Red is my name
Red is my name (Turkish original edition: Benim Adım Kırmızı ) is a novel by Orhan Pamuk published in 1998 . Ingrid Iren's German translation was published by Hanser in 2001 .
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Portrait of Selim I from the Şemāʾil-nāme by Nakkaş Osman .
The novel is set in Ottoman Istanbul in 1591. The miniature painter Fein Efendi , a talented ornamenter in the painting workshop of the Sultan's court, is found dead at the bottom of a dry well. Fein worked with his three colleagues Velican ("Olive"), Hasan Celibi ("Butterfly") and Musavvir Mustafa ("Storch") on a secret illuminated book for the Sultan ( Murad III ). The book is expected to be completed by the turn of the millennium of the Hijra and show the world that the Sultan's court workshop also mastered Western methods of painting. This project, which is directed by the “uncle”, is extremely controversial because it adopts the “Franconian”, i.e. western, Renaissance methods of perspective and portraiture. It is considered a sign of a lack of artistic mastery and disrespect for one's teachers to deviate from traditional painting and develop a personal style of painting, or to sign one's works. The illuminators also fear the attacks of the preacher Nusret Hodscha, known as Erzurumi, and his followers, since the use of perspective is considered blasphemous and the planned type of representation contradicts the prohibition of images in Islam .
Meanwhile, Kara Efendi, a secretary in the civil service, returns to Istanbul after spending 12 years in various cities in the eastern provinces, where his childhood sweetheart Şeküre lives with her two children and the slave Hayriye with her father, uncle Efendi. Her husband fought in the Ottoman-Safavid War and has been missing for four years. In her father-in-law's house, her brother-in-law Hasan urged her to become his lover. The uncle offers the nephew to collaborate on the text version of the book. Kara accepts the assignment to be close to Şekure. They secretly exchange messages through the peddler Ester and meet each other in the abandoned "House of the Hanged Jew". During such an encounter the uncle is slain and the last page of the book stolen. Şeküre is now defenseless and would have to return to the father-in-law's house with her children. In order to avoid this and to feign her father's consent to a marriage with her cousin, Şeküre hushed up his death for a few days. Kara has her missing husband declared dead, they marry and then announce the death.
The Sultan is angry about the events and has the apartments of the illuminators suspected of being perpetrators searched, but without result. He gives Kara and old master Osman , the first illustrator, three days to find the killer and solve the case, otherwise the artists are threatened with torture.
They begin investigations and are even allowed into the treasury of the sultan's palace to look for clues through comparative style analyzes of the painters' old models, because a horse drawing was discovered on the dead man, which could have come from the perpetrator. However, the old master is not particularly interested in solving the case, but eventually makes correct assumptions. He is still upset that the Sultan had his uncle use the Western method to make the book and is disappointed at the betrayal of his students. When he discovered the needle with which the Persian miniature painter Behzād once took his eyesight, he blinded himself with it and thus refused to accept the new era. Likewise, his role model tried to evade the orders of new rulers and to come closer to the "view of Allah on the world" (p. 436) in an introspection in the "pure darkness".
When Kara returns home the next day after the night in the treasury, he discovers that Şeküre, fearful of a robbery, has left the house and gone to see her father-in-law. He and a couple of men besieged his house, urging Şeküre to follow him. On the way home they witness how fanatical supporters of the preacher demolish a coffee house and kill a storyteller. Among the guests, Kara sees the painter "Butterfly", follows him and searches his house without success. So both go to “Storch”. When they didn't find anything they were looking for, they looked for "Olive" in his hiding place in the dervish convent . A questioning seems to confirm his alleged innocence. Only when Kara and the illustrators bring him down and gouge his eyes out in a scramble does he reveal himself as a double murderer and thief on the last page of the book.
“Olive” justifies himself: with the murder of Fein Efendi, he wanted to prevent him from going to the hate preacher Hodscha and thus endangering the book illustrators. After he had confessed his deed to his uncle, he killed the old man because of "his arrogance" and his secret game with the painters. To free herself, "Olive" Kara attacks with a knife, injures it badly and is able to flee. He gives himself up to the dream of a successful future in India and makes his way to the port. But before he leaves the country, he wants to see the book illuminator for the last time. There the jealous Hasan lies in wait for him, believes him to be one of his rival Kara's companions, and takes revenge for the missed opportunity to win his sister-in-law by decapitating “Olive” with a blow of the sword.
Kara returns home wounded and is cared for by Şeküre. He recovered and worked as an official of the Sultan for 26 years until his death. The uncle's book is not completed because a new sultan ( Mehmed III ) comes to power and the illuminator's workshop loses its importance. The painters leave the city and the era of Istanbul book illustration comes to a temporary end.
Structure and technology
In 59 chapters, two protagonists, various supporting characters and even figures and objects painted by the Meddah tell the story. Again and again the novel speaks from unusual perspectives: from the perspective of Satan, of death, of the color red. Both the perpetrator and the murder victim have their say in the novel.
The author adds a supposedly trivial love and crime story to this structure. He also immerses the reader in the Istanbul of the 16th century: in the style of an artist's novel, he writes in detail about the atmosphere of the workshops, the effect of the miniature pictures and the history of Ottoman book illustration. Pamuk's novel tells of business, family and court life and paints a picture of the social structure and everyday life of that time. Fables and allegories fit in , most of which come from the world of book illustration. The fables are often about Behzat , the great role model of the illuminators.
“Red is my name” is therefore reminiscent of a collage . Pamuk does not use a uniform narrative perspective , but lets his characters speak subjectively and the narrative situations constantly change. The novel uses cross-references to prevent the book's complex scheme from getting lost in the numerous actions and perspectives.
Interpretative approaches
The novel is set in the 16th century, but refers to the modern age and comments on current events in Turkey. With the conflict of the painting school, which develops between the traditional and modern painting style, an image of modern Turkish society is drawn. It is a religious conflict between Eastern tradition and Western modernity. The uncle admired the art of the Renaissance , which flourished in this epoch: in the pictures of the Italian masters the eyes are not “just round holes”, but “reflect the light like a mirror”. The lips are "not a gap on the paper surface of the face, but a different, red-tinged knot of meanings, which, in tightening and relaxing, gives expression to all our joy and sadness, our soul language" (Chap. 26, p. 187). He admires the individual design of the figures because every viewer wants to see himself painted as a unique personality. But the uncle also knows that devout Muslims see in a lifelike and perspective representation a deification of man and thus a violation of religion: since it is only Allah "who calls the non-existent into being, who animates the inanimate" (chap. 28, p. 216). He fears that the imitation of the style could lead to the old books and their picture pages no longer being appreciated. The oriental tradition of illumination could be forgotten. After all, the Ottoman painters in the novel do not succeed in convincingly combining the imported western style and the traditional painting style. They continue to rely on their traditional values and reject Western influences.
Reviews
The novel received positive reviews. Hans-Peter Kunisch ( Die Zeit ) praises the “elegant” and “postmodern narrative attitude” as well as his “openness to politics”. Ernst Osterkamp from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung speaks of a “masterpiece of multi-perspective narration” and praises the translator's good work. Christoph Bartmann ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) says that with this novel Turkey succeeded in "being included in the cosmos of the European novel". The "word painter Orhan Pamuk", he continues, has succeeded in creating a portrait of a country that "has one foot in the Occident and the other in the Orient".