Novelist (b. 2 January 1902, Uzunköprü
/ Edirne - d. 2 October 1964, İstanbul). She attended the primary school until
ten years of age and then entered the French School of Tutoring. In 1914, she
passed to the German High School in Haydarpaşa and went to Germany with the
help of Turkish German Association in 1917, where she completed her
undergraduate and doctorate studies on philosophy. She served in the Republican
People's Party for a while, and then dedicated herself to writing and theosophy.
She got married in 1931. She was a member of the Kenan Rıfai tarikat.* She is
buried in the Karacaahmet Graveyard. Her works have been republished by the
Kubbealtı Academy Foundation since 2001. She was a member of the Conquest
Society.
Her short stories and translations with
the pen name Safiye Sami Dilârâ were published in the reviews Millî Mecmua, Her Ay, etc. after 1926,
when she returned to İstanbul. Her first article titled “Rabindranath Tagore”
(Rabindranath Tagore) appeared in Millî Mecmua in 1927. Some of her articles remained in the newspapers where
they were serialized. Furthermore, she translated the novels of Knut Hamsun and
Selma Lagörleff. Safiye Erol wrote four novels, two translations, two etudes
and hundreds of articles, until 1964 without cease. Her articles, which were
later collected under the title Makaleler (Articles), appeared in the reviews and newspapers such as Mecmua, Her Ay, Yeni İstanbul, Havadis, Türk
Yurdu and Son Havadis. She used a
sincere and warm language in her works, where she sometimes used a narrative
and sometimes a floating expression. All of her novels depict the people who
suffer from love, which are sometimes romantic, and even ill.
Erol has been on the literary agenda
again with the attempts of Halil Açıkgöz and the republication of her works by
the Kubbealtı Publications. According to Selim İleri, the history of literature
is one of “Treachery”, when thinking about Erol; as her name is never mentioned
in this history, except the work titled “Resimli Türk Edebiyatı” (Turkish
Literature with Illustrations) by Banarlı. However, Murat Belge puts that Erol
“is no inferior to Halide Edip Adıvar.”
WORKS:
NOVEL: Kadıköy'ün Romanı (The Novel of Kadıköy, 1938), Ülker Fırtınası (Comet Storm, 1944), Ciğerdelen (Piercing Through the Chest,
1947), Dineyri Papazı (Father of
Dineyri, serialized in Tercüman in
1955; edited by Halil Açıkgöz, 2001).
STUDY: Ken'an Rıfaî ve Yirminci Asrın Işığında Müslümanlık (Ken'an Rıfaî and Islam in the Twentieth Century,
with Samiha Ayverdi, Nezihe Araz and Sofi Huri, 1951), Çölde Biten Rahmet Ağacı (Tree of Benevolence in the Desert,
serialized in Tercüman in 1962;
edited by Halil Açıkgöz, 2001).
