Harmonies and Discords: Rhythmanalysing Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Öz

Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis reveals how cyclical and linear patterns structure everyday life. By distinguishing organic rhythms from social and mechanized schedules, it introduces eurhythmia, arrhythmia, and polyrhythmia to describe harmonious or discordant temporal interactions. Rooted in dialectical and phenomenological thought, it demands an embodied, sensory engagement: the analyst “listens” to environments to discern underlying rhythms. In literary studies, rhythmanalysis extends narratological, structuralist, and multidisciplinary traditions by focusing on lived, sensory narrative rhythms. Building on applications in urban studies and sociology, critics have used close reading and digital mapping to trace tempo patterns. By examining repetition and variation across organic and mechanical registers, this approach uncovers how fiction choreographs pacing, mood, and thematic resonance in various genres and historical periods. This study applies rhythmanalysis to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and The Sun, reading its protagonist, an Artificial Friend, as a rhythmanalyst. Through Klara’s relations with the Sun’s cycle, her urban surroundings, and human routines, we identify moments of eurhythmia, where natural and social rhythms align; and arrhythmia, where mechanical schedules disrupt organic flows. These polyrhythmic intersections in domestic and public spaces reveal the novel’s critique of artificial temporalities. Carefully analyzing Klara’s evolving embodiment, from her household sacrifices and experiments with mechanized “lifting,” to her final confinement in the attic, demonstrates how Ishiguro dramatizes the tension between cyclical renewal and imposed linearity. Klara’s journey shows that personhood arises through active engagement with spatial rhythms.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• rhythmanalysis
• space
• Ishiguro
• Klara and The Sun
• Lefebvre

Uyum ve Uyumsuzluk: Ishiguro’nun Klara ile Güneş Romanının Ritimanalizi

Öz

Henri Lefebvre’in ritim analizi, gündelik yaşamın döngüsel ve doğrusal örüntülerle nasıl biçimlendiğini açığa çıkarır. Organik ritimleri, sosyal ve mekanik programlar dan ayırarak, uyumlu ya da uyumsuz zamansal etkileşimleri açıklamak için öritmi, aritmi ve poliritmi kavramlarını kullanır. Diyalektik ve fenomenolojik bir temele dayanan bu yaklaşım, duyusal ve bedensel bir deneyim gerektirir; analist, ortamın ritmini kavrayabilmek için çevresini adeta “dinler.” Edebiyat incelemelerinde ritim analizi; anlatıbilimsel, yapısalcı ve disiplinlerarası yaklaşımları genişleterek, yaşa mın deneyimsel ve duyusal boyutlarını öne çıkaran anlatı ritimlerini ele alır. Kent çalışmaları ve sosyolojiden alınan yöntemlerle birlikte, eleştirmenler yakın okuma ve dijital haritalama gibi tekniklerle metinlerdeki tempo örüntülerini takip ederler. Ayrıca, organik ve mekanik unsurlar arasındaki tekrarları ve farklılıkları inceleye rek, edebi eserlerin çeşitli tür ve dönemlerde nasıl hız, atmosfer ve tematik yankılar oluşturduğunu ortaya koyarlar. Bu çalışma, Kazuo Ishiguro’nun Klara ile Güneş ro manını ritim analizi perspektifinden inceleyerek romanın başkahramanı olan Yapay Arkadaş Klara’yı bir ritim analisti olarak değerlendirmektedir. Klara’nın Güneş’in döngüsüyle, yaşadığı kent ortamıyla ve insanların günlük rutinleriyle kurduğu ilişki ler incelenerek, doğal ve sosyal ritimlerin birleştiği öritmik anlar ile mekanik düzen lerin organik akışları bozduğu aritmik anlar tespit edilir. Ev içi ve kamusal alanlarda ortaya çıkan bu poliritmik etkileşimler, romanın yapay zamansallıklara dair eleşti risini vurgular. Klara’nın bedensel değişimleri, ev içindeki fedakârlıkları, mekanik “yükselme” denemeleri ve nihayetinde çatı katına hapsedilmesini dikkatle incele mek, Ishiguro’nun döngüsel yenilenme ile dayatılmış doğrusallık arasındaki gerilimi nasıl işlediğini gösterir. Klara’nın yolculuğu, kişiliğin mekânsal ritimlerle aktif ve bilinçli bir etkileşim sonucunda ortaya çıktığını ortaya koymaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• ritimanaliz
• uzam
• Ishiguro
• Klara ile Güneş
• Lefebvre

Kaynakça

1. Addie, J.-P. D. (2024). Rhythmic infrastructure. In J.-P. D. Addie, M. R. Glass, & J. Nelles (Eds.), Inf rastructural times: Temporality and the making of global urban worlds (pp. 25–46). Bristol Univer sity Press. doi.org/10.51952/9781529229745.ch002
2. Bedetti, G. (1992). Henri Meschonnic: Rhythm as pure historicity. New Literary History, 23(2), 431 450.
3. Boes, T. (2008). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the “Individuating Rhythm” of modernity. ELH, 75(4), 767–785.
4. Brighenti, A. M., & Kärrholm, M. (2018). Beyond rhythmanalysis: Towards a territoriology of rhythms and melodies in everyday spatial activities. City, Territory and Architecture, 5(1), 4. doi. org/10.1186/s40410-018-0080-x
5. Çakar, E. (2022). Re-visiting T.S. Eliot’s poetry through Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis. Manisa Celal Bayar Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 20(1), 298–309. doi.org/10.18026/cbayarsos.1055857
6. Edensor, T. (2010). Introduction: Thinking about rhythm and space. In T. Edensor (Ed.), Geographies of rhythm: Nature, place, mobilities and bodies (pp. 1-18). Routledge. doi.org/10.4324/9781315584430
7. Elden, S. (2004). Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the possible. Bloomsbury.
8. Elliott, R. (2017). Species of sonic spaces. Literary Geographies, 3(1), 69-86.

9. Ermarth, E. D. (1992). Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the crisis of representational time. Prin ceton University Press.
10. Frank, S. (2019). Rhythms at Sea: Lefebvre and Maritime Fiction. In S. L. Christianse & M. Gebauer (Eds.), Rhythms Now: Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis revisited (pp. 159-188) Aalborg Universi tetsforlag.
11. Fülöp, E. (2015). Proust’s Imperfect: Rhythms of the “Recherche.” Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui, 12, 197-212.
12. Galam, R. (2010). (En)Countering Martial Law: Rhythmanalysis, Urban Experience in Metro Manila, and Ilokano Literature (1980–1984). Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 58(4), 481–522. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42634652
13. González, C. R. (2016). The rhythms of the city: The performance of time and space in Su hayl Saadi’s Psychoraag. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 51(1), 92–109. doi. org/10.1177/0021989414562083
14. Gümüş, İ., & Yılmaz, E. (2020). Rhythmanalysis as a method of analyzing everyday life spaces: The case of Kıbrıs Şehitleri Street in İzmir. Online Journal of Art and Design, 8(3), 229–250.
15. Güvenç, Ö. Ü. (2020). Rhythmanalysis in Doris Lessing’s “Storms”: London from a critical view of everyday life. Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 8(14), 15–24.
16. Hagen, A., & Mills, K. A. (2024). Rhythm in literary apps. Visual Communication, 23(2), 309–329. doi. org/10.1177/14703572221078038
17. Highmore, B. (2002). Street life in London: Towards a rhythmanalysis of London in the late 19th Cen tury. New Formations, 47, 171–193.
18. Ishiguro, K. (2021). Klara and the Sun. Faber & Faber.
19. Karhio, A. (2014). “All this debris of day-to-day experience”: The Poet as rhythmanalyst in the works of Louis MacNeice, Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 13, 57 79. doi.org/10.35360/njes.304
20. Katz, T. (2010). Pausing, waiting, repeating: Urban temporality in Mrs. Dalloway and The Years. In E. F. Evans & S. E. Cornish (Eds.), Woolf and the City (pp. 2–16). Liverpool University Press.
21. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell.
22. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. Continuum.
23. Lefebvre, H. (2014). Critique of everyday life: The One volume edition (J. Moore, Trans.). Verso.
24. Lefebvre, H. (1996). The right to the city (E. Kofman & E. Lebas, Eds. & Trans.) In Writings on cities (pp. 63–184). Blackwell. (Original work published 1968)
25. Marcus, L. (2021). Rhythm. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. doi.org/10.1093/acrefo re/9780190201098.013.1089
26. Rydstrand, H. (2017). The Rhythms of character in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Miss Brill.’ In J. Murphet & H. Groth (Eds.), Sounding modernism: Rhythm and sonic mediation in modern literature and film (pp. 181–192). Edinburgh University Press.
27. Simpson, P. (2012). Apprehending everyday rhythms: Rhythmanalysis, time-lapse photography, and the space-times of street performance. Cultural Geographies, 19(4), 423-445.
28. Tamboukou, M. (2025). From Palibino to Riviera: Narrative rhythmanalysis of Sofia Kovalevskaya’s literary writings. Textual Practice, 1-26. doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2025.2451914
29. Walker, A. (2024). A literary rhythmanalysis of queer life writing from COVID-19 home isolation. Ethi cal Space: International Journal of Communication Ethics, 21(4), 1-18. doi.org/10.21428/0af3f4c0. b440c1ab
30. Wunderlich, F. M. (2013). Place-temporality and urban place-rhythms in urban analysis and design: An aesthetic akin to mmusic. Journal of Urban Design, 18(3), 383-408. doi.org/10.1080/13574809 .2013.772882