Polemics Debate of Old-New Kemal Ahmet's Case Against the Accusation That He Had Turned Bourgeois Against Leftist Pretenders Against the Accusation that He was a Nationalist The discussion actually started when, in his column in "Tan," Orhan Selim began to write against petit bourgeois intellectuals. He said the following in the article entitled, "Criticising Myself": "I enjoy criticising myself; I particularly enjoy criticising you, Orhan Selim. The pleasure I get from shredding you, son, though not quite like the pleasure the evil stepmother derives from mistreating her weak, emaciated stepdaughter, is rather like the pleasure derived from vanquishing the enemy. "I, Orhan Selim, am trying to be the first to spot any mistakes, to perceive and understand my articles, which are getting worse everyday, before anyone else does. And perhaps by making these random claims, I am undertaking a kind of cleverness, and perhaps I am trying to rescue myself from myself. Perhaps. This is habitual to every insignificant intellectual. And I, Orhan Selim, am ultimately no object other than an insignificant intellectual." (2 June 1935) The restaurants where members of the press converged nightly, right-wing virtuosi were competing with one another in elaborating to the young people in attendance, what they were reading in international papers, how extreme nationalist views were the vogue in Europe now, how socialism was completely out. When Peyami Safa, who was one of these, declared on such an evening, that, 'No one reads Nâzım anymore; his writings mouth after the grocer's and the peddler's language!' There followed a rather fierce exchange between him and Elif Naci. Rightist intellectuals were trying to impose upon the younger journalists. The leftists felt very uneasy. Orhan Selim took up the subject in columns at two newspapers simultaneously on the same day. The heading of the column in "Tan" was "Caffé-Bar Intellectuals": "I felt tired when I left work. The weather was steaming hot. I went into a bar for a mug of bear. Over against the table where I sat, sat four people. Drinking raki. One of them was speaking in audible tones. I listened to what he was saying: A title in the magazine 'Les Nouvelles Litteraires' coincided with a sentence in 'Revue des deux Mondes' which view (?!) in turn had been borrowed from a political (?!) article in 'Candide.' A philosopher in 'Mercure de France' had been made to face up with someone or other, and all of this had been brought under the profound (?) wisdom of the Larousse. "For a long while, I used up all my energy trying to understand what he enthused lad was talking about. But apparently, I singularly lacked talent; add to that the exhaustion of an entire work day, I failed to grasp what this bar intellectual was saying. I felt oppressed by the heaps of words, the weight of innumerable words that felt apart as soon as they became concretised, and - to tell you the truth - I left before I could even drink up my beer. This goes to show that I am too narrow minded to grasp such rampant intellectualism, floating as freely as children's dragon kites, flying high in vast areas, and knowing no bounds." (7 June 1935) The day this article was printed in "Tan," across the page from Peyami Safa's column, in "Akşam," Orhan Selim had published the article, "The Intellectual": "The intellectual is rather like a song. One cannot have enough of the well-made, solid, profound kind. The ill-made, however, is unbearable. One wishes neither to hear nor to taste it. *** "Most intellectuals are in a way like musical records. They emit the sounds recorded in them. But then there is a very special sort among them, who believes that he does not play what has been recorded in him, but he emits what he does because he chooses to emit just that. This sort is no different from members of primitive cultures who, not knowing that it rains as a result of numerous complex reasons, believe it rains because it wishes to rain. *** "Every petty, half-baked, sketchy intellectual believes he is the pivot of the earth. *** "Of the chicken and the cattle, the small version is desirable - the chick, the calf. Of the intellectual, the large... *** "Intellectuals are like stairs connecting the storeys of the apartment building of social life. They point at the dirt or cleanliness of those living on the storey that falls to their lot." (7 June 1935) ^ Top | Next >