Time is a notion that questions what humanity has been from the earliest
times to the present. Many thinkers examine time in depth and try
to explain it with scientific findings. Aristotle states that there is a close
relationship between time and motion. While the motion of one object
is fast in the flow of time, the motion of the other object is slow. Heidegger
argues that time, which is considered as a metaphysical entity,
gains meaning through existence. It is stated that time has no meaning
without existence, and that there is no movement of existence without
time. Bergson highlights the effect of time on existence with the metaphor
of “duration”. Duration is expressed as a parameter regarding the
fast and slowness of time according to its effects on entities. While Spinoza
creates an analogy in terms of the infinity of space and time on the
axis of matter and metaphysical perceptions, Elias deals with time with
its sociological and human counterparts. The views of these thinkers
who examine time are also reflected in the world of fiction.
When looking at time from a philosophical perspective in fiction, it is
necessary to analyze it with reference to psychological, physical and
biological time types. The desire to live in another time or a parallel
time other than the current one, which falls within the scope of psychological
time, is related to the desire for time migration. The desire for
time migration brings about space migration. Traveling to places is an
action, a mobility, carried out through physical migration of this world.
What moves the body are the needs and desires of the soul. What is
desired here is a temporal migration. At the same time, the periods of
time spent in dreams and love can be explained by psychological time.
Physical time, on the other hand, covers the effect of time on things and
objects, as it depends on the clock and calendar. Seasons and periods
of the day are times that can be explained by physical time. Biological
time is a process related to the timing of bodily needs according to the
human biological clock. A person’s sleeping time, eating and drinking
times, and time of death due to old age are related to biological time.
The effect of biological time is not only on humans but also on other living
things. In addition to these genres, identifying case time, narration
time, reading and writing time in fiction will provide a critical perspective
in revealing the time structure of the work. It is seen that the long
stories of Mustafa Kutlu, one of the prominent story writers of Turkish
literature, include many dimensions of time, and have a rich content in
terms of time fiction.
In Mustafa Kutlu’s long stories, concepts about time used in subjects
such as the alienation of the individual, the negative reflections of the
innovations brought by modern life, the degeneration of values and
beliefs created by modernism and capitalism in the Anatolian people,
criticism of concretion and the spread of distorted structures, deadlocks
in migration from the countryside to the city, themes of love that end
in separation, conflict of person-family-society and system are discussed
from a philosophical perspective.
Keywords: Time; Story; Mustafa Kutlu; Types of Time; Chronological
Time