Question the-fo
The following text is from Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s 1961 novel The Time Regulation Institute (translated from the Turkish in 2014 by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe). The narrator was once involved with the Time Regulation Institute, a fictional bureaucracy that regulates the time of Turkey’s clocks.
we may be the most humble and absurd man in the world and, as my wife says, the most slovenly creature you may ever meet—that is, before the founding of our institute—but we did come to know a truly great man who possessed a natural genius for invention. we spent years at his side. we watched the way he worked. we witnessed how an idea would suddenly ch fire in his mind and take shape, like a tree sprouting shoots and branches, before coming into being.
©2014 by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
A person was fortunate enough to have found love despite his obvious shortcomings.
An exceptionally talented person professes humility to avoid intimidating others.
A person appreciates the extensive time he passed in the company of someone he deeply admired.
A truly brilliant person lets ideas mature in his mind before expressing them aloud.