Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 16 Number 1, April 2015
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Holm, Bent. The Taming of the Turk: Ottomans on the Danish
Stage 1596-1896. Translated from the Danish by Gaye Kynoch. Vienna.
Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag (Ottomania 2), 2014. 338pp.
€55.00.
ISBN
978-3-99012-118-4.
Reviewed by
University of Winnipeg
The Taming of the Turk by Bent Holm is an exemplary work in cultural studies. It is a thorough dramaturgical analysis of performances, festivities, texts and pictorial materials covering three centuries of Danish engagement with the figure of “The Turk;” i.e. actual Turks, Muslim figures from the Ottoman empire and whatever imagination called up to fear and fantasize about.
Bent Holm recently retired from the University of Copenhagen. He is a theatre historian, a dramaturg and a translator. His translations of, for example, Carlo Goldoni and Dario Fo and his work as a dramaturg have garnered him high standing in the theatre profession, and his scholarly contributions are equally significant. In recognition of his work he was awarded the coveted Holberg Medal in 2000.
In Denmark (as in other Protestant parts of Europe) the Turk and the Pope were the evil ones, the Devil and the Anti-Christ, respectively, and Luther and the King were on the side of God. With the sultan’s advance on Vienna in 1529 and the city’s actual two-month siege in 1683 the End of Days felt near. Luther had notoriously described the Turk as the harbinger of damnation, the scourge of God.
An example of Holm’s meticulous analyses is found in his discussion of King Christian IV’s coronation festivities in 1596. At one point during the festival days an invitation to tournaments appeared on the castle door on behalf of Pope Sergius VI (a fictional pope for any actual pope with that name had only come up to number IV) and at the tournament the king showed up in a carriage dressed as this “Pope” for a day. Holm, though, does not end the story with considerations of the upside down world of the carnival aspects surrounding the festival. He pursues the meaning of this pope’s name in various contemporary writings. Sergius’s name turns out to derive from a legend then widely in circulation about the heretical Christian monk who supposedly inspired Muhammad in the writing of the Qur’an. Pope and Turk, though apparently in opposition, are now revealed as conspiratorial partners. But importantly the king as Protestant prince becomes stronger by “exposing himself to laughter […] He demonstrated his sovereignty by appearing as the antagonist.” (P.50).
Likewise in his analysis of the figure of the Turk in Ludvig Holberg’s Peder Paars from 1619-20, Holm unearths how the figure both causes fear and reflection for the character of old Gunhild who has absorbed the view of Lutheran theologians of the Turk as “God’s punishment and scourge, and that sin, which is rampant among Christians, causes the Turk’s invasion.” (P.83). Holm also elucidates how Holberg, who was central to the establishment of theatre in Danish in 1722, saw both the Papacy and Islam as theatre and worthy of parody.
By the 19th Century the fear of the Turk had dwindled somewhat but he, and especially she, is still a figure of fascination and fantasy around which alluring amusements may be shaped.
What is impressive about Holm’s work is his exacting attention detail and especially to the echoes these details caused and were caused by. We never get the sense that he went out to find evidence for an already formed idea. Rather, we are led by his curiosity about how Muslims and Islam were portrayed in Danish culture over three centuries, and about why the images took the forms they did. What he has discovered is both deeply interesting and important in the current context. Indeed, it is important far beyond the borders of Denmark; a fact Hollitzer must be applauded for realizing by making an edition available in English.
This reader learned a great deal more about the operations of Orientalism than I ever did from reading Edward Said.
Gaye Kynoch’s has successfully translated not only the literal meaning of Holm’s text. She has managed to make his idiom work in English. That is a remarkable achievement.