Abstract:

In Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s literary texts, her protagonists typically perform like actors on a stage. Not much attention has been paid to the stage settings of Özdamar’s novels where her actors perform their roles. This article addresses the following questions: first, where are the stages on which Özdamar places her novel’s characters; and second, what is the historical and societal relevance being expressed by these particular stage settings? The role of trains in Özdamar’s novels is of special interest. As Foucault says, “A train is an extraordinary bundle of relations,” and this is true for her novels, where many diverse plays are performed using a railway compartment as the stage setting. In addition, the discussions of the motif of her use of German as her novels’ language are played out on trains. It is repeatedly evident that her narratives of solidarity are told in these railway compartments. Though the panoramic view from the railway window, and the changeover to imaginary literary landscapes constitute illusionary spaces, where for once the ‘actually existing socialism’ seems to be apparent, Özdamar’s protagonists are nevertheless aware of the problems German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) socialism. The continuous traveling between East and West Berlin on the urban commuter train transforms the contradictory and coinciding fragments of the protagonist’s identity into a horizontal coexistence. That is, although every railway journey must come to an end, one can always start a new, so that in spite of the protagonist’s disillusionment, a utopian moment of solidarity shines forth.

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