Pamuk: a post-modern master
Somewhat fatigued wading through the labyrinthine prose of Saramago and the socio-political-literary cricket writings of CLR James (I like both these writers immensely but reading them at the same time was a bit too much), I picked up Orhan Pamuk's 'My Name Is Red' , not knowing much about Pamuk's already formidable reputation.
It has been a while I have felt so strongly drawn towards any novel. Like reading Camus's 'The Fall' for the first time, or reading Dostoyevsky or Marquez or Rushdie for the first time.
Pamuk's novel depicts the world of master miniaturists in Ottoman Istanbul: highly skilled, inspired, ambitious,devoted but at the same time torn between tradition and European influences, tormented by religious guilt, suspicious of each other and vulnerable to religious and state persecution. Pamuk has masterfully handled the timeless conflicts in art -- between individualism and tradition, between innovation and orthodoxy, between the sacred and the secular. Each short chapter in the novel is written from the perspective of one of its protagonists and in that chapter the focus is entirely on him/her. On another level, apparently all these chapters are being told by a storyteller who himself is a character of the novel (an irreverent satirist and an eventual victim of religious zealots). The center of the novel is not any particular character but interplay of ideas and an enigmatic, unsure romance. Both these abstractions continuously change their shape but always in some ways reflecting each other. The narrative is given its surface unity by a murder mystery which is eventually solved by the secrets of the sub-conscious signatures an artist leaves behind.
Another dimension of the novel is the perennial internal conflicts in Islamic thought and its uncertain balancing act of philosophical curiosity and religious absolutism, virile sensuality and austere habits.Though the novel is set in 16'th century Istanbul (Pamuk makes the city as starkly vivid as Dostoyevsky made St. Petersburg), those conflicts are still fundamental to the appreciation and proper understanding of Islamic civilization.
Pamuk is not only a master of building layers upon layers of potent symbolism, an accurate painter of moods and places, a playful erudite and a tireless interpreter of history, he can nervelessly bring together sublime meditation on the nature of divinity with very raw description of sexuality. But if one knows about Sufism (even if only has read Rumi) then his frankness shouldn't surprise.
I was fortunate in having some knowledge (thanks to growing up in India in a very historically conscious childhood, thanks to my parents) about miniature painting, the history of Persia, Ottoman empire, Tamer Lane and the Mongol influence in west and southern Asia , the Moguls empire and Sufism before reading this novel. Having at least some rudimentary ideas about Islamic history and Ottoman Empire is a must to enjoy all the aspects of this novel.
Pamuk, one feels, has thrown a few sly punches to that traditional western thinking that Edward Said so aptly called 'Orientalism'. He shows how the Turkish artists and intellectuals in the height of Ottoman glory looked down at the then European art forms and how the ordinary citizens in Istanbul had hardly contained contempt for Venetians (‘counterfeiters’, 'without shame' , 'anarchic'). The table will of course be turned just a few hundred years from then and the invention of an imaginary Orient (as imaginary as the uncultured Venetians of Ottoman artists) will begin. The novel ends with that premonition.
Plan to start Pamuk's 'The Snow' now.
It has been a while I have felt so strongly drawn towards any novel. Like reading Camus's 'The Fall' for the first time, or reading Dostoyevsky or Marquez or Rushdie for the first time.
Pamuk's novel depicts the world of master miniaturists in Ottoman Istanbul: highly skilled, inspired, ambitious,devoted but at the same time torn between tradition and European influences, tormented by religious guilt, suspicious of each other and vulnerable to religious and state persecution. Pamuk has masterfully handled the timeless conflicts in art -- between individualism and tradition, between innovation and orthodoxy, between the sacred and the secular. Each short chapter in the novel is written from the perspective of one of its protagonists and in that chapter the focus is entirely on him/her. On another level, apparently all these chapters are being told by a storyteller who himself is a character of the novel (an irreverent satirist and an eventual victim of religious zealots). The center of the novel is not any particular character but interplay of ideas and an enigmatic, unsure romance. Both these abstractions continuously change their shape but always in some ways reflecting each other. The narrative is given its surface unity by a murder mystery which is eventually solved by the secrets of the sub-conscious signatures an artist leaves behind.
Another dimension of the novel is the perennial internal conflicts in Islamic thought and its uncertain balancing act of philosophical curiosity and religious absolutism, virile sensuality and austere habits.Though the novel is set in 16'th century Istanbul (Pamuk makes the city as starkly vivid as Dostoyevsky made St. Petersburg), those conflicts are still fundamental to the appreciation and proper understanding of Islamic civilization.
Pamuk is not only a master of building layers upon layers of potent symbolism, an accurate painter of moods and places, a playful erudite and a tireless interpreter of history, he can nervelessly bring together sublime meditation on the nature of divinity with very raw description of sexuality. But if one knows about Sufism (even if only has read Rumi) then his frankness shouldn't surprise.
I was fortunate in having some knowledge (thanks to growing up in India in a very historically conscious childhood, thanks to my parents) about miniature painting, the history of Persia, Ottoman empire, Tamer Lane and the Mongol influence in west and southern Asia , the Moguls empire and Sufism before reading this novel. Having at least some rudimentary ideas about Islamic history and Ottoman Empire is a must to enjoy all the aspects of this novel.
Pamuk, one feels, has thrown a few sly punches to that traditional western thinking that Edward Said so aptly called 'Orientalism'. He shows how the Turkish artists and intellectuals in the height of Ottoman glory looked down at the then European art forms and how the ordinary citizens in Istanbul had hardly contained contempt for Venetians (‘counterfeiters’, 'without shame' , 'anarchic'). The table will of course be turned just a few hundred years from then and the invention of an imaginary Orient (as imaginary as the uncultured Venetians of Ottoman artists) will begin. The novel ends with that premonition.
Plan to start Pamuk's 'The Snow' now.
posted by Atanu Neogi at 11:48 PM
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