Conversations with History - Orhan Pamuk

[Music] you you you welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our distinguished guest today is Orhan Pamuk who is the 206 Nobel laureate in literature he is the author of many novels including the White Castle the black book the new life my name is red snow and his new book is the Museum of innocence he is the author of several works of nonfiction Istanbul memories of a city and other colors essays and a story and here is his new book mr. Pumbaa to Berkeley it's a joy to be in Berkeley looking back how do you think your parents shape your thinking about the world well my father was an egalitarian and libertarian person while our mother was I would say more conservative just like perhaps in Garcia Marquez novels where women were keeping been paying attention to continue to talk to household well the father was a bit venturing and going out and doing strange things I had a family like that and so my father gave me did not carry on what tradition would teach you in Turkey that that you have to be respectful to your elders that you have to respect religious and military authorities that you have to obey the authority he was not a father like that but my mother was somehow like that so I had the two sides of things and then also from my father I have learned that that it's not the great saints or soldiers or partials or the Statesman that are important but writers say say I am what he had seen in Paris when in streets of Paris he had he wanted to be a poet himself so these were the things that I that I've learned from their family from them from the mother that you have to be like others in fact she named me Orhan because according to her Orhan was the second ottoman sultan who not a very distinguished person who did not show off who didn't he was a modest one of the most modest Ottoman Sultans my father was in lived in distinction art culture how they do these things in Europe and that's how they talk about this thing and your mother was worried about you becoming an artist it seems that she thought it was a practical animal mother's very of course because they think that you are not going to make money which she was right I kept it at the beginning of course and then my father was more called understanding but they were both worried that that man I decided to as I wrote in my not in in my autobiographical Istanbul and I decided to quit studying architecture and quit painting and it was I quit painting I wanted to be a painter between the age of 7 and 22 but suddenly quit and began writing novels there and when I quit studying architecture they were buried because they thought that I may end up a loser and as a writer in Turkey you are and were presented with some dilemmas about what would be the nature of your art when you ultimately became a novelist and in reading some of your essays you were very much influenced by the example of joy story FC I gather and the the insights that he derived in coming to terms with his own nationality and what the West had to offer I think this that in non-western world where there is of course an anxiety about too much being too much influenced by West's modernization especially in countries like Japan Russia where modern or Ottoman Empire and Turkey where modernization comes from the ruling elites not from economy or from civil society there is a resistance to signs and symbols of 2s2 an modernization because it's also a class struggle going on there is a strong attempt of modernization from above in both Japan Russia and Turkey and there is a resistance to it Dostoyevsky's attitude of love and hate of West is a typical thing in Japan more or less the same thing the famous writer I admire the tiny sake in his youth was a great admirer of anything that came from the United States especially not from Europe he was he was also influenced by Baudelaire then in his Middle Ages and after late in life he was also turned turned back to tradition we may say the same thing about das tsk but these sentiments should not be understood as one day he is working for the party aid the other day next day is working for the party be both sentiments are at the same heart at the or simultaneously and struggling and making these great writers forming these great writers identities in your book which I will show Istanbul memories and the city an extraordinary book which is a saying you're at the story of your early years the story of your city and intertwine with beautiful photographs you talk about for Turkish writers who were very important to you and and tell us what you got from them because that won one sense is that for you they were as important because they showed you what could be very important in your culture even though you were surrounded by the ruins of that culture at the heart of my Istanbul book the idea is the concept of melancholy or Turkish melancholy I which I Hyun and I make a distinction between traditional Western melancholy which makes you more individual while I describe the Turkish vision a Turkish melancholy as something communal suggesting that this is related to the decline of the Ottoman Empire the overabundance of the ruins of the architectural ruins of the Ottoman modernity and the fact that we were all living in 1950s 40s 60s at the edge of Europe but attend 10 times less rich and with an idea that Turkey will not reach the modernity and economical affluence that Europe and Western civilization civilization have this lend us a sort and sort of a feeling that we can associate what the new Japanese has a certain ethics of fail nobility of failure I also this whole feeling and that that we usually I ascribe Ottoman ruins ethically I also is a sort of a derivative of Turkish Sufism but all related economically to the poverty of and poverty and sense of loss of the country this melancholy I associated with for writers these writers were not social realists nor concern nor conservatives in their reactionary right-wing sense but they had one food in the past Ottoman past they enjoyed it and one food and realized that the glorious will say the best fruits of European literature is in an imminent inevitable and attractive and they were in the event involved and refined their own voices to a certain melancholy I have learned from them that the the contradiction between say Islam or tradition and Europe or modernity is not a contradiction you can have these things in your heart or in your mind and in fact the them that difference between them the electricity between these two sources may inspire you may invoke make make made well make you different so is it is it fair to say and I think this is what I got out of Istanbul that this melancholy the setting of ruins to which you could always retreat in a walk but in the end you would go back to the study as you became a writer and with words convey what you had sensed in the city but also shape a world that was your own so it seems that the setting what a writer does but on the other hand having gone through your father's library at some time or another as you write about library I mean yeah that is she was reading French and English and was buying books from stumbles international book shops and and also he was in 50s and 60s many many times went through Paris and had all the Galle my books so forth and so on also um that library prepared also the way he treated books the authenticity of the writer that the writers writers are that in a writer's life is much more interesting than a businessman or a rich or a religious person or whatever a professor is life this I have learned from my father father and then I have a natural inclination to be solitary and be creative first I wanted to be a painter then switch to writing in your noble essay you use the story of your father suitcase his writings which he gave you in a suitcase toward the end of his life and and there's a sentence I want to read I already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father suitcase and put it away you're going through his writings the sense of being marooned in the provinces and the fear that I locked authenticity so so these were two central problems which you addressed in the way this was also of course related to the fact that Turkey was we felt that in 50s and 60s was essentially a provincial place although we were geographically on Europe and Istanbul why because I am like majority of humanity actually we felt out of history history was being made in London Paris in New York and in fact this is the common sentiment I share with 90% of humanity I think that humanity does not have a sense of we are making history we are provincials we are imitating the center these feelings are heavily common in non-western world then you have to calm down these resentments angers you feel with respect to tradition you're different underline your difference but and and one part of your spirit knows that this is not actually what you want modern the attractions of modernity westernization are always had always double edged double side and these are issues I address on almost all of my novels that I'd say that I love these subjects perhaps because also Turkey is culturally made up of these problems the drama now between traditional societies and modernity is more or less is being played in Turkish spirit for quite a long time USA in your book of essays you're writing on the Charterhouse of Parma by Stan though and you say the source of my happiness lay not in the events themselves that are described in the book but in the spiritual and emotional responses they provoked so you're talking about yourself too aren't you that that's what you're trying to do in your writing reading novels teachers those of us saying in 1950s 60s 70s that in fact the that life is not a life is not something given and decided by fate but you make choices in life one is free that it's not the community but your own heart you have to listen art of the novel or novels says stand out not wrote them is based on individuals choices in an end dramatization of these choices when you read a novel and if you come from a traditional society one part of you you begin to begin to learn the joys of living outside of the community that's what I learned from novels and that's what that's the sentiment I defer there let's talk now about your new novel the Museum of innocence and let me show it to our audience again talk about the concept that is behind this novel the idea of a Museum of innocence wait yeah please go ahead Museum of innocence is a love novel in the popular sense that that a character tells his love story that spans some thirty years that takes place in Istanbul and an upper-class high society man kemmal falls in love with his twice removed cousin so forth and so on and the story goes we're not going to sell it but one part of the story is that for this or that reason our character collects the things that they they were lovers he and his beloved share and also the idea of the museum slowly undeveloped and unfold and developed and there are so many novels and museums have so many things in common that first museum novels have also archival qualities preserving strength that museums have are gestures the way we talk our language what we see what we relate all these are transit things that change from language to what we see the chemistry of the cities our daily lives the way we behave with how we comic with advertisements objects brands things and history they are all preserved in the normals novels are based on daily life observations as almost cathedrals made from small daily life observation units and they preserve them and it's along with the language the way we are manner of speaking disorder and I find lots of parallels between novels and museums this is one subject and the other subject is that my character in the novel pays a lot of attention to his beloved and puts together things that remind him of her and in the end he begins to make a museum that's also referring to the title of the book Museum of innocence and and and this in the love affair you are through this this extraordinary detail of the the evolution of the affair are really telling us something about the human condition about the pain that love or suffer and so these these mementos from the relationship are you say I believe somewhere in the book are like real museums which often create take objects collect them to help us remember the pain but also forget the pain yes Museum of innocence is a love novel or a novel of love whatever we call it but it does not put love on a pedestal it does not like most love stories say oh what a sweet thing law is I'm not saying that my aim is not to do that my name is like say Montaigne or like a detached observer pay attention to what happens to us when we fall in love sp this is the novel is written from a male's point of view what happens to a men if he falls in now what is love pain what is equating what is suffering what is how hoping what is waiting for the telephone to ring so forth and so on all aspects of long I without trying to sweeten it without sugar icing it try to explore analyze of course with humor and see true and with that energy represent a form represent a culture a minyan and and and in fact make a whole panorama of Stumm who culture between 1975 and at the end of 20th century my character in the book also it's just like an anthropologist collecting objects from a lion cultures is collecting things of his beloved and then telling his story to the attentive leaders through these objects I also compare a lover's attention a lovers attention to his beloved this I compared to a writer's attention to detail we here we watch the narrative voice and and it has writerly qualities the lovers patient lovers refines observation observations have in fact come something common with writers attempt to embrace the little details and with the true with the little details the whole world at one point in the novel you say that he our hero was becoming like the woman he loved that there was he he was coming to understand her through his identification with her of course I am in loves in in love pain I think that is at both an anger resentment and fury that the beloved does not understand us and in fact an ultra attention and identification with the beloved that in fact following every little single single gesture of her because we perhaps like soldiers or maneuvering to get her back or maneuvering to win her heart as we do this we more and more pay attention like a novelist all her all the gestures all the movement silences and this it lends us both a certain wisdom and maturity but also an understanding that this person is human as we are so we begin to identify with our beloved of course well this is one part of the lover the other part of the library is that there is anger resentment for not being understood for not getting for and also unrequited love is about identification with the below it and feeling angry to her that Museum of innocence is perhaps about this there are two institutions or two to two groups that come under criticism in the way you portray them one is the the middle class which at an engagement party as a hero interacts with his friends in the circle you see the middle class of Turkey as during this period is overly imitative of over drawn to the attractions of the West buying appliances just to have them which break which they can't fix talk a little about that because your criticism is right very compelling him I am observing all these details you may call them criticism but I'm not passing the moral judgment on them this is how life is this is how life is in non-western world that I don't think is different in Western world so this is how human beings behave as I get older I don't pass I don't criticize even passenger model judgment on human-beings I try to understand the whole system yes as you have said the upper classes office high society of Istanbul in 1950s 60s and I would think that all non-western worlds ruling elite is imitative of the Western civilization because that legitimizes their power they derive the signs and symbols of their power from the Western civilization this is such a strong trend that for me pinning it down is more important than passing passing cultural and ethical judgment my point is I my point is that this is how it is I'd rather not make all upper classes or shallow or this or that I'm not interested in that I want to see how it is now the other institution that you spend a lot of time on is the movie industry yes and yeah first when I married in 1982 my first book was published but I was not much making money and I wrote for Turkish movie industry at film scripts which was not even shot then some ten years later I wrote a script which was shot and I had a sense of what it was and of course being a Turkish boy and watching in summer garden cinemas all these melodramas also later in television had taught me what I taught me the fact that medieval Islamic romances and we may include also of course medieval with all romances Islamic all Christian has something very common where with the melodramatic Bollywood or Turkish Bollywood or Hollywood relationship and melodrama the melodramas in my part of the world are based on traditional romances and love in this book and in those melodramas are based on you know based on the fact that the sexual taboos refreshin the fact that men and women cannot come together and negotiate their love talk about their love cannot there are not social places for men and women to meet to develop and they negotiate understand each of the so forth and so on this is one part of the frame in which my lover's behave well and and this sort of I would say love in repressed society mmm it gives lots of energy in the and in developing refinement in communication my lover's are communicating through glances looks silences by raising eyebrows double double me with language or sometimes even silences gestures and paying lots of attention to each other with the with silence also they are testing each other where there is called seriousness very old-fashioned their their endurance and they are in fact not enjoying life partly right like just like Jane Austen novels but preparing for marriage in this novel represents Istanbul life in 1970s but I think strongly think that life is not changed in lost non-western world love is a preparation for marriage and testing the authenticity endurance they can the character of the beloved or the would-be husband or mates wife or husband fan me and the novel is plays around with all these rituals expressions this culture or the culture even somehow refined and melodramatic culture melodramatic especially in movies and its representation of it in movies but also write my novel tries to look at this whole attitude and culture of love not condemning anyone not passing ethical judgments neither two characters nor to the situation's but trying to see all panoramas in that Museum of innocence has a fresco like quality it true that energy of that love it tries to represent the culture of Istanbul between 1975 till end of 20th century and and there are really two relationships here because our hero is engaged and then but most of the book is about this unrequited love affair that he has or the these two relationships really capture these two worlds right or is that I don't want to dramatize that the words are different I am I want to dramatize that the fact that at the heart of the perhaps and it's a tell it this whispering at the heart of the story lies the virginity taboo the taboo of virginity which we can tell this much about my brave characters break this cold venturing but then they suffer the consequences this is and through this I go into all the I try to go through the all the details of culture tongue-in-cheek I tell to my readers this is a turkey story but I know that this is more or less near 80% of humanity live love like this how long did it take you to write this it took me a lot a lot of time and some of this time was politics troubled but it was such a joy to write this novel which is full of humor with a heartfelt attention to detail and full of observation from my upper class middle class life in Istanbul that it was so sweet to write it that even in the bad worst political times I that Katmai kept me going if I wrote one or two pages from this novel in the morning I felt so happy that anything I could take and I gather you you essentially because there are many chapters in the book you essentially come up with a number of chapters and then work on them maybe the later chapter before you write an earlier yes I am I'm compared to other writers because I've read autobiographies biographies and I'll talk to my writers friends that I think I am relatively high relatively planned more compared to other writers of course you can't plan a novel from A to Z so many details come when you write but I am a planner and and then when I'm stuck I skip one chapter go to a chapter in fact sometimes I give myself a price of oh I want to write this chapter I've been waiting for this chapter to come now I skip to that chapter first write that because it's a joy to write that chapter I don't feel much what the American culture calls more writer's block because I think sometimes naively that I plan and when I'm stuck I just continue with another chapter and some is it as if it's a some sugar that I want to eat and make myself happy writing of this book was a joy to me perhaps most of it is based on what I have seen from inside from middle class upper middle class life in Istanbul that Co so-called high society and and in lower middle classes also included film industry clubs restaurants ventures Bosphorus with its many mansions the others on Bosphorus Istanbul residential apartment upper-class apartment buildings the culture the all culture this city is chemistry its pulse its how it this is this Museum of innocence is full of heartfelt details that I want to register this is the museum quality of the novels that you will live something a sentiment and observation and smell you want to preserve them and then there is an natural inclination put them in a novel talk about the levels of creativity obviously there's the creativity of the idea of the book but then what about the many creativity's where the character you decide for the character to do something and it just comes to you out of the blue well yeah that is creativity but that it should be limited there are inspirational say more moons when you write a novel just like a poem is if a poem is coming from out of the blue from God wherever it comes and there right there is also lots of and discipline reading the text through readers point of view and novel is a combination of inspiration and architecture while sometimes a poet a good poetry a little short story can be like something like an epiphany that you're inspired it's there you don't know how where it is while there is always a logical architectural planning composition almost like orchestral music in writing and forming novels that is also what I like well it sounds like architecture in painting which were my background your background prepared you in a way is I'm also a visual writing that some novelists are dramatical writers based on very small on verbal play and the bends and twists of the story that I like I also care about tens of twists of the story but I tell my stories through verbal visual detail always drawing pictures in reader's imagination that I think I owe that naturally I'm inclined I wanted to be a painter somehow frustrated or failed in it and suddenly switch to writing in my novels I feel that I'm always drawing pictures through words let's talk a little about politics politics in this novel or politics in the sense that this novel is slightly or suggesting the repression of woman and that the more you know and in this frame men love a girl a woman the more they destroy or suppress them what they want to possess them they're afraid of the freedom of the beloved here because she may be successful in love in life and venture on her own way decide about her there is in this culture and a desire to process the woman and put it in I put it in I put her in a house and then and a novel is also about that owning a woman controlling a woman and afraid of the most men in my part of the world are afraid of successful woman and I don't think this is only a non-western thing and this is I think an a universal thing let's talk about another aspect of politics namely Turkey's relation to the West that that's really not in here except in the end there there is a krip to Europe and is that attitude of toward the west this fat fish almost imitation the sense of powerlessness in the face of Western Civ is that attitude changing in Turkey is changing bug in some twenty years ago I would have in my youth I would have underlined that imitation part of it like my evil wrought mimic men but today I see the inevitability of it and I take pride in not paying too much attention to imitative part of non-western countries ruling elites but well but try to see through the inevitability of being a mimic man in the end Turkey was not was never a colony of the West and imitation or or we may put in different word aspiration to be westernized was not a damn nning thing as it's an post-colonial Society Turkey's westernization is a self-imposed thing and and to call it imitation is more dramatical where is full of more self-hatred why I see it and what is a more historical or historically inevitable thing and how important do you think for the world is it that turkey yet admission to the rpe because it was very important for our world but then it should not be the defendant geopolitically it's geopolitically important and that an Islamic country successfully unites with Europe and it is also good for Europe for develop developing just like the United States a more multicultural image of itself I believe in a Europe that is not based on Christianity and history but in a Galit a fraternity freedom and this these are the arguments defending for turkeys entry to European Union but they're also geopolitical arguments it should be based turkeys in entrance to Europe should be based on also ethical judgments to that we should able to say that we have a turkey has ground in Europe geographically part of Europe Turkish two football teams are playing in European Soccer Cup for 50 years and I used to follow them now if you take a draw a line and say that your Islam Turkey is out then it is against our understanding of egalitarianism I think it's not ethically true but then of course politics is not made with ethics ethics is always used in politics rather than I am strong motivation in politics your writings appeal to many different audiences and I'm curious as what do you you hope that the impact on a Turkish audience on a world audience and that the USA do you it is your belief in universalism to have the same reaction or you expect different reaction one writes a novel with so many motivations you still consider your leadership you consider what you want to tell you have you believe in a story also writing a novel is not only passage they're passing a message but also exploring a subject yourself in it in it though changing you want to identify with a person that's also an motivation so there is not one single motivation forming and novel I write I'm a slow writer I write a novel in five years and in those even in those five years I change investing and venturing and choosing a subject is also aesthetically choosing a sort of an imaginary world in which you want to live of course in this whole motivations there is who are the readers of the offices to book who are and when I began writing I was 35 years ago I was a typical national writer addressing the small Turkish leadership of course while on the other hand as we have talked about him now my father was saying you have to write for the world literature is world literature don't people shall die my father was in that sense very humanistic and lived in that literature should be addressed all humanity more or less now my my books are translated to 55 languages that I also now honestly I should say that I also think of the international readership but do I change my voice do i sugar eyes myself Duane right detail just to be interesting to the other countries who had reproduces again about Turkey expectations i ethically control my ask these questions to myself and control myself and try to keep my authenticity what i would love to write not only for the Turkish leader one can also sugar eyes yourself for the Turkish leader as well once there is a leader there is always in the writers heart to romanticize to address to be loved by the reader whether the Turkish or international but there is also our ethical size that says don't do it tell the truth or tell what your heart wants to tell that's more important what then what the reader wants to read one final question what what advice would you give to students who aspire to be a novelist what should they learn from your career especially after they read the book Istanbul I would give them the advice that don't pay attention for the old authors advice just to follow your own humors on that note mr. book and I want to thank you very much and I think if people who watch the show will want to go out and buy the book after listening to you talk let me show it again and I want to thank you very much it was a great honor to have you on our program thank you very much and thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history [Music]

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

Views: 53,267

Rating: 4.9294119 out of 5

Keywords: UC, Berkeley, ucberkeley, event, Conversations, With, History, Harry, Kreisler, Museum, of, Innocence, Istanbul, Orhan, Pamuk

Id: zy62YqDeE0c

Length: 41min 47sec (2507 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2009