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This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions. My name is Robert Harrison.
And we're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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As for my place in the world, in life as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was not in the
center. In the center of the world there was a life richer and more exciting than our own.
And with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside of it.
In the same way there was a world literature and its center too was very far away from me.
I have described in my books how this basic fact evoked a Jacobian sense of
the provenchality and how, by another route, it led to my questioning, my authenticity.
I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings
and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security,
and sense of degradation than I do.
[Music]
That was a quote from last year's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech by the Turkish writer
Ojant Pamuk, who joins me in the studios of KZSU today.
That's right, and don't act so surprised. You know all you friends of entitled opinions
that around here we bring you only the best, and Pamuk is definitely among the very best.
I'll introduce him to you in a moment, but first I would like to throw out a question.
Where would be B without the provinces? Answer? No where.
I for one believe that Western culture owes considerably more to its provinces than it does to its
metropolises. Like the grain, vegetables, and meat that sustain nations and empires,
the cultural nourishment of the West comes essentially from its outlying regions.
Our cosmopolitan centers tend more to attract rather than to be get, great artists, poets,
and even philosophers. For every Parisian native in the history of French literature,
there are any number of Montanes, flubés, and handbills.
For every native Roman or Milanese writer of note, there are any number of Leopad,
these false scholars in Piedandelos. And it is not New York, finally, that gives us the likes
of Faulkner, Dickinson, or Ammons. While it's true that the provincial genius tends to migrate
from the periphery to the center, it's also true that his or her genius remains rooted
in that exocentric place in which he was incubated.
My guest today, Oton Pamuk says that he became a writer because in his native city of Istanbul,
he felt provincial vis-a-vis the West, excluded on the margins, angry, and deeply melancholic.
Yet he adds that when he sat down at a table to write, he found an entire world beyond these sentiments.
I quote, "What I now feel is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man.
For me, the center of the world is Istanbul.
By Istanbul, he means not only the city, he has lived in all his life, but also,
and above all, the city that comes to life in a variety of colors in his books that are either
set in Istanbul or are about Istanbul."
When it comes to the writer, then, it is difficult to say exactly where is the center
and where the periphery. As Pamuk reminds us, a writer is someone who shuts himself up in his
room day after day, year after year, and there, in his room, he turns inward, going deep into himself.
As he so descends into the interior, the writer performs distances himself from friends, family,
nation, and society. In short, he removes himself to the margins of the world.
Thus wherever he may live, or wherever he may be from, the writer must withdraw to the provinces,
so to speak, or into what Joseph Conrad called, that lonely region of stress and strife in the
south in order to write. And yet, that lonely provincial region is the center from which the world's
of our novels emanate.
No one knows better than Oran Pamuk how painful, doubt inducing, and isolating the writers with
draw can be, and also how pleasurable and thrilling. He describes his birth as a writer with sincerity
and eloquence not only in his Nobel speech, but also in his most recent book, titled Other Colors,
published just this last month by Kannav, as well as in his book, "Estamble, Memories of a City,"
which came out in English translation in 2005. We'll be talking to him about this another matter
today, including some of his astonishing novels, but first let me welcome Oran Pamuk to the program,
Oran is a pleasure and an honor to have you here.
It's a pleasure for me as well. Thank you.
I began by quoting from the Nobel speech, and you say there that I know from experience that the
great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings and suffer from the same sense
of probability that you suffered from as a younger man. While I'm sure that is the case,
is it not also true that in Turkey there's something particular about the relationship to the West,
being that Turkey can, the modern Republic of Turkey was self-consciously setting itself the
westernization model. It's very close to Europe on the other side of the Dardinells,
and that therefore there might be a little bit of a difference there.
Cultural promenciality is a feeling that I've felt all my life. It's a very common feeling
that you can live in your country, that you have a strong feeling that there is a lot of going on
in history. Of course, more so in art that you feel that you want to
in the arts or literature that you think that you belong to, but you are so far away from it,
that the only thing that you can do is get the works of art, pictures, books, read them,
a sort of feeling that, but on your hand, as you do that, you develop a sort of a feeling that
you have no power because you cannot join the game. It has almost a tragic dream like quality,
you just want to be in there, join the crowd, but you cannot. This is the most fragile,
painful moment of promenciality, which I think that I've lived especially in first in my childhood
in some mood, but second more so in my teenage years till maybe mid-40s in my life as a writer
in Turkey, reading all the Western books, seeing that Turkish literature has no place in
world literature or very little place, trying to doing your best to move towards there while on
your hand. One part of you also resists that movement and once stubbornly to embrace go deeper into
your provincial corner, I have enjoyed living thoroughly all aspects of
promenciality, but then I will also probably say that, I always like the Czechovian characters who
are always dreaming of going to most covers and Peter's book, and I found a more humane or perhaps
because of my situation. Do you feel now that you say that Istanbul has become the center,
that even while you are in New York City as you are, this year's teaching at Columbia University,
that you bring the provinces with you wherever you go? I bring the provinces with me hopefully,
but then of course when I say as I said in my Nobel Prize acceptance speech, for me Istanbul is the
center, I am not referring to an acknowledged fact everyone agrees about, but I am perhaps irrational,
stressing the fact that I have lead to all my life at the beginning you think is provincial,
but once you live all your life in a center in a place, 10 after a mile, you have the right to see
it as the world center, and perhaps my book, because perhaps now after the age of 50, my books
are translated to 55 languages, I am being read all the wood the world, I think then I somehow managed
to get out of my provinciality, but now I am also very pleased to hear that my books are
more and more enjoyed in continental China, in Korea, I hear I am being read a lot in India,
not at least places are not the centers of the world, I am also here very popular in Latin
American countries, I sometimes associate this all this because I represent those, I know and represent
the feelings of being at the edge, having and developing a sort of admiration for the center,
trying to get things from the center, after living all this, after writing about it so many
times, so many forms, then I find it reasonable that my readers in this countries which are of the
center are perhaps also sharing my sentiments of proven reality, I have to underline the fact that
there are some basic situations in which to identify the proven reality of the writer,
artists is easy, first there is this immense troubled relation to the center, anxieties of influence,
too much sense attention paid to authenticity, a fragile feeling of not being important and neglected,
these are the things I always hear from writers outside the West, these are their problems and
they are also now that they are not only themselves but their cultures they feel is out of the center,
they are also more problematic about issues of representation, we authors from the provinces,
from the edges of the Western civilization feel more troubled about issues of representing
the nation perhaps because our nations are hungry for getting acknowledgement from the centers of
West, sometimes we in the West forget the extent to which much of the rest of the world sees us
as a center rather than this model that sometimes we like to believe that the world has become
very multi-central, I wrote about this in my article, the anger of the damned which I put
in this collection other colors, that I think the frustration of not being included, a sort of a
feeling of powerlessness in justice comes just because of the fact that most of the humanity
is outside the centers of West and have very little to join the game of history and the only thing
that is less for them, for most of humanity is to resist sometimes, rationally sometimes or most
of the time, irrationally. Or Han, you've said that you are now an international author and widely
recognized and which you are obviously especially the Nobel Prize has brought you an
notoriety that is very difficult for us to imagine how much changes when you receive a prize like
that. When I've heard the news that I have received a Nobel Prize this was early morning in New
York, I was in New York to teach at Columbia University, my first reaction was to say that this
will not change my life. That was our I think under estimation, it changed my life, it made my life
more intense, made me more popular internationally, but on the other hand it was not that I was
already translated to the six languages before the Nobel Prize, now I'm translated to 56 languages,
I have more readers all over the world obviously, but then it did not change my devotion to writing,
my working habits, feeling and urge to write the joys of being alone in a room with paper and pencil
and writing and dreaming and needing this as a as a sick person needs some pill or
medication every day, these are the things that make me, I cannot continue to look at literature
as a sort of medication or a pill that makes me happy and I will continue to live like this.
In fact, I'm working more and more because perhaps that I want to write more books to all this
enthusiastic readers all over the world, all the books that I have planned for so many years,
I want to write them and publish them and then of course there are so many demands, I'm traveling,
answering questions, doing interviews, teaching at Columbia, planning new books, I'm now finishing
550 page novel that I've been working on the last four years called Museum of Innocence,
so much is happening in my life, some of it perhaps the intensity, the number of emails and other
things, the questions, the people who want to do interviews, they have this went up and up and it's
troubling, then demands for new translations also nice, so my life get to be a bit hectic and more
intense and I'm of course not complaining, enjoying so many people also ask me after the Nobel
Prize, is it disturbing, it's not disturbing at all, I'm happy and I sometimes joke in
the tell that people then, I'm the kind of superficial person who would be happy with a Nobel
Prize and I'd recommend it to anyone, but on their hand it made my life, as it made my life more
intense, it's also more pleasurable, I'm working more than ever and enjoying my situation in fact.
Well, thank you for coming on to this interview, I know how many requests you get and we're
delighted that you accepted our invitation from entitled opinions, you can be translated
all the world languages but in the final analysis when you sit down in your room to write you
write in Turkish, so what is lost to the readers of your books that don't read it in Turkish and if I may
elaborate this because as we were speaking before we came on here, I was born in Turkey raised in
Turkey, I know I speak Turkish the way a 13 year old boy would speak Turkish not beyond that age
and I know that Turkish is a language still in flux and in evolution that there is an old
kind of Ottoman Turkish that when Kamalatatu founded the modern Republic of Turkey, there was this
new academy of Turkish, Dijlkuru, that tried to terrify the words, there are all sorts of things
for which there are no Turkish words modern, the things that you need to invent words for,
neologisms, French pervades Turkish as borrowed words as well as other European words, in other
words Turkish is a very stratified language with a history and I have looked at some of your
novels in Turkish and compared them to the English but I don't want to tell you my impression but
I would like to hear from you how you engage in this stratified history of the language.
First you ask about what is lost in translation, of course something is lost in translation but that's
definition of poetry that which is almost untranslatable, if you're a prose writer, if you're a fiction writer,
I strongly believe that more or less you accept the fact that you're addressing universals
that are translatable, that writing fiction, being a prose writer, implies I think that
optimistically translation is possible that yes, of course something is lost in translation
but you can find something in the translated language to satisfy what is lost in translation.
So I'm not going to say that my books are reads great in Turkish and so much is lost in translations,
I'm upset. If something is lost I always think that because the translator was not paying enough
attention or is not good, that's why some of the things may be lost. I work a lot with my translators,
I up to now, English is the only language that I think I should check there, I up to now, I had
four English translators with my last translator, more in freely, we work extensively, regular
pattern is this, that more in free the translates to thanks, sends it to me and then every time I read
it I get a bit at the beginning, I must confess and more in knows a bit depressed, not because
translation is troubled but then it is so hard to accept the fact that here is the voice that I will
be speaking for another 500 pages for another five years, that it's like accepting the voice you
find in original Turkish, it's as hard as finding the voice that's appropriate for the
book in original Turkish. First I feel distanced from the voice that Maureen
freed it thinks that is appropriate for the book but after a while I accept it, I make corrections
with the text, if the problem is a problem of dictionary, say if I'm writing, I'm eating an apple and
Maureen freed it makes it my mistake, carelessness, I'm eating at knowledge, that's no problem,
I tell her and we change it. Problems are more deeper that of syntax, of inner melody,
in the length of the sentences, the aim of the sentence is in whole, the tone, side meanings,
how economic to translate the whole Turkish meaning, then because if you want to satisfy and translate
everything to pass all the advances to pass into the second language, since the words are not the same,
the area that the words imply and cover are never the same in languages, then the translation gets
longer and longer. These are issues as we sit together with Maureen, discounts also we have to be fast,
we cannot judge every sentence for quite a long time, it's then endless charm. So translation is for
me first about being fast and making fast decisions about the meaning of the text, getting the words
right, inner music is as important as the words. Would it be fair to say that in a novel like
my name is read that the language in Turkish is more archaic, let's say classical, the register is
more Ottoman as opposed to a novel like snow, which is more Turkic. There was some unfortunate
attempt, institutional attempt in Turkey to purify Turkish in mid-30s and 40s, but I don't believe in it.
My Turkish is my standard for using the language, the language I hear from my grandmother,
from my mother, from my father. I am a conservative in the sense that I want to keep Turkish
as it is, and in my novels I use the language of my mother, my grandmother, which is actually the
language I use, I also hear in the streets. Ottoman court poets are in the publicing period,
some writers try to develop an artificial literary language, I don't believe in it. I strongly believe
in the idea that you have to write with the language, with the words, with the dictionary,
use here in the streets as much as possible. But then when writing historical novels, I pay
attention to give the flavor of the past, but don't use the old words just occasionally.
And I think there is a continuity of simple Turkish that is going on. Of course, there are lots
of old words around, but then these words are if you know how to use them cleverly around.
Language in historical novels is a great problem, but then in my novels, of course, novels address
the contemporary reader, first of all, it was not a big matter for me.
Well, turning to your novels, or handy, the question that intrigued me,
and you have these two most recent books, which is other colors, which has just come out,
a number of collection of essays on everyday matters, and you're becoming a writer,
as well as Istanbul, the memories of a city is very much how you became a writer. I want to ask
you about that. And there you say more than once that you originally wanted to become a painter.
So the question I would ask is, there are at least three of your novels, which have colors in
the title. You have the white castle, the black book, my name is red, and then snow,
I mean, it's not a color, but kara is a color of black, but even there, one of the main
characters is latched, you've got blue. So I would like to ask you how you understand the
presence of colors in your fiction, especially when you insist so beautifully for me
about the black and white character of your Istanbul. I wanted to be a painter between the ages of 7 and 22
more than interested in painting. So perhaps the impact of it was that I developed to be
more visual writer compared to other writers, and I'm self conscious about this.
There is an immense object of color symbolism in Islam, but I don't use it. I am a more,
since I'm a visual writer, I pay attention to colors, details, painterly details. I pay attention
to the things that surround the drama, the colors that surround the drama in my fictions. And
that's why I put color names, I think, into my novel titles, and your question, since it has
asked so many times by people, by journalists, by friends, I wanted to call this new book, Other
Colors, also referring to the fact that it's full of experiences of life, slices of life,
instance poetic experiences that I have lived, which I always thought will one day end in one of
those books, but then they did not. So I put these fragments of life together in this book, Other
Colors, and to me, and try to make it also edited and edited the book in such a way that
has a autobiographical quality. I should tell our listeners that this book is a remarkable collection of
autobiographical fragments, as well as your readings, or you comment on your own books, but also
the books that you've read, there's section on politics, pictures and texts and other cities and
civilizations. And again, it's called Other Colors. In the Istanbul book, however, you do say that
the Istanbul that you were most enamored of is the Istanbul of dusk, nightfall, of fall, turning to
winter, of a, if not a monochromatic, and Istanbul that is largely in black and white, and all these
very evocative black and white photos in there seem deliberately to exclude the presence of
colors. When I published my Istanbul book some four years ago in Turkey, my latest from
young generation object to the fact that this is not their colorful, happy, sunny Istanbul,
and I agreed with them. I wrote my Istanbul, and that's the Istanbul I like, the Istanbul of
long winter nights, black and white, a poor black and white place where the ruins of Ottoman Empire,
the ruins of all extravagant wooden, Ottoman buildings were in ruins. That's how I spent my
childhood playing football among the Ottoman ruins, among the wooden houses which were
next two decades burned down one by one. My Istanbul in 50s, 60s, 70s was an extraordinarily
provincial place where the sense of community was out, the sense of being outside of Europe,
but so close to Europe and still being full, the sense of nothing will change here, there's no
feature here, was still hovering around. Perhaps a place where the presence of the loss of
Ottoman Empire that the city had once upon a time was a capital of great magnamias and
where which empire now is in ruins and leading a poor provincial life open to
develop relationship with Europe unsuccessfully. And we were, and I come from an upper middle class
secular family where the generosity was not the issue who considered themselves,
more westernized from the rest of the country. These were my sentiments and I was a solitary
boy who enjoyed the life of imagination and this is how I started to make myself
encouraged by my family of civil engineers since I was drawing well. They thought that I would be
the artist in the family and I described my life in that manner. These are the things that made me
and I described them in a very heartfelt fashion in my book, Istanbul. Yes, in fact, I have to
say that my favorite piece of writing of yours is the last chapter of Istanbul, which for me is,
well, it's many things, but it's also very moving because it's called a conversation with my mother
and it's when your mother thinks that you still want to become an artist and I should tell our
listeners who don't have a present in mind that there's a way in which there is a conversation
the second place for you and your mother where she is giving you all these reasons and actually some of
them make a lot of strong common sense. Yeah, she was right. She was my mother who thought that if
her son would go to arts and try to be a painter, would lead a miserable poor troubled life in a country,
in Islamic country and a poor country where painters were no one paid any attention to painters.
She told me and as I wrote in the book that once upon a time when she was getting married, that
someone gave a round of time that she married my father, they decided to give a present
a painting to a friend and how sad was the painter and she recommended that I don't venture to these
artistic things in this part of the world. Unfortunately, we are not, this is not Paris, she told me
and later when I wanted to be a writer, more or less she did the same, in fact even more fiercely.
And this was a normal, healthy mother trying to protect her son, but on the other hand,
this was also the voice of sometimes very provincial and conservative voice of common sense,
which kills you. Yes, and you speak of it as your sort of anger and frustration with the defeatism,
that was being expressed through your mother's attitude, which was the defeatism of your culture
and the society of Turkey. But what I find so extraordinary is the way you know that you're going to
go for a walk in the night of Istanbul after this argument. And you alternate descriptions of the
wandering through the city of Istanbul with dialogues with your mother for three or four pages,
and all of a sudden it looks like you have two mothers that you have your mother, your biological,
social mother who gave birth to you and who's caring so for you. And then this other mother,
which is Istanbul, who is, she is the incubator, the matrix of your birth as a writer,
and that by wandering the species of comparison and in fact, that died on so many others,
the town embraced me better than my mummy, that it was so consulley to go out into
mananko histories of my childhood. Whenever I still have problem, the best cure is
either to go to movies or just go out and walk endlessly. Whenever I'm in trouble, walking out,
especially, you know, that's what I had all the time to walk out in the street is such a great
pill for all the troubles. One sense of it perhaps because the city was provincial, was not categorised,
was not put in a frame, was not highlighted in a museum, it was a part of the whole town,
now, which sometimes some parts of the town, which now look like a museum today, at that time,
in my childhood, where never museum night, where never put in pedestal. So I would walk endlessly
and thought that I must find things that invent one day a world from the materials that I come across,
it may be painting, it may be literature artistically. I felt attached to things, things outside
the common sense of the grown-ups. In walking the streets of Istanbul had carried a very
walking in the streets of Istanbul had always gave me a strong feeling of consolation. What I was
consoling me from, or what I was being consoled about, I can't really say this, but it made me feel
better to walk endlessly in this street. Can I read a quote from Emerson, she's one of our founding
cultural fathers, and asks you if this corresponds to your experience of becoming a writer. He writes,
"I shun mother, father, wife, and brother when my genius calls me." I advise don't do it too much,
they get offended after my books, every age book for me is not only writing the book,
publishing the book, but also trying to count on all these angry voices who are upset because I
wrote about them. Being an artist is, in fact, being honest first to yourself, then to your people who
are close to you, and people do not realize, unfortunately, that their lives are not only
their lives, but also if they're friendly or close to me, also happen to be a part of my life,
and I have the right to talk about these things. I was always troubled by the reaction, my readers,
my acquaintances, people who object to my representation of them, but it is inevitable. But then
there's also the social side that, yes, by temperament, I'm a solitary person, especially in my youth,
if I used, I did not go to parties, I did not go to, I did not join the crowds, I did not join
political meetings, if I did not believe in general causes because perhaps because
crowds made me nervous, even I'm going to a party, I upset me for more than two days, that I
saw I didn't want to go to parties because someone says something there or there's something
happens, and then the imagery stays with me while in the early mornings, or when I work, I want
to my mind to be away from local disturbances, away from the pititall, or I would say, away from
local disturbances, away from the things that may upset me. And this was drawing from the crowd and
my mother's in the same passage from Emerson, he goes on to say, "To believe your own thought,
to believe that what is true for you in your own private heart is true for all men, that is genius."
Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense. Do you think as a novelist,
this is a...
Yes, I agree, this is a so eye-opening observation, which I haven't read before I confess,
is that all art is based on, especially literature. My conviction is that all literature
is based on open or hidden belief in the fact that all human beings are alike. There is an almost
resource like optimism in that, that once you go in yourself, explore the secret ones,
unconscious things, or give labor to a certain special thing for quite a long time,
such as to reach and intense relationship with yourself and discover something new,
literature is based on the simple optimistic belief that that something new about the human heart
that you have discovered about yourself will be enjoyed, understood by others, because humanity
is more or less like the same. A person who insistently locks himself in a room and writes endlessly
and most writers I like that, in the end, it imagines that other hearts will be moved by
observations or the things that he analyzes or explodes, because other beings are like that.
One last, so we can wrap it up, I know that you have other commitments, or on that,
so we appreciate your being here. There's a previous generation of Turkish writers that you
found that they had compromised their literature under, because of political worries,
because of political worries, because they felt that they had to speak for the nation or speak for
the community, not in terms of the process that you've just described.
Can I ask, who are those writers that you have in mind?
This is the tough question. I don't know what I'm saying, but it's nice in him.
He commit, for example, is the Turkish poet who...
Look, I have felt that so many authors just to be to serve a country, to serve a cause and
ideology, to be a part of a community that was politically powerful, joins the community, so to speak,
and especially in literature when they want to make also roads outspokenly
political, it's not being outspoken, that's problematic here. It's being committed to
an program that everyone agrees about, and politics in literature have felt, always felt
destroys the quality of the work. When I started writing in Turkey 34 years ago,
examples of the previous generation had thought not to go towards politics. My examples were
say, "Tabaku, Káilvino, "prussed, while, very examples were more gorky, Steinbeck,
or Hemingway, more realistic and flat writers." I thought that I would pursue my way,
because I was also looking for combining the old strange, even baroque, Ottoman poetry,
Islamic, Sufi allegories to my writing, and this I realize I can only do if I don't pay too much
attention to satisfying the demands of the community, not to pay attention to make social,
commentary side of literature, which I always want to evade.
Well, finally, I should tell our listeners that you're working on a novel, which I believe is a
love story. I'm finishing a novel, which probably will be published soon in Turkey, and probably
will be published here in the United States, in New York, in two years or one and a half years,
with the title Museum of Innocence, which chronicles, Istanbul men's upper middle class men's
infatuation, obsessive love to a twice removed cousin who is poor. So it's a sort of a long
panorama of the life of the high society in Istanbul, between 1975 in the last 25 years,
and also a fresco of the city life in the last quarter of 20th century. We will see.
We look forward to that. Thank you for coming on the program. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Bye.
Well, after all the tests are in the box room, and the clouds are on your to live.
You can happen.
You can't do it.
With the rest there's bread, the wind whispers clearly
A broom is truly squeaky of the wholesing pieces of yesterday's life
Somewhere, a queen is sweetly
Somewhere, a king has no way
And the wind it cries, very
(a fanboy music)
(music)
Yeah!
The traffic lights they turned blow tomorrow and shine the yimp and air fell on my beard.
Tiny island states down the street cause the life that lives in the street and the wind streams vary.
The wind never remember the name it has blown in the past and with the scratch it's the
only two menace wisdom and Christmas no this will be the last and the wind cries merry.
[Music]
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