[Xmca-l] Re: Best possible theoretical approach on learning from life experiences

[David Kellogg]

I take it that we are using "perezhivanie" to mean something like the
reconstruction and reliving of an experience through word meanings. So what
we are proposing is not simply a kind of account of how Hikmet's
experiences (e.g. his birth in a noble Ottoman family, his adherence to
communism, his exile in the Soviet Union, etc.) added up to make him an
artist but more the reverse, an analysis of the texts that he wrote which
would reveal them to be "overlivings" of a historically specific life.

That's why Martin recommends Sartre. Sartre starts with Flaubert's texts
(not just Bovary, but also A Sentimental Education and even the viciously
racist and reactionary Salammbo). He uses these texts to locate Flaubert on
a line of development that goes from Balzac to Zola. But it's a linguistic
line of development, one that shows Balzac as fully engaged as an business
entrepreneur rather than simply an artist and, paradoxically, Zola as a
dispassionate and unengaged observer, who only takes up the case of Dreyfus
as a hobby in his retirement, when his literature has dried up.

This would be a big project but it would give you a lot of data. Ulvi would
have to show how Hikmet's whole oeuvre related to the whole of Turkish
literature: Turkish verbal artists before his time (the Ottoman poets) and
also how he relates to the realist, biographical literature that came out
after him (e.g. "Mehmet my hawk" and the popular literature, but also the
more intellectualistic Turkish writing like "My name is red".

You might start with something smaller. For example, I have always wondered:

a) How does "Pourquoi Benerdji c'est suicide?" (I don't know the title in
Turkish) relate to Hikmet's own experiences of internecine struggles in the
Turkish Communist Party?

b) How does his innovations in poetic meter (not to mention rhyme!) relate,
on the one hand to his rejection of the court poetry of his time and on the
other to his own interest in the dialogue around him?

It might seem like a) is easier than b), because, as Vygotsky points out,
"perezhivanie" always has two poles: there is the pole of experience and
there is the pole of the "I" experiencing it. Because the latter is
protected by "privileged access", at least insofar as bodily sensations are
concerned, the former seems more sharable and hence more recoverable. I
think that misses Sartre's point, which is not about how the content of the
artist's life is recoverable from the content of the artwork but rather how
the form of the artwork is recoverable from its content and vice versa.

Maybe most of us tend to a processing of the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune that is relatively unmediated by form, even, and even
especially, in our own lives. Apparently Flaubert never actually said
"Bovary c'est moi!" (Anyway, I had always assumed he was referring to
Charles, and not to Emma.) But the first English translation of Madame
Bovary was  done by a young woman who also committed suicide by poisoning
herself after a long and disappointing extra-marital affair. Her name was
Eleanor, and she too was a working class militant and a lifelong communist.
She was also the youngest daughter of Karl Marx.

David Kellogg





On Sun, Nov 5, 2017 at 4:08 AM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Martin.
>
> Does anyone know any study on a person's life, learning, formation in the
> light of the concept of perezhivanie in the centre?
>
> 4 Kas 2017 22:01 tarihinde "Martin John Packer" <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> yazdı:
>
> > I would suggest Sartre’s (existential Marxist) analysis of Flaubert…
> >
> > <https://www.amazon.com/001-Family-Gustave-Flaubert-1821-
> > 1857/dp/0226735095/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=
> > 1509821640&sr=1-1&keywords=sartre+Flaubert+book+1&dpID=
> > 41CeMqdxQnL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch>
> >
> > <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/02/04/sartres-last-case/>
> >
> > <https://www.lrb.co.uk/v04/n10/julian-barnes/double-bind>
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 4, 2017, at 6:41 AM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com<mailto:ul
> > vi.icil@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > For a study on Turkish poet, also a painter and playwright, Nazim Hikmet,
> > whom learning seems to be heavily determined from life experiences at
> each
> > stage of his life,
> > I am looking for a best theoretical approach in general on learning from
> > life experiences, then more specifically for such great poets, painters
> and
> > play writers.
> > Just to give a closer idea, please look at the section below from his
> > novel, Life's good, brother.
> >
> > I appreciate highly any idea, proposal on such a theoretical approach.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Ulvi
> >
> > I sat down at the table in the Hôtel de France in Batum. A table with
> > carved legs—not just the legs but the whole gilded oval table was covered
> > with intricate carvings. Rococo . . . In the seaside house in Üsküdar, a
> > rococo
> > table sits in the guestroom. Ro-co-co . . . The journey I made from the
> > Black
> > Sea coast to Ankara, then from there to Bolu, the thirty-five-day,
> > thirty-fiveyear
> > journey on foot to the town where I taught school—in short, to make a
> > long story short, the encounter of a pasha’s descendant—more precisely, a
> > grandson—with Anatolia now rests on the rococo table in the Hôtel de
> > France in Batum, spread out over the table like a tattered, dirty,
> > blood-stained
> > block-print cloth. I look, and I want to cry. I look, and my blood rushes
> > to my
> > head in rage. I look, and I’m ashamed again. Of the house by the sea in
> > Üsküdar. Decide, son, I say to myself, decide. The decision was made:
> death
> > before turning back. Wait, don’t rush, son. Let’s put the questions on
> this
> > table, right next to Anatolia here. What can you sacrifice for this
> cause?
> > What
> > can you give? Everything. Everything I have. Your freedom? Yes! How
> > many years can you rot in prison for this cause? All my life, if
> necessary!
> > Yes, but you like women, fine dining, nice clothes. You can’t wait to
> > travel,
> > to see Europe, Asia, America, Africa. If you just leave Anatolia here on
> > this
> > rococo table in Batum and go from Tbilisi to Kars and back to Ankara from
> > there, in five or six years you’ll be a senator, a minister—women, wining
> > and
> > dining, art, the whole world. No! If necessary, I can spend my whole life
> > in
> > prison. Okay, but what about getting hanged, killed, or drowned like
> > Mustafa
> > Suphi and his friends if I become a Communist—didn’t you ask yourself
> these
> > questions in Batum? I did. I asked myself, Are you afraid of being
> > killed? I’m not afraid, I said. Just like that, without thinking? No. I
> > first knew
> > I was afraid, then I knew I wasn’t. Okay, are you ready to be disabled,
> > crippled, or made deaf for this cause? I asked. And TB, heart disease,
> > blindness? Blindness? Blindness . . . Wait a minute—I hadn’t thought
> about
> > going blind for this cause. I got up. I shut my eyes tight and walked
> > around
> > the room. Feeling the furniture with my hands, I walked around the room
> in
> > the darkness of my closed eyes. Twice I stumbled, but I didn’t open my
> > eyes.
> > Then I stopped at the table. I opened my eyes. Yes, I can accept
> blindness.
> > Maybe I was a bit childish, a little comical. But this is the truth. Not
> > books or
> > word-of-mouth propaganda or my social condition brought me where I am.
> > Anatolia brought me where I am. The Anatolia I had seen only on the
> > surface, from the outside. My heart brought me where I am. That’s how it
> is
> > .
> >
> >
>