Huzun
Reading the Orhan Pamuk memoir of his life in Istanbul (my starting point for immersion into his writing). He's currently on trial in Turkey for speaking out about the mass murders (in the millions) of the Armenians and Kurds back at the close of the Ottoman empire. The NY Times has the occasional editorial with the latest (delays, the EU politico from, I believe, The Netherlands getting into trouble after making statements about the massacres, etc), but news here about Turkey for the most part seems limitted to the advance of the Avian Flu.
The pictures he draws are fascinating to me, showing me the old city that I caught in glimpses, especially on the last day I spent there running around the outdoor exhibits of the biennial with Alex. We saw buildings in varying states of decay and ruin, rubble yet to be sorted thru after the earthquake a few years ago. I had the views 2 1/2 weeks earlier from above looking down from the Galata Tower, now I was wandering the alleys near the waterfront - the old buildings built poorly at the end of an empire to house an increasing population shift to the city. Not unlike the houses he describes on the Bosphorus that were once the retreat of the rich from the inhabitants of the areas I was roaming, houses that were burnt down in the 50s and 60s or the subject of inheritance dispute.
The Turkish language is a puzzle to me even after 3 1/2 weeks spent there. There is a tense that "allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed . . . It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences." Pamuk later explains the word Huzun, melancholy. He sums up the 2 points of view of the word as; 1) a state of grace or poetic concept, a Sufi idea of spiritual anguish from not being able to do enough for Allah, to be close enough to him, or 2) an illness, loss, death, anger, fear. I won't even try to articulate what he spends an entire chapter illuminating. I will just alert you to its existance and recommend it.
The word Huzun seems to fit very well right now, but which definition thereof I'm not sure.
The pictures he draws are fascinating to me, showing me the old city that I caught in glimpses, especially on the last day I spent there running around the outdoor exhibits of the biennial with Alex. We saw buildings in varying states of decay and ruin, rubble yet to be sorted thru after the earthquake a few years ago. I had the views 2 1/2 weeks earlier from above looking down from the Galata Tower, now I was wandering the alleys near the waterfront - the old buildings built poorly at the end of an empire to house an increasing population shift to the city. Not unlike the houses he describes on the Bosphorus that were once the retreat of the rich from the inhabitants of the areas I was roaming, houses that were burnt down in the 50s and 60s or the subject of inheritance dispute.
The Turkish language is a puzzle to me even after 3 1/2 weeks spent there. There is a tense that "allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed . . . It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences." Pamuk later explains the word Huzun, melancholy. He sums up the 2 points of view of the word as; 1) a state of grace or poetic concept, a Sufi idea of spiritual anguish from not being able to do enough for Allah, to be close enough to him, or 2) an illness, loss, death, anger, fear. I won't even try to articulate what he spends an entire chapter illuminating. I will just alert you to its existance and recommend it.
The word Huzun seems to fit very well right now, but which definition thereof I'm not sure.
posted by tovah @ 10:11 PM
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