Istanbul, Memories and The City
by Orhan Pamuk
Today I enjoyed reading another book by Orhan Pamuk. Some books after closing the last page of them the narrative or its characters in our minds living a few days, some of them stay with our minds for a long time, but some books stay in our minds forever. "Istanbul, Memories and the City" is one of those books for me that is living in my mind forever. Whenever someone talks about the atmosphere of a city or the attractions and spirit of a city, I think of Istanbul. During reading the book, I searched all the neighborhoods of Istanbul on Google Maps and I read the Summary of the lives of the characters on Wikipedia. I hope to see Istanbul up close as soon as possible.
Sometimes when I get tired of the problems of my life, the pain of the people, and the endless wars of this world, I try to believe Orhan's sentence. "life can't be all that bad. I'd think from time to time. whatever happens, I can always take a walk along the Bosphorus." Page 63
"The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy"
Chapter 10 of "Istanbul, Memories and the City" is "Hüzün" (sadness) it was the most important part of this book for me. I would like to read it again more carefully and attentively. Orhan introduces four poets, writers, and journalists who are symbols of Istunbule's melancholy "Hüzün". Artists who often lived alone and died alone
Some notes from this book
" Melling's Istanbul is not only a place graced by hills, mosques, and landmarks we can recognize, it is a place of sublime beauty." Page 75
" It is time to come to a better understanding of this feeling that the city of Istanbul carries as its fate." page 89
" With time, we see the emergence of two very different Hüzüns, each evoking a distinct philosophical tradition." page 90
" The Hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry, it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating." page 91
" Now we begin to understand Hüzün not as The melancholy of a solitary person but the black mood shared by millions of people together. when I am trying to explain is the Hüzün of an entire city: Of Istanbul." page 92
Pamuk says " if we are to pinpoint the difference it is not enough to say that Istanbul is much richer than Delhi or San Paulo. ( if you are going to the pool neighborhoods, the cities and the forms poverty take are in fact all too similar.) the difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible" .... page 101
" By neglecting the past and severing their connection with it, the Hüzün they feel in their mean and hollow effects is all the greater. Hüzün rises out of the pain they feel for everything that has been lost, but it is also what compels them to invent new defeats and new ways to express their impoverishment." page 103
" Hüzün of Istanbul is something the entire city feels together and affirms as one. just like it the heroes of Tanpinar's peace, the greatest novel ever written about Istanbul... It is Hüzün which ordains that no love will end peacefully. Just as in the old black and white films- even in the most affecting and authentic love story." page 105
" As for the heroes of Tanpinar's peace, there are only two ways to face the impasses: Either they go for a walk along the Bosphorus or they head off into the back streets of the city to gaze at its ruins." page 107.
In my opinion, among the artists who have written about Istanbul, Pamuk has attentioned to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's writings more than others. "Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is a write of A Mind at Peace"
"to understand the "civilizing mission" that these signs embodied and that turned the city into a jungle of announcements, threats, and reproaches, we must take a look at the city's newspaper columnists and the "City correspondents " who were their forefathers." page 131
" In The Return of the Flaneur" Walter Benjamin begins his review of Franz Hessel's Berlin Walks by noting, " if we were to divide all that existing description of cities into two groups according to the birthplace of the authors, we would certainly find that those written by natives of the cities concerned are greatly in the minority." according to Benjamin, the enthusiasm for seeing a city from the outside is the exotic of the picturesque. for natives of a city, the connection is always mediated by memories." page 240
" let's recall that Walter Benjamin said people from outside a city are most interested in its exotic and picturesque features." Page 257
" When I was 15 and doing my own paintings, it was especially when painting the back streets that I became troubled about where our melancholy was taking us." page 264
" But in Istanbul, where, especially in the nineteenth century, visitors were rarely admitted to any room but the parlor, foreigners are seldom able to make sense of what they see." page 277
" He (Flaubert) was the first to note that the gravestones one saw all over the city were, like the memories of the dead themselves, slowly sinking into the earth as they aged, soon to vanish without a trace." page 292
" Money could never be the object, but if happiness depended on it, it could be a means to that end" Page 314
" Is this the secret of Istanbul - that beneath its grand history, its living poverty, its outward-looking monuments, and its sublime landscape, its poor hide the city's soul inside a fragile web? but here we have come full circle, for anything we say about the city's essence says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no center other than ourselves." page 349
" Why should we expect a city to cure us of our spiritual pains? perhaps because we cannot help loving our city like a family. But we still have to decide which part of the city we love and invent the reasons why." page 351
