207. Today in 1920s Turkey: 5 December 1925 (“Class” at the Dinner Table)
Türkçe
Medeniyet Dersleri: 15
Yemek İçmek Adabına Dair!
Efendiler, şu havası, suyu güzel memleketimizde enva çeşit hastalıklar türeyor. Doktorlar buna gıdasızlık diyorlar. Hani can boğazdan gelir, derler bu sözü unutmamalı. Bir insan yiyeceği şeylere çok dikkat etmelidir. Fakir de olsa yenecek şeylerin en kuvvetlisini seçmelidir. Ve vaktinde yemelidir. Bizde çok insanlar vardır ki karnı ne zaman acıkırsa yemeğini yer, vakti saati belli olmaz. Buna intizamsızlık derler. Sonra yemek yemenin de bir usulu, edebi vardır. Bir çoklarımız şöyle süslüce bir sofraya oturduğumuz zaman mutlak bir pot kırarız. Çünkü usulunu adabını, erkanını bilmeyiz. Medeni insanların yemek yiyişi bile başkadır. İnsan onlara yemek yerken bakmakla doyamaz. Beyaz keten örtülerle, türlü çiçeklerle, billur bardaklarla süslenen yemek masaları insana başka bir zevk verir. Hele yemek yerken, çatal ve kaşık tutuşları, bıçaklarla bulunacak şeyleri terbiyeli, ve tertiblice kesişleri doğrusu ya, insanı yemeğe imrendirir. Ya biz öyle miyiz ya, pek çoğumuz ortaya konan kalaysız, kara bir meydan sinisinin etrafında toplanır, ağızlarımızı şapırdatarak, avurdlarımızı şişirerek ortadaki sahana bir girişiriz ki bizi seyredenler imrenmekten ziyade iğrenirler. Ben Anadolu’nun bir çok yerlerini gezdim. Köylerdeki fakir insanları söylemiyorum. Şehirdeki zengin ağaların sofralarında da bulundum. Onlarda çatal ve bıçağın sofrada yeri yoktur. Yemekte çatal yerine sağ eldeki üç parmağı kullanırlar. Bu parmakların içinde çamurlusu, nasırlısı, belki uyuzu bile vardır. Şimdi şu iki türlü yemek yiyişten hangisini beğenirsiniz, sorarım size? İşte bunlara medeniyet derler. Yediğimiz şeylerin içimize sinmesi vücudumuza yaraması için temizliğine, adabına, erkanına dikkat etmemiz lazımdır, başka çare yok.
English
Lessons in Civilization: 15
Rules of Good Manners Concerning Dining and Drinking!
Gentlemen, in this our country, whose air and water is so beautiful, all kinds of diseases are springing up. Doctors call this malnutrition. You know they say that life passes through the throat, this proverb should never be forgotten. A person should pay close attention to what they eat. Even if one is poor, they should choose the most fortified things to eat. And eat at the appropriate time. There are many among us who will eat whenever they get hungry, at no fixed time. They call this unorderliness/haphazardness. There is a method, an etiquette to eating food. Many of us make a blunder when we sit at a nice and fancy table. This is because we must (get to) know the best practices, their methods, and rules of conduct. Civilized people eat food/meals differently. You can’t get enough of watching them eat. Their dinning tables set/bedecked with white linen clothes, various flowers, and crystal glasses are especially delightful. Especially the way they hold forks and spoons while eating, how they politely and neatly cut what they find with their knives, frankly speaking, make the food appear (even) more appetizing. Are we like that? Most of us gather around an open untinned dark metal tray (used as a table) and attack the frying pan at the center while smacking our lips and puffing out our cheeks, arousing more disgust than desire in anyone watching us. I’ve traveled many places in Anatolia. I’m not talking about the poor people in villages. I’ve also been present at the dinning tables of rich aghas (landowners). There is no place at their tables for forks and knives. Instead of a fork, the first three fingers of the right hand are used when dinning. There could be dirty, calloused, and even mangy fingers among these. Now I ask you, which of these two types of eating do you approve of? They call these things civilization. In order for the things we eat to be satisfying and beneficial to our bodies we must pay attention to its cleanliness and proper manner of consumption — there is no other way.
Comments:
As the fifteenth installment in Karagöz’s serial column, “Lessons in Civilization,” this text focuses on table manners and proper etiquette when eating. It begins by establishing the importance of food, nutrition, and bodily health to remove the act of eating from something trivial or functional into something that requires care and is worthy of the reader’s attention. From here, the essay segways into the aesthetics and proper conduct of eating by presenting the ways of “civilized” people and how they consume food as a model for readers to emulate. After explaining how tables are set and utensils are used by said “civilized” people, the author contrasts this with uncivilized methods of dining before wrapping up the discussion with some thoughts on hygiene and the broader health benefits of pairing eating habits with proper table manners.
The biweekly journal, Karagöz often featured similar content of a “civilizing” or “edifying” nature, in addition to warnings and announcements on poor or dangerous conduct. 1920s Turkey has covered a number of these “Lessons” in previous posts, which highlight the scope of these behavioral interventions (see posts #126, #172, and #173). In this way, Karagöz aimed to educate and reform its audience in a variety of ways, from directly informing their readership of the parameters of proper conduct to passive-aggressively shaming them. The present text provides an example of the oft-deployed method of “compare and contrast” used in this genre of writing. Surprisingly, this edition omits any specific reference to who constitutes the “civilized” people held as shining examples of table manners. Perhaps this was left unspecified so as to avoid prompting a comparative insecurity against another people or class, but based on the description, the author is likely referring to European or vaguely upper-class practices of dining.
Nevertheless, like many such “civilizing” suggestions floated by Karagöz, this one is dependent on a certain degree of material means to fulfill such behavioral requirements. Indeed, the author acknowledges that these suggestions are not directed at “poor people in villages” but aimed at local rich people (Turks) who have the means to afford linen table clothes, silverware, crystalline glasses, and fresh flowers. Thus, it seems that civilization is something both performative and exclusive… or at least more mandatory for the upper classes and less expected of the lower ones. In reality, the financially vulnerable classes of all nations/countries are less invested in or less burdened with the psychological pressure to observe superfluous rituals or non-essential practices. Civilization, in this way, invites everyone into its fold, although it is its intrinsically exclusive pretense that is the generative force behind its allure.
