Madonna in a Fur Coat

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I could have carried on as I was, shunning human company and leading a mediocre existence, but at no point having to face how very empty my life was. I’d have dragged on through life, convinced that my strange temperament allowed me no more, and never would I have known what it meant to lead a happy life. I’d have suffered from loneliness, while still believing that one day I might be rescued. Such was my state of mind when Maria, or rather her painting, came into my life. She had swept me away from my dark and silent world, delivering me to the land of truth and light. And now she had vanished, offering no reasons, and as suddenly as she’d come. Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coatwas released in English a few years ago, and it’s brilliant.”—Elif Shafak, Booker Prize nominee for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World From the Publisher

Ali’s daughter Filiz told the Times that when she talks about the book in schools, students—including boys—have tears in their eyes. A latter-day Sorrows of Young Werther, perhaps. But Madonna in a Fur Coat may be less Goethe than Kurban Said, the Jewish, Baku-born author of Ali & Nino and The Girl from the Golden Horn, the former also a Romeo & Juliet-style romantic tragedy and the latter also featuring a Turk, in this case a young woman, unmoored in inter-War Mitteleuropa. The focus on monologue and dialogue rather than action is reminiscent of Sandor Marai, another post-Imperial Mittleuropa writer of psychologically-intense novels of almost exactly the same period. A shaft of light had passed over me, illuminating my empty life with possibilities I dared not question. ve tekrar itiraf etmeliyim ki kötü bir yorum yapmak için son sayfalar�� bekliyordum zırtlanlar gibi.If this psychological scarring were not enough, we meet Raif when he is in uncommunicative middle-age, introduced through a younger colleague and, insofar as Raif has one, confidant. The narrator, some quarter of the way in, is told by Raif on his deathbed to fetch his journal. Only then do we hear Raif’s story. In lesser hands, this story in a story might be trite, but just as Raif and Maria find themselves through each other, this other narrator only comes to understand his own restlessness through Raif’s story.

Kürk Mantolu Madonna, boşlukların ütopyasıdır. Boşlukların anlamını en güzel şekilde idrak edeceğiniz romanlardan birisidir. Raif Bey anlatıcı için, Maria Puder de Raif Bey için bir ütopyadır. Fakat aynı zamanda boşlukların distopyasıdır da diyebiliriz. Çünkü boşluklar bu ikilemde kaldıkları sürece anlamlı olan olgulardır zaten. O bilinmez boşluğun kapanıp kapanmayacağını bilmeden yaşamak, beynini ve ruhunu bitirmek harika bir distopya değil midir? Bu kalabalık hayatta, bu dolulukların kirlettiği hayatta, yüreğimizi ve ruhumuzu gereksiz şeylerle doldurmaya çabalayan yüzlerce olayın, nesnenin, insanın olduğu bu hayatta biraz da boşlukların olmasını arzulamak harika bir ütopya değil midir? Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali is considered one of the foremost Turkish classics of the 20th century. Written in 1941 and describing how both Germany and Turkey had changed following the Great War, this classic is now available in English for the first time. Using the life of a translation clerk named Raif Efendi as a metaphor to show how the world has changed, Ali delivers a hidden gem of a classic to western readers. When Rafe gets seriously ill, he entrusts a journal from his youth to his new friend, our narrator. His story begins when his academic ambitions in poetry are curtailed by a family mission to Berlin where he is tasked to learn the business of perfumed soaps as a strategy to expand their olive oil business. His rich romantic fantasy life inspired by literature clashes with his social awkwardness in talking or interacting with women. Even I can empathize with his ineptness:

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Bu kadar içten, beni bu kadar derinden etkileyen, kendimle bu kadar özdeşleştirdiğim, içimi tatlı tatlı sıkan, gözlerimi dolduran, sayfaları hızlıca çevirip boğazımdaki düğümü bir türlü atamadan okuduğum başka bir kitap var mıdır bilmiyorum. Madonna in a Fur Coat tells the story of a Turkish man named Raif Efendi who stirs an interest in one of his colleagues, the unnamed narrator, to find out more about him. Upon becoming closer to him, the narrator gains the opportunity to read a diary written by Raif revealing an emotionally intimate and intense relationship with a painter named Maria Puder that occurred when Raif was a young man living in Berlin. He raised his head to look at me with daydreaming eyes, whereupon I said, "You must be Raif Efendi." Boşlukların farkındalığında olarak yaşamak gerçekten kolay mı zannediyorsunuz? Dolu dolu geçirdiğimiz hayatların niteliği konusunda kendinizi hiç sorguladınız mı? itiraf etmeliyim: kürk mantolu madonna'yı okuyup okumadığımı soran herkese cevap olarak hazırladığım bir metin var, çok da keyif alırdım bilerek okumuyorum, her yerde görmekte bıktım, popülaritesini kaybedince okuyacağım derken. birkaç şaka eklerdim sonra, iltem dilek'in meşhur karikatürünü gösterirdim filan...