Istanbul: Memories and the City

Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, is perhaps a great book; time will tell. It is part history, part personal memoir, part a rich collection of images of and from the city, part a reflection on the nature of westernization on Turkish culture, part appreciation of a city and the life within it, and part a contemplation of the way people have written about Istanbul.

For this blog, I want to point out that the book has an interesting perspective on knowledge.

Pamuk seeks to convey to those who don't speak Turkish the Istanbul concept of hüzün which he likens to "melancholy" but as a communal feeling rather than as an individual feeling. He recognizes that the feeling of melancholy has changed from the romantic melancholy of the past to a sadder feeling. Hüzün is a mood or emotion, which he considers to characterize Istanbul. He describes hüzün as softening feelings as smoke softens a landscape. He considers hüzün as the result of living in Istanbul amidst the decay of its richer past, the contemplation of the loss of empire, and the challenges of Westernization of an Eastern people. Pamuk devotes much of this book to the effort to convey an understanding of hüzün.

How can you know how another person feels? Especially, how can you know explain in one language what a word describing an emotion in another language actually means. The meaning of a word describing an emotion, in the sense of an actual understanding of that emotion, is ultimately tacit knowledge gained by experience of the emotion and observation of people experiencing the emotion. I don't know whether Pamuk has succeeded in conveying accurately the meaning of the word "hüzün", but he has used a rich array of technique and skill to do so, and has certainly conveyed an understanding of some emotion. The point is, he did not simply tell the reader what the word meant as a dictionary would; rather he (and his translator, Maureen Freely) illuminated the meaning by language, example, reference, and other techniques. Tacit knowledge can perhaps be communicated, if not be directions, then by poetry and prose!

Pamuk contrasts the written accounts of Istanbul of Western European authors and Turkish authors and of Western and Turkish artists in the 19th and 20th centuries, citing the differences in culture, purposes, and capabilities of the authors and artists. Over the period he describes, the city changed greatly. He notes, almost as an aside, that the city would have appeared quite different to its inhabitants -- occupied with their daily occupations, routines and concerns -- than to the writers and artists. He provides a counterpoint of his own observations of the city, noting how strongly those observations were affected by what he had read and the images by others that he had studied.

Pamuk also writes of his memories of growing up and living in Istanbul, but notes that others who knew him told different stories of his life, and that his memories may in many cases be based on tales he was told but now remembers as reality. He writes of another (imaginary) Orhan, who he has been in his consciousness since childhood, who lives a parallel but different life in Istanbul. Again, almost as an aside, he suggests that in the second life provided by this biography, his account may be colored both by the nature of memory and by his purposes as a writer.

I assume that there was a "real" Istanbul and a "real" Orhan who grew up and lived there in the second half of the 20th century, but that our knowledge of Istanbul and Orhan Pamuk will always be hazy, seen through the perceptions of others and of faulty memory.

By juxtaposing the memoir with the history of the city, Pamuk helps the reader, who must have personal experience with the nature of his/her own memory and self-accounts, to better and more viscerally understand the nature of historical writing.

Ultimately, Pamuk helps the attentive reader to obtain tacit knowledge about the very nature of knowledge, not by overt description, but utilizing the tools of poetry and prose, of biographic and geographic narrative, and especially by the use of the tools of a great writer and novelist.

Were Istanbul not a great read, it would be worth reading for this tour de force alone.