The Paradox of Hope and Hopelessness as an Existence Form in Tatar Çölü and Gizli Emir

Abstract

Although Dino Buzatti's Tatar Çölü and Melih Cevdet Anday's Gizli Emir are products of different languages and literatures, they can be regarded as texts that handle existential situation of human being in the world in the context of universal attributes of hope and hopelessness. While hope is presented in these two novels as the basic emotion that lead all the actions of human being in the world, it is pointed out that this emotion specify hopelessness in a dialectical way. In this sense, novelists who try to emphasize that hope and hopelessness paradoxically constitute the two sides of human being's existence, represent the lives of novel characters within the frame of tension which is designated by this paradox. This tension is visible in "waiting" action. The novelists remark that the action itself is more important than whether the hope that action gear occurs or not, and they imply that the existence of human being in this world is related to their attitudes they present about that action. Buzatti and Anday, who think that a human being who can see the "waiting" as a source of existential problem can reach his or her own sense of existence, have tried to handle the subject in a philosophical dimension within the possibilities of the novel genre.