“Pantomime”: A short story by Sami Paşazade Sezai

Abstract

“Pantomime” ( پ ا ن د و م ی م ا , 1891 ) by nineteenth-century Ottoman writer Sami Paşazade Sezai (1859–1936) is considered by critics as one of the first modern short stories in Turkish literature, and a precursor of Turkish literary realism. As suggested by the title of the collection in which it was published, Little Things ( ك و چ ك ش ي ل ر Küçük Şeyler), Sezai’s aspiration was to make the unnoticed appear, telling the story of the seemingly ordinary details of everyday life. A transitional writer who comfortably navigated the familiar waters of Romanticism while experimenting with Realism, Sezai crafted his stories with the awareness that he was writing at the crossroads of language reform and literary explorations in the fin de siècle Ottoman Empire. Although he admired French writers like most of his contemporaries (he even translated Daudet’s “L’Arlésienne” in Little Things), he developed a distinct authorial voice through his engagement with form and language in his short stories. In this sense, “Pantomime” constitutes a canonical story in Ottoman literature that represents Sezai’s literary style and it demonstrates the liminality of writing practices at the time, between tradition and modernity, Romanticism and Realism. “Pantomime” is about the tragic life and suicide of a thirty-three-year-old clown, Pascal. The most distinct element in the story is the ubiquitous silence that pervades Pascal’s life, blurring the line between his pantomime presence on stage, and his existence offstage. The writer masterfully distills the unsettling silence in the plot and contrasts it with the laughter of the spectators and the jovial twitter of birds. One of the story’s most recurring words, س ک و ن ت (sükûnet: quietude, stillness), also testifies to the uneasy stillness that the writer weaves into the story. This intense sadness ( ح ز ن , hüzün) also spills into the city. Even the ruins of the Byzantine fortress and chant-like bird songs exude melancholy. While the author’s melancholic gaze paints every part of Istanbul with hüzün, it is Pascal’s tragic life that remains central to the story. For Sezai, it is the tragic life of an outsider that lends itself to literary exploration. His contemplative storytelling negotiates descriptions of Pascal, who is portrayed as both a circus performer and a human, and as both comedic and tragic. While Romanticism is heavily felt in Sezai’s depictions of Byzantine ruins, gardens, and the big tree in the courtyard of Pascal’s house, keen physical and psychological depictions of him demonstrate modern elements. Most interesting, and most challenging to capture in translation, is the quiet yet intense storytelling in “Pantomime.” Also hard to render is Sezai’s economy of words which depart from the style of earlier short stories. His language is lighter and his paragraphs are not drowned by long and ornate Persian ezāfe ( ا ض ا ف ه : Persian grammatical construct where words are annexed to make adjectival phrases, also used in naming and denoting possession). His sentences, although long and at times syntactically-