Hatice Utkan – published in City Brief – Hürriyet Daily News
This year Dublin has been named a UNESCO City of Literature, one of only four such cities worldwide. Dublin joins Iowa City, Melbourne, and Edinburgh on the UNESCO list.
Even though this year Dublin becomes the city of literature, it would be right to say that Istanbul also deserves this title. The city has a world-famous literary history, having produced prominent literary figures, including Nobel laureates and nominees such as Orhan Pamuk and Yaşar Kemal.
Not only its own writers praised the city, but also writers from all over the world have written about Istanbul and its beauties. World renown writers such as Evliya Çelebi, Arnold von Harff, Hans Dernschwam, Pierre Gilles, Augier Ghislain de Busbecq, Nicolas de Nicolay, Salomon Schweigger, George Sandys, Jean Thevenot, Guilliaume Joseph Grelot, Chateaubriand, Charles Pertusier, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gerard de Nerval, Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Loti, Charles Diehl, Claude Farrere, Edmundo De Amicis, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Julia Pardoe, Durand de Fontmagne, Dorina L.Neave, Helmuth von Moltke, Hans Christian Andersen, Knut Hamsun, Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Gomez Carillo, Vincente Blasco Ibanez, Juan Goytisolo, Le Corbusier have all been inspired by this city.
Istanbul came to the scene in the 19th century as an exotic city, established by aristocrats, writers and artists and many travelers who came to town in search of illusion, exotic environments and dreams. Some of these writers were also travelers in the 19th century stayed and established themselves in the city because they loved it so much.
The venues of old Istanbul, like Çırağan Palace and the Cité de Péra still reflect the luxurious and extravagant nature of Istanbul. Many western travelers described the city as the most exotic city of all time and used it as a setting for their novels.
Orhan Pamuk, on the other hand, describes Istanbul in his own way. According to Pamuk, Istanbul has a peculiar melancholy feeling called hüzün, a Turkish word whose Arabic root denotes a feeling of deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life, “a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating.”
The word is widely used in Turkish and it defines a mood between desperation and sadness, though a person also may like it.
According to Sufi philosophy, hüzün is a spiritual anguish one feels at not being close enough to God. For Saint John of the Cross, this anguish causes the sufferer to plummet so far down that his soul will, as a result, soar to its divine desire. Hüzün is therefore a sought-after state, and it is the absence, not the presence, of hüzün that causes the sufferer distress. “It is the failure to experience hüzün,” Pamuk says, “that leads him to feel it.”
According to Pamuk, moreover, hüzün is a communal emotion, not the melancholy of an individual but the black mood shared by millions. Pamuk writes in his book Snow, “What I am trying to explain is the hüzün of an entire city: of Istanbul.”
By appealing to hüzün, Pamuk presents a breathtaking portrait of Istanbul.
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| Orhan Pamuk : “Hüzün” describes Istanbul |
Influence on French writers
It is a fact that French writers had an exclusive interest in the East, and most of them have books called Voyage En Orient (Voyages to East).
While some of those writers just passed through Istanbul during their travels some chose to stay and spend their lives in Istanbul.
Among the latter was a man called Pierre Loti, a French novelist and naval officer, who may have been one the most inspired writers to have stayed in Istanbul. Loti was inspired by Istanbul – indeed, the city did not leave him till the day he died.
Even though Loti did not die in Istanbul, many venues bearing his trace appeared after his death, such as the Pierre Loti Café, a popular place in Eyüp dedicated to the time Loti spent in Turkey.
In 1876 fellow naval officers persuaded him to turn passages in his diary dealing with some curious experiences at Istanbul into a novel. The result was Aziyadé (1879), a novel which, like so many of Loti’s, is part romance and part autobiography, like the work of his admirer, Marcel Proust, after him.
Visiting Istanbul, Loti fell in love with the view of Eyüp and the Golden Horn and spent his time in the city.
But he was not satisfied with this exterior charm. He desired to blend with it a moral sensibility of the most extreme refinement, at once sensual and ethereal. Many of his best books are long sobs of remorseful memory, so personal, so intimate.
He described the beauty and melody and fragrance of the city in his books, and also supported the Turkish War of Independence. In response to Loti’s support for Independence, the Council of Ministers sent him a message of gratitude. In spite of his orientalist views, Loti received a positive critical reception from Turkish intellectuals.
Another prominent French writer is Gerard de Nerval. In his book “Voyage en Orient,” Nerval described the city in journalistic style, while also focusing on artistic aspects of the city. His book is described as the best travel book of all time, which depicts Istanbul and its beauty. In particular, Nerval loved the cemeteries of Istanbul.
Another author who Istanbul was Alphonse de Lamartine, who once said if one had but a single glance at the world, one should gaze on Istanbul. Lamartine saw Istanbul while he was going back to France from Lebanon. He came to the city on May 20, 1833 and met with Sultan Abdülmecid. During his visit, he visited every part of Istanbul and watched the city, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus from his exclusive penthouse.
Gustave Flaubert wrote once: “It is time to see the East and he comes to Istanbul. He visits the Blue Mosque, listens to the azaan, and tries to understand the deeper meaning behind it. He is amazed by the aphrodisiac beverages, which are sold on the streets of Istanbul.”
Flaubert discovered strong Turkish coffee while the city drags him to dreams and he stayed in Istanbul. Flaubert’s letters, which are penned from Istanbul, are some of the most important thoughts of the writer.
As written in the final section of the “Voyage en Orient,” Flaubert arrived in Istanbul in October, 1850, accompanied by his friend Maxime du Champ after his visit to Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.
His letters from Istanbul, written in 1850, tells his stories and ideas about himself, life, marriage and lifestyle.
Flaubert writes to his mother, that the artist must be a freak of nature, an oddity outside ordinary life, a monster of sorts: “So, I am resigned to living as I have lived: alone, with my throng of great men as my only cronies – and a bear, with my bear rug as company.”
His sentences got stronger and more rigid as he wrote. “I care nothing for the world, for the future, for what people will say, for any kind of establishment, or even for literary renown, which in the past I used to lie awake so many nights dreaming about.” Flaubert adds one final line whose simplicity belies his self-confidence and earnestness: “That is what I am like; such is my character.”
Maybe it was Istanbul, which affected the great writer like this during those times. Flaubert’s time, which he spent in Istanbul, also inspired Orhan Pamuk and Pamuk wrote a speech about Flaubert that he gave at Rouen University in France in 2009.
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| Gustave Flaubert |
Pamuk said: “In Istanbul, at the end of the 1970s, in the midst of trying to get my newly completed first novel published, living alone with my mother, I remember trying to locate the Justiniano Hotel in Galata where Flaubert had spent his days and penned these words in 1850. Just like the “great men” that he had idolized, I tried to take Flaubert as my model.”
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| Gerard De Nerval loved the cemetries of Istanbul |
An Italian among French and Turks
Edmondo de Amicis always dreamed that Istanbul to keep its epic characteristic forever safe. However, even though he wishes, he is sure that one day Istanbul will loose its charm and its exotic affect. His book, which belongs to 1847 titled Istanbul focuses on his impressions during the emperor period of the city.
The writer creates his writing style parallel to the colorful and exciting Istanbul. He depicts the birds of Istanbul. Mosques, woods, old ramparts, gardens, palaces, every where is full of birds. Amicis wrote about Istanbul that people who visit the city do not know which part to look at.
However, while most of the writers praised Istanbul with theier beautiful words, a Turkish writer from 2000s, Selim İleri looks at the city pain and despair. The Istanbul born writer said that the city had lost its charm and become arid. The city lost its past charm and become lonley, but still continued to inspire writers.
[HH] Americans in Istanbul
American writers in Istanbul also focus on multicultural literary analysis, but this also proves how Istanbul continued to affect writers and the literary world. Literary legends such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Ernst Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and James Baldwin visited and wrote about Istanbul.
American writers not only thought that the city was a beautiful place but that it was also weird and different. Melville, who visited Istanbul in 1856 writes: “Cedar & Cypress [are] the only trees about the capital. The Cypress [is] a green minaret, & blends with the stone ones. The minaret is perhaps derived from the cypress’ shape. The intermingling of the dark tree with the bright spire is expressive of the intermingling of life & death.”
For Twain, Istanbul was a city which certainly did not inspire him at all. Twain described Turkish women swathed in veils, as “they look as the shrouded dead must have looked when they walked forth from their graves amid storms and thunders and earthquakes that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the Crucifixion. A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once—not oftener.”