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Yemenici sokak 13 - Gurdjieff´s
institute
Yemenici sokak - detail
Yemenici sokak - entrance
Kumbaraci sokak
Galata Mevlevihanesi - entrance
Büyükada Aya Yorgi
church - inside
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| Newsletter
3/2003
In Gurdjieff’s
wake in Istanbul
A photo report by Thomas Groetz of his August 2003 journey to Istanbul
Gurdjieff arrived in Istanbul on
July 7, 1920, after having left Tiflis and Batumi
by boat. In the fall
of the same year, he was able to rent a small three-storey
house in Yemenici sokak. This is a small street not
far away from the Galata tower, north of the Golden
Horn on the Asian side of Istanbul. Today, walking
through these twisting and narrow streets one can still
feel its past importance, when this area was filled
with Armenians, Greeks and Jews. But most of the streets
are quite empty now, tourists are rare here and many
of the historical buildings are in a bad, decayed state,
standing close to other buildings that have been restored.
The Yemenici sokak, where in October 1920 Gurdjieff
opened his Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man for the third time after Essentuki and Tiflis,
also shows buildings in good shape alternating with
abandoned buildings, and in the case of Gurdjieff´s
former house on number 13, burned out architecture.
As can be read in the teaching prospectus of the Istanbul Institute, Gurdjieff
decided to concentrate on his movements, in addition to giving lectures. To
work on the dances and to practise them with his group of mainly Russian students
who had followed him to Istanbul, he needed a hall. In the small Yemenici building,
this was of course impossible. |
Yemenici sokak
The problem was soon solved when Gurdjieff could rent
a big hall in the house that is located behind the high
iron fence as seen on the photograph, bottom right. This
building still belongs to a Jewish community, as it was
in Gurdjieff’s time. Unfortunately, a military
man in one of the small observation posts strategically
located all over Istanbul did not allow me to photograph
this Jewish institution. It was in this building that
John G. Bennett attended a performance of Gurdjieff’s
movements he later described vividly in Witness, his
memoirs. Especially The Initiation of a Priestess and
parts of the ballet The Struggle of the Magicians fascinated
him.
During the time of the Istanbul Institute, Gurdjieff lived in an apartment in
the Kumbaraci sokak, just a few minutes’ walk from Yemenici. The Kumbaraci
sokak is a darker, but bigger, and a more crowded street. In this apartment,
Gurdjieff worked with Ouspensky on the libretto of The Struggle of the Magicians,
as Ouspensky tells in his book The Search of the Miraculous. At the same time,
Ouspensky and Gurdjieff regularly visited the weekly ritual of the Mevlevi dervishes
that took place in the Galata mosque. The historical Mevlevi centre (Mevlevihansi)
is also very close to Kumbaraci and Yemenici sokak. Here, the typical Sema ritual
of the Mevlevis was revived in 1982, after having been forbidden since the mid
twenties by Atatürk. Now, it is celebrated every Sunday afternoon for an
audience. |
Galata Mevlevihanesi - cemetery
Gurdjieff decided to close his Istanbul
institute after seven or eight months in the summer of
1921. It is reported that it was too difficult for him
to attract a steady group of interested pupils large
enough to carry out his study program. In addition, the
political situation became unsteady (and soon led to
the overthrow of the sultan).
Gurdjieff also gave up his apartment in Kumbaraci sokak and decided to
stay for some weeks in a villa on the nearby Büyükada, the biggest
of the so-called Princess Islands in the Marmara Sea, which can be reached
in less than half an hour by ferry. By that time, Ouspensky already lived
on Büyükada in a guesthouse with his family, and Thomas de Hartmann
with his wife stayed here for some time as well. On the Princess Islands,
one can feel a strong Greek influence. On top of the highest mountain in
Büyükada, the beautiful Aya Yorgi (Saint George) church and monastery
is located, a Russian orthodox spiritual centre that was probably visited
by Gurdjieff too, not only because his patron was Saint George.
In the meantime, Gurdjieff developed new plans and decided to turn to Western
Europe. On August 13 1921, he and his group left Istanbul by train for
Berlin. |
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All Photos by
Thomas Groetz
email:
t.groetz@web.de |
