A Writer And A Political Activist
Mehmet Eroğlu is both an activist of the 1968 era and the only literary writer of this generation in Turkish literature. He is one of the first people who spoke up about the spirit of the era with a full voice and about the people who are young, idealistic, and lived through it without being broken. With his debut novel, Mehmet Eroğlu accomplished what very few contemporary novelists were able to do so. He managed to portray the political turmoil of the 1968 while also developing characters and lives of vast dramas resonate with readers long after its turn of the last page. Mehmet Eroğlu’s artistic thought, literary reality, engages some of the most painful and tragic sides of humanity and consciousness. The cements of these traits are adopted from his political activist and adventurous life. Consequently, his own experiences enabled him to portray with deep sympathy universal characters who question themselves, the common consciousness and the morality of humanity. Eroğlu uses whatever literary device seems capable of giving the greatest intensity of life to his characters. What especially places the characters to the universal literary pantheon is the duration of their great sentiments, their struggle against the currents of human nature and society and the high price they pay for their actions taken towards their journey of self questionings. Those men were making their existences meaningful by only being saviors. Mehmet Eroğlu constitutes a glaring proof that lives could not stay in the memories will eventually manage to get themselves written.
A Great Writer On The Traits of Dostoyevsky:
When we examine the works of Mehmet Eroğlu, who always puts man at the center of his stories, we notice that the main source feeds him intellectually and emotionally is the human suffering. He believes that suffering grants us the ability to sense and engage to people, things, situations, and above all ourselves. Therefore the critiques advise that Mehmet Eroğlu’s works suggest affinities with Dostoevsky for his deep love of humanity and compassion for fellow-sufferers in the human condition. Like Dostoyevsky, he appreciates “suffering arising from destruction and chaos.” Eroğlu says the true literary work only emerges during the stage when the individual makes a choice and leads to a situation from which there is no other consequence but suffering. He believes that an author should spend at least some part of his life in Golgotha. Many critics call him “Turkey’s Dostoyevsky,” have also detected traces of existentialism in his perception of human suffering. Mehmet Eroğlu portrays the torment of the efforts from avoiding self-deception, the terrible beauty of free will and difficult choices one has to make. He shows the organic relationship between the fate of the country and the fates of individuals so masterfully that it has strongly inscribed into the world of literature. His fascinating psychological analyses penetrated so deep into the human soul, has gazed so fearlessly and feelingly into the innermost workings of human emotions, thoughts, and affairs often gain an essence of philosophy. Even though he is occasionally described as a political writer or a philosophical writer with roots in an existentialist vein, Eroğlu plainly expresses that he depicts tragic themes that grow in the shady lands where human creation, brotherhood and enmity, cruelty and compassion coexist. Maybe that is why there is a hidden protagonist in all of Mehmet Eroğlu’s novels, invisible yet with a presence that can be felt in every line: ‘Death.’ Eroğlu’s stories often end in his kingdom. Once Oscar Wilde exclaimed the following for Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; ‘What makes their books so great is the pity they put into them.’ In our times it is astonishing to see a writer who sustains the quality of the generation of these great writers in all aspects of his novels.
A Turkish Writer, Standing Apart From Orientalism:
Though at first glance the tragic themes Eroğlu depicts remind us of a writer nourished by the Western culture, upon closer inspection we discover the web of connections between ideas, people and events in their true conditions. In the broadest sense, surely, Eroğlu speaks of the painful problems of the contemporary life in the West as well, and of man in general. But it is because Eroğlu is so profoundly national and Turkish – that is, deeply rooted in the versatile historical life of his people, its present and its rich past, and its culture – that we may speak of him as truly universal and international. And that makes him an enduring figure in Turkish letters. He is a novelist who chooses to write about the young, lonely, angry people of a land caught between the East and the West. He has scrupulously kept his distance from orientalism and chosen to write not about faulty or schematic orientalist Turkey, but instead of the people from a unique country with an extraordinary past searching for an identity.
A Writer From A Generation of 1968 With An Anti-War Standing:
Mehmet Eroğlu maintains that “writers do not grow in mother’s womb but on the tips of their pens” and emphasizes on the principle qualities of writers as an artist: displaying an opposing stand against the prevailing order, the conventional morality and the wealth that gives birth to poverty. His service to literature is precisely the same as his service to humanity. He shares a conviction that only the most thoroughgoing social and political consciousness could bring about social and economic justice. Although he finds wealth as the most dangerous disease that should be eradicated from the face of this planet, he yet defends that an author should not be linked to any authority or any political system. He also believes an independent writer is not freed from responsibility, and it is his duty is to reflect and interfere with the temporal period he lives in. That is what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity. “The artist must be very conscious of the main current and bring to light the disharmony and contradictions, or at least must not let it be forgotten. He is the one who opens the doors of his individuality to the sufferance of the other beings. Therefore the most important element nurtures and molds a writer is that the existence of desire and capacity to blame himself. The artist is he who makes justice, above all, the God of his passions…” Studying these words, we understand that he calls the artist back to the elemental forces ever at work beneath the surface-show of nature and humanity. Mehmet Eroğlu is delicately careful to stay out of conformity and the fallible fashions of the contemporary literature. He is the first writer in Turkish literature with a clear anti-war stance. Eroğlu views every act of writing —in parallel with its artistic merit— as a social act. There exists no other novel in Turkish literature that bears as apparent a criticism against violence as The Landscape of Time, one of his most important works. In his novels, as much as he focuses on urban youth, Eroğlu also fights for the revolution in the social consciousness of our time which has been eroded and destroyed by industrialization, urbanization, revised conceptions of human nature and destiny and class distinctions. Eroğlu’s work has been throughout inspired by a passionate love of humanity, and by his ceaseless struggle against conventional politics and dogmatic believes, and society’s mechanical influence on the minds of its members.
Eroğlu’s Mastery in Plotting and Language
Mehmet Eroğlu’s mastery of plotting, adeptness at dialogue and characterization, ability to evoke atmosphere encouraged the movie industry to persuade him to write for screenplays since the beginning of his career as a writer. Including two adaptations of his own novels, Eroğlu has written screenplays for movies and TV series which some of them received awards in the international film festivals. His skill in plotting are best traced in these following three novels; The Man Who Forgot His Name, The Walk: Interrupted, and View Of Time. It is what his imagination and literary techniques do with an extremely rich set of ideas, emotions to create the “colour of life” in his fictions that earns him an honored place. His literary form suggests similarity with various cinematic techniques- flashback, intercutting, and patchwork narrative. The Man Who Forgot His Name is a similar narration, focuses on the disillusionment of a young man from the resistance war in Palestine. The story moves forward and backward disregarding the chronological time and its narration is divided into names and events with a few cast of characters. His novel The Walk: Interrupted is a story of a man in an exile for his political choices and with its main three characters, each with a different perception of the action and a different way of relating to reality has been adapted almost exactly to the silver screen with a few tiny changes. But we may say that the best traces for his mastery of plotting are found at his seventh novel, The Landscape of Time. Eroğlu’s tendency to use words and images as if he were a composer or a painter can be observed in this book. The story integrates political and philosophical questions of our times with a heart braking love story in the center. It goes deep into the mind and memory of the characters through the timelines in the past, present and future; and just like life itself, it develops and ends perfectly. Mehmet Eroğlu advises a great novel is a product of using the letters in a heightened emphasis on showing rather than telling. His most influential contribution to the craft of fiction is restructuring the Turkish language for a brilliantly floral language. Eroğlu’s books make the reader to enter the process of reading actively and even so, force them to underline many of the sentences. This is why critics always refer to the artistic merit of his writings. His extensive use of detail to illustrate the lives of his characters, things and nature, made him a pioneer in Turkish literature. In his writings, he excelled in dialogues and witty conversation and a book of quotations on Mehmet Eroğlu’s wisdom has recently been published.
His works are characterized by richness in syntax, characterization, point of view, symbolic resonance, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhythms.
A Writer And A Political Activist
Mehmet Eroğlu is both an activist of the 1968 era and the only literary writer of this generation in Turkish literature. He is one of the first people who spoke up about the spirit of the era with a full voice and about the people who are young, idealistic, and lived through it without being broken. With his debut novel, Mehmet Eroğlu accomplished what very few contemporary novelists were able to do so. He managed to portray the political turmoil of the 1968 while also developing characters and lives of vast dramas resonate with readers long after its turn of the last page. Mehmet Eroğlu’s artistic thought, literary reality, engages some of the most painful and tragic sides of humanity and consciousness. The cements of these traits are adopted from his political activist and adventurous life. Consequently, his own experiences enabled him to portray with deep sympathy universal characters who question themselves, the common consciousness and the morality of humanity. Eroğlu uses whatever literary device seems capable of giving the greatest intensity of life to his characters. What especially places the characters to the universal literary pantheon is the duration of their great sentiments, their struggle against the currents of human nature and society and the high price they pay for their actions taken towards their journey of self questionings. Those men were making their existences meaningful by only being saviors. Mehmet Eroğlu constitutes a glaring proof that lives could not stay in the memories will eventually manage to get themselves written.
A Great Writer On The Traits of Dostoyevsky:
When we examine the works of Mehmet Eroğlu, who always puts man at the center of his stories, we notice that the main source feeds him intellectually and emotionally is the human suffering. He believes that suffering grants us the ability to sense and engage to people, things, situations, and above all ourselves. Therefore the critiques advise that Mehmet Eroğlu’s works suggest affinities with Dostoevsky for his deep love of humanity and compassion for fellow-sufferers in the human condition. Like Dostoyevsky, he appreciates “suffering arising from destruction and chaos.” Eroğlu says the true literary work only emerges during the stage when the individual makes a choice and leads to a situation from which there is no other consequence but suffering. He believes that an author should spend at least some part of his life in Golgotha. Many critics call him “Turkey’s Dostoyevsky,” have also detected traces of existentialism in his perception of human suffering. Mehmet Eroğlu portrays the torment of the efforts from avoiding self-deception, the terrible beauty of free will and difficult choices one has to make. He shows the organic relationship between the fate of the country and the fates of individuals so masterfully that it has strongly inscribed into the world of literature. His fascinating psychological analyses penetrated so deep into the human soul, has gazed so fearlessly and feelingly into the innermost workings of human emotions, thoughts, and affairs often gain an essence of philosophy. Even though he is occasionally described as a political writer or a philosophical writer with roots in an existentialist vein, Eroğlu plainly expresses that he depicts tragic themes that grow in the shady lands where human creation, brotherhood and enmity, cruelty and compassion coexist. Maybe that is why there is a hidden protagonist in all of Mehmet Eroğlu’s novels, invisible yet with a presence that can be felt in every line: ‘Death.’ Eroğlu’s stories often end in his kingdom. Once Oscar Wilde exclaimed the following for Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; ‘What makes their books so great is the pity they put into them.’ In our times it is astonishing to see a writer who sustains the quality of the generation of these great writers in all aspects of his novels.
A Turkish Writer, Standing Apart From Orientalism:
Though at first glance the tragic themes Eroğlu depicts remind us of a writer nourished by the Western culture, upon closer inspection we discover the web of connections between ideas, people and events in their true conditions. In the broadest sense, surely, Eroğlu speaks of the painful problems of the contemporary life in the West as well, and of man in general. But it is because Eroğlu is so profoundly national and Turkish – that is, deeply rooted in the versatile historical life of his people, its present and its rich past, and its culture – that we may speak of him as truly universal and international. And that makes him an enduring figure in Turkish letters. He is a novelist who chooses to write about the young, lonely, angry people of a land caught between the East and the West. He has scrupulously kept his distance from orientalism and chosen to write not about faulty or schematic orientalist Turkey, but instead of the people from a unique country with an extraordinary past searching for an identity.
A Writer From A Generation of 1968 With An Anti-War Standing:
Mehmet Eroğlu maintains that “writers do not grow in mother’s womb but on the tips of their pens” and emphasizes on the principle qualities of writers as an artist: displaying an opposing stand against the prevailing order, the conventional morality and the wealth that gives birth to poverty. His service to literature is precisely the same as his service to humanity. He shares a conviction that only the most thoroughgoing social and political consciousness could bring about social and economic justice. Although he finds wealth as the most dangerous disease that should be eradicated from the face of this planet, he yet defends that an author should not be linked to any authority or any political system. He also believes an independent writer is not freed from responsibility, and it is his duty is to reflect and interfere with the temporal period he lives in. That is what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity. “The artist must be very conscious of the main current and bring to light the disharmony and contradictions, or at least must not let it be forgotten. He is the one who opens the doors of his individuality to the sufferance of the other beings. Therefore the most important element nurtures and molds a writer is that the existence of desire and capacity to blame himself. The artist is he who makes justice, above all, the God of his passions…” Studying these words, we understand that he calls the artist back to the elemental forces ever at work beneath the surface-show of nature and humanity. Mehmet Eroğlu is delicately careful to stay out of conformity and the fallible fashions of the contemporary literature. He is the first writer in Turkish literature with a clear anti-war stance. Eroğlu views every act of writing —in parallel with its artistic merit— as a social act. There exists no other novel in Turkish literature that bears as apparent a criticism against violence as The Landscape of Time, one of his most important works. In his novels, as much as he focuses on urban youth, Eroğlu also fights for the revolution in the social consciousness of our time which has been eroded and destroyed by industrialization, urbanization, revised conceptions of human nature and destiny and class distinctions. Eroğlu’s work has been throughout inspired by a passionate love of humanity, and by his ceaseless struggle against conventional politics and dogmatic believes, and society’s mechanical influence on the minds of its members.
Eroğlu’s Mastery in Plotting and Language
Mehmet Eroğlu’s mastery of plotting, adeptness at dialogue and characterization, ability to evoke atmosphere encouraged the movie industry to persuade him to write for screenplays since the beginning of his career as a writer. Including two adaptations of his own novels, Eroğlu has written screenplays for movies and TV series which some of them received awards in the international film festivals. His skill in plotting are best traced in these following three novels; The Man Who Forgot His Name, The Walk: Interrupted, and View Of Time. It is what his imagination and literary techniques do with an extremely rich set of ideas, emotions to create the “colour of life” in his fictions that earns him an honored place. His literary form suggests similarity with various cinematic techniques- flashback, intercutting, and patchwork narrative. The Man Who Forgot His Name is a similar narration, focuses on the disillusionment of a young man from the resistance war in Palestine. The story moves forward and backward disregarding the chronological time and its narration is divided into names and events with a few cast of characters. His novel The Walk: Interrupted is a story of a man in an exile for his political choices and with its main three characters, each with a different perception of the action and a different way of relating to reality has been adapted almost exactly to the silver screen with a few tiny changes. But we may say that the best traces for his mastery of plotting are found at his seventh novel, The Landscape of Time. Eroğlu’s tendency to use words and images as if he were a composer or a painter can be observed in this book. The story integrates political and philosophical questions of our times with a heart braking love story in the center. It goes deep into the mind and memory of the characters through the timelines in the past, present and future; and just like life itself, it develops and ends perfectly. Mehmet Eroğlu advises a great novel is a product of using the letters in a heightened emphasis on showing rather than telling. His most influential contribution to the craft of fiction is restructuring the Turkish language for a brilliantly floral language. Eroğlu’s books make the reader to enter the process of reading actively and even so, force them to underline many of the sentences. This is why critics always refer to the artistic merit of his writings. His extensive use of detail to illustrate the lives of his characters, things and nature, made him a pioneer in Turkish literature. In his writings, he excelled in dialogues and witty conversation and a book of quotations on Mehmet Eroğlu’s wisdom has recently been published.
His works are characterized by richness in syntax, characterization, point of view, symbolic resonance, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhythms.