{"id":1368,"date":"2021-05-28T11:21:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T18:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2022-04-23T11:21:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T18:21:52","slug":"third-rate-present-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/third-rate-present-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"third-rate present of people"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet who was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, came to Istanbul in 1980s and had this to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI came to Istanbul to look at the past, not at the future \u2014 since the latter doesn\u2019t exist here: Here there is only an unenviable, third-rate present of the people, industrious yet plundered by the intensity of the local history. Nothing will happen here anymore, apart perhaps from street disorders or an earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once in a while I go back to this comment, and try to make a sense of it. What did he mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I was in St. Petersburg and looked for his house, which was to be turned into a museum. It wasn\u2019t there, and no one knew anything about it. Yet, within a few hundreds meters, there was Pushkin\u2019s house, his books, his chairs .. so on. Revered as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Russians knew of Brodsky but they didn\u2019t seem to care. I wish he were alive, and I could ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once in a while I get depressed in Istanbul, and feel how he felt about it too, forever gnawed by \u201cthe third-rate present of people\u201d \u2014 just like the Italians of 70s &amp; 80s. Maybe it\u2019s the curse of Roman Empire we both are buckled under.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joseph-brodsky-1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joseph-brodsky-1.jpg?resize=500%2C500&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joseph-brodsky-1.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joseph-brodsky-1.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joseph-brodsky-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet who was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, came to Istanbul in 1980s and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1370,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}