Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New

Author(s): Victoria Rowe Holbrook

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Jul. - Sep., 1992, Vol. 112, No. 3
(Jul. - Sep., 1992), pp. 440-454
Published by: American Oriental Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/603080

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Journal of the American Oriental Society

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ORIGINALITY AND OTTOMAN POETICS: IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NEW

VICTORIA ROWE HOLBROOK

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Seyh Galib's verse romance Beauty and Love has been received as a startlingly original work,
in contrast to broad disparagement of Ottoman poetry as imitative of the Persian. He articulated
a poetics of originality in a "Digression" taken mid-way through his romance. He ridiculed a no-
tion that poetry is properly the imitation of poetry, offering a series of proofs on the mode of ex-
istence, logical necessity, and universality of original poetry.

Born, as it were, out of time, this noble poem appears amid the trivialities and
impudicities of the Romantic Age like a pure and stately lily in a wilderness of
nightshade and hemlock.
E. J. W. Gibb,1 referring to Galib's Beauty and Love2

IN ISTANBUL AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
the poet feyh Galib (d. 1799)3 claimed to compose
"fresh" verse. Modern criticism of Ottoman Turkish
poetry has had difficulty coming to terms with Galib's
claim, for the politics of literary evaluation reigning
over the past century have discursively produced a dec-
adent eighteenth century untouched by the light of
originality-"a wilderness of nightshade and hem-
lock," in Gibb's elegant phrase. Most critics have
praised Galib as a superlatively original artist, some-
times judging him the greatest of Ottoman poets and
more often naming his Beauty and Love as the finest of
Ottoman verse romances. Conclusions regarding his
literary time, also evaluative, have required that Beauty
and Love be judged an exception, "a pure and stately
lily" somehow "born out of time."
1 A History of Ottoman Poetry', 6 vols. (London: Luzac,
immediate literary past they identified with the failing
1900-1907), 4:180.
2 Husn-ii Ask. All translations from the work quoted in this
4 See Sherif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman
article are mine, and follow the sole critical edition, itself
based on the poet's autograph, by AbdUlbaki Gblpinarli,
Husn-ui Ask (Istanbul: Altin Kitaplar, 1968). A facsimile of
the autograph is included in Gblpinarli's edition, which also
contains a description of other manuscripts he consulted.
3 "Galib" is a pen-name; the poet's given name was Meh-
med. He became a Mevlev4 ,eyh some years after writing
Beauty and Love at the age of twenty-five. Turkish names,
titles, and other words are spelled here according to modern
Turkish usage, adding a distinction between the characters
hamza (') and ayn (') in words of Arabic derivation. Long
vowels are often not indicated in names and titles.
Exalting Galib against the image of a disparaged
Ottoman past, Gibb, in his six-volume History of Otto-
man Poetry, monumentalized a late nineteenth-century
moment in the ideology of his Young Ottoman4
friends, whom Gibb met when they sojourned abroad
or fled in exile. Perhaps willingly, perhaps somewhat
unbeknownst to himself, Gibb served as spokesman for
an Ottoman opposition who often had occasion to ad-
vise European scholars then in the process of produc-
ing grand narratives5 of the histories and literatures of
Muslims, narratives that continue to define present aca-
demic formations. The Young Ottomans, and their suc-
cessors in reform, the Young Turks, deprecated an old
East and longed for new Western science, passionately
engaged in an effort to reform Turkish language and
literature as a key element of their platform for reform
of the Ottoman state.
Their program required a polemicist attack upon an
Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).
5 Jean-Franqois Lyotard has used this term to describe dis-
cursive practices which seek to unify contradictions with an
eye to power and control. See his The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge, tr. Geoff Bennington and Brian Mas-
sumi, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 10 (Minneapolis:
Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984; orig. French pub. 1979). I do
not cite my observation this way as a censuring judgment, but
as an analysis of the, so to speak, natural laws of linguistic
creations. Certainly persons have good reason to seek control
over their destinies, inevitably affecting others as well.

440

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 441

sultanate as something reprehensibly moribund, and the is true of others he did not, but could have mentioned,
first modern Turkish literary histories were composed and of his own contemporaries and immediate succes-
in this heady atmosphere. Young Ottoman judgment of sors who engaged in dialogue with him. Galib's own
the literary past was institutionalized by the Turkish works other than Beauty and Love have not been ed-
Republic founded in 1923 at the Empire's collapse, and ited, although his stature as among the four or five
served as touchstone for the modern canon of Ottoman most brilliant Ottoman poets is reiterated in every his-
poetry. For this reason I begin with Gibb's century-old tory of Turkish literature, in whatever language. Criti-
opinion, which epitomizes a pronouncement of modern cal editions of the works of Ottoman poets, even those
evaluation still echoing down the halls of Turkish lit- judged major, are few, and secondary sources, not to
eraturefakultes. Every reference to Galib has alluded in mention translation, proportionally sparse.
some way to the tension between his claim to origi- An objective evaluation should comprehend a pro-
nality and the falling out of fashion of his age.6 foundly rich poetical tradition whose longevity has
Many of these references have a rather exasperated been calculated from the Ottoman dynasty's rise to
air; the critic seems to plead: Galib was original, power in the fourteenth century to the advent of "west-
Beauty and Love was new-and then be too exhausted ernization" in the nineteenth, accommodating a concur-
to offer much analysis of what was original about Gal- rent Arabic and Persian tradition, and its inheritance
ib's poetry, or consider his work within its literary and dating back some seven centuries more. Galib was,
philosophical intertextualities. One can well under- typically for an Ottoman poet, trilingual, writing in Ar-
stand the frustrations Turkish scholars writing since the abic and Persian as well as Turkish-a specifically
republican revolution have felt. The revolution made Ottoman Arabic and Persian which have their own (yet
necessary a reconstruction in its light of the Ottoman to be written) literary history. And there is the rest of
past. This all-consuming project did not encourage the Turkish literature, pre-Ottoman, or developing in tan-
study of works in their own contexts. Republican dem, Azeri, Chagatay, etc. Ottoman poets often dem-
scholars were also burdened, after the Alphabet revolu- onstrated their command of stylistic developments
tion of 1928 which replaced the modified Arabic script abroad by composing verses in these various kinds of
with one based on the Roman, with the overwhelming Turkish, as Galib did. The institutions transmitting
task of transliterating Ottoman literature. By the same knowledge of these various items were dismantled by
token, they were pressed into service to produce basic the republic, which at the same time demanded fluency
teaching texts for the new nationalist educational insti- with a great deal of new knowledge, having only the
tutions, introducing Ottoman poetry to students trained most tenuous points of relation with the old.
by cultural revolution to distrust it as an emblem of the I will take as moot the worried question, "Was Galib
failed empire. Most of the critical writing on Galib has original?" Gibb, correcting von Hammer's error finding
been of this introductory genre. Galib's romance derived from an earlier Persian work,8
In the days of revolutionary consciousness, in one had offered one explanation: Galib wrote a verse narra-
sense itself a kind of gap of interrelation, it was not tive with an original plot, while his romance 6cole
reasonable to offer judgment of how original Galib's (supposedly) made a virtue of revising classic plots
work may have been, and the tracing of lines of influ- well known and loved by all. Yet even fine contempo-
ence remains a game of chance; citations are dealt rary scholars casually refer to Beauty and Love as the
from the deck of Islamicate texts which have happened most famous rendition of a classic romance.9 If Galib's
to catch modern notice. The majority of Ottoman ro-
mances, most of them very long, have not been edited.
failure in the poet's quest: Here in our Istanbul Nev'izade /
The works of some of those Galib referred to as liter-
Gave chase, but in his pedestrian way (v. 825).
ary forebears exist only in manuscripts,7 and the same
8 "Alike in subject and sentiment, in imagery and language,
[Galib] is a law unto himself.... Von Hammer's assertion
6 For a summary of Galib's reception in modern times, and that the poet took as his model Fettdhi of NIshapur's prose
Ali Nihat Tarlan's opinion dissenting from its reigning theo- romance called Beauty and Heart (Hfisn-u Dil) is absurdly
retical assumptions, see my "A Technology of Reference: Di- wrong" (A History of Ottoman Poetry, 4:180-81). Gibb relied
van and anti-Divan in the Reception of a Turkish Poet," much upon the works of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall
Edebiyat (forthcoming). (1774-1856).
7 Nev'izdde Ata~l's romances, for example, though Galib 9 [Beauty and Love is] "A mystical romance in the classica
gave Ata~l only disparaging mention in Beauty and Love, tradition, the most famous rendition of which in Turkish li
have not been published. In this couplet he referred to Ata~l's erature is by feyh Galib." See Ahmet Omur Evin's pioneerin

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
442 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
work rendered a classic romance, it has yet to be cited.
The belief that it did derives from assumptions about
the literary past bequeathed by Young Ottoman polem-
ics and transmitted as a function of nationalist myth,
rather than of individual error. The slur that Ottoman
poetry in general imitated the Persian, to which Gibb
gave resounding international voice,10 and repeated
over and over without proof, is based on a misunder-
standing of Ottoman poetical conventions and a con-
founding of notions of "imitation."
But the idea that a literary work is original because
its plot originates with its author would seem, at least
in "the West," to be of recent vintage, subsequent to
Galib's practice.11
FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT DAY
Much energy has been devoted to discovering unac-
knowledged "sources" of Beauty and Love, as of other
Ottoman works.12 The impetus for this hunt maythis
be category had often been articulated in protest
Origins and Development of The Turkish Novel (Minneapolis:
Bibliotheca Islamica, 1983), 20, n. 31. Evin's finely conceived
synthesis deals with a different subject, and I cite his passing
footnote as part of a broader phenomenon.
10 His most concise statement is found in his Encyclopaedia
Britannica article on Turkish literature: "In all literary mat-
ters the Ottoman Turks have shown themselves a singularly
uninventive people, the two great schools, the old and the
new, into which we may divide their literature, being closely
modelled, the one after the classics of Persia, the other after
those of modern Europe, and more especially of France"
(1911 ed., 27:465). The second half of his judgment, regard-
ing modern imitation of the French, is also in need of critique.
1 Roland Barthes historicized and rejected this idea in hispsychology, and metaphysics. Since republican educa-
tional and scholarly practice has been mainly preoccu-
essay, "The Death of the Author" [1968]: " ... the writer can
only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original."
See Image-Music-Text, tr. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill &
Wang, 1977; orig. French pub. 1968), p. 146. Michel Fou-
cault's essay, "What is an Author?" deals with the historicity
of the "author-function," necessarily, though not explicitly,
calling into question notions of originality which depend upon
the author. See Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, tr.
Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1977; orig. French pub. 1969), 113-38.
12 G1lpinarli, early in his career (during the period he pub-
lished Divan Edebiyati Beydnindadir, 1945) claimed Galib
had taken his "subject" from a treatise by Fuzuli, and found
Fuzill's source in a work by Suhravardi (Maqtul), in turn de-
rived from one by Ibn Sina. Over the course of his many
introductory studies of Galib, Golpinarli abandoned this posi-
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
traced to the dominance of philologist methodology in
construction of Turkish republican literary institutions.
Philology's creative genius abides in its challenge to
ahistorical discursive practices, among them myth and
appeal to authority. By tracing documentable things
from their origins to the present day, nationalist phi-
lology strove to free a Turkishness and Turkish con-
sciousness from Ottoman ideologies of Empire, and
succeeded in this daring move.
But the power of myth was recuperated in forms of
nationalist ideology, leaving people bound to reconcile
incompatible juxtapositions of value. The institution of
national literature was furnished by local alternatives
to the dominant international culture of the Ottoman
Empire, namely, "folk literature." Folk literature be-
came popularly understood in Turkey, by the common
confusion of folklore method with the sources it stud-
ies and both with artifact, to be anything not produced
by the Ottoman ruling class; the literature chosen to fill
against Ottoman power, even in alliance with rival
ideologies such as the Safavi.13 Appeal to older oppo-
sitional discursive practice served polemicists articu-
lating a modern nationhood in opposition to empire.
For the same reasons, it became useful, in a climate
valuing individualist originality, to discredit Ottoman
literary and philosophical institutions by finding them
derivative.
Lately the triumph of nationalist institutions has pro-
duced unintended effects: the Ottoman past, occulted
by revolution, became liable to appropriation, and con-
temporary fundamentalist movements have not over-
looked the opportunity. Perhaps like all "pre-modern"
imaginative literature, Ottoman poetry carries intellec-
tual attendants closely tied to religiosity-cosmology,
pied with constructing secularist national literary
institutions, Ottoman artistic and philosophical litera-
ture was left to a minority not in a position to carry out
tion, and examination of the works he invoked reveals that
while all have been called allegories, they have little else in
common.
13 It is worth stressing that "folk literature" (halk edebiyatl),
as a category, does not function in modern Turkish discourse
to refer to the anonymous expression of oral culture. The
most famous folk poets of the past, like Pir Sultan Abdal, are
well-defined individual personalities; the most famous of all,
Yunus Emre, Turkish national poet par excellence, left extant
a treatise in Arabic evidencing a literary education.
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 443

their labors with institutional support.14 Their marginal

(as the same Gblpinarli's research makes it possible to
efforts have not produced the discursive apparatus for
judging whether an appropriation is based on any his-
torical roots at all, and the Ottoman universe of dis-
course has become a convenient unknown liable to
populist plunder for legitimation of fundamentalist
movements practicing their ideal imperialism in Tur-
key and elsewhere, carrying piggyback those dark
politics of gender masquerading as the sacred.
But the project of determining the essence of a thing,
in this case Turkishness, by tracing it from its origins
to the present day has been very widely criticized. At
the most basic level, the project cannot succeed simply
because one will not find the ultimate origin of any-
thing by scholarly method, at least not until scholarly
method invents some kind of truth-meter, a Geiger
counter of essence. The idea of an essential identity,
whose history can be constructed, has been incessantly
debunked in post-structuralist discourse as an illusion
made possible by acts of language. Claims to compre-
hensiveness, so seductively reassuring, are belied by
the exclusionary acts of the comprehender's limited
consciousness which must leave much out. Inherent in
the attempt to define literary or philosophical things by
tracing influence, there is the disadvantage that the
meaning of a text may be reduced to "sources," making
its past and present specificity disappear in attendant
discourse.
READING IN ISTANBUL CIRCA 1780
While historical study of original articulations of
concepts Galib employed in Beauty and Love, such as
those of the divine names (esmd') and their sites of
manifestation (mazhar), or perpetual creation (teced-
dud-i havddis), is of interest in itself, the question of
source is peripheral to Galib's synthesis of these articu-
lations when one's project is poetics. We owe Golpi-
narli much for his critical edition of Beauty and Love
(1968) and his footnotes to it, including those citing
(without comment) Raghib-i Isfahani's (d. 1108)
Al-Mufradat fi Gharib al-Qur'dn and the Ta'rifdt of
Sayyid Sharif Jurjani (d. 1413). But it is unlikely that
Galib consulted these works, and impossible that these
concepts remained frozen in suspended animation over
the course of Ottoman centuries. It is much more likely
14 In the preface to his textbook on Ottoman poetry
Cendb-i Ismd'cl Rusahf al- Ankaravf Kuddise Sirrihu and Der
use at Turkish universities today, Professor Fahir Iz notesMedh-ithat
he has published it at his own expense; see Eski Turk Ede- ~,drih-i Mesnevi Ismd'il Ankaravi Kuddise Sirrihu (Cairo:
biyatinda Nazim (Istanbul: KtiAiqkaydin, 1967), I. 2:v.
prove) that Galib received these orally as part of Turk-
ish MevlevP5 and Meldmt16 practice and thought, the
first a dervish order and the second a supra-order,17
both documentably of Galib's heritage, and each hav-
ing its own (yet unwritten) intellectual history; and
Galib's praise of Ankaravi18 would point to that seven-
teenth-century Ottoman commentator's works as a
more immediate textual source.
In evaluating Ottoman poetry, appeals to the pri-
macy of a distant (= Arabic) textual source demand
15 The Mevlevi dervish order was founded in Turkish Ana-
tolia at the end of the thirteenth century on the basis of Mev-
lana Rumi's teachings. For Rumi's thought, see Annemarie
Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun (London, 1978); and William
C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of
Rumi (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1983). Treat-
ment in English of the Ottoman history of the order is limited
to Eva de Vitray-Meyerovich's Rami and Sufism, tr. Simone
Fattal (Sausalito, Cal.: Post-Apollo, 1987; orig. French pub.
1977). See also my "Diverse Tastes in the Spiritual Life: Tex-
tual Play in the Diffusion of Rumi's Order," in The Legacy of
Mediaeval Persian Sufism (London and New York: Khaniqah
Nimatullahi Press, 1991). The major study of both Mevlana's
thought and the Mevlevi order is that of Abdulbaki Gdlpi-
narli, in two volumes: Mevldnd Celaleddfn (Istanbul: Inkilfp,
1959) and Mevldna'dan Sonra Mevlevilik [Mevlevi-ism After
Mevlana], 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Inkilap ve Aka, 1983).
16 Golpinarli referred to Galib's Meldmi affiliation (in his
critical edition, p. 9), as did Sadettin NUzhet Ergun, &eyh
Galib ve Eserleri [&eyh Galib and his Works] (Istanbul: n. p.,
1936), 13, through the poet's father. For an introduction to
the Meldmi, see my "Ibn 'Arabi and Ottoman Dervish Tradi-
tions: The Meldmi Supra-Order, Part One," Journal of the
Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society X (1991), and C. H. Imber,
"Maldmatiyya," in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H. A. R.
Gibb, J. H. Kramers, E. Levi-Provenqal, et al., 6 vols. (Lei-
den and London, 1954-). The first comprehensive modern
treatment is Abdulbaki Golpinarli's pioneering Meldmilik ve
Meldmiler (Istanbul: Devlet, 1931).
17 During the greater part of their long history the Meldmi
were a kind of order of ,eyhs; ,eyh directors of dervish houses
of various orders enjoyed Melami affiliation, and it became a
kind of "way" transcending the orders; therefore I have
termed it a "supra-order."
18 Two odes in praise (kaside) of Ismac'l Ankaravi in Gal-
ib's Divan are titled: Der Evsdf-i Serif-i $drih-i Mesnevi
still in
Evsdf-z &erffe-i Gavvds-i Bahr-i Ma'navi Cendb-i
Bulak, 1836/1252), part one, pp. 7-8.

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
444 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)

that history (= Islamic history) be traced back along a
text-chain to its original (= more Islamic) source. Ob-
servation of what Andrews has called the "ecology of
the song"19 makes clear that the mode of transmission
terms too close to Young Ottoman polemic to be re-
proper to Ottoman literary culture was largely oral
while yet, or also, "high" in culture and written as
well. Turkish "folk literature" too, might be creatively
studied through categories of orality and literacy, put-
ting aside the high/low duet for a while. Obviously,
Galib did not survey a landscape delimited by positiv-
ist notions of objectivity, mapped out by nationalist
boundaries or critical editions. Questions of source
would have been pursued, at least in significant part,
along lines of oral transmission having their own
specific modes of interpretation and evaluation.
In Beauty and Love, Galib (d. 1799) criticized the
Ottoman poet NabM (d. 1712), saying he'd taken the
plot of his verse narrative Beneficity (Hayrdbdd) from
Attar's (d. 1220) Persian Book of Divinity (Ildhlnd-
mah).20 Had Galib himself read Attar's narrative? Or
did he hear it discussed, or recited? If he did read it, it
was in manuscript;21 under what conditions did he do
so? Did he read the manuscript in a dervish house
(tekke) library? Did his father or one of his father's
friends have it in a private library at home? Did Galib
read it with a teacher, or perhaps a friend or circle of
friends? Was he able to consult a manuscript at his
these scholarly excursions, though avowedly prelimi-
nary, have judged Ottoman literary theory unoriginal
and therefore uncreative,23 an evaluation couched in
ceived without question as objective. Conservative
preservation of such texts and their interpretation, as
well as the resultant gap between theory and practice,
was probably universal in "pre-modern" times.24 There
are however, other sources for Ottoman theory of liter-
ary style. Contrary to popular opinion, the majority of
Ottoman poets judged most successful were not me-
drese graduates.25
Though, like Galib, they may well have been famil-
iar with contents of medrese curricula, they had their
education elsewhere, usually at a dervish house (tekke)
or under tutelage associated with a tekke. In Galib's ro-
mance there is evidence of a sense of competition felt
between tekke and medrese institutions,26 well known,
yet left out of discussions of literary theory. There is a
vast landscape of Ottoman discourse on poetics alter-
native to medrese standard available for consideration;
poetry, poetics, ideas about imagery, metaphor, and
language, were probably most debated not in the Otto-
man medrese but in the dervish house, under headings
we have yet to define.
THE IDEA OF ORIGINALITY

convenience? Was the work felt to reside primarily in

the manuscript or its oral transmission? When the au-
thor of a romance rendered a classic plot, to what de-
gree and in what way was his borrowing by means of a
textual source? Questions of this kind have not been
sufficiently explored.
Ottoman theory of literary style has been studied to
date in view of what was taught in the Ottoman me-
drese seminary under the rubric of rhetoric (beldga);22
19 See Walter G. Andrews, Poetry's Voice, Society's Song: man Rhetoric up to 1882, Parts I and II," The Journal of
Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle & London: University of Ottoman Studies 3 (1982): 165-88, and 4 (1984): 19-134; and
Washington Press, 1985), chap. seven.
20 Should Nabi ever then be applauded / For piling words
on what Shaykh Attar said? / You don't know his Book of
Divinity? / Was there something lacking in his story? (vv.
186-87); To tell the truth, it's [Nabi's romance] but a fingered
tale / Thieves are by far given the greatest share (v. 208).
21 Printing of literary texts was not Ottoman practice at the
time.
22 An Ottoman medrese was a kind of college offering in-
struction in accordance with established syllabi to students
having sufficient preparation in the "Arabic sciences," and
One would prefer to approach the question of origi-
nality from a historiography of the idea and values dis-
tion, which could include the highest governmental offices, as
a law degree does in America today. The medrese system,
over which a kind of central control was exercized from Istan-
bul, operated throughout the Ottoman centuries and is dated in
its legitimating formations from earlier Islamicate times.
23 See Christopher Ferrard, "The Development of an Otto-
''Reca'izade Mahmud Ekrem's Tadlim-i Edebiydt, Parts I and
II," Turk Dili ve Edebiyati 14-15 (1980-1986): 215-33,
and Journal of Ottoman Studies 6 (1986): 139-61. For an al-
ternative analysis, see Walter G. Andrews, Jr., An Introduction
to Ottoman Poetry (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976).
24 See Ren6 Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism 1750-
1950, I: The Later Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1981; orig. pub. 1955), 5-6.
25 An hour's perusal of the biographical notices in Gibb's
History on the most famous Ottoman poets will make this
obvious.

qualifying them as candidates for careers in law and educa- 26 See the chapter "Professor Madness," vv. 373-89.

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 445

cursively assigned to it. But republican conditions have POETRY AS A CHARACTER

not promoted inquiry into the intellectual history a his-

toriography of value would require,27 and more hands It was after introducing Poetry (Siihan)29 as a char-
are needed to construct it. Of course, claims to origi- acter who resides in the garden of "meaning" (macnd)
nality are in themselves of dubious status. They are as that Galib digressed from his tale to expound his claim
proverbial, subjective, or relative as the claim that to the new. The description of the garden concludes
nothing is new. More often than not, they appear (like with this verse (714):
the claims of the Young Ottomans, or my own) to be
That gaily blooming garden was, in short
among rhetorical strategies of players jockeying for
Alike to the pure genius of the poet
position on a field of competition; the perceived value
of the new in a particular historical context is as rele- As a character, Poetry resides in a location like
vant to the question as anything else. (manende) the poet's genius or nature (tab'). The hero-
Galib expounded a poetics of originality in a "Di- ine Beauty and the hero Love meet him during a
gression" taken mid-way through Beauty and Love. springtime stroll, and Poetry assumes the role of go-
There he dropped his narrative persona of the tale, and between for the two adolescent lovers. He is described
its tone, quality, and imagery, to take up the expository as ontologically prior to God's creation of the heavens,
persona of orator. The prefatory, digressive, and epi- because God creates by speech (vv. 715-16):
logue chapters of Islamicate romances have often been
A sage young at heart and sprightly of limb
omitted in translation and summary on the view that
Welcomed the guests to that pleasure spot in
such parts are not of interest to readers who could only
Poetry by name, his gracious person
be expected to appreciate the tale. But in fact these
Existed prior to heaven's creation
other parts of the romance, excluded by a modern per-
spective also judging them as parts of fictional, there-
fore not objective critical discourse, are one site where
29 Galib used various words for poetry and poet in Beauty
theory of Ottoman literary practice took place.
and Love. Translation of the terms evcar as poetry and ,aCir as
Considering the lack of secondary literature treating
poet, has been standard in English practice. Another term,
sources for Ottoman poetics, the deceptively simple act
mazman, means etymologically "something enclosed" (in ver-
of considering seriously just one case can have effects
bal form), "meaning," "import." According to Redhouse's
more creative than a historiography of the idea com-
1890 dictionary, in Ottoman usage it apparently came to mean
promised by begging of inadequate corollaries. Here I
bon mot, "witticism" or "pun." In Galib's usage, however, it
will offer materials from Galib's romance as one source
denotes poetic signification, including metaphor and imagery.
for a genealogy of originality as an Ottoman idea. I
But it is suhan which is the subject of the three proofs of
leave general conclusions based on comparisons for a
the Digression. The Redhouse translation of this Persian loan-
day when sources like these have been mined for their
word is: "1. Anything said, thought, or written; a word, ex-
value in the analysis of poetics. No translation of
pression; a remark, a saying; an assertion; a discourse; talk.
Beauty and Love has been published, and so I will
2. (mystics) A revelation or divine command." These are in-
quote extensively from the work here.28 This is chro-
clusive definitions, but none of them corresponds to the pri-
nologically a late Ottoman text, one described as sum-
mary denotation of Galib's usage: poetry. In Beauty and Love,
mative of the Ottoman romance. In this sense I have
the term siihan is used substantively to mean poetry, in com-
elsewhere called Beauty and Love "the ultimate ro-
pounds to mean poet (siihanver, siihansenc), and as the name
mance." My treatment at this stage necessarily takes
of a character.
the form of explication.
Alternative translations of the term would be "word" or
"speech"; in compounds, "eloquent persons," or some such
phrase. These have the advantage of preserving the denotative
27 For exceptions characteristic of republican minority range
dis- above and beyond which a poetic connotation became
course, see the works of M. Kaya Bilgegil, Mehmet Kaplan, the one Galib emphasized. But "word" has the disadvantage
and Harun Tolasa. of raising Christian associations in the mind of an Anglo-
28 Brief passages from the work have been translated into
phone audience, especially when capitalized as the name of a
various languages, with varying degrees of accuracy and suc- character; Gibb translated Sihan as "the Logos," reading
cess. I quote my translation of Galib's romance into English Beauty and Love as a kind of Neo-Platonist allegory (A His-
verse, which, hesitating and endlessly revising, I have not yet tory, 4:187-88). "Speech," when used consistently to trans-
published. late sUhan, obscures the specificity of Galib's meaning.

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 446 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)

He is aware to a degree approaching omniscience, and
powerful to a commensurate degree, because as the
medium of God's creative acts Poetry has been every-
where and knows everything (vv. 717, 719-20):
Informed of Beauty and Love's quiddities
Aware of heat and cold's own properties ...
He was both the question and the answer
Both miracle and divine messenger
Unrivalled in guiding right and astray
Contraction, expansion, under his sway
He is capable of reconciling contraries, of assuming
any form, and necessary to life, for life is given
through his mediation (vv. 722-23, 725, 730):
He would, when he was graciously inclined
Make lover and beloved of death and life
He could be a sprite, could be a devil
Could be aquatic, could be terrestrial ...
Now he was a poet, now a scholar
Now an ascetic, now a sorcerer ..
Each creature in the world depends on him
All that is naught discovers life through him
them-has most publicly pointed to Sterne and Diderot
as early novelists who accommodated non-narrative
discourse in their books, offering a mine of possibili-
ties overlooked by a kind of realist hegemony over the
novel. Today, Galib's way of differentiating narrative
styles in his romance seems postmodern, though, like
Diderot's, his moves are of eighteenth-century vintage.
The diction of Galib's Digression, though teasingly
subtle, is straightforward compared to that of his tale. The
narrative style of Beauty and Love is extremely com-
pressed for an Islamicate romance; one American student
of mine described it as psychedelic, finding the experi-
ence of reading it a continuous series of mental implo-
sions. One can scarcely overemphasize the reputation for
difficulty Beauty and Love has acquired over the years.
But this reputation should be appreciated in the context of
a high valuing of difficulty; a universe in which the "diffi-
cult" is defended against suppression of Ottoman poetry
as the losing side of a polemic promoting the simple as
the pure and properly nationalist.
THE OPENING

Later on in the tale, Poetry reveals that he is the her-
oine Beauty's humble slave (v. 1610). Although in the
Digression there is no question of poetry or any other
term's functioning as a character, qualities attributed to
the character were also attributed to the term.
THE DIGRESSION
Galib's oratorial voice opened the Digression by set-
ting up his opposition, appealing to a certain kind of
reader (vv. 737-38):
O ye who seek meaning's luminous jewel
Give my discourse the hearing it is due
One or two concerns in this connection
Have served as the cause of my contention

The connection to which he refers is the subject of po-

Galib's poetics of originality took the form of a
etry, just previously introduced in the tale as a charac-
series of proofs: of the "Existence," (Vicuad) the "Ne-
ter. The orator satirizes others he will name who don't
cessity," (Lazum) and the "Universality (Umam) of the
seek "the jewel of meaning." "Meaning" (mana) is
Necessity" of poetry (siihan). These headings are sub-
pair to "form" (suret), a duo similar to truth and ap-
sumed under the "Digression" (Mebdhis-i Diger).30 In
pearance. Those who don't make the distinction are
the midst of his romance Galib paused to engage in lit-
portrayed as not able to understand what is going on in
erary polemic. This kind of interruption of fictional
this polemic. The orator ridicules a notion that poetry
narrative by expository/essayist digression was re-
should properly be the imitation of poetry, pointing out
jected in realist times as not novelistic. The triumph of
the absurd infinite regression such a view would re-
a realist project of omniscient narrator, whose illusion
quire (vv. 739-42, 744-45):
should not be disturbed, has been rejected in recent de-
cades by Milan Kundera, among many others who find Some lunatics dressed as rational men
it appropriate to interrupt their fictions with digressions Claim new poetry has come to an end
not narrative in genre. In defining Central European As if the great poets of former times
fiction, Kundera-who, like the American John Barth, Did no more than to re-phrase former times31
stops his fictions to comment on what he is doing in In no man is there found worthiness left
The business of poets must then be theft

30 It is rare for such chapter headings to occur in the auto-

graph of an Islamicate romance; more often they are inserted 31 Gyiyd ki siihan-veran-i pipn / Hep sdyleyeler zamdn-i
by editors. All headings I mention are Galib's own. pisin.

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 447
"Is there anything that has not been said?
Even one single word left unexpressed?"...
Some ponderous idlers jibbering nonsense
Dregs a tribe of jinns sons of jinns has left
Calling themselves the poets of the age
Worship on the prayer mat of the cafe
The orator characterizes the professional poets of his
time as doddering fools who, even in worship, imitate.
His jibe at their "worship on the prayer mat of the cafe"
is relevant here as a criticism of imitation. The cafe is
a forum for gossip, rumor, hearsay. To take the cafe
as one's prayer mat is, figuratively, to worship a God
known by hearsay.
The orator satirizes his opposition as victims of their
own misapprehension of self-interest. In order to de-
fend themselves against charges of mediocrity, they
make a virtue of imitating the ancients; in a world
where everything has been said, repetition is the only
option (vv. 744-47, 751-53, 755):
They babble on in their ill-omened snooze
Consumed in their own fires like the Kaknus32
They bow and cow to each other and say:
"That's how it is gentlemen, I daresay ...
Let all appreciate our worth, dear friends
Men of genius will not be seen again"
In order to peddle their poetry
They reject outright originality
Their works in their hands, inkpots on their belts
In the shops, in the streets, their presence is felt ...
Since their own talents are ever so slight
They try to make verse's dawn a dark night
The orator attacks three groups who write verse and
make judgments about poetry: professional poets, bu-
reaucrats, and pedagogues; the latter two overlap inso-
far as they are products of the medrese seminary. In a
pioneering study of the poet Nedim, Evin observed that
32 The Kaknus (Greek) is a mythological bird which has
360 nostrils in its nose. It lives high up in the mountains in
India, perched facing the wind, which produces various tones
as it passes through the Kaknus's nostrils. When other birds
hear these tones, they gather on its head; and so it captures
prey. The Kaknus lives for a thousand years. At the end of its
life, it gathers a pile of wood, sits on top of it and sings, flap-
ping its wings in excitement. Its flapping wings produce Turkey: 1718-1730" (Ph. D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1973),
sparks which ignite the wood, and the Kaknus dies in the fire.67-68.
An egg is produced from the ashes out of which another Kak-
nus is hatched (see Golpinarli's 1968 critical edition, pp. 332-
33, after Tercume-i Burhdn-i Kaati'). The analogy is between
modes of self-immolation.
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
at the beginning of the Ottoman eighteenth century po-
etry was considered a branch of the learned sciences. It
was a body of received knowledge to be learned, con-
sisting of prosody and rhetoric. On a scale ranging
from the profitable to the harmful, poetry was class-
ified as neither profitable nor harmful. The classifica-
tion is taken from an Ottoman document containing
"information on education in Turkey during the first
half of the eighteenth century," and interpreted to mean
that poetry was "assigned an insignificant role among
intellectual pursuits."33 But one wonders: assigned by
whom? It seems this classification was pedagogical,
made by the medrese establishment.
It is unlikely that a pedagogical classification could
reflect the attitudes of Ottoman society at large. Galib's
orator treated the bureaucrat/pedagogues most con-
temptuously of all in his satire, classifying them below
the professional poets. He even seemed to make an
equation between their (according to him) proclivity
for a passive homosexual role (muglim) and lack
of ... what might it be called-literary virility? His
views may have been characteristic of an ongoing de-
bate on the nature and social value of poetry, announc-
ing something of his personal intellectual and political
loyalties in a polemic with establishment positions of
his time. Twenty-five-year-old Galib's free-for-all tone
does evoke the competitive posture, and the sharp
teeth, of youth (vv. 756-57, 759-62):
Then dilletante scribblers among the scribes
Usually the senior clerks among scribes
Billowing cloaks of righteous vanity
They stir up the sea of terminology . .
A couple of young boys to pass the time
A volume of verse, music and some wine
If one should to hard work feel disinclined
From these it is that strength is to be mined
Does this not define the word catamite?
Is not such poethood tasteless and trite?
Seminary students34 can't be poets
No, that group I will not even discuss
Ergun has observed that the writing of parallels
(nazires)35 had apparently become the main content of
3 See Ahmet Omur Evin, "Nedim: Poet of the Tulip Age:
The Beginning of Western Influences and Westernization in
34 Suhte kismi, var. of softa-medrese students.
35 Verses in which a poet engages in a dialogue with an
admired and challenged predecessor by writing a poem in
the same form, same rhyme scheme, meter, and on the same
448 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
many a poet's collected works at the end of the eigh-
teenth century.36 It may in part be this practice that
Galib ridiculed when accusing the professional poets
of his time of claiming that poetry is properly the imi-
tation of poetry. More to the point, he seems to have
been trying to define a kind of true poetry, and true po-
ethood (vv. 764, 766-67):
Living in our city more friends than should
Rush frantically off to art's neighborhood ...
Like flies picking up offal from rumors
They try to contemn the honey of verse
In other words, original poetry
Scarce as well-balanced temperament must be
Galib was highly regarded in literary circles at the
moment of writing his romance, and had perhaps al-
ready caught the attention of the prince, later Sultan
Selim the Third, whose friendship he so enjoyed after
being appointed zeyh of the Kulekapi Mevlevi dervish
house at Galata in Istanbul.37 He claimed the title of
the greatest poet of his time in Beauty and Love
(vv. 1977, 2082) and apparently aspired to be received
as such by virtue of his originality (v. 2069: I've sur-
passed the school of my heritage! I've articulated a
new language, et seq. through v. 2082). He began in
his opening to narrow the definition of poetry by con-
centrating on the poet's nature, a discussion he ex-
panded later under the heading "On the Nature of
Poethood" (vv. 802-22). Poetry is not for the dilletante
nor for anyone whose style of life and thought is inap-
propriate to its practice. Original poetry is more than
the meter and rhyme "they" suppose it to be, and
scarce as a well-balanced temperament.
THE FIRST PROOF
The first proof of Galib's Digression dealt with poet-
ry's mode of existence, the question of the being of po-
etry. It answered the queries: In what sense does poetry
exist? What is its mode of being? Galib claimed that
poetry is original by definition; if it is not original,
then it is not poetry.
subject as one by the predecessor. The Ottoman parallel
should not be, as it has been, confused with the British and
American "imitation," composed with the intention to repro-
duce the style of another author. The parallel, and verse forms
such as the tahmis, are more fora of competition delimited by
rules of form.
36 feyh Galib ve Eserleri, 5-8.
37 Ergun, 36-41.
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
If one may, speaking very generally, and if such
general speaking is of heuristic value, point to the or-
ganic and mechanical metaphors as dominant in nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century Eurocentric thought,38 it
might be helpful to consider the possibility that the
dominant metaphor of Galib's Ottoman eighteenth-
century orientation was an ontological one. That is, he
looked at everything, and anything, from a cosmic
model delimited according to ontological priority.
When he took a particular object or thought in hand in
order to consider it, he found it natural to place it as
prior or subsequent in a progression of being from the
divine-explained in more detail below. Galib did not
see things as developing organically, like a butterfly
from a cocoon, or as part of a mechanistic system made
up of simultaneous parts.
The crux of his first proof is a reference to the theory
that human beings participate in God's creative acts
through the divine name "truth."39 He drew a connec-
tion between God the truth, and poetry. The key verse
is 777:
It's God the truth who showers forth poetry
Mankind is the true site of this bounty40
As noted before, Galib enjoyed a multiple Mevlevi/
Melami affiliation, typical of Ottoman dervish practice.
A readily recognizable sign of Melami affiliation, in
certain periods including Galib's time, may well be par-
ticipation in the philosophical intercourse of the Ibn
'Arab! &oles4l of Ottoman thought. And one of the
38 See Vincent Descombes's discussion of the work of
Michel Serres, Modern French Philosophy, tr. L. Scott-Fox
and J. M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980;
orig. French pub. 1979), 85f.
39 While it is debatable whether "truth" (hak) should be
called a divine name, and has perhaps been better rendered as
"the divine reality," Galib seems to use it as a divine name.
40 Feyyaz-i suhan cendb-i Hak'tir / Insan bu ataya miis-
tahaktir
41 Ibn 'Arabi's writing style, and modes of thought, have
proved extremely difficult for modern readers. His importance
for our appreciation of Islamicate thought may be compared
with that of Thomas Aquinas in Christendom. Early studies
available seemed, at least to this writer, preliminary gropings
in the dark. But Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Three Muslim Sages
(New York: Caravan, 1964), Toshihiko Izutsu's Sufism and
Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press 1983;
first pub. 1966-67), and Henri Corbin's Creative Imagination
in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, tr. Ralph Manheim (Princeton:
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 449
readable signs of such participation, from the superfi-
cial perspective available today, may be the kind of
practice of signification by Arabic-noun-morphology-
play Galib engaged in above, where reference to the
interrelation of the terms hak ("truth," "right") and
mUstahak ("made truly deserving," "possessing the
right to") indicates an interrelation of divine name and
its site of manifestation.42 With the new scholarship on
Princeton Univ. Press, 1969; orig. French pub. 1958), paved
the way for the collaboration of Michel Chodkiewicz, ed.,
with William C. Chittick, Cyrille Chodkiewicz, Denis Gril,
and James W. Morris in Les Illuminations de la Mecque
(Paris: Sinbad, 1988).
Connection between Ottoman reception of Ibn 'Arabi's
thought and Izutsu's work is not only textual. Izutsu received
at least some of his early training (prior to 1908) from Abdur-
rasid Ibrahim, a representative of certain Turkish interests so-
journing from Istanbul in Tokyo (Selquk Esenbel, public
lecture, The Ohio State University, 1990). Chittick's Ibn al-
'Arabis Metaphysics of Imagination: The Sufi Path of Knowl-
edge (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1989) has
offered revision of the pioneering work of Nasr, Izutsu, and
Corbin through extensive analysis of Ibn 'Arabi's Meccan Rev-
elations. Chittick's book makes Ibn 'Arabi's thought available,
both extensively and reliably, to the non-specialist for the first
time. Other recent publications of much importance in this
vein are: James W. Morris' "Ibn 'Arabi and his Interpreters,"
JAOS 106 (1986): 539-51, 733-56, and 107 (1987): 101-19;
Michael Sells' "Ibn 'Arabi's Garden among the Flames: A Re-
evaluation," History of Religions 23 (May 1984): 287-315,
and "Ibn 'Arabi's Polished Mirror: Perspective Shift and
Meaning Event," Studia Islamica 67 (1988): 121-49; and Ma-
sataka Takeshita's Ibn 'Arabrs Theory of the Perfect Man and
its Place in the History of Islamic Thought (Tokyo: Institute
for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
1987).
As such scholars have explained, a number of teachings
attributed to Ibn 'Arabi are actually older or subsequent artic-
ulations; for example, that of the Oneness of Being (wahdat
al-wuJaud). See William C. Chittick, "Rfimi and Wahdat
al-Wujfid," in The Heritage of Rumi, ed. A. Banani and
G. Sabagh (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming).
42 Grammatically, it is the relation between the Arabic mas-
and Galib.
dar of the root form and that of the tenth, the reflexive of
causative; see Wehr's dictionary, and the grammars of Wright,
Lambton, and Timurtas. It is with these considerations in
mind that I translate miistahak as "true site (of manifesta-
tion)," trying to build assumed information into my transla-
tion and so economize on the need for commentary and
footnote which can burden a poetic text to disfigurement.
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ibn 'Arabi, one feels confident referring to his articula-
tions, and it would be by professional convention
approved to cite him as source in this context. How-
ever, such citation is misleading, first of all because it
reiterates a practice made obsolete by discovery of the
theories' more various provenance. And while the all-
pervasive importance of Ibn 'Arabi's reception in Otto-
man intellectual history has been noticed,43 it has
hardly been explored44-thus my vague reference to
"Ibn 'Arabi &coles." It is only with the just-published
scholarship that there exists exposition of Ibn 'Arabi's
thought comprehensive enough to serve as a basis for
evaluating his Ottoman reception. Furthermore, there is
no available textual evidence that Galib read Ibn
'Arabi's works. One can be sure he did receive the con-
cepts and theories from Ottoman authors and oral tradi-
tion; we may assume that he had read Ibn 'Arabi's
Bezels of Wisdom, or at least one of its many Ottoman
commentaries. But while lack of scholarship concern-
ing Ottoman thought leaves one in a philological vac-
uum, mechanical citation of pre-Ottoman sources is no
solution. It reinforces the philological reductionism I
have noted as something to avoid; in short, continuities
by which a civilization is defined are not amenable to
citation.
Briefly, what is important to understanding Galib's
proof is the theory that the world exists, and continues
to do so, because it manifests the names and qualities
of God, and that God's human creature plays a crucial
role in this process.45 Generally speaking, creation is,
by definition, perpetual divine manifestation. Consider
43 See Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical
Age 1300-1600, tr. Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber (Lon-
don: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 183, 185, 189, 199-
202. William Chittick has begun the work of separating out
the intellectual strands of Ibn 'Arabi's Ottoman reception at its
roots in the period of Seljuk aftermath; see his "Sadr al-Din
Qfinawi on the Oneness of Being," International Philosophi-
cal Quarterly 21 (1981): 171-84, and "The Five Divine Pres-
ences: From al-Qfinawi to al-Qaysari," The Muslim World 72
(1982): 107-28. But there remain four Ottoman centuries of
prolific theoretical production between these early interpreters
44 For one exception to this rule in Turkey, see Mustafa
Tahrali & Selquk Eraydin, Ahmed Avni Konuk, Fusasu'l-
Hikem Tercume ve ferhi I (Istanbul: Dergdh, 1987).
45 Although Galib did not specifically, anywhere in Beauty
and Love, refer to the concept of the perfect human being
(insan- kamil), my colleagues in Islamicate thought will rec-
ognize that the theories he did invoke obviously assume it.
450 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)

the beginning of Galib's first proof, new. Galib referred

where specifically to this theory of per-
he compares
petual creation (teceddiid-i havadis)47 (v. 783):
the divine names (esmd') and sites of manifestation
(mezahir) to "twins" (768-71):
In sum, is not perpetual creation

0 ye who know the finer points of sense
Give ear to the discourse of this swift pen
Though we scrutinize the surface of things
God's names and these sites manifest are twins
Prior to bringing about death and life
Munificent God was quickener of life
But joined to each other in succession
Are creator, creature, and creation
The orator's likening of the names and sites to twins
would seem to be a metaphorical analogy between on-
tological and temporal processes. A divine name, by
definition, requires (demands!) a site; the two are
paired, the name ontologically prior to the site. The
couple is "born" of a divine unicity which plays the
role of mother in this analogy. Twins in a sense come
forth from one source; the analogy, though philosophi-
cally inexact, may be taken as one between God as
mother (or paternal singularity), and divine name and
its site of manifestation as twin and twin, in so far as
one twin, in order to be a twin, requires the existence
of the other.
This argument, invoking the theory of the divine
names and sites of manifestation, carries the question
of originality beyond the context of textual source into Galib's argument in this connection is the faculty of
another realm of relations. Accordingly, God's names
and qualities are the cause of sites of manifestation by divine, then one's speech, and so one's poetry, would
which they enjoy full existence (vv. 772-77):
Each instant divine names step into view
And set spinning heaven's wheel of fortune
Impute to essence no contrariety
All effects proceed from God's qualities
Order and change could never be for naught
There's cause in every quality of God
Prior, flawless, ceaseless, is God the truth
Speaking, tongueless, voiceless, is God the truth
Things empowered require one to empower them
There's one who causes speech to be spoken
It's God the truth who showers forth poetry
Mankind is the true site of this bounty
Because God's qualities are (philosophically consid-
ered)46 infinite, their manifestation cannot come to an
end, but creation must be perpetual, and perpetually
46 Popular worship current in the Islamic world numbers
God's names at ninety-nine. But if God is not to be limited,
neither can God's qualities be.
The cause of new poetic expression?
Original poetry, being one of the things in the world,
exists as everything else there does, by virtue of per-
petual creation. But the connection Galib's orator has
drawn between divine truth, poetry, and mankind, as-
signs original poetry a more specific status. He has said
that it is God the truth who bestows poetry, and that it
is the human creature whose special right it is to ex-
press this gift; poetry is created through an interrelation
between the divine and the human. But these interrela-
tions are varied. The type Galib specifically invokes is
that between God and the worshipper who does not
fail, a reference to the sacred saying (hadts-i kudst or
ildhh), in which the prophet Muhammed quoted God:
My servant does not fail to approach me through acts
of piety until I love him, and when I love him, I be-
come the hearing by which he hears, the seeing by
which he sees, the tongue by which he speaks ... 48
The theory which cites this saying goes something like
this: it is possible to achieve a state in which one's fac-
ulties operate according to the divine. Most relevant to
speech. If one's faculty of speech were to operate as if
more directly originate with God. All things originate
with God, but here the poet's mode of access is defined
in contradistinction to the claim of the orator's opposi-
tion that poetry originates in imitation of poetry. The
47 The classic modern essay on the theory of perpetual crea-
tion is: Toshihiko Izutsu, "The Concept of Perpetual Crea-
tion," in Melanges offerts a Henri Corbin, ed. S. H. Nasr
(Tehran, 1977), 115-48.
48 A handy volume currently in print and citing many of
the most oft-quoted hadis is Traditions of the Prophet, by
Dr. Javad Nurbaksh (see pp. 14-15). It have translated the
Arabic therein slightly differently. There is one variant of the
saying, and one cannot know which variant Galib intended
here, although Nurbaksh's choice follows Hujviri, who would
be, through Jami, a likely link in the genealogy of Ottoman
usage. For more ancient and other variants, and a discussion,
see William A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in
Early Islam: A Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special
Reference to the Divine Saying or Hadith Qudsi, Religion &
Society, 7 (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), 71, 173-74.

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 451

concentration on the poet's nature which I noted in the
opening of the argument is strengthened here.
Galib cited the sacred saying in refutation of the
Mu'tezile position regarding the divine attributes
(v. 778):49
If you've heard the sacred saying he'll not fail
Forsake the severing Mu'tezile error
Mu'tezile discursive theology, an item of Ottoman me-
drese curricula, rejected the attribution of qualities to
God, "severing" Him from His attributes.50 The ora-
tor's proof of the logically necessary existence of origi-within the text of Beauty and Love or in the sources for
nal poetry depends upon the action of God's qualities
within a specified interrelation between the human and
the divine, and he rejects the Mu'tezile position
(vv. 778-81, 783):
tory of their reception might wonder if Galib invoked
them at peril. In his usage we find them, at the end of
the eighteenth Ottoman century, fit for citation to sup-
port a "new" poetics of artistic innovation. And there
is a tone of parody to Galib's Digression, as if he em-
ployed the convention of logical proof in order to make
fun of those who invoke it blindly. Presumably, he
makes reference to items that were well understood
and accepted; his free-wheeling parodic tone implies
that he is manipulating the obvious conclusions of
much-repeated arguments. There is no indication,
Galib's biography, that his synthesis subjected him to
censure; he apparently was perceived, and has been re-
ceived, as the most successful poet of his time.

THE SECOND PROOF

If you've heard the sacred saying he'll not fail
Forsake the severing Mu'tezile error
There can be no bound to God's qualities Having argued that poetry exists, the orator went on
The blessing of poetry cannot cease to address the question of why it should exist. The sec-
Give this matter the consideration due ond proof evoked the vision of an heroic age of Arab
Could our forebears have exhausted that boon? poetry. According to Galib's reference, the condition of
Beyond bound, estimate, analogy the pre-Islamic Arabs was such that they would best
New poetry is uttered constantly ... be convinced of the legitimacy of the prophet Mu-
In sum, is not perpetual creation hammed's mission by an unrepeatable poetic perfor-
The cause of original expression? mance: the Koran, that is, the word of God. Since the
proof of Muhammed's mission, and by implication, of
His opposition's claim that originality has been used the existence of the God whose word Muhammed trans-
up implies that its cause has ceased to have effect. The mitted, first depended upon recognition of the Koran's
orator viewed this conclusion as logically absurd. Po- nonpareil status, only those capable of testing it will be
etry is not produced within the diachronic dimension of convinced by the proof. So if poetry, and those capable
textual relations, but within the synchronic-in that it of recognizing it, should cease to exist, so would the
transcends time-dimension of perpetual creation. proof of the legitimacy of Islam (vv. 784-95):
From this point of view, the determining relationship is
Before Islam, in days of ignorance
not one between a poet and his forbears, but between
Universal were claims to eloquence
the poet and God/truth. Put slightly differently, poetry
The fair at Ukaz was set up each year51
depends upon conditions of aesthetic perception, and
thus upon the poet's nature, rather than upon the trans- Poetry competitions were held there

mission of poetic texts. Pretensions were staked out with sword and tongue
Duels accompanied improvisation
Notable here for a genealogy of originality is the
way in which Galib uses these items: the theory of the But when the living, ever-praised Lord

divine names and sites of manifestation, the sacred Bestowing the Koran upon the world

saying he'll not fail, Muctezile theology, and the theory Made miracle with eloquence coincide

of perpetual creation. My readers familiar with the his- The eloquent tribesmen were terrified
49 In Turkish, Hadis are referred to by the first words of the
Arabic citation; here, la yazal: "[he or she] does not fail."
50 Ottoman medrese teaching of Mu'tezile (Ar. Mu'tazili)
theology has not been studied. For its early theory, and with
regard to this issue, see Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to
Islamic Theology and Law, tr. Andras and Ruth Hamori
(Princeton, 1981).
So those wayward tribes should come to know awe
Produce its parallel-thus proposed God52
51 It is said that poetry competitions were held at this fair
near Mecca, and the winning poems were hung up in the Kaaba.
52 Galib referred here to certain verses of the Koran (11:23-
24, X:38, XI:13, XVII:88), answering challenges to the
legitimacy of Muhammed's prophetic mission. Muhammed

This content downloaded from

51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 452 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
Still unparalleled stands that miracle
The word of the living, the powerful
If men lost the power to judge and reflect
That challenge, that miracle, would lose effect
If all poetry and eloquence ceased
The Koran's virtue could not be perceived
If no poet could compose poetry
God's proof would insufficient prove to be
Thus empowered to prove man's powerlessness
Could God's own empowering be powerless?
I've dismissed my foes with manifest proof
Derived my genius by Koranic proof
The orator argued that poetry must exist if the divine
origin of the Koran is to be recognized. He further
qualified the definition of poetry he approached in his
opening and specified in his first proof, where he made
it a function of a particular relationship with the di-
vine. Here we find poetry also to be that mode of
speech which makes recognition of the superiority of
the word of God possible, finding the poet to be the
one capable of making the distinction between divine
and human speech.
But if this proof depends upon a distinction between
the two, what of their unity implied by the sacred say-
ing he'll not fail? If it is possible to reach a state in
which one's speech is, as it were, divine, why will it al-
ways be impossible to parallel the poetic performance
of the Koran? Galib said definitely: Although speech
be the spring of miracles I The Koran can never be
paralleled (v. 40). However, one recognizes that the
question draws a kind of line of philosophical tension.
The challenge is there. To meet it would disprove the
legitimacy of Muhammed's mission. But to ignore it
would be to fail to recognize the challenge of Mu-
hammed's mission. Presumably, the effort to meet it
would be an exercise in recognition, and those who
will not fail meet the challenge to perception-or
rather, apperception-which is perhaps the require-
ment of the challenge.
THE THIRD PROOF
At issue in Galib's brief and final proof, of "The
Universality of the Necessity" of poetry, was whether
or not the miracle of the Koran can be discerned and
demonstrated in every language. Is what was true for
was apparently accused of composing the Koran himself,
though he claimed to transmit the word of God. The verses
challenge his detractors to prove their accusations by compos-
ing something like it, saying they will never be able to do so.
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Arabs true for Turks? Like the second proof, this argu-
ment deals with the social role of poetry, and finds it of
ultimate importance in social life. The orator referred
to a decision by Abu Hanife (d. 767), founder of the
school of Islamic law to which Ottomans adhered, ap-
proving of the view that the Koranic miracle is univer-
sal and necessarily so by virtue of its meaning, though
he subsequently retreated from this position. There is a
certain problem in the special status of the Arabic lan-
guage; can the Koran be translated?53
In the early centuries of Islamic history there were a
great many converts who did not speak Arabic, and
there was debate over whether or not they should be
advised to recite their prayers (salat; which include
Koranic passages) in their native languages (vv. 796-
801):
Abu Hanife, chief of Imams sage
Did not require Arabic verse in prayer
He ruled the miracle and its meaning
Is universal and necessary
In exposition he said furthermore
Though his reverse ruling is the stronger
That peoples not Arab are permitted
To petition God in their own language
One or two poets in every era
Surely express the power of miracle
Exerting their pure imagination
They offer the style of their confession
One could compare the relationship of "meaning"
(macna) with "Arabic verse" (nazm as specifically Ara-
bic form) in the Koranic sign to that of the "signified"
and "signifier" which together constitute the linguistic
sign of structuralist discourse. While the Sausseurean
sign is the product of a system of conventional differ-
ences, defined by analogy with communication systems
exemplified by the Morse code,54 the linguistic sign as
understood by Galib's heritage is a manifest site of an
ontologically prior determinant. The Galibian mental
signified may accord less or more with its determinant,
according to the nature of the person who conceives it.
The view that the Koran is untranslatable implies
that meaning is determined by linguistic form, and thus
a translation, a change in form, will cause an unaccept-
able change in meaning. The orator argued to the con-
trary in his first proof that all effects proceed from
God's qualities (v. 773). According to this judgment,
meaning is logically necessary, prior, to form, and
53 For the early articulations of this debate, see Goldziher,
Introduction to Islamic Theology, 53.
54 See Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, 93.
 HOLBROOK: Originality and Ottoman Poetics: In the Wilderness of the New 453
poets can bring the meaning of the Koran and its chal-
lenge into their language. So what was true for the Ar-
abs is true for the Turks, and for all peoples and all
languages. Poetry exists by virtue of the poet's relation
to the divine; it must exist if knowledge of the divine is
to endure, and its existence, and this knowledge, is log-
ically universal.
But there remains for consideration the term "ima-
gination." Imagination is furnished by images, non-
corporeal forms not perceptible to the five senses. It is
ontologically intermediate to the prior divine names on
the one hand, and the subsequent bodies of this world
here, on the other. Images-including poetic ima-
gery-are fundamentally not the product of the mind,
but subsist independently in their proper realm. Poets
exerting their pure imagination (v. 801) in this sense
would ideally be able to anticipate corporeal form by
way of access to a "World of Imagination," discussed
below. Original poetry would not be an imitation of
material reality, but a participation in bringing material
reality to be.
IMAGINATION
The term imagination (hayal) was and is used in
Turkish to mean "imagery" in general, the place where
images are apperceived, points of view upon these pro-
cesses, and the human faculty. Imagination is at once
the ontological realm where one imagines, the activity
of imagining, and what is imagined, all of these objec-
tified as something to view.
A comparison may clarify this. In English, we refer
to "a view." This may be a site from which one can
have a fine view, overlooking the Grand Canyon, for
example. Or it can be what one sees from that cliff. Or
it can be the activity of looking over that cliff. All
these perspectives are gathered up in the term "imagi-
nation."55 One objectifies all at once the location of a
of dealing with reality." Reformist claims had it that
5s For Galib's pir Mevlana RMimi's treatment of imagination,
"Classical Ottoman poetry was based on Arabic and
see Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, 248-56. Galib's connec- Persian models.... Rhetoric was the very essence of
tion with and fidelity to Rumi's "way" is well documented by
many references in Beauty and Love; relevant here would be
verse 2079: I took its [Beauty and Love's] secrets from the
Masnavi / I stole, but I stole common property; and the event
in Galib's romance following the heading "The Fortress of
Forms" (Kale-i zdt iis-suver), named after the last tale of
Rimi's Masnavi. And also by the fact that Galib was a Mev-
levi ,eyh, by his commentary on Rimi's Masnavi, his func-
tions as a Mesnevthan, a professional "reader" (and certainly
interpreter) of Rimi's Masnavi as part of the regular Friday
ritual in Istanbul mosques; see Sedit Yuksel, feyh Galip:
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
point of view, what is seen from there, and the act of
seeing.
In this exposition of Galib's poetics so far, there has
been, or seemed to be, an easy distinction between the
abstract and concrete. But in fact, if reception of Ibn
'Arabi's thought in Ottoman intellectual history is all it
is said to be, a very real intermediate "world" must in-
tervene-the "imaginal."56 Things conceived of as ab-
stract and concrete should be transposed in an
ontologically intermediate World of Imagination, un-
derstood as a place where the abstract is apperceived in
sensory terms, and the concrete in non-corporeal form.
Imagination is a realm of non-corporeal yet sensory
comprehension, where its comprehension occurs; a
realm interiorized as part of the human microcosm and
objectified as part of the cosmos. This intellectual habit
of objectifying a point of view-at once the place
where it occurs, what is seen there, and the act of view-
ing, is something yet to be considered seriously as a
fundamental of Ottoman thought. But any respectable
Ottoman had experience of his non-corporeal body.
* * *
When juxtaposed with Galib's Digression, the Young
Ottoman critique, and Gibb's monumentalization of it,
seems grossly distorted, and it was. Galib's poetics of
originality excluded imitation, whether of one's for-
bears or of material reality. The precise nature of the
poet's apprehension of images as Galib and other Otto-
man poets-indeed, Muslim poets-understood it re-
mains to be fully appreciated. Yet Namik Kemal's
(d. 1888) argument that "meaning ought not be sac-
rificed for art" has been received as if it were modern.
His position "was contrary to the traditional approach
of viewing literature primarily as a medium of verbal
embellishment.... The main problem with the 'old lit-
erature' was that it had never developed rhetorical
means to convey ideas, and as such, it stood in the way
Eserlerin Dil ve Sanat Deqeri [$eyh Galib: Value of his Lan-
guage and Art] (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1980), 21; and
by notes in Galib's autograph of Beauty and Love commemo-
rating his ninth, tenth, and eleventh readings of Rfiml's
Masnavi (see Golpinarli's critical edition, p. 15).
56 See William C. Chittick, "Death and the World of Imag-
ination," The Muslim World 78 (1988): 51-82, and his "The
World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery," Temenos 10
(1989): 99-119.
454 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
Ottoman poetry, the art of which depended not on say-
ing something new but saying what other poets had
been saying in an original way. Allusions pervaded the
poetic idiom as poems were written in imitation of
other poems since the Middle Ages."
Galib laid claim to the new in similar terms, al-
though the referents of the terms have changed-espe-
cially those of the terms "meaning," "idea," and
"reality." His charge against homosexuality would
seem no less conventional: "Namik Kemal even went
so far as to accuse some of the past masters of moral
turpitude for suggesting homosexual imagery."57 These
recurrences point to rhetorical conventions signalling
competition on the field of the new, to conventions of
poetics. The Young Ottomans were not only arguing
against a traditional approach; they were making a tra-
ditional argument. Evidence of a convention is not un-
dermined by a change in the meaning of its terms, any
more than the presence of convention undermines the
originality of a poetics. It may have been the change in
definition of reality which was the most radical trans-
position, and that turn of thought was not peculiar to
Ottomans. Looked at this way, Young Ottoman polem-
ics can be seen as an example of the continuity of
Turkish poetics in the nineteenth century, rather than
merely a product of European influence or evidence of
terminal decline in pre-Young-Ottoman Ottoman imag-
ination, which have been favored views.
The price of investment in such views is the loss of
memory and pride, and the sacrifice of intellectual al-
ternatives it requires. It seems that nationalist needs for
57 Evin, Origins, 11-12, 17.
This content downloaded from
51.79.129.69 on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:29:40 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
social mobilization replaced individual enlightenment
as an effect desired of literature, but the displacement
may be seen as a literary as well as political effect; it
may be analyzed as a function of the development of
realism as well.
The articulation of Young Ottoman poetics followed,
chronologically, orientalist interest in the "study" of
things Turkish; as Andrews has pointed out, various
kinds of minority discourse in the disintegrating Otto-
man Empire served contemporary European interests
and ancient fears, and Turkish reformers adapted to
their purposes rhetorical practices of nationalizing non-
Muslim and non-Turkish groups.58 Their contacts
abroad widened the effects of their polemics; Gibb's
work may be seen as the child of Young Ottoman
rhetoric. He took the terms of their oratory literally,
and turned a convention into literary history. Early re-
formist polemic was frozen in time by a reception
which reinforced its dominance over ensuing and con-
tinuing debate in Turkey.
Along with the political disintegration of the empire,
the threads of Ottoman intellectual traditions were un-
ravelled and this process entailed the forgetting of its
conventions. The detail I have sketched is part of a
much broader canvas which-impossible to accom-
plish as this may seem-hid the entire intellectual cul-
ture of the Ottoman Empire under a bush. I wonder: in
so far as humanism requires humanities, may not hu-
manity be undermined by spiriting them away?
58 "Reading Ottoman Poetry in the West: Reconstruction,
Post-Reconstruction and The Politics of Orientalism," lecture
to The Graduate Theory Group, Ohio State University, 1990.