The Dreams of Abdullah Efendi (Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları) is an early collection of stories by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar that exemplifies his modernist narrative style, which focuses on the individual's inner world in Turkish literature. First published in 1943, this work is considered one of the author's most significant contributions to the short story genre, addressing themes such as dreams, time, consciousness, fear, and identity with psychological depth and philosophical allusions. The five stories in the work offer a multilayered narrative on the individual's alienation, fragmented self-structures, and internal conflicts in the modern city. Tanpınar's perceptions of time, stream of consciousness, and metaphysical tensions—which form the foundational building blocks of his literary universe—are materialized through fiction in this work.
Author and Literary Context
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is one of the most original thinkers and artists of the Republican era of Turkish literature. A writer of poetry, novels, essays, articles, and short stories, Tanpınar is also known as an aesthetic theorist, academic, and cultural historian. His literary approach is based on a multifaceted understanding that draws from both Western literature and classical Turkish-Islamic aesthetics. Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları is considered one of the early examples in which this multilayered intellectual and aesthetic perspective takes form in the short story genre. In this regard, the work is not merely a collection of stories addressing individual themes but also represents a new direction in modern Turkish short story writing.
Content and Thematic Structure
The book consists of five short stories: "Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyası" (The Dream of Abdullah Efendi), "Rüyalar" (Dreams), "Bir Yol" (A Path), "Geçmiş Zaman Elbiseleri" (The Clothes of a Past Time), and "Evin Sahibi" (The Owner of the House). Each story has a narrative that progresses on one or more layers of consciousness. The dream forms the structural and thematic center of almost all the stories. Especially in the opening story, "Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları," the transitions between the protagonist's inner world and external reality are addressed with a psychoanalytic approach that reflects the influences of Freud and Jung. Through this narrative, Tanpınar suggests that a dream is not merely a sign of the subconscious but also a metaphor that interweaves different planes of time.
The dominant thematic structures in the work include the cyclical nature of time, the individual's internal dissolution, the mechanical structure of modern life, alienation, loneliness, and identity fragmentation. The protagonists are often individuals who speak with their inner voices, confront the past, or feel anxiety about the uncertainty of the future. These individual dissolutions are made visible, particularly within the urban setting and the mundane details of daily life.
Language, Style, and Narrative Features
Tanpınar's style is a synthesis of the aesthetic possibilities of classical Turkish and Western narrative techniques. In Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları, this style is at times woven with intense imagery, and at others, it takes on a narrative form based on inner monologues and stream of consciousness. The language is enriched with descriptions that often possess a poetic quality. The metaphors, allegories, and allusions used in the stories offer a multilayered reading experience. Tanpınar's word choices and sentence constructions reflect the emotional states of the characters. Therefore, reading the work involves not only following the narrated events but also tracing an inner world.
Philosophical and Psychological Layers
The narrative structure in the work exhibits a framework that is consistent with Paul Ricoeur's theoretical framework on the relationship between time, memory, and identity. Furthermore, in accordance with Bühler's Gestalt theory, the individual's perceptual integrity and their relationship with the environment are dissolved in the stories, both sensorily and intellectually. The characters in the stories are often individuals who cannot structure the reality of the external world or who are in conflict with this reality. The dream, in this context, is both an escape and a space for confrontation. This narrative method of Tanpınar brings unconscious processes into play on a symbolic level to reveal the individual's fragmented self and internal tension.
This psychological and philosophical structure is particularly evident in the story "Evin Sahibi," which provides a platform for discussing the relationship between fear and personal and collective memory. Here, fear is not only an individual emotion but also a way for society to confront its metaphysical anxieties. The sense of fear and uneasiness in the stories is directly related to the uncertainties brought by modern life, social disconnections, and the dissolution of traditional structures.
Literary Value and Impact
Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları is regarded as a pioneering text in the development of an individual-centered, introspective, and psychologically-driven narrative in Turkish short story writing. Tanpınar's approach to the crises of the modern person from the perspective of the individual's inner world distinguishes him from the traditional short story style of his period. Particularly in the context of the reflection of the post-Republican individual’s identity crisis and cultural conflicts in literature, the work serves as an original example in both its thematic and structural aspects.
The stories are regarded not only as literary fictions but also as reflections of a philosophical way of thinking. In this respect, Abdullah Efendi'nin Rüyaları is considered a cornerstone that established the foundations of Tanpınar's aesthetic and intellectual universe.
