Literary The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Now I really wasn't expecting that!

Neither was I.....

I read the book and am thinking it over. To give you some further context:
It isn’t a clear cut story of a separation between the Islamic world and Western world in the 17th century. A few centuries before, from the 7th to the 15th century, the greater part of Spain (except for the north) is governed by Muslim kingdoms from Arabia and North-Africa. The first are the Umayyads from Damascus and the last one the Nashrid-dynasty.Therefore the Andalusia’s cities, Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada and Cádiz become renowed throughout Europe and North-Africa as influential centres of trade, science, art, literature and architecture. In this era scolars travel to the Islamic scientists in Andalusia and Sicily. They translate scientific texts of Islamic scientists from Arabic and Greek into Latin. This contact attribute much to the Renaissance that starts in Italy.

[sun surfer]

I've finished and I really loved it. It's a complex story that has so many layers of meaning. I really enjoyed the end of the story and I'm left pleasantly pondering over it all.

Originally Posted by desertblues

...The preface of this book puzzles me. This story about finding a forgotten manuscript as a way to authenticate the story, it's historical importance, found in a 'governor’s office (...)at the bottom of a dusty chest stuffed to overflowing with imperial decrees, title deeds, court registers and tax rolls'.(6) Pamuk doesn't need this rather dated cliché, this artificial way to help his story along. This book is fiction, so why would Pamuk use this to give his story credibility? This intrigues me.

I have a different interpretation of this (and spoilers follow for anyone who is still reading).

We are left at the end thinking about who actually wrote the manuscript that was found. Similarly, I think Pamuk is playing with us with the preface. Instead of himself finding the manuscript, it is this other person Darvinoglu. Or is it? The book is dedicated to Darvinoglu's sister - or is it Pamuk's?

There is also the epigraph ostensibly from Proust that is a "mistranslation" from someone else.

I think with all of this Pamuk is playing with many layers of possible fictions and realities and specifically with the theme of duality that's central to this book. As there are dual main characters, so there are two people involved with the epigraph and also two authors presenting this book - Pamuk and Darvinoglu. Or is it all the same person?

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key."

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I've finished and I really loved it. It's a complex story that has so many layers of meaning. I really enjoyed the end of the story and I'm left pleasantly pondering over it all.
(...)
We are left at the end thinking about who actually wrote the manuscript that was found. Similarly, I think Pamuk is playing with us with the preface. Instead of himself finding the manuscript, it is this other person Darvinoglu. Or is it? The book is dedicated to Darvinoglu's sister - or is it Pamuk's?

There is also the epigraph ostensibly from Proust that is a "mistranslation" from someone else.

I think with all of this Pamuk is playing with many layers of possible fictions and realities and specifically with the theme of duality that's central to this book. As there are dual main characters, so there are two people involved with the epigraph and also two authors presenting this book - Pamuk and Darvinoglu. Or is it all the same person?

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key."

Yes, I agree with this book having many layers. It is presented as a historic novel, but this isn't all what it is. On one level it could be, but then......Constantinople was called Istanbul from 1923 on, so that doesn't fit.
That is also why I remarked that I perhaps confused matters by posting 17th century music and also the context I gave in my previous post.
It is confusion inside confusion. One never knows what's what in this book and who's who.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by desertblues

Constantinople was called Istanbul from 1923 on, so that doesn't fit.

desertblues, if you want to look here

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambul...ung_des_Namens

I remembered it like you, but the article in the German wikipedia about Istanbul claims that this name was already used in the 16th century.

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by Billi

desertblues, if you want to look here

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambul...ung_des_Namens

I remembered it like you, but the article in the German wikipedia about Istanbul claims that this name was already used in the 16th century.

Thank you for this info. Hm, interesting.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Billi

desertblues, if you want to look here

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambul...ung_des_Namens

I remembered it like you, but the article in the German wikipedia about Istanbul claims that this name was already used in the 16th century.

My German wasn't up to that, but I got the English version. When you think about it, it makes sense that the people who actually belong to the area would have a different name from the one imposed by the various groups who ruled their empires from Constantinople.

So changing the name in 1923 was really just an acknowledgement of this, in the same way that the huge monolith in the centre of Australia, which the 19th century English explorers named Ayers Rock, is now known correctly by its Aboriginal name of Uluru. (Though of course the diehards still call it Ayers Rock!)

[desertblues]

I have read this book now and find it very interesting. It is rather a challenging book that needs some serious reflection and ‘chewing’ upon. Even before beginning to read the actual book, but an undeniable part of it, confusion sets in with the dedication, preface and citation.
I would like to comment upon these things, before talking about the rest of the book.

White Castle includes a preface about the origin of the manuscript that was supposedly written by a fictional character from Mr. Pamuk's second novel 'the silent house', Faruk Darvinoglu. Unfortunately I didn’t read this particular book, so I can’t say what kind of person this is.
I read some of Pamuk’s books though, which I enjoyed very much (My name is Red, Snow, The museum of innocence, The innocence of objects).
To get back to the preface: this tale about finding a forgotten manuscript as a way to authenticate the story, it's historical importance, seems rather logical at first: found in a 'governor’s office (...)at the bottom of a dusty chest stuffed to overflowing with imperial decrees, title deeds, court registers and tax rolls'.(6) While reading this book it confuses matters as it becomes clear that this is not an historical novel at all, but a philosophical one, a book of ideas: this preface is meant to get the reader thinking about reality, appearances, identity.
The fictional Faruk makes clear that this book isn’t what is seems to be ‘when I consulted the basic sources for the period, I saw right away that some events described in the story bore little remblance to the fact’. In this aspect he is important for the reader as he tells us not to believe everything that follows.

The book is dedicated to the fictional sister of the fictional Faruk Darvinoglu. This is an interesting construction which piques further interest.’ Readers seeing the dedication at the beginning may ask if it has a personal significance. I suppose that to see everything as connected with everything else is the addiction of our time. It is because I too have succumbed to this disease that I publish this tale.’(9)

The citation at the beginning is a beautiful thought 'To imagine that a person who intrigues us has access to a way of life unknown and all the more attractive for its mystery, to believe that we will begin to live only through the love of that person – what else is this but the birth of great passion? Marcel Proust, from the mistranslation of Y.K. Karaosmanoğlu’.
This dedication gives me the feeling I am part of a great mystery somehow. I would have to research where it comes from, but perhaps I’d better leave the enchantment for what it is.

Spoiler:

yes, I am getting a bit poetical about this.....

[caleb72]

OK. I finished it about an hour ago. I'm very happy this book was picked, although I found it very tough. I have to admit being a bit stumped for the moment as to what Pamuk was getting at, but when I get some more time, I'll give a bit of a brain dump and see if other readers here can help me sort through it all.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I am up to 40% and the beginning of the plague section. Definitely many layers to this book!

I was able to find the information on the epigraph by searching around the internet.

Karaosmanoğlu's mistranslation is:

Alakamızı uyandıran bir kimseyi,bizce meçhul ve meçhullüğü derecesinde cazibeli bir hayatın unsurlarına karışmış sanmak ve hayata ancak onun sevgisiyle girebileceğimizi düşünmek bir aşk başlangıcından başka neyi ifade eder?

The original passage is:

Que nous croyions qu'un être participe à une vie inconnue où son amour nous ferait pénétrer, c'est, de tout ce qu'exige l'amour pour naître, ce à quoi il tient le plus, et qui lui fait faire bon marché du reste.

Of which one English translation is:

All that love requires to be born is that we should believe that a being participates in an unknown life in which our love will enables us to penetrate.

And a second translation is:

Once we believe that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown existence to which that creature's love for ourselves can win us admission, that is, of all the preliminary conditions which Love exacts, the one to which he attaches most importance, the one which makes him generous or indifferent as to the rest.

[desertblues]

Thank you Book-worm-girl, that is a good find.

A hypothesis about this book is slowly forming in my mind.
Although the story is told by the Italian young man, nowhere is he referred to by his own name. Does he exists even?
He is captured at sea and when waiting for his captors to arrive, I get the feeling that he sees his whole life before him in a few seconds, just as is said to happen in the short seconds before dying.
For me, a decisive moment in the book is his capture. What happens at that instant and what is the effect on the mind of that young man?

Spoiler:

'I heard shrieks, footsteps rushing back and forth, an uproar going on outside, I knew that at any moment the book would be snatched from my hand, yet I wanted to think not of that but of what was written on its pages. It was as if the thoughts, the sentences, the equations in the book contained the whole of my past life which I dreaded to lose; while I read random phrases under my breath, as though reciting a prayer. I desperately wanted to engrave the entire volume on my memory so that when they did come, I would not think of them and what they would make me suffer, but would remember the colours of my past as if recalling the cherished words of a book I had memorized with pleasure.' (11)

[Bookpossum]

Hmm - that is an interesting thought. At the moment I am still wondering whether the Italian author is an aspect of Hoja's personality, or whether there are indeed two men and one is in the process of assuming domination of the other. On page 12 of Chapter 5 it says:

But the more he read about my sins and increased his petty, infantile punishments, the more I became wrapped in a peculiar sense of security; for the first time I began to think I had him in the palm of my hand.

It reminded me of The Servant by Harold Pinter, and the Ingmar Bergman film Persona, both of which I saw a long time ago. However I'm not going to confuse myself further by looking them up at the moment!

One thing I just went back to check in the Preface was the title given to the document: The Quilter's Stepson. That suggested that the "I" of the book was this person, but it is Hoja who was the stepson of a quilter. So is he "I"?

Thanks for the Proust quote and translations, Bookworm_Girl. Interesting how different the two English translations are, but the original seems to me to be quite complex, so the second translator is trying to cram in every possible nuance and gets a bit clunky. No wonder I never managed to read any Proust!

[caleb72]

I was thinking about the two main characters in two lights:

1) That Hoja was actually the Italian man who did actually throw away his faith at the decisive moment and from that point forward lives as two personalities: Hoja and the Venetian. I know that's a bit problematic for various reasons, but it interests me to think of it in that way.

2) That the Venetian represents a Western ideal or vision that was enviously stolen by the Turkish to push themselves forward and that the Turkish empire struggled between the more mystical nature of its past and the new rationalism/science that they wanted to adopt. Looking at it this way explains a few things to me:
- The way that public opinion never quite damned Hoja, but only the influence on him - the Western influence.
- The fact that that the characters became almost as one which told me that they were possibly more about halves of a whole, each half battling for supremacy.
- The strange envy/inferiority complex of Hoja towards the Venetian
- The odd and incomplete way that the Venetian's methods were adopted making a statement of how various ideas were adopted without changing the basic way of thinking to make them productive (the machine of war being a great example)
- The fact that rational thinking had to bend to adapt to mysticism - becoming an astrologer instead of an astronomer and all that comes with it
- The eagerness and passion with which the initial adoption took place reminded me of an empire eager to quickly gain the advantages of an enemy it secretly admires
- The obsession with the difference in the Western man when exploring sin and the discovery and conscious rejection that all men sin the same seemed to also have a national rather than character-based feeling to it.

There's just so much more to this story, but the above were two things I was thinking about the further I read.

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by caleb72

I was thinking about the two main characters in two lights:

1) That Hoja was actually the Italian man who did actually throw away his faith at the decisive moment and from that point forward lives as two personalities: Hoja and the Venetian. I know that's a bit problematic for various reasons, but it interests me to think of it in that way.

2) That the Venetian represents a Western ideal or vision that was enviously stolen by the Turkish to push themselves forward and that the Turkish empire struggled between the more mystical nature of its past and the new rationalism/science that they wanted to adopt. (...)

Bravo, Caleb, you have some valid points there.

I think the authenticity of (historical) things is flawed, the reader is warned in the preface, as well as reality itself is in question in this book. I think one is encouraged to see these things as symbolic.
Therefore it is difficult to give a clear view on the whole story. It’s all in the (readers) mind, so I embrace and take the freedom the writer gives me, in interpreting this novel.

I go with the hypothesis that there wasn’t a ‘Venetian’ at all to begin with; the encounter, the tale of his capture symbolises the interaction between the East and the West. Therefore I can place the capture of the ‘Venetian’ as the ending of the separation of the two. Remember the Arab conquests of part of Spain, Sicily and France from the 7th -15th century and the subsequent influence on the Renaissance, in a way a rebirth of the Western values, culture. Yes, perhaps a ridiculous explanation, but here it is.
Remember that the writer of this novel is Turkish…….

I get the feeling that the best way to ‘attack’ this book is concentrating on the story as it is and let the big picture evolve. Let’s pretend the Venetian is the West and Hoja is the personification of the East, and try to find a meaning in this novel.

Hm, perhaps the above is rather outrageous, but I find it not impossible, so I'll ponder on this a bit more.....

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

It reminded me of The Servant by Harold Pinter, and the Ingmar Bergman film Persona, both of which I saw a long time ago. However I'm not going to confuse myself further by looking them up at the moment!

Good catch! Persona definitely plays with similar duality and identity themes.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I've passed the half-way point and decided to re-read the preface and research its background. I was intrigued by the post from desertblues that Faruk and his sister were characters from another book, Silent House. I wanted to understand what the connection was. Here's a summary of the key points I found about this novel and links to a few websites with further details. Beware of spoilers if you plan to read this book someday!

Silent House was published in 1983. It is set in the summer of 1980, a period of simmering political tensions in Turkey. In Sept would occur the third military coup in the history of the Turkish Republic. Three years of marshal law followed, and 500,000 people were arrested.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_..._d%27%C3%A9tat

The novel chronicles the decline of three generations of the Darvinoglu family from the early 20th century to 1980. Their story is told in first-person stream of consciousness (very Faulkner-esque) with each chapter rotating amongst various family members.

The location is the beach-town of Cennethisar. It was a sleepy fishing village and remote from Istanbul when the patriach of the family (Grandfather Selahattin) was exiled here by a Young Turk for his radical republican politics in the early century. By 1980 it is a luxury beach resort for the nation's Westernized capitalist elite.

The novel revolves around the one-week visit to the 90-year old matriach (Grandmother Fatma) by her three grandchildren from Istanbul - an annual obligatory visit rather than one motivated by love. They are Faruk (oldest), Metin and Nilgun. There is an illegitimate fourth relative, Hasan, who is a central character of the story.

The novel is Pamuk's "meditation on the impact of the coup on his homeland." Each grandchild represents a different political movement.
Faruk - Secular Republicanism
Metin - Neo-liberalism, wants to move to America
Nilgun - Communism
Hasan - Fascism, Ultra-Nationalism

Some major themes of the novel are:
1) Each generation pays for the previous generation's "inability to reconcile their imperial past with their modern aspirations to be citizens of Europe"
2) The past is never dead no matter how much one modernizes. Tradition continues. A central question of the book is "What is time?"
3) Feelings of inferiority to the West

The Grandfather represents historic Turkish progressivism. Several details of his life mirror Ataturk's. He is consumed by a passion to write an all-encompassing encyclopedia of Western scientific knowledge (sounds very Middlemarch!). He says in the novel:

When I've finished my 48-volume encyclopedia of all the basic principles and ideas, everything that must be said in the East will have been said once and for all.

Faruk is the oldest grandchild in his mid-30s. A professor of history. Divorced. Mostly he sits around Fatma's table wallowing with a bottle of alcohol. He searches the government archives in Gebze looking for meaning in the Ottoman manuscripts. He becomes obsessed to write "a book with no beginning and no end". His book's purpose will be:

to encompass, with no attention to relative value or importance, every piece of information I could discover about Gebze and its environs in [the seventeenth] century . . . I won’t let a single document escape my eye, every single event will take its place, one by one. Someone reading my book from cover to cover will during those weeks and months end up able to glimpse that cloudlike mass of events that I managed to perceive while working here, and like me he’ll murmur excitedly: This is history, this is history and life . . .

Nilgun, Faruk's sister, is the only sibling who really cares about politics and has real compassion for the lower classes. She is a university student and represents the potential for a bright future of the family and reversal of the family's decline. Hasan, the fascist thug who hangs with the local gang terrorizing the town citizens, falls in love with her. Somehow this results in the tragic fate of her death.

Here are a few websites where I gleaned this information.
http://quarterlyconversation.com/sil...by-orhan-pamuk
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-cultu...sh-novel#page1