Place & Pamuk

I've recently been on a bit of a Pamuk binge.

Here I am referring to recent Nobel Prize-winning Turkish journalist Orhan Pamuk who is known for such novels as Snow and My Name is Red, as well as the memoir Istanbul. My father snatched up these three books before he embarked upon travels to Turkey and Greece last spring and ever since they have been sitting upon the shelves of the study/my room taunting me because I had not had a chance to sit and read them yet. Thus the Holiday break Pamuk binge.

Though Pamuk's writing brings up a plethora of issues and problems, not least of which is the political and social melancholy of Turkey, my mind grabbed hold of one particular theme that is woven throughout his writings: the significance of place.

This theme began to intrigue me after reading some of Wendell Berry's essays in which he lifts up the significant connection between land and people, of home, and of working to strengthen the local communities that have shaped us. Echoing Gandhi, Berry (and Pamuk perhaps) seems to make "place" the focus of problem-solving, vocation, life sustenance and the answer to all meaning-of-life questions. Okay, they don't suggest that all of life's questions can be understood in the context of place. But for these men, the "places" in their lives have been the lenses through which they have understood the world, determined their vocations, undertaken their work, and discerned the meaning of their lives. Place is no small thing.

For Pamuk, the place is Istanbul.

"Istanbul's fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am." -Istanbul (pg 6)

Such is this connection that his memoirs cannot be complete without describing both his life and the city he has lived his entire life in.

"The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been in its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own."
(pg 6)

This connection between place and life…of land and people…triggers so many complexities. Questions of community and society. Problems of country and allegiance…

"At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us - they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts - but did we perhaps deserve better? -Istanbul (pg 7)

…history, civilization, art, music…

"If we see our city in black and white, it's partly because we know it from the engravings left to us by Western artists: the glorious colours of its past were never painted by local hands. There is no Ottoman painting that can easily accommodate our visual tastes. Nor is there a single piece of writing or work in today's world that can teach us how to take pleasure in Ottoman art of the classic Persian art that influenced it...when magazines or schoolbooks need an image of old Istanbul, they use the black-and-white engravings produced by Western travelers and artists." -Istanbul (pg 39-40)

It is fascinating to me how Pamuk translates this need and desire for place into also an explanation for the misunderstanding between peoples.

"Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them?"
- Snow (pg. 259)

It’s as if place and life and culture are all intertwined so tightly, that if we don’t understand how people live in another city, another culture, in a sense another world, we are also incapable of understanding their sufferings, their joys, their views.

My first reaction to this is one of thoughtful fascination. Firstly, because this is an explanation of the clash between civilizations that is rooted in culture, in empires and cities and communities. An explanation that fiercely puts the diversity of peoples and life at the focus, and calls for the need of understanding between peoples. Though, not without providing a base of pessimism in regards to whether this can be accomplished, and perhaps an idealistic sense of hope…

It is also fascinating because I’m not sure what this says about today…when globalization is mobilizing people to new places, new homes, and new identities...when the borders that we have often seem so superficial and archaic...when the economic, political, and societal forces at play make it impossible to see a world where people would be rooted to one place and in fact dissuade this option in favor of choice, modernization, and the market.

Yet, this is perhaps most intriguing in the sense that for people interested in the world, in other cultures, in striving for justice, and making change...this concept of place is simultaneously a recipe for a success, a diagnosis for failure, and a deep philosophical quandary.

A recipe for success in that by making place your focus, by seeking to understand those around you, and make your own unique contribution to society through your community, one should be able to lift up your neighbors and take a stab at truly resolving some of the problems that torment society.

[My query to this recipe: if we all looked inward to our own communities, would not the communities that lack such leaders, resources, and power still be left out in the cold?]

A diagnosis for failure because of the limits of history and the limitless today. For example, Pamuk demonstrates that Turkey is haunted by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and demoralized by the Westernization of their culture. There can be no changing the past. Nor is there soon to be a halt to the economic and societal globalization that are homogenizing cities and erasing cultural identity worldwide. Yet within history and modernity is widespread misunderstanding and clashes between the truths and traditions of world cultures. Reconciliation of ideas seems impossible. Yet conflict is deemed terrible.

"Now one could understand us from so far away." -Snow (pg. 426)

A deep philosophical quandary because the above contradicting views still beg questions: where are we without place, without home, without roots? what will become of new generations without a collective consciousness rooted by place? is it good/bad or simply different for the world to have mass migration and people who make traveling, moving, and exchanging identities their place in the world? what is the true importance of place and are we losing it?

I am certainly not sure. And unfortunately neither is Orhan Pamuk.

"I try to focus on these issues not from the point of view of a statesman but from the point of view of a person who tries to understand the pain and suffering of others. I don't think there is any set formula to solve these problems [in the context of problems of religious tolerance in Turkey]. Anyone who believes there is a simple solution to these problems is a fool -- and probably will soon end up being part of the problem. I think literature can approach these problems because you can go into more shady areas, areas where no one is right and no one has the right to say what is right. That's what makes writing novels interesting. It's what makes writing a political novel today interesting."
-Orhan Pamuk, in an interview with New York Times' Alexander Star