Today in 1920s Turkey: 26 March 1923 (Spring Flowers or Autumn Blossoms?)

(Cartoon by Muhittin, Zümrüdü Anka, 26 March 1923, no. 22, page 2.)

English
Man: I am presenting myself to you as an autumn blossom.
Woman: Well then, you must be a nerium!

Türkçe
Erkek: Size kendimi bir sonbahar çiçeği olarak takdim ediyorum.
Kadın: Zakkum olsanız gerek!...

Comments:
It is March, so love is in the air with the welcome arrival of Spring in Turkey. The ability to maneuver the complex intricacies of finding an ideal life-mate is especially pressing during this season of rejuvenation and renewal. Males, for instance, sometimes must rely on their wits instead of other physical or material qualities (e.g. good looks, brawn, wealth etc) to secure a mate. This cartoon employs a combination of text and image to present the attempts of an elderly man to court (or “pick up”) a much younger woman.

The age difference is indicated visually whereas the humor in their interpersonal exchange is reflected in the dialogue below. The cartoon’s word play is lost in translation but the concept’s logic holds up with explanation. In Turkish “autumn/fall” is expressed as “last spring” (son bahar). Thus, in telling the woman that he is a kind of spring flower the man hopes that perhaps the object of his desire will only hear the “spring” part of “(last) spring.” Autumn, of course, is a reference to the man’s old age.

Catching onto his advances, the woman elaborates by suggesting he must be a certain kind of flower. The flower she compares him to, “nerium” or zakkum is a notoriously toxic plant. The woman also met the old man in quick-wittedness by playing her own word-games. The word zakkum (the name of the flower) in Turkish has several other meanings including “very bitter” and the name for a tree that supposedly grows in hell. Thus, she delivers a backhanded compliment (insult, or “complisult”) to him with her specific choice of flower—perhaps punishing him for making a pass on someone so far out of his age-range.

The cartoon features the fashionably dressed man and woman situated in an interior furnished with a few props. The artist, Muhittin’s signature is located between the two figures. Muhittin’s style of caricature includes baby-faced woman and child-statured adults engaged in otherwise grown-up activities. A brief discussion of this artist and another example of his work can be found in this post. And finally, another example of his work covered by Today in 1920s Turkey can be found in #22 (Global Dissatisfaction with Monarchies.)

(Entire page, Zümrüdü Anka, 26 March 1923, no. 22, page 2.)

This article has been updated and modified from its first iteration published right here on Steemit on 25 March 2017. For the original version see:
71. Today in 1920s Turkey: 26 March 1923 (Spring Flowers or Autumn Blossoms?)