Turkish · Intermediate
Read Bahar ve Kelebekler ve Diğer Hikâyeler in Turkishwith every sentence explained
English title: Spring and Butterflies and Other Stories
Ömer Seyfettin · 1917
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About the book
Bahar ve Kelebekler ve Diğer Hikâyeler by Ömer Seyfettin was first published in 1917. In Passage you read the full text in the original Turkish, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 21,900 words.
Love, manners and modern life in old Istanbul, served with a wink.
In the Istanbul of the 1910s, Western fashions collide with old traditions, and Ömer Seyfettin watches it all with a sharp, amused eye. In Bahar ve Kelebekler, a 97-year-old great-great-grandmother scolds her gloomy, novel-reading descendant and remembers the joyful springtimes of her own youth. In Gizli Mâbed, a young Frenchman with his head full of Pierre Loti insists that the Turks are blind to the mysteries of their own country. In Aşk Dalgası, a dreamy bachelor on the Kadıköy ferry bumps into an old school friend who has some very firm opinions about love.
Witty, satirical and now and then surprisingly dark, these stories show the playful side of a master of the Turkish short story, and paint a lively picture of a city on the brink of change.
- Author
- Ömer Seyfettin
- First published
- 1917
- Language
- Turkish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 21,900 words
How it opens
Küçük salonun fes renginde kalın ve ağır perdeli penceresinden dışarısı muhteşem, parlak bir suluboya levhası gibi görünüyordu. Saf mavi bir sema. Çiçekli ağaçlar... Cıvıldayan kuşlar... Uyur gibi sessiz duran deniz... Karşı sahilde mor, fark olunmaz sisler altındaki dağlar, korular, beyaz yalılar... Ve bütün bunların üzerinde bir esâtir rüyasının havâi hakikati gibi uçan martı sürüleri! Pencerenin önündeki şişman koltuğa gayet zayıf, gayet sarı, gayet ihtiyar bir kadın oturmuştu. Bahar ve hayata dargınmış gibi arkasını dışarıya çevirmişti. Sönmüş gözleri köşelerdeki gölgelere karışıyordu. Karşısında, bir şezlonga uzanmış esmer, güzel bir kız, siyah maroken kaplı bir kitap okuyor; pencereden, çiçek, kır kokuları; deniz, dalga fısıltıları getiren tatlı bir nisan rüzgârı giriyordu.
Reading Bahar ve Kelebekler ve Diğer Hikâyeler in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Turkish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Turkish feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
