Istanbul - memory of a city
Istanbul - Memory of a City (Original title: İstanbul - Hatıralar ve Şehir ) is an autobiographical work by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk , which was first published in Turkey in 2003 under the original title " İstanbul - Hatıralar ve Şehir" . The German translation by Gerhard Meier was first published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 2006 .
In his memoirs, he writes about his life in Istanbul and focuses in particular on the far-reaching cultural change that has rocked Turkey, as well as the seemingly never-ending struggle between modernity and the past. He describes the deep melancholy (Turkish: hüzün ) of its residents, which everyday culture in Istanbul cannot be imagined without. Orhan Pamuk understands hüzün as "the feeling with which Istanbul and its inhabitants have been infected in the most intense way in the last century". In addition, Pamuk mourns the lost common family tradition in his novel.
The book is equipped with numerous photographs of “Istanbul from the early 1950s to today”, most of which are by Ara Güler .
background
Istanbul is the most populous city in Turkey and its center for culture, trade, finance and media. The urban area extends on the north bank of the Marmara Sea on both sides of the Bosphorus , the strait between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea . Due to this location in both European Thrace and Asian Anatolia , Istanbul is the only metropolis in the world that is located on two continents. The urban settlement area is home to around 14.3 million inhabitants, making it fourth among the most populous cities in the world . With two central terminal stations , numerous long-distance bus stations, two large airports and a large number of shipping traffic, Istanbul is the country's largest transport hub. Its transit location between two continents and two seas makes it an important stop in international logistics .
The metropolis can look back on 2,600 years of history since the founding of its original districts , during which it served as the capital of three great world empires. The architecture is characterized by ancient , medieval , modern and, most recently, modern styles. It combines elements of the Greeks, Romans , Byzantines , Ottomans and Turks to form a cityscape. Because of this uniqueness that has been historic center of the UNESCO for World Heritage declared. For a long time, Istanbul was an important center of Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam . It is the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and has numerous mosques , cemevi , churches and synagogues . In 2010 Istanbul was European Capital of Culture .
content
The work is divided into 37 chapters according to thematic aspects, which are roughly based on Pamuk's biography. A little more than half of the chapters primarily deal with autobiographical topics, such as memories of childhood " I " (Chapter 3), the family situation "My parents and their absence" (Chapter 8) or the first experiences in school in Chapter 13 Chapter 12 is dedicated to his grandmother, who is also the head of the family clan. Chapter 20 describes the family's dealings with religion. Chapter 21, " The Rich ", describes, with a certain ironic distance, the western-oriented lifestyle of the Turkish upper class of the 1960s.
In addition to the events of his childhood, the author addresses the atmosphere and attitude towards life in Istanbul in the 1950s and 1960s, for example in Chapter 5 " Black and White " or in Chapter 6 "Exploring the Bosphorus ". Pamuk combines these memories with descriptions and analyzes of historical photos, images and texts, e.g. Some of them also have a biographical reference, since he had leafed through them in the library of his parents' house as a child. He describes Anton Ignaz Melling's historical city and Bosporus views in detail in Chapter 7. Chapter 11 is the " four lonely, melancholy writers" Yahya Kemal ( 1884-1958 ), Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar ( 1901-1962 ), Reşad Ekrem Koçu ( 1905-1975 ), and Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar (1887 - 1963), whose works are also included elsewhere in the presentation. So Pamuk links his childhood memories of the Bosporus with descriptions of the "Bosporus civilization" by A.Ş.Hisar and other historical background information. The explorations of shabby districts of Istanbul by AHTanpinar and Y.Kemal shortly after the end of the First World War are analyzed in Chapter 26.
In his memoirs, Pamuk describes the melancholy and gloomy mood that he not only finds in himself, but everywhere in Istanbul. He describes this basic feeling with the Turkish term "Hüzün", which means melancholy or sadness. Chapter 10 is devoted to explaining this word in its cultural and etymological dimension as well as the causes for this basic mood, which "emanates from all these nooks and crannies and people and flows over the city" .
The travels of the French writers Gèrard de Nerval , Théophile Gautier and Gustave Flaubert , who visited Istanbul one after the other in the mid-19th century on their way back from their trips to the Orient, are each described in separate chapters. Pamuk mentions Flaubert's visit to the brothel with a bit of mockery and shows that many travelers to the Orient in the 19th century were not free from clichés. The travel report from Gautier is positively highlighted, which "apart from some hackneyed topics such as the sultan, women and the cemeteries - has become a delightful big city report ." The romantic Gautier also explored the impoverished and dilapidated suburbs of Istanbul and she understood "sometimes as melancholy beautiful" . This description later inspired Y.Kemal and AHTanpinar, who tried to create a national identity in the melancholy beauty there.
In the last chapters of the work again autobiographical aspects predominate. Pamuk describes how he dealt intensively with painting early on. He describes the child's happiness and the later struggles with it in several chapters. At the age of about 15 he began to obsessively paint cityscapes (Chapter 28), later he was occupied with capturing the happiness of the family in painting (Chapter 29). The last chapters are devoted to his school days at Robert Gymnasium, his first love and the subsequent lovesickness. In the last chapter "A conversation with my mother: patience, caution, art" he describes how he made the decision to give up studying and painting and become a writer.
criticism
Historian Norman Davies accused Pamuk of claiming that his view of Istanbul was "completely turcocentric" and "characterized by a remarkable historical myopia". Pamuk is "a writer who only looks at the recent past and ignores everything else." "The past, it seems, goes back no further than the world of his parents and grandparents."
literature
- Orhan Pamuk: İstanbul - Hatıralar ve Şehir. 22nd edition. İletişim Yayınları, Istanbul 2012, ISBN 978-975-05-0458-7 .
- Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul - Memory of a City. From the Turkish by Gerhard Meier. 15th edition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-446-20826-1 .
Web links
- “Hüzün”, the Istanbul feeling - essay by Orhan Pamuk
- Declaration of love to a city - Review by Jörg Plath
Individual evidence
- ↑ Orhan Pamuk: "Hüzün", the Istanbul feeling. Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 19, 2010, accessed on June 27, 2013 .
- ↑ Patrick Batarilo: Hüzün: The Turkish Melancholy. SWR2, January 7, 2010, archived from the original on June 28, 2013 ; Retrieved June 27, 2013 .
- ↑ Hubert Spiegel: The bittersweet honey of discouragement. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 18, 2006, accessed on June 27, 2013 .
- ↑ Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul - Memory of a City. 2006, p. 419.
- ↑ Pamuk, Orhan: Istanbul. Memories of a city. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, p. 128
- ↑ ibid. P. 118
- ↑ ibid. P. 259
- ↑ ibid. P. 262
- ↑ cf. ibid. p. 289f
- ^ N. Davies, Disappeared Reiche, Darmstadt 2013, pp. 348f.