Literature
The Time Regulation Institute
CevvelaLiterature
The Time Regulation Institute
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
“The clock itself is space, its movement is time, and its setting is the human being.”
“Our greatest illness is believing that everything is mere form.”
“Doing nothing is sometimes the greatest occupation.”
“Collapse begins when a person starts to believe the lies they have made up.”
“Founding a new institution is nothing more than moving old illnesses into a new building.”
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Reader Score: 7.8 / 10(4.340 votes)
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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.