Mani nella salsa

View of Istanbul from the window of Orhan Pamuk (El País)

In this year Turkey is the special guest of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and on this occasion Babelia, the literary supplement of El País has asked Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk to present his own Turkish library.

Con poco más de veinte años no compraba los libros como un coleccionista, sino como alguien inquieto que quisiera comprender lo antes posible, leyéndolo todo, el sentido del mundo: el motivo de la casa en los cuentos populares de Gümüshane; la trastienda de la rebelión de Ethem el circasiano contra Atatürk; un listado de asesinatos políticos en la época constitucional; la historia de la cacatúa de Abdülhamit, comprada por el embajador en Londres por encargo del sultán y enviada desde Inglaterra a Turquía; ejemplos de cartas de amor para tímidos; la historia de la introducción de las tejas de Marsella en Turquía; las memorías políticas del médico que fundó el primer hospital para tuberculosos; una Historia del Arte Occidental de ciento cincuenta páginas escrita en los años treinta; los apuntes de clase del comisario que enseñaba a los estudiantes de la escuela de policía las maneras de combatir a los pequeños delincuentes callejeros como carteristas, timadores y descuideros; los seis tomos de memorias de un antiguo presidente de la república, llenos de documentos; la influencia en la pequeña empresa moderna de la ética de los gremios otomanos; la historia, los secretos y la genealogía de los jeques de la cofradía de los cerrahi; las memorias del París de los años treinta de un pintor olvidado por todos; las intrigas de los comerciantes para elevar el preciod de las avellanas; las quinientas páginas de duras críticas de un movimiento marxista turco prosoviético a otro movimiento prochino y proalbanés; el cambio de la ciudad de Eregli tras la apertura de las fábricas de hierro y acero; el libro para niños titulado Cien turcos famosos, la historia del incendio de Aksaray; una selección de columnas de entreguerras de un periodista totalmente olvidado hacía treinta años; la historia bimilenaria comprimida en doscientas páginas de una pequeña ciudad de la Anatolia Central que no era capaz de localizar en el mapa de un primer vistazo; la afirmación de un maestro jubilado que pretendía, a pesar de no saber inglés, haber resuelto el misterio de quién era el asesino de Kennedy sólo leyendo la prensa turca.

Pamuk offers an unexpected explication for this eclectic interest. Although he was born in an upper middle class family, and both his father and grandfather had a considerable library – about which he writes with great affection in his Istanbul –, but this library, as he says, was rather a “museum” to him. In fact, in 1928 the Arabic alphabet was officially replaced with the Latin one, and for the generations educated after this date the complete previous literary production has become unaccessible. Even if the texts of the earlier authors were being gradually published in Romanized version, but in the lack of continuity the elevated and sophisticated language of the Ottoman literature had also become obsolete, so much that – at least in the case of more ancient authors – even a modern Turkish “translation” had to be added to the Romanized transcription of the original Osmanli text. The established canon has thus lost its validity, and Pamuk, just like his contemporaries, had to create a new one for himself out of whatever he found. Hence the impatience, the neglect of the hierarchies of genres, the joy of discovery and the liberty of heterogenity.

It is not accidental that the personal canon of Pamuk includes several authors from Istanbul who around and after the turn of the century produced a similarly “gathering” oeuvre, from Reşat Ekrem Koçu, the author of the Istanbul Encyclopedia which was published in monthly instalments and remained unfinished, to the late 19th-century journalist Ahmet Rasim, who in his “letters”

a lo largo de medio siglo, escribió sin parar sobre todo lo que se refiriera a Estambul: de los diversos tipos de borrachos a los vendedores ambulantes de los suburbios; de los dueños de los colmados a los malabaristas callejeros; de los músicos a los pordioseros; de la belleza de los barrios del Bósforo a las tabernas; de las noticias cotidianas a las de la Bolas; de los parques, plazas y lugares de diversión a los mercados semanales; de las bellezas individuales de cada estación del año a las muchedumbres; de los juegos con bolas de nieve y trineos a la historia de la prensa; de los cotilleos a los menús de los restaurantes. (Orhan Pamuk: Estambul)

Sébah and Joaillier, photographers of the sultan: Café in Istanbul, end of the 19th century

Something similar to this is reported by Arthur Rimbaud in The alchemy of the word about the canon losing its force and about the elevation of the appreciation of the genres hitherto confined to the lowest levels of hierarchy:

I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable. What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the nave rhythms of country rimes. (Translation by Paul Schmidt)

And something similar comes to my memory as well if I recall how in my teenager age the various canons of the books at home, of the school readings and of the official book publishing of the last years of Communism became empty for me – that is, how I gradually lost my interest in what “one must read” –, and how I began to track down second-hand book shops, flea markets, book sellouts, Transylvanian, Slovakian and foreign language bookshops and then ancient libraries, in order to fish out of the debris and disorder, or at least of orders unknown to me, works that were important only to me, that I discovered for myself.

All that is over. Today, I know how to celebrate beauty. – finishes Rimbaud his relation. But he is only half right. Of course one gradually composes his own canon and also understands the values or at least the points of view of the other canons as well. But the joy and freedom of treasure-hunting, of exploring the obscurity, of discovering and personalizing the small and the forgotten will never be over if one has once felt it.

Orhan Pamuk: Estambul, cover photo of the Spanish edition