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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
I happened today on Borges' essay on "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" (thanks for the link, Dave!) -- Douglas Crockford has put a parallel translation of it online on his web site, it's not clear whose translation he's using. Great fun to read, and it includes a list of the types of animals which I'm pretty sure is included as a fragment in Book of Imaginary Beings:
These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge*. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into:
- belonging to the Emperor
- embalmed
- trained
- piglets
- sirens
- fabulous
- stray dogs
- included in this classification
- trembling like crazy
- innumerables
- drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
- et cetera
- just broke the vase
- from a distance look like flies
Wilkins made an early attempt to create a universal language -- some of his work An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language is online in facsimile here; Borges also references some other early attempts, Johann Martin Schleyer's Volapük, Giuseppe Peano's Interlingua, and Bonifacio Sotos Ochando's Lengua universal. (Pedro Mata's Curso de lengua universal, referenced by Borges, is online in its entirety at Google Books.)
 *Wikipædia notes that the truth of this attribution is open to question. Laszlo Cseresnyesi of Shikoku Gakuin University wrote a post on LINGUIST-l in 1996 discussing the Celestial Emporium. "The responses I have received leave no doubt
that I'd better give up on the search for the
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Creatures
(and stop pestering my colleagues at the Chinese
Department). However, I believe that one cannot
prove the non-existence of a book conclusively,
and I have had no chance to follow all the
conceivable leads in a major library."
posted evening of October 27th, 2009: 1 response
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Monday, October 26th, 2009
I was exuberant at the thought of beginning anew, and greatly soothed by the consolations of life in a yalı, so much so that during the first few days I convinced myself that a rapid recovery was in prospect. No matter what amusements we'd partaken in on the previous evening, no matter how late we'd come back, and no matter how much I'd had to drink, in the morning, as soon as the light began to stream through the gaps in the shutters, casting its strange reflections of Bosphorus waves onto the ceiling, I would throw open the shutters, each time amazed at the beauty that rushed in, that almost exploded, through the window.
It suddenly struck me this evening that Pointe-Courte has a lot in common with this portion of Museum of Innocence. I'm wondering now how much a comparison of Noiret's character with Kemal would work, how much provincial France in the 50's "is like" Turkey, the provinces of Europe, in the 70's. I'll be watching Pointe-Courte again on Thursday (Mark and Woody are coming over!), will keep that thought in mind.
posted evening of October 26th, 2009: Respond
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Sometimes I felt that my happiness issued not from the possibility that Füsun was near, but from something less tangible. I felt as if I could see the very essence of life in these poor neighborhoods, with their empty lots, their muddy cobblestone streets, their cars, rubbish bins, and sidewalks, and the children playing with a half-inflated football under the streetlamps. My father's expanding business, his factories, his growing fortune, and the attendant obligation to live the "elegant European" life that befit this wealth -- it all now seemed to have deprived me of simple essences. As I walked these streets, it was as if I was seeking out my own center.
I am growing more confident about this reading: dissolute Kemal is the cosmopolitan, westernized Turk; his longing for Füsun is a longing for his Ottoman roots, what he imagines to be his authentic self. This is very interesting coming from Pamuk, who self-identifies as European, who has said repeatedly that Europe is Turkey's future. The longing for Füsun is destroying Kemal, that's clear enough. But she is herself a character, with her own needs and desires; how does her identification as authentic Turkishness play into her character? And does that make Sibel (also a full character in her own right) a personification of Kemal's cosmopolitan identity? Is Kemal being presented as dissolute because he cannot fully embrace that identity?
(Like with Snow a couple of years ago, I want to draw an easy parallel to American cultural identities. But again it seems like that is too easy and risks missing the point.)
posted evening of October 26th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Arachne left the ends of her warp as a delicate fringe, while her border showed ivy interwoven with flowers.
Hers was a work whose merit neither Athena nor Envy could deny. The masterwork goaded the goddess into blind fury: she shredded the fabric and its catalogue of the gods' sins. Then, snatching a branch from an olive growing on Mt. Cytorus, she lashed Arachne's face thrice and a fourth time.
The miserable girl couldn't bear the shame; she went and hanged herself. With a hint of pity Pallas said to the dangling corpse, "Live -- but for your sins, continue to hang. Your whole line will pay the same punishment."
Having spoken, Pallas sprinkled Arachne with magic herbs. At the touch of this dire elixir, Arachne's hair fell off and with it her nose and ears. Her head shrank, and then her whole body became small. Instead of legs, her wizened fingers projected from her sides, and the rest of her became all belly -- from which nevertheless she spins thread and as a spider continues the work of her loom to this day.
-- Metamorphoses, Ovid, Book VI
translated by David Drake
Sylvia's class is doing a unit on Greek mythology; she has as reading homework a pagelong summary of the story of Arachne -- she was telling me about it this morning and we agreed that it leaves out way too much detail... Before lunch, we looked up Ovid's telling of the story, which I have not read in many years; I was amazed all over again by it, and Sylvia was interested and receptive. What an extraordinary story-teller! I am thinking the summary-for-schoolkids probably has to leave out all the gods posing as animals to impregnate mortal women stuff,* which is kind of the heart of this story, and Arachne committing suicide by hanging herself is probably similarly verboten... The story's kind of weak when you take all that out.
 * (It just said something to the effect of, "Arachne's weaving showed the gods behaving poorly and made fun of them," and that the gods being angry at this is why she was transformed into a spider.)
posted morning of October 25th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, October 24th, 2009
During the break between songs, we came alongside Celâl Salik the columnist again. "I've worked out something love has in common with a good newspaper column, Kemal Bey," he said. "What is it?" I asked. "Love, like a newspaper column, has to make us happy now. We judge the beauty and the power of each by how deep an impression it makes on the soul." "Master, please write that up in your column one day," I said, but he was listening not to me but to his raven-haired dance partner.
I have started to notice a heavy focus on defining and referencing definitions of love and happiness in Museum of Innocence. On almost every page I see both words, see Kemal's insistence on declaring whether and how he was happy in each moment of his narrative; and part of his means of introducing each character is to have the character talk about what love is, and how it can be attained. I wonder how much this is Pamuk's project as well, I remember a lot of this type of discussion in Snow.
posted evening of October 24th, 2009: Respond
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"Please bring it tomorrow. Don't forget," Füsun said, her eyes widening. "It is very dear to me." Chapter 17, "My Whole Life Depends on You Now," is the end of the first major cycle in Museum of Innocence -- it ends with the same words as Chapter 1, completing the flashback/exposition that began in Chapter 2.The pace of the book has been very even through this first piece of the narrative, not dragging nor rushing. The sense of Kemal leading me through his exhibit is palpable... There is a lot of room left for the story to escape from his control, which I am hoping for -- being led this way could start to feel stifling if I am not given more freedom to roam the museum looking at what I want to look at. (It does not feel stifling at this point, alls I'm saying is I could see that developing at some point...)
posted afternoon of October 24th, 2009: Respond
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 I just found out about Winston Rowntree's comic strip Subnormality -- it is well-drawn, well-written and hilarious. Looking through the archives there is a highly rewarding way to spend some time.
posted morning of October 24th, 2009: Respond
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First explicit mention of Leyla and Mecnun comes near the beginning of Chapter 24, "The Engagement Party." Kemal is talking with his sister-in-law, Berrin, about the prospects for romance between Sibel's friend Nurcihan (who lives in Paris and has had romantic liaisons there) and Kemal's college friend Mehmet (who comes from a conservative family but does not want a marriage arranged by his parents). Berrin does not think Mehmet has any chance with modern (i.e. sexually liberated) women, because "they know if they go gallivanting around town with him too much, a man like this will secretly begin to think of them as whores."
"But the reason that Mehmet couldn't fall in love with them was that they wouldn't let him get close enough, because they were conservative and frightened.""That's not the way it works," said Berrin. "You don't have to sleep with someone to be in love. The sex is not what matters. Love is Leyla and Mecnun." (Also in this chapter is the first mention of Kemal's parents' friends the Pamuks...) I am getting a slightly anthropological-ish feeling from the first part of this novel, from Pamuk's narrator explaining carefully the customs and mores of 1970's Istanbul. (I happened on a really good example of this last night but I'm not finding it now...) On the one hand this is not something I would necessarily expect from a memoir-writer -- but it seems somehow totally in character for Kemal, the obsessive documentarian of his obsession with Füsun, to leave nothing unsaid -- the obsession with Füsun becomes an expression of his obsession with his society and his place in it. Possibly this could be expressed by saying, Kemal (a bit like Ka in Snow, though the parallel is far from exact) is a neurotic cosmopolitan searching for Authenticity.
posted morning of October 24th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla
And I kiss this wall and that wall
It's not Love of the houses that has taken my heart
But of the One who dwells in those houses-- Qays ibn al-Mulawwah
Thanks to Ayse Papatya Bucak of Reading for Writers, for pointing out the connection between Museum of Innocence and the Ottoman story of Layla and Mejnun -- Ms. Bucak calls Pamuk's book a rewriting of the old story, which tells how Mejnun goes obsessively mad after being refused by his love-object.Interesting! I had never heard of that story but some quick experimentation with Google will demonstrate that its influence is very broad in the Islamic world. The New York Turkmen Institute has put online Sofi Huri's translation of Fuzûlî's version of the story, which appears to be the primary Ottoman version -- it was made into an opera by Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov (produced in NYC just this past Spring by Yo-yo Ma) -- Here are Erkan Oğur and İsmail H. Demircioğlu performing "Leyli Mecnun" from that opera:
posted evening of October 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
I wonder when the narrative present of The Museum of Innocence is. The novel is rooted very firmly in time -- in the first few pages we see that the high point of the narrator's life was on May 26th, 1975 (a few weeks past my fifth birthday), and that his involvement with his distant relation Füsun had started a month previous to that, on April 27th (when I was still four years old) -- when is he speaking though? In chapter 4 he says, "As I sit down so many years later and devote myself heart and soul to the telling of my story..." -- I hope (and expect) his road to the present moment will be as much a part of the story as are the events he is narrating. Kemal was 30 at the time of the happiest moment of his life, so was born in 1945, the same age as my uncle. So he could well be narrating in my present moment, as a 65-year-old. Pamuk is 57 years old now, perhaps his narrator is his age, in which case he would be speaking in 2002. Or maybe something else. The excerpt that appeared in the New Yorker this summer under the title "Distant Relations" was adapted from chapters 2 through 6 -- I thought at the time that it would work much better in the context of a longer novel than as a short story, and I was right -- instead of getting to the end and thinking "well, then what?" you just turn the page and keep reading...
 Update: The narrative present has to be after 2007; when Sibel leaves him in 1976, Kemal says "I would not see her again for 31 years." He opened the museum in the mid-90's -- there is a reference to him doing this "twenty years later."
posted evening of October 20th, 2009: Respond
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