Katharina Forster (University of Warwick) Alev Tekinay’s Der weinende Granatapfel as Neo-Romantic Bildungsroman – An Analysis of the Novel’s Chronotopic Structure A number of novels published in the past few years, such as Ilija Trojanow’s Der Weltensammler (2006), Feridun Zaimoglu’s Liebesbrand (2009) or Yadé Kara’s Selam Berlin (2003), feature motifs and narrative patterns evocative of the traditional bildungsroman. However, they tell transcultural coming-of-age stories, highlighting the quest for self-discovery in a world transformed by mass migration and colonialism. While time and the idea of development are of special importance in the bildungsroman, time and space are central variables in intercultural novels of formation: they represent change not only in temporal terms as personal and social developments within societies, but also spatially as travels and encounters between cultures. To describe the configurations of time and space in literature and their “intrinsic connectedness” 1 Bakhtin introduced the concept of the chronotope. In literature, he argued, “[t]ime […] thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.” 2 I will use Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope in a brief discussion of Alev Tekinay’s fantastic novel Der weinende Granatapfel (1990), which has been called a neo-romantic novel of formation 3 , to describe how the text reimagines genre traditions. 1 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays , ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008) 84. 2 Ibid. 3 Alev Tekinay, Der weinende Granatapfel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990) [= Phantastische Bibliothek No. 249] 2.
Alev Tekinay was born in Izmir; she studied German in Munich, receiving a PhD in medieval literature 4 , and has since published scholarly articles on a number of topics, among those the image of the orient in Romantic literature. 5 Her keen interest in the Romantic period also informs her short stories and novels; they often incorporate fairy-tale elements or fantastic themes, which—as Tekinay stated in an interview—present alternative solutions to contemporary problems and social conflicts. 6 Her novel Der weinende Granatapfel is highly allusive. 7 It draws on a number of pretexts from Eastern and Western literary traditions: the Turkish fairy tale of the weeping pomegranate 8 , E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der goldne Topf and, most significantly, Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen . Tekinay takes up Romantic ideas and motifs – like Sehnsucht (longing), Heimweh (homesickness), Entfremdung (alienation) – but reinterprets them in the context of labour migration as sociocultural alienation and a longing for intercultural connections. The fantastic solution the novel puts forward – which is the idea of unity, reinterpreted as a reconciliation of East and West – is taken from both Romantic philosophy and Eastern Mysticism, a reflection of Tekinay’s efforts to construct a deeper connection between Eastern and Western cultures 9 . 4 cf. Alev Tekinay, Materialien zum vergleichenden Studium von Erzählmotiven in der deutschen Dichtung des Mittelalters und den Literaturen des Orients (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1980). 5 cf. Alev Tekinay, “Der deutsche und türkische Liebesroman im Mittelalter,“ Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen- ländischen Gesellschaft 131 (1981); ----, “Der morgenländische Bestandteil im ‘wunderbaren morgenländischen Märchen‘ Wackenroders,“ Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 218 (1981); ----, “Zum Orientbild Bettina von Arnims und der jüngeren Romantik,“ Arcadia 16 (1981). 6 cf. Petra S. Fiero, “Eichendorff and Novalis Revisited, Phantastic Elements and Intertextuality in Alev Tekinay’s Works,” German Studies Review 23.3. (2000) 417. 7 cf. ibid. 418, 420-1. Fiero mentions Eichendorff’s Das Marmorbild , Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen , Brentano’s poetry and Eastern philosophy, especially Sufism; cf. Erika Greber, „Öst-westliche Spiegelngen, Der Doppelgänger als kulturkritische Metapher,“ Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 66 (1992) 587. Erika Greber references E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der goldne Topf and Nâzim Hikmet’s works as the novel’s pretexts. 8 cf. Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, Typen türkischer Volksmärchen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1953) 111-112; cf. „How Keloglan Married the Padisah’s Daughter,“ Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative , Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas <aton.ttu.edu/narratives/wmVol_41-1196_How_Keloglan_Married_The_Padisahs_Daughter.pdf>. 9 cf. Fiero 422. Fiero also states that Tekinay is keen to “stress the affinity between literary and philosophical trends coming from the Occident and Orient.”
The novel tells the story of the young Orientalist Ferdinand Tauber, an awkward dreamer, who – feeling lost and alienated and strangely affected by a half-remembered dream – embarks on a journey to Turkey. In Istanbul he stumbles upon a poem by the Turkish folk poet and Sufi mystic Ferdi T., which mysteriously describes Ferdinand’s own life and causes him to remember his dream: it shows his separation from a beautiful woman in a garden of weeping pomegranates. Ferdinand is thrown into an identity crisis and, determined to find an answer to the mystery, he follows Ferdi T. all over Turkey, but always fails to catch up with him in time. On his journey, he learns that Ferdi T. is his doppelgänger and that he himself might be his literary invention that took on a life of its own. He also meets and falls in love with the woman he saw in his dream and eventually starts to write his own poems, becoming a poet of his own. A day before Ferdinand and Ferdi T. are finally set to meet at a poetry competition, the Turkish poet dies of a mysterious illness. Ferdinand is inconsolable but upon listening to a radio broadcast of Ferdi T.’s final poem, he resolves his identity crisis in the sudden realization that there is neither a Western poet Ferdinand Tauber nor an Eastern poet Ferdi T. He rejects the notion of an individual identity for the abstract idea of a universal kinship of all humans. As becomes apparent, the novel merges fantastic with more realistic, i.e. verisimilar, elements. Each is tied to a different chronotope. The fantastic chronotope is characterized by simultaneity and the dissolution of spatial boundaries and is linked to the utopian solution put forward by the novel – the idea of unity and reconciliation. Ferdinand’s process of becoming a poet mirrors the cyclical, non-chronological progression that characterizes Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen . 10 He does not develop through his experiences with the world outside of himself. His development is depicted as an awaking of hidden talents, a remembering of forgotten knowledge. On his travels, Ferdinand is always struck by the feeling that what he sees 10 cf. Fiero 418. Fiero acknowledges Novalis’ influence on the depiction of Ferdinand’s journey, but does not develop the idea fully; for a general discussion of Novalis‘ novel as bildungsroman cf. Jürgen Jacobs and Markus Krause, Der deutsche Bildungsroman, Gattungsgeschichte vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (München: Beck, 1989) 102-116.
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