Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernised district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write.
His first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later in 1982. The novel is the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nisantasi, Pamuk's own home district. The novel was awarded both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. The White Castle (1985) about the frictions and friendship between a Venetian slave and an Ottoman scholar was published in English and many other languages from 1990 onwards, bringing Pamuk his first international fame. The same year Pamuk went to America, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York from 1985 to 1988. It was there that he wrote most of his novel The Black Book, in which the streets, past, chemistry and texture of Istanbul are described through the story of a lawyer seeking his missing wife. This novel was published in Turkey in 1990, and the French translation won the Prix France Culture. The Black Book enlarged Pamuk's fame both in Turkey and internationally as an author at once popular and experimental, and able to write about past and present with the same intensity. In 1991 Pamuk's daughter Rüya was born. That year saw the production of a film Hidden Face, whose script by Pamuk was based on a one-page story in The Black Book.
His novel The New Life, about young university students influenced by a mysterious book, was published in Turkey in 1994 and became one of the most widely read books in Turkish literature. My Name Is Red, about Ottoman and Persian artists and their ways of seeing and portraying the non-western world, told through a love story and family story, was published in 1998. This novel won the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger, the Italian Grinzane Cavour (2002) and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award (2003). From the mid-1990s Pamuk took a critical stance towards the Turkish state in articles about human rights and freedom of thought, although he took little interest in politics. Snow, which he describes as “my first and last political novel” was published in 2002. In this book set in the small city of Kars in northeastern Turkey he experimented with a new type of “political novel”, telling the story of violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. Snow was selected as one of the best 100 books of 2004 by The New York Times. In 1999 a selection of his articles on literature and culture written for newspapers and magazines in Turkey and abroad, together with a selection of writings from his private notebooks, was published under the title Other Colours. Pamuk's most recent book, Istanbul, is a poetical work that is hard to classify, combining the author's early memoirs up to the age of 22, and an essay about the city of Istanbul, illustrated with photographs from his own album, and pictures by western painters and Turkish photographers.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.
“¿Qué es la honestidad la mayor parte de las veces sino miedo?”
“Porque nada puede ser tan sorprendente como la vida. Excepto la escritura. Excepto la escritura. Si, por supuesto, excepto la escritura, el único consuelo”
“... en el país de los infieles francos todos los perros tienen dueño. Al parecer los pasean por las calles arrastrándolos con cadenas al cuello como si fueran los más miserables esclavos. Dicen que además introducen a esos pobres perros a sus casas y que incluso los meten en sus camas. ... No son cosas que los francos puedan comprender el que los perros paseemos en manadas y gavillas por la calles de nuestro Estambul...”
“Nadie confía en nadie, todo el mundo espera alguna bajeza del prójimo.”
“...noté el frío de la nieve y recordé que no era ni un viejo ni un niño: en la piel sentía gozosamente el mundo.”
“Una carta no dice lo que quiere decir sólo con lo que está escrito. Las cartas, como los libros, se leen también oliéndolas, tocándolas, manoseándolas.”
“Qué extraños lectores son ustedes, qué extraño país es este.”
“En mi opinión, un marido inteligente debe olvidar a todos los hombres que le dan recuerdos para su mujer. ”
“Creíamos saber mucho, pero no sabíamos nada. ”
“Cualquier cosa que me recuerde a ti, me entristece tanto que no lo puedo soportar.”
“...no creo que podamos vivir sin imitar a otros, sin querer ser otros.”
“¡Ninguna vida se parece a otra!... Cada historia es una historia precisamente porque no existe otra igual.”
“...los que dicen que las personas son creadas de dos en dos se equivocan. Nadie se parece a nadie. ”
“Lee poco pero con gusto, parecerás más leído que el que lo hace mucho pero aburrido. ”
“Mi ignorancia hacía mi victoria aún más insoportable, pero mi modestia y mi vergüenza aliviaban mis culpas. ”
“...no cambiaría nada saber que la escritura, que cualquier texto, no trata de la vida sino del sueño, por el mero hecho de ser escritura.”
“Por aquellos años su padre comprendía que un pueblo podía cambiar su "modo de vida", su historia, su tecnología, su cultura, su arte y su literatura, pero no le concedía la menor posibilidad de que cambiara sus gestos.”
“The sight of snow made her think how beautiful and short life is and how, in spite of all their enmities, people have so very much in common; measured against eternity and the greatness of creation, the world in which they lived was narrow. That's why snow drew people together. It was as if snow cast a veil over hatreds, greed, and wrath and made everyone feel close to one another.”
“Painting taught literature to describe.”
“Solo después de casarse descubrió Galip que en la vida de aquella persona anónima a la que las estadísticas y los encasillamientos burocráticos llaman "ama de casa" (aquella mujer con detergente e hijos que Galip jamás había podido relacionar con Rüya) existía una región así de secreta, así de misteriosa y así de resbaladiza.”
“Encontrarse solo con los rastros en lugar de con los recuerdos en sí se parece a mirar con lágrimas en los ojos la huella que ha dejado en un sillón vuestra amante después de abandonaros para no volver más. ”
“Bueno, nos hemos bajado del caballo y nos montamos en el burro. ¡Que sea para bien!”
“Cuando el jardín de la memoria comienza a secarse -le había dicho Celâl una de aquellas noches-, uno tiembla con amor por los últimos árboles y rosales que le quedan. Los riego y los acaricio de la mañana a la noche para que no se sequen: ¡recuerdo, recuerdo que no quiero olvidar! ”
“En realidad nadie sabe que está viviendo el momento más feliz de su vida mientras lo vive.”
“Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil. ”
“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. ”
“What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.”
“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”
“My unhappiness protects me from life.”
“It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she's going to fall in love with him.”
“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?”
“Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.”
“What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?'Be yourself,' said Ipek.”
“I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.”
“There are two kind of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girls eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man -- and I am in this category -- can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.”
“this, then, is how we first came across the fearsome secret history of turkey's mannequins.”
“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”
“Os romances nunca serão totalmente imaginários nem totalmente reais. Ler um romance é confrontar-se tanto com a imaginação do autor quanto com o mundo real cuja superfície arranhamos com uma curiosidade tão inquieta. Quando nos refugiamos num canto, nos deitamos numa cama, nos estendemos num divã com um romance nas mãos, nossa imaginação passa a trafegar o tempo entre o mundo daquele romance e o mundo no qual ainda vivemos. O romance em nossas mãos pode nos levar a um outro mundo onde nunca estivemos, que nunca vimos ou de que nunca tivemos notícia. Ou pode nos levar até as profundezas ocultas de um personagem que, na superfície, parece semelhante às pessoas que conhecemos melhor. Estou chamando atenção para cada uma dessas possibilidades isoladas porque há uma visão que acalento de tempos em tempos que abarca os dois extremos. Às vezes tento conjurar, um a um, uma multidão de leitores recolhidos num canto e aninhados em suas poltronas com um romance nas mãos; e também tento imaginar a geografia de sua vida cotidiana. E então, diante dos meus olhos, milhares, dezenas de milhares de leitores vão tomando forma, distribuídos por todas as ruas da cidade, enquanto eles lêem, sonham os sonhos do autor, imaginam a existência dos seus heróis e vêem o seu mundo. E então, agora, esses leitores, como o próprio autor, acabam tentando imaginar o outro; eles também se põem no lugar de outra pessoa. E são esses os momentos em que sentimos a presença da humanidade, da compaixão, da tolerância, da piedade e do amor no nosso coração: porque a grande literatura não se dirige à nossa capacidade de julgamento, e sim à nossa capacidade de nos colocarmos no lugar do outro.”
“Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with İpek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread.”
“I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”
“For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life.”
“Todas las civilizaciones, como la gente que hay en los cementerios, son mortales. Y nosotros sabemos, como el hecho de que vamos a morir, que las civilizaciones que han llegado a su término no volverán nunca más.”
“... recuerdo que lo que hace especial a una ciudad no son solo su topografía ni las apariencias concretas de edificios y personas, la mayor parte de las veces creadas a partir de casualidades, sino los recuerdos que ha ido reuniendo la gente que, como yo, ha vivido cincuenta años en las mismas calles, las letras, los colores, las imágenes y la consistencia de las casualidades ocultas o expresas, que es lo que mantiene todo unido.”
“Más interesante era verme la nuca, algo que todavía me provoca un escalofrío haciéndome pensar que mi cuerpo es en realidad un extraño que hace años que llevo encima.”
“La diferencia entre el hombre al que le gusta soñar continuamente que es Napoleón y al hombre que se cree Napoléon es la diferencia que hay entre el soñador dichoso y el esquizofrénico desdichado.”
“No era en absoluto de esos padres que riñen, prohíben y castigan. Especialmente en los primeros años de mi infancia, cuando salía por ahí y jugaba con él, sentía que el mundo era un lugar divertido al que el hombre venía para ser feliz.”
“Y, al igual que ocurre con nuestras vidas, la mayor parte de las veces es por otros por quienes nos enteramos del significado de la ciudad en la que vivimos.”
“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. ”
“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.”
“Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than "seeing the world with words."From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time. ”