Foreword

This article provides an introduction to the special issue Reading Ahmet Hamdi Tanp\u131nar Today, edited by the author. It lays out the historical context in which Tanpinar composed his literary works, the national and international reception of the author and the specific perspectives in which the essays in the volume interpret Tanpinar\u2019s works. This issue responds to the increasing national and international interest in Tanp\u131nar. It complicates and contributes to our understanding of the Turkish modernist, whose work has recently been incorporated into \u201cthe European universal library.\u201d While translations in English bring his novels to a wider audience, international discovery and dissemination of literary works by a non-Western author typically result in their appropriation by and for the world literary public. In Tanp\u131nar\u2019s case, his work has come to represent a presumed essence of Turkish literature and culture of the first half of the twentieth century, \u201ccombining a European literary voice with the Ottoman sensibilities of the Near East\u201d, as described on Penguin Random House\u2019s website. Tanp\u131nar is perceived as the cultural bridge between East and West; tradition and modernity; the Ottoman past and the Republic\u2019s present; all crystallized in the image of Istanbul\u2019s Bosporus, the strait that separates Europe from Asia. In view of Tanp\u131nar as the next Turkish author of world literature (after Pamuk), and of his work as a national cultural product of exportation, the articles in this issue contextualize and critically examine such local and global appropriations. They do not make claims to authentic \u201clocal\u201d literary categories or hold his work up to the global standards of readability; instead, in their variety and originality, they aspire to create an attentive and continuing dialogue that suggests a healthy future for Tanp\u131nar studies. The article finally argues that in light of Tanp\u131nar\u2019s multiple and contradictory identities, a dialectical approach is necessary to understand his work