Orhan Pamuk’un Hafızasında Bir Melankoli Kaynağı: İstanbul

Özet

The focus of the article is the construction of the city image in Orhan Pamuk’smemory. The essence of the image of İstanbul in İstanbul Memories and theCity appears to be a profound sense of melancholy, which gives way to anequally deep sense of happiness that, Pamuk opines, few other cities couldpossess. The article then investigates Pamuk’s sources of inspiration in creatingİstanbul’s image which is loaded with melancholy. It is obvious that Pamuk’smemories concerning İstanbul have been mainly but not exclusively- shapedby four poets\writers to whom the author sincere expresses his gratitude inthe work. The first two are the Turkish authors, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı andAhmet Hamdi Tanpınar, who themselves had been influenced by the othertwo, Gerard de Nerval and Theophile Gautier. Gautier’s travel w r i t i n g s ,which he later published under the title of Constantinople had a considerableimpact on Yahya Kemal Beyatlı and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, both of whomdeveloped a different and indigenous İstanbul image for its inhabitants. Whatmakes this city image different and original is the combination of the beautiful with the bizarre, the miserable and the sordid which brings about a senseof prevailing melancholy rising over the ruins of a collapsed empire. Whilefollowing the footsteps of his literary predecessors, Pamuk also renders anearly autobiography which is interwoven into the cultural, socio-political, andenvironmental, changes that took place in Istanbul in the twentieth century.The theoretical framework of the article is based on the views of Freud,Kristeva, and Peter Schwenger.