Eyvaz Taha - Avae Tabid (Voice of Exile) - Jun 17, 2022
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| Eyvaz Taha |
This analysis of the novel I Want to Go Mad (originally titled in Turkish: “Dəli Olmaq İstəyirəm”) is written by the novel’s own author, Eyvaz Taha. In his reflections, Taha offers a profound insight into the interplay and tension between reason and madness. The novel tells the story of an exile, speaking of resistance and liberation within its own linguistic and cultural framework. By using Azerbaijani Turkish, it challenges cultural hegemony. The main character is in search of a passage from reason to madness but is constantly caught on the boundary between the two. Taha’s writing reflects on the concept of consciousness and the complexities of the human experience, where rationality and madness are interwoven.
Through his novel, Taha seeks to establish a dialectical relationship between reason and madness, challenging the reader to gain a deeper understanding of complex concepts such as freedom, consciousness, and language.
The novel “I Want to Go Mad” is an exilic work within its own homeland. Despite common self-censorship, its publication has been delayed multiple times for various reasons, the primary one being the language in which it is written. The novel is penned in Azerbaijani Turkish, a paradox in the hegemonic discourse—a discordant note. Beyond this, the novel embarks on an inner journey to escape the conventional and rational aspects of life. However, it is neither a spiritual quest in the traditional sense nor the story of a seeker in pursuit of immortality. It is the tale of a character who wants to go mad. Yet, despite his efforts to connect with madness, he lacks the courage to confront the realm of complete suspension of reason. Nevertheless, he is a character who, driven by the hope of finding a breach in the imposed order, dives into the unknown, all against the backdrop of an obscure and passionate love.
Without any attempt to reflect a philosophical stance in the novel, the outcome is a dialectical perspective on reason and madness. In the story, the doctor represents the rational aspect of the human mind, while the insane embody the irrational aspect. Yet, one shouldn’t envision a clear line between reason and madness. It should not be assumed that madness is confined within the bodies of the insane on one side, while reason nests in the bald head of the doctor on the other. Nor is it accurate to think that they simply coexist tensely while preserving their distinct identities and realms. The point is that each is embedded within the other. The conflict of reason is inherently present within madness itself. As Slavoj Žižek puts it in dialectical logic, “Reason is not a soothing network that merely resolves or conceals contradictions, chaos, madness, and the like. On the contrary, reason is the ultimate boundary of madness. The issue is not that, on the one hand, we have rational structures, and then, on the other, we encounter the contradictions of life, and that somehow we must bring these two together. Quite the contrary, contradiction and conflict in the grandest sense are inherent within reason itself. In other words, reason is the ultimate surplus of madness.”
The synthesis of awareness emerges from this unsettling dialectic of reason and madness. The protagonist, fleeing from the world of reason to the realm of madness, reaches nowhere, becoming even more disoriented in a circular path. This is because there aren’t two distinct realms at play; rather, there is a singular, complex, tension-filled realm comprising both reason and madness. In other words, reason is not a comprehensive domain that absorbs the contradiction of madness and irrationality. Therefore, it is no surprise that, despite his initial decision to oscillate between the two, the protagonist ultimately encounters a unique situation that, from one perspective, appears mad and, from another, reasonable. Here lies the destination—the attainment of the forbidden fruit of awareness, the pursuit of liberation. Yet, the result is an intoxicating joy mixed with excruciating anguish, not bliss. Awareness is gratifying but not a source of happiness. Thus, in the unfolding of the story, the visible battle with the foundational core of reason does not lead to increased pleasure but to greater suffering. Moreover, throughout the narrative, what may go unnoticed is a battle of equal intensity with the foundational core of madness. In the novel, only those characters are spared from this struggle who perform their duties with absolute certainty in the realm of clear theories and possess unwavering moral principles. The guards in the story symbolize this category as the police (state).
The mingling of reason and madness, existence and non-existence, is reflected on various levels. In the novel, boundaries dissolve—a playful, postmodern eclecticism blurs the line between city and village, red and green lights, the cosmos and self, seriousness and humor, margin and text, myth and reality, and even the original and the marginal. Furthermore, not only does the linear continuity of time disintegrate, but at certain points, different times appear side-by-side rather than sequentially. This means that the past, present, and future sometimes occur simultaneously. Only day and night survive this maddened amalgam to some extent, likely due to the overwhelming dominance of tradition and the mind’s inability to escape the eternal, terrifying dichotomy of good and evil. Additionally, I dared not extend the same degree of temporal and spatial disjointedness to the characters. I wanted the subconscious of the individuals to hint at fragmentation more than cohesion, akin to the fragmented psyches of Kurt Vonnegut’s characters—a fragmentation that is now a matter of daily concern for a branch of psychoanalysis across the realms of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. Yet due to linguistic limitations, it was impossible to achieve this degree of disjointedness. Thus, I had no choice but to "consider the state of language"—a constant concern of mine. What do I mean by "consider the state of language"?
My perennial concern casts a heavy shadow across the novel: language and the dizzying play of signs. The truth is that we are now engaging in an intimate relationship with language in order to summon it from our subconscious into the realm of life. If I had lived in Hemingway's America, I would have neither written in polished language nor given much regard to Shakespearean lyricism. I would have tried, like Anton Chekhov or Nazim Hikmet, to turn language into an invisible stocking—without adornment. But here, Azerbaijani Turkish, deprived of its own city-state, would suffocate if I, as its humble spokesperson, did not elevate voice to the level of speech. The ancient Greek philosophy knew that the birth of language coincided with the rise of politics and the polis. In the absence of a city-state to shoulder the burden of language, we have no choice but to constantly court it. Thus, in this novel, I have engaged in a full-fledged affair with language—a romance for deep empathy to uncover its semantic layers, reveal its hidden beauty, convey an uninhibited pleasure that fills the reader with sweetness, and create a suspense that shakes the “knowledge entrenched in official language” like a fever. However, I took care that this passion for language did not turn into romanticized politics, a pitfall that could end politics and bring on death, as the Romantic movement and Humboldt did to the German language, and as antiquarianism and Kasravi did to Persian.
On a practical level, this linguistic consideration was not without cost. The schizophrenic tone of the main character, who is also the narrator, would have fused reading the story with boundless pleasure if the novel’s atmosphere had descended into chaotic language. However, as I mentioned earlier, I deliberately denied the reader this pleasure. For example, by using a composite language (a rough and colloquial tone for the chief guard, rigid and commanding for the doctor, wise for the Ozan, poetic for the female musician), the aesthetic richness could have been enhanced. Yet, given the current state of Azerbaijani Turkish, I lacked both the ability and the desire to do so, as I wrote in a language that has withstood the homogenizing blows of ninety years, a language barred from centers of education, where any attempt at reform is laden with penal consequences. Now, as state radio and television in Tabriz, Urmia, Ardabil, and Zanjan insistently work to dismantle it, we are in dire need of a shared, intersubjective standard language. Therefore, any emphasis on jargon or dialects is another blow to the ailing standard language. Having spent my entire life revitalizing and expanding this language, I now see aiding the cohesion of the standard language as a political necessity and a symbol of critical thinking against the status quo. At times, there is no avoiding this burden, as an inevitability is embedded here. For when the existence of a language is threatened, it erupts from the subconscious to the conscious at the slightest provocation.
If there exists no history but the history of reason and meaning, then the separation of language and thought becomes marginal. Is language merely the language of reason? If so, does language not stand opposed to madness? In this case, isn’t language the mark of reason, and silence the mark of madness? With this ominous tool of the opposing front, how can one enter the secretive realm of madness? Is there any solution other than the Hegelian one, where contradiction is internalized within reason? Therefore, it is unsurprising that, in this novel, only the sane speak, or those on the verge of madness. The mad are silent, or they speak alone, in isolation, and in silence—with words without language. They have names but their essence is shrouded in silence. As Foucault says, “The insistent murmur of a language that speaks alone, without a speaking subject and without an audience, self-contained, caught in the throat, breaking apart before expression, and quietly returning to a silence from which it was never severed; the scorched root of meaning.” And if it is true that the madman's habitat lies outside the realm of meaning production, then here we approach the threshold of the impossible. Thus, merely speaking about madness, narrating its silence, is to join the enemy camp, “for praising silence always occurs within logos, a language that objectifies things.” Since logos is nothing but "the historical meaning and reason," even “speaking well of the silence of madness” amounts to seizing and capturing madness through the discourse of reason.
I did not fear narrating an anti-subject and ideology-averse story that ultimately ends in ideological commitment. I wanted to transcend the subject, but the subject transcended me. I also wanted to experience the pleasure of jamming the gears of the subject’s subjugation and identity formation in the Althusserian sense. I wanted the social subject to approach the threshold of the impossible through madness, perhaps by dismissively and mischievously refusing to challenge the Big Other (the existing symbolic order). I wanted to take the risk of disrupting the existing order from within for a slight disturbance in its harmony.
In this sense, the story’s heroine could have been depicted as Promethean, but it didn’t happen. This thought came only after the story had fully formed, while I was developing the character of Khan, a mysterious man from the Caucasus. After all, Prometheus was bound in the Caucasus after stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. But the primary issue was the difference in gender: Prometheus was the son of Iapetus, while my protagonist is an ordinary woman. Besides, I didn’t pursue the idea of a Promethean heroine because it came too late. The story had taken shape, and I neither had the time nor the inclination to restructure everything. Moreover, I feared, as Farough Asadpour puts it, that “this figure, in our hands, would become less of a scholar committed to freedom and equality, and more of an angry and intolerant icon, opposed to those who refuse the ‘gift.’”
The main issue was the anti-subject nature of the central theme. The core of suspense in this novel is repeated failure to reach the goal. Moreover, the subject’s centrality is removed in this novel; the heroes are anti-heroes. This spirit does not align with that of Prometheus. However, it would have been better if the heroine had rebelliously resisted the anti-subject narrative. In the story, when the heroine is ordered to burn her beloved instrument, she simply turns back from the doorway and disrupts the ceremony. Her wanderings across the mountains and plains are not enough. She should have acted decisively.
The novel is not what I say it is, but what the reader will read. Not merely due to the appealing idea of the author’s death or other reasons emphasizing the reader’s constructive interpretation—though these are true. I have another reason: in this novel, I have unconsciously left many things unsaid. When I read the novel myself, these unspoken things echo in my ear unconsciously. But for readers, these unsaid aspects will come alive in line with their feelings, emotions, knowledge, and desires. The outcome will likely be a novel that readers, with no resemblance to my conceptions, will largely write themselves. I wonder whether this will make reading the novel difficult or will it unfold effortlessly, like surrealist automatism.
Lastly, throughout the narrative, the presence of a “naively omniscient narrator” bears the story’s burden. It’s not improbable that I might have spent a few days with a false identity in a mental institution to write this novel, even perhaps undergoing psychoanalysis as a madman. I wish I hadn’t interrupted the doctor and his assistant when they discussed “paranoia and the beautiful soul,” with a Lacanian idea of the barred subject or an incomplete reference to Hegel’s perspective on the beautiful soul. They were so shocked they nearly went mad themselves. Still, the temporary stay was a bitter experience and affirmed Zizek’s words: “Madness is something terrible—madmen suffer—it’s wrong to try to find a liberating dimension in madness.”
From Avaaye Tabeid Issue No. 23, Fall 2021.
Eyvaz Taha was born in Mugan, Iranian Azerbaijan. By profession, he is engaged in philosophy and writes literary prose. In the 1990s, E. Taha was the founder and chief writer of the magazine Yol. Later, in the Republic of Azerbaijan, he laid the foundations for the Cahan magazine and took on its editorial leadership. In 2004, he also began publishing the newspaper Yarpag. Yarpag was the first newspaper published entirely in Azerbaijani Turkish since the fall of the Autonomous National Government of Azerbaijan (1945-1946).
To date, Taha has published nearly two hundred writings (articles, stories, novels, critiques, essays, and translations) across various magazines and newspapers. These writings, published in Azerbaijani Turkish, Persian, and English, focus on issues primarily at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and politics.
Alongside the publications Yol, Cahan, and Yarpag, two books form the cornerstone of Taha’s reputation: Where the Bullet Was Fired and Poetry is the House of Being. Despite believing that his unpublished works, kept secret under assumed names, might have even greater impact, these two books remain central to his legacy.
Link to the original text in Farsi: Avaaye Tabeid's website.