Chapter 23 "Istanbul" Nahwal in Istanbul

Merlin's painting depicts the hill where I have lived all my life, but before any buildings were situated.Gazing at the edge of Merlin's landscape at Yeledez, Machka, or Tesvechye, at the poplars, plane trees, and vegetable gardens, I imagine what the Istanbulites of his day would have done if they had seen their paradise beyond recognition The feeling was as painful as I was when I saw the gardens, the crumbling walls and arches, the blackened remains of the burnt mansion.To discover that the place where we grew up - the center of our lives, the starting point of everything we do - didn't really exist a hundred years ago shudder.

Somewhere in the Istanbul chapter of Nerval's "Journey to the Orient" gave me a similar feeling.The French poet came to Istanbul in 1843, equivalent to half a century after Merlin's painting. In his book, he recalled walking from the Galata Sufi Monk Church (renamed Tunel in fifty years) to the present tower. The district of Kesim - a hundred and five years later, I took my mother's hand and walked the same way.The area is known today as Beyoglu, and its main avenue (renamed Independence Avenue after the founding of the Republic) was called Pera Avenue in 1843, much as it is today.Nerval describes the boulevards that begin at the temple as Paris: fashion, laundries, jewelers, glittering windows, confectionary shops, English and French restaurants, cafés, embassies.But in what the poet refers to as the French hospital (today the French cultural center), the city came to a shocking, bewildering and (for me) frightening end.Because in Naval's book, today's Taksim Square—the center of my life, the largest square in the city, and I have lived around it all my life—is described as a wilderness, where horse-drawn carts and meatballs are sold. , Watermelon and fish vendors are mixed together.He spoke of cemeteries scattered among faraway fields—cemeteries that disappeared a hundred years later—but I always remember a sentence from Nerval about what I’ve known all my life to be a sprawl of old apartment buildings. Those "fields": "A boundless prairie shaded by pines and nut trees."

Nahwal came to Istanbul when he was thirty-five.Two years earlier, he had suffered the first bout of depression that would lead to his hanging twelve years later, during which he had spent time in several psychiatric institutions.Six months before his departure, his unrequited love for the true love of his life, the actor Ke Lun, passed away.The "Journey to the Orient" which took him from Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt to Cyprus, Rhodes, Ismail and Istanbul marked these sorrows, and the rapid conversion of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Hugo and others to the French An oriental exotic dream of great tradition.Like many writers before him, he wishes to speak of the Orient, and since French literary culture associates Nerval with melancholy, it might seem that he will find melancholy in Istanbul.

But when Nerval came to Istanbul in 1843, he was not concerned with his own sorrow, but with things that helped him forget it.In a letter to his father, he vowed that the madness that struck him two years ago would never return and that it would "help me to prove to everyone that I was only a victim of a single incident".He also said hopefully that his health was excellent.We can imagine a time when Istanbul was not affected by defeat, poverty, and the shame of being seen as weak by the West, and therefore had not yet shown its melancholy face to the poet.Don't forget that the city was darkened only after the rout.At certain points in his travelogues, Nerval recounts seeing what he called in his famous poem "the black sun of sorrow" in the East, for example on the banks of the Nile.But in bustling, exotic Istanbul in 1843, he was a reporter in a hurry looking for a good story.

He came to the city during Ramadan.To him, it was like attending a carnival in Venice (indeed, he described Ramadan as a combination of "fasting" and "carnival").On the night of Ramadan, Nahwal went to watch the Karagoz shadow puppetry, enjoyed the city scenery with bright lights, and listened to stories told by readers in cafes.The landscape he described would inspire many Western travelers to follow in his footsteps.These sights, though lost in impoverished, westernized, technologically modernized Istanbul, have left a deep impression on many Istanbul writers, who have capitalized on the "ancient Ramadan night".The image of Istanbul hidden in the literature I read with nostalgia as a child owes much to the exoticism first conceived by Nerval and then perpetuated by travel writers influenced by him.Despite making fun of the British writer who came to Istanbul for three days, saw all the sights, and then immediately wrote the book, Nahwal still did not forget to enjoy the Sufi whirling dance and watch the sultan leave the palace from a distance (Nerhwal is touching Abdul Mejid, who claims to have been face to face with him), took long walks in the cemetery, pondering Turkish dress, customs and rituals.

Nerval in the thrilling "Aurelia, or Life and Dreams" - a work he likened to Dante's "New Life" and inspired by the surrealism of Breton, Éluard and Artau. Appreciation by Christians - in which he confessed that after being rejected by the woman he loved, he concluded that life was meaningless and could only pursue "vulgar pastimes", and the emptiness he found was traveling the world and looking at the costumes of various countries With strange customs.Knowing that his descriptions of customs, landscapes, oriental women were as crude as his reporting on the nights of Ramadan, Nairwal, in order to speed up Journey to the Orient - as many writers do when they feel their stories are weakening —he added to his own fictional saga. (Tampina, in a long essay on urban seasons, co-authored with his melancholic companions Yahya and Hisar, says that research was conducted to figure out which of these stories were fiction and which truly belonged to the Ottoman era. Extensive research.) These fictional stories clearly demonstrate that Nahwal was able to portray a hypothetical Istanbul in depth, providing an Arabian Nights-esque stylistic basis.In fact, whenever a scene feels lifeless, Nerval reminds readers that the city is “like the Arabian Nights.”Immediately after explaining why he "felt it unnecessary to discuss palaces, mosques, and bathhouses, of which so many have spoken," he made a statement that would be echoed a century later by writers such as Yahaya and Tampina, and became The cliché that Western travelers used to say afterwards: "Istanbul has the most beautiful scenery in the world. It is like a theater, and it is best viewed from the auditorium, avoiding the poor and dirty neighborhoods that flank the stage." Eighty years later, The image of the city created by Yahya and Tempina resonates with the people of Istanbul - which can only be done by combining the beauty of the scenery with the poverty of the "side of the stage" - they are sure

Thinking of Nerval.But if you want to know what these two great writers (both admired Nehwal) discovered, discussed, and then created, and if you want to see how the generation of Istanbul writers after them simplified and generalized what they created, read What their ideas convey is not so much the beauty of the city, but rather the sadness they feel about the decline of the city. We have to look at the works of another writer who came to Istanbul after Naval.