My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red

Orhan Pamuk

I do, however, know this: when you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories

As I stare at people's faces, I realize that many of them believe they're innocent because they haven't yet had the opportunity to snuff out a life. It's hard to believe that most men are more moral or better than me simply on account of some minor twist of fate.

Over time, jealousy becomes an element as indispensable as paint in the life of the master artist

This picture by the great master Bihzad, as much as the tale itself, addresses a grave fear I've carried within me for years: the horror of waking in the black of the night to realize there's a stranger making faint sounds as he creeps about the blackness of the room! Imagine that intruder wields a dagger in one hand as he strangles you with the other. Every detail, the finely wrought wall, window and frame ornamentation, the curves and circular designs in the red rug, the color of the silent scream emanating from your clamped throat and the yellow and purple flowers embroidered with incredible finesse and vigor on the magnificent quilt upon which the bare and vile foot of your murderer mercilessly steps as he ends your life, all of these details serve the same purpose: while augmenting the beauty of the painting, they remind you just how exquisite are the room in which you'll soon die and the world you'll soon leave. The indifference of the painting's beauty and of the world to your death, the fact of your being totally alone in death despite the presence of your wife, this is the inescapable meaning that strikes you.

For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home

Since I had in my child-like naïveté, no doubt that my love would be reciprocated. I grew exceedingly assured and came to regard the world as a good place.

As a result, I know nothing about the page I've fallen from. My request is that you look at me and ask: "were you perhaps meant to provide shade for Mejnun disguised as a shepherd as he visited Leyla in her tent?" Or "Were you meant to fade into the night, representing the darkness in the soul of a wretched and hopelesd man?" How I would've wanted to compliment the happiness of two lovers who fled from the whole world, traversing oceans to find slace on an island rich with birds and fruit! I would've wanted to shade Alexander during the final moments of his life on his campaign to conquer Hindustan as he died from a persistence nosebleed brought on by sunstroke. Or was I meant to symbolize the strength and wisdom of a father offering advice on love and life to his son? Ah, to which story was I meant to add meaning and grace?

I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning

No matter how talented a miniaturist might be, it is time that makes a picture "perfect"

When your face appeared to me at the window like divine light, I considered it nothing but an act of God's grace

Like those who know how to read a picture, one should know how to read a dream.

I reminded him that death was unique, just like the portraits of infidels I had seen hanging in Venetian palazzos; all of them desperately yearned to be rendered distinctly. "They want to be so distinct and different, and they want this with such passion that," I said, "look, look into the eyes of Death. See how men don't fear Death, but rather the violence implicit in the desire to be one-of-a-kind, unique and exceptional. Look at this illustration and write an account of it. Give voice to Death. Here's paper and pen. I shall give what you write to the calligrapher straightaway

"After beholding the portraits of the Venetian masters, we realize with horror," said my father, "that, in painting, eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face, always the same, but must be like our own eyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well. Lips can no longer be a crack in the middle of faces flat as paper, but must be nodes of expression - each a different shade of red - fully expressing our joy, sorrows and spirits with their slightest contraction or relaxation. Our noses can no longer be a kind of wall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments with a form unique to each of us"

After he attained the perfection of the old masters by working his entire life, the great master Bihzad blinded himself to avoid tainting his painting with the desires of any other workshop or shah.

Never once taking my eyes off the mirror, with the practiced movements of a woman applying kohl to her eyelids, my hand found the needle on its own. Without hesitation, as if making a hole at the end of an ostrich egg soon to be embellished, I bravely, calmly and firmly pressed the needle into the pupil of my right eye. My innards sank, not because I felt what I was doing, but because I saw what I was doing. I pushed the needle into my eye to the depth of a quarter the length of a finger, then removed it.
In the couplet worked into the frame of the mirror, the poet had wished the observer eternal beauty and wisdom - and eternal life to the mirror itself.
Smiling. I did the same to my other eye.
For a long while I didn't move. I stared at the world - at everything. As I'd surmised, the colors of the world did not darken, but seemed to bleed ever so gently into one another.

When the great masters of old were forced to adopt the styles of victors and imitate their miniaturists, they persevered their honor by using a needle to heroically bring on the blindness that the labors of painting would've caused in time. Yes, before the pureness of God's darkness fell over their eyes like a divine reward, they'd stare at a masterpiece ceaselessly for hours or even days, and because they stubbornly stared out of bowed heads, the meaning and world of those pictures -spotted with blood dripping from their eyes - would take the place of all the evil they suffered, and as their eyes ever so slowly clouded over they'd approach blindness in peace

It was this ivory handled sword which always provided me with inner peace and balance during all those years I worked with the pen. Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.

It was mercilessly forgotten that we'd once looked upon our world quite differently.