Literature
The Institute for Time Adjustment
CevvelaLiterature
The Institute for Time Adjustment
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar · Dergâh Yayınları · 1961
8
Cevvela Score
7.8 (4.340 oy)
Reader Score
Summary
Through the characters of Hayri İrdal and Halit Ayarcı, the story traces the rise and fall of the “Institute for Time Adjustment”—a formalistic, bureaucratic, and absurd institution caught between East and West. A ruthless satire of the pains of modernization and the lack of meritocracy.
Quotes from Cevvela
“Saatin kendisi mekan, yürüyüşü zaman, ayarı insandır.”
“Bizim en büyük hastalığımız, her şeyi şekilden ibaret sanmamızdır.”
“Hiçbir şey yapmamak, bazen en büyük meşguliyettir.”
“İnsan, kendi uydurduğu yalanlara inanmaya başladığında çöküş başlar.”
“Yeni bir kurum kurmak, eski hastalıkları yeni bir binaya taşımaktan başka bir şey değildir.”
Reader Quotes
No approved reader quotes yet.
Rate as a reader
Choose a score from 1 to 10. It saves immediately; one vote per device for this book.
Reader Score: 7.8 / 10(4.340 votes)
Reader Comments
No approved reader comments yet.
Tanpınar takes an X-ray of the culture of “pretending” in these lands. Halit Ayarcı is the prototype of that manipulative manager—often seen in institutions today—who is wrapped in a visionary facade but is completely hollow inside. The Institute is the very embodiment of those hollow institutional structures that serve no purpose yet survive on massive budgets. The author’s tone is sarcastic; he confronts us with how we worship the bureaucracy we’ve invented for ourselves, even though we produce nothing of substance. It demonstrates the exact opposite of Cevvela’s statement that “being useful is a way of being, not an image”—that is, how uselessness is transformed into a colossal image. Form can never take the place of substance.