[ad_1]
Raif, a young Turkish man becomes obsessed with the self portrait of a young woman named Madonna in fur during a stay in Berlin in the twenties. In the gallery where he walks from day to day, the artist, Maria Puder – who also sings in the Atlantic nightclub, ends up introducing herself. And a passionate and complicated friendship begins between the two.
You are now reading one of yours free articles on GP.se
READ MORE: In Babylon Berlin, Hitler is behind the scenes
Already at their The first meeting sets the tone, they both talk about their amazing loneliness; Raices during "all life and since my childhood". Maria said stiffly of her: "As alone as a sick dog." Maria warns her men and sees something to Raif "she sees only girls."
Novel Generation. Sabahattin Ali captures the feeling of life and the mentality of her time and her young wishes in fur Madonna. Photo: Filiz Ali
Sabahattin Ali's novel Fur Madonna who came out in Turkey in 1943 has all the features of a generational novel; give a sense of life, a mentality of time, and young desires an expression, preferably in a time of transformation, but the transformation itself is not at the center of the novel.
But the book has a lucky receptionist when it was published. It may be because Sabahattin Ali was a controversial author in Turkey who had stubbornly published a satirical newspaper. He was jailed twice in the 1930s and 1940s and was killed in unclear circumstances when he attempted to cross the border with Bulgaria in 1948. He died at age 41 and his body was born. 39, has never been found.
It is only now that in Turkey and abroad, Madonna has been rediscovered in fur and is finally available in Swedish in the formidable translation of Mats Andersson.
Even inside the novel The construction itself is a literary discovery. An unemployed young man in Ankaras in the 1940s wrote poetry without success, but eventually found a job in a bank where he shared a room with Raif efendi (which means that Mr. Raif Efendi was already an obsolete title of the Ottoman Empire.) Retired Raif efendi translates the bank's paper into German and remains very discreet. Our young narrator takes notes from Raif's eve of 1933, where he writes about his love affair in Berlin more than 10 years ago.
Then, in the 19th and 20th centuries, Raif left a disintegrating Ottoman empire to go to a soap factory and meet Maria in a chaotic, postwar Berlin. But the tumult of time is only a state of mind, a scene of their relationships with walks, discussions, misunderstandings and special spiritual intimacy. Raif, shy, inexperienced and polite, and Maria, an emancipated, liberating and uncompromising woman, have a relationship that constantly tests the limits of honesty and truth. Both, a Turk and a half-German, are like a kind of explorer of the new modernity of the 1920s, where it was shortly possible not to worry about how a man or a woman would be or of the order of religion, family and nation.
READ MORE: He made up with social shame
Fur Madonna is an intense call and full of atmosphere for the freedom of the individual and also – the hump hidden between the lines – the freedom of society. Perhaps not a coincidence that the novel is rediscovered now. A Turkish generation novel for our time.
Source link
