Pamuk, Orhan; Maureen Freely (tr.);
Snow [Turkish: Kar, 2002]
Vintage 2005-07-19
ISBN 9780375706868 / 0375706860 Paperback, 480 pages $14.95
topics: | fiction | turkey | islam
Politics in a literary work are a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, a crude affair though one impossible to ignore. We are about to speak of very ugly matters. - lines from Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), quoted in the front matter. Orhan Pamuk, the narrator, appears as a character in Snow, addressed as "Orhan". The story of the poet Ka's visit to the border town of Kars unfolds in the narrative frame of being told by the novelist Orhan, four years after the incidents in the story. Occasionally the narrative will move forward, hinting at events to come in the author's special omniscient voice, thus keeping the suspense alive. At one point, the character Blue, who emerges as one of the strongest delineations in the book, is telling a story to Ka. Suddenly he steps off the story to describe how he feels at this point in the narrative, and then gradually Blue gets increasingly involved in the story. This seems to be a favourite ploy with Pamuk. Many incidents, such as the murder of the director of the Education institute, may have been modeled on real events. Two years after Snow, see murder of [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink|Hrant Drink]). At one level a very tightly-wrought thriller and page turner, at another a lyrical essay on contemporary and deep political issues, reflecting on the identity of the Turkish nation and the nature of religious fanaticism, written in a poetic tone, with snow falling gently on every page. .
Like those Chekhovian characters so laden with virtue that they never know success in life - full of melancholy. 4 Ka, you see, was one of those moralists who believe that the greatest joy comes from never oding anything for the sake of personal happiness. 23
There are those who despise us for writing the news before it happens; they fear us not because we are journalists but because we can predict the future. 29 [Ka finds a news item being printed, describing an event - a play to be staged later, in which he is given a role of reading out a poem called "Snow" which he has not written] the pleasure of the child who knows death is too far off to imagine. 34 If I were an author and Ka were a character in a book, I'd say, ‘Snow reminds Ka of God!' But I'm not sure it would be accurate. What brings me close to God is the silence of snow. [Ka to Muhtar Bey] -- "What did you do while you were in Frankfurt?" "I'd think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write... I masturbated" 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 have been happy too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic powers... Happiness and poetry can coexist only for the briefest time." Ipek and Ka, 129 "Unlike you, I am not afraid of life or my passions." Necip to Ka, 144 The word atheist comes from the Greek word athos. But that word doesn't refer to people who don't believe in God: it refers to the lonely ones, the people whom the gods have abandoned. 145 There was a familiar smell of wood in his room. 167
"Impatient men like you don't fall in love with a woman, they take possession of her." Kadife to Ka, 225 For Ka, who had not made love in four years, it felt like a miracle. So, even as he succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh, his conscious mind was reminding him what a beautiful moment this was. Just as with his first sexual experiences, it was not so much the act as the thought of making love that occupied him. For a while, this protected him from overexcitement. Details from the pornographic films to which he'd become addicted in Frankfurt rushed through his head, creating a poetic aura that seemed beyond logic. ... So it was not Ipek herself who was arousing Ka but pornographic imagery, and the miracle was less her presence than the fact that he could imagine his fantasy here in bed with him. 254 Her eyes were very sure of themselves: Ka worried that Ipek was not as fragile as he wanted her to be. This is why he pulled her hair to cause her pain, why he took such pleasure from her pain that he yanked her hair again, why he subjected her to a few other acts also inspired by the pornographic film still playing in his head, and why he treated her so roughly—to the accompaniment of an internal musical sound track as deep as it was primitive. When he saw that she enjoyed his being rough, his triumph gave way to brotherly affection. 249 [Vintage] In the meeting at the Hotel Asia, a Kurdish boy says, "I've always dreamed of the day when I'd have a chance to share my ideas with the world. . . . All I'd want them to print in that Frankfurt paper is this: We're not stupid, we're just poor! And we have a right to want to insist on this distinction" [p. 275]. Later, Orhan asks, "How much can we ever know about love and pain in another's 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?" [p. 275 vintage] I am very happy now. I have no desire to play the hero. Heroic dreams are the consolation of the unhappy. 316 You are the slave of the ruthless Europeans and like all true slaves, you don't even know you're a slave. You're just a typical little European from Nisantas: not only were you brought up to look down on your own traditions, you think you live on a higher plane than ordinary people. 331 It doesn't matter where you live -- here, or in your beloved Europe -- you'll always be imitating them; you'll always be grovelling. 357 People who seek only happiness never find it. Blue to Ka 357
[p.35-37, Vintage edition] from http://www.emrekorkmaz.com/photos-4/photos-5/photos-8/styled-6/index.html “Muhtar took over his father’s Arçelik and Aygaz appliance distribution,” said İpek, “and once we were settled here, I tried to get pregnant. When nothing happen, he started taking me to doctors in Erzurum and İstanbul; when I still couldn’t conceive, we separated. But instead of remarrying, Muhtar gave himself to religion.” “Why are so many people giving themselves to religion all of a sudden?” Ka asked. İpek didn’t answer, and for a while they just watched the black-and-white television bracketed to the wall. “Why is everyone in this city committing suicide?” asked Ka. “It’s not everyone who’s committing suicide, it’s just girls and women,” said İpek. “The men give themselves to religion, and the women kill themselves.” “Why?” İpek gave him a look that told him he would get nowhere by pressing her for quick answers; he was left feeling that he had overstepped. For a time, they were both silent. “I have to speak with Muhtar as part of my election coverage.” Ka said. İpek rose at once, walked over the cash register, and made a phone call. “He’s at the brace headquarters of the party until five,” she said, when she returned. “He’ll expect you then.” Another silence fell over between them, and Ka began to panic. If the roads had not been closed, he would have jumped on the next bus leaving Kars. He felt a pang of despair for this failing city and its forgotten people. Without intending it, he turned his head to look out the window. For a long time, he and İpek watched the snow listlessly, as if they had all the time in the universe and not a care in the world. Ka felt helpless. “Did you really come here for the election and the suicide girls?” İpek finally asked. “No,” said Ka. “I found out in İstanbul that you and Muhtar had separated. I came here to marry you.” İpek laughed as if Ka had just told a very good joke, but before long her face turned deep red. During the long silence that followed, he looked into İpek’s eyes and realized that she saw right through him. So you couldn’t even take the time to get to know me, her eyes told him. You couldn’t even spend a few minutes flirting with me. You’re so impatient that you couldn’t hide your intentions at all. Don’t try to pretend you came here because you always loved me and couldn’t get me out of your mind. You came here because you found out I was divorced and remembered how beautiful I was and thought I might be easier to approach now that I was stranded in Kars. By now Ka was so ashamed of his wish for happiness, and so determined to punish himself for his insolence, that he imagined İpek uttering the cruelest truth of all: The thing that bind us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life. But when she spoke, İpek said something very different from what he had imagined. “I always knew you had it in you to be a good poet,” İpek she said. “I’d like to congratulate you on your work.”
Margaret Atwood, New York Times, August 15, 2004 This seventh novel from the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times. In Turkey, Pamuk is the equivalent of rock star, guru, diagnostic specialist and political pundit: the Turkish public reads his novels as if taking its own pulse. He is also highly esteemed in Europe: his sixth novel, the lush and intriguing My Name Is Red, carried off the 2003 Impac Dublin Literary Award, adding to his long list of prizes. He deserves to be better known in North America, and no doubt he will be, as his fictions turn on the conflict between the forces of Westernization and those of the Islamists. Although it's set in the 1990's and was begun before Sept. 11, Snow is eerily prescient, both in its analyses of fundamentalist attitudes and in the nature of the repression and rage and conspiracies and violence it depicts. Like Pamuk's other novels, Snow is an in-depth tour of the divided, hopeful, desolate, mystifying Turkish soul. It's the story of Ka, a gloomy but appealing poet who hasn't written anything in years. But Ka is not his own narrator: by the time of the telling he has been assassinated, and his tale is pieced together by an old friend of his who just happens to be named Orhan. As the novel opens, Ka has been in political exile in Frankfurt, but has returned to Istanbul after 12 years for his mother's funeral. He's making his way to Kars, an impoverished city in Anatolia, just as a severe snowstorm begins. (Kar is snow in Turkish, so we have already been given an envelope inside an envelope inside an envelope.) Ka claims to be a journalist interested in the recent murder of the city's mayor and the suicides of a number of young girls forced by their schools to remove their headscarves, but this is only one of his motives. He also wants to see Ipek, a beautiful woman he'd known as a student. Divorced from a onetime friend of Ka's turned Islamist politician, she lives in the shabby Snow Palace Hotel, where Ka is staying. Cut off from escape by the snow, Ka wanders through a decaying city haunted by its glorious former selves: there are architectural remnants of the once vast Ottoman Empire; the grand Armenian church stands empty, testifying to the massacre of its worshipers; there are ghosts of Russian rulers and their lavish celebrations, and pictures of Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic and instigator of a ruthless modernization campaign, which included -- not incidentally -- a ban on headscarves. Ka's pose as a journalist allows Pamuk to put on display a wide variety of opinions. Those not living in the shrunken remains of former empires may find it hard to imagine the mix of resentful entitlement (We ought to be powerful!), shame (What did we do wrong?), blame (Whose fault is it?) and anxiety about identity (Who are we really?) that takes up a great deal of headroom in such places, and thus in Snow. Ka tries to find out more about the dead girls but encounters resistance: he's from a bourgeois background in cosmopolitan Istanbul, he's been in exile in the West, he has a snazzy overcoat. Believers accuse him of atheism; the secular government doesn't want him writing about the suicides -- a blot on its reputation -- so he's dogged by police spies; common people are suspicious of him. He's present in a pastry shop when a tiny fundamentalist gunman murders the director of the institute that has expelled the headscarf girls. He gets mixed up with his beloved's former husband, the two of them are arrested and he witnesses the brutality of the secularist regime. He manages to duck his shadowers long enough to meet with an Islamist extremist in hiding, the persuasive Blue, said to be behind the director's murder. And so he goes, floundering from encounter to encounter. In Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, the line between playful farce and gruesome tragedy is very fine. For instance, the town's newspaper publisher, Serdar Bey, prints an article describing Ka's public performance of his poem Snow. When Ka protests that he hasn't written a poem called Snow and is not going to perform it in the theater, Serdar Bey replies: ''Don't be so sure. There are those who despise us for writing the news before it happens. . . . Quite a few things do happen only because we've written them up first. This is what modern journalism is all about.'' And sure enough, inspired by the love affair he begins with Ipek and happier than he's been in years, Ka begins to write poems, the first of them being Snow. Before you know it, there he is in the theater, but the evening also includes a ridiculous performance of an Ataturk-era play called ''My Fatherland or My Head Scarf.'' As the religious school teenagers jeer, the secularists decide to enforce their rule by firing rifles into the audience. The twists of fate, the plots that double back on themselves, the trickiness, the mysteries that recede as they're approached, the bleak cities, the night prowling, the sense of identity loss, the protagonist in exile -- these are vintage Pamuk, but they're also part of the modern literary landscape. A case could be made for a genre called the Male Labyrinth Novel, which would trace its ancestry through De Quincey and Dostoyevsky and Conrad, and would include Kafka, Borges, García Márquez, DeLillo and Auster, with the Hammett-and-Chandler noir thriller thrown in for good measure. It's mostly men who write such novels and feature as their rootless heroes, and there's probably a simple reason for this: send a woman out alone on a rambling nocturnal quest and she's likely to end up a lot deader a lot sooner than a man would. Women -- except as idealized objects of desire -- have not been of notably central importance in Pamuk's previous novels, but Snow is a departure. There are two strong female characters, the emotionally battered Ipek and her sister, the stubborn actress Kadife. In addition, there's a chorus: the headscarf girls. Those scrapping for power on both sides use these dead girls as symbols, having put unbearable pressure on them while they were alive. Ka, however, sees them as suffering human beings. ''It wasn't the elements of poverty or helplessness that Ka found so shocking. Neither was it the constant beatings to which these girls were subjected, or the insensitivity of fathers who wouldn't even let them go outside, or the constant surveillance of jealous husbands. The thing that shocked and frightened Ka was the way these girls had killed themselves: abruptly, without ritual or warning, in the midst of their everyday routines.'' Their suicides are like the other brutal events in the novel: sudden eruptions of violence thrown up by relentless underlying forces. The attitudes of men toward women drive the plot in Snow, but even more important are the attitudes of men toward one another. Ka is always worrying about whether other men respect or despise him, and that respect hinges not on material wealth but on what he is thought to believe. Since he himself isn't sure, he vacillates from one side to another. Shall he stick with the Western enlightenment? But he was miserable in Germany. Shall he return to the Muslim fold? But despite his drunken hand-kissing of a local religious leader, he can't fit in. If Ka were to run true to the form of Pamuk's previous novels, he might take refuge in stories. Stories, Pamuk has hinted, create the world we perceive: instead of I think, therefore I am, a Pamuk character might say, ''I am because I narrate.'' It's the Scheherazade position, in spades. But poor murdered Ka is no novelist: it's up to Orhan to act as his Horatio. Snow is the latest entry in Pamuk's longtime project: narrating his country into being. It's also the closest to realism. Kars is finely drawn, in all its touching squalor, but its inhabitants resist Orhan's novelizing of them. One of them asks him to tell the reader not to believe anything he says about them, because ''no one could understand us from so far away.'' This is a challenge to Pamuk and his considerable art, but it is also a challenge to us. blurb: Dread, yearning, identity, intrigue, the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism–these are the elements that Orhan Pamuk anneals in this masterful, disquieting novel. An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories of the radiant Ipek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, Ka finds himself pursued by figures ranging from Ipek’s ex-husband to a charismatic terrorist. A lost gift returns with ecstatic suddenness. A theatrical evening climaxes in a massacre. And finding god may be the prelude to losing everything else. Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense, Snow is of immense relevance to our present moment. --Ramifications The Turkish book, Kar, was published in 2002. Five years later, in an echo of events in Snow, his friend, the editor of the newspaper Agos, Hrant Dink was shot dead. In the words ofRobert Fisk 20 January 2007: Hrant Dink became the 1,500,001st victim of the Armenian genocide yesterday. An educated and generous journalist and academic - editor of the weekly Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos - he tried to create a dialogue between the two nations to reach a common narrative of the 20th century's first holocaust. And he paid the price: two bullets shot into his head and two into his body by an assassin in the streets of Istanbul yesterday afternoon. The 53-year-old journalist, who had two children, was murdered at the door of his newspaper. Just over a year ago, he was convicted under Turkey's notorious law 301 of "anti-Turkishness", a charge he strenuously denied even after he received a six-month suspended sentence from an Istanbul court. Subsequently, one of the suspects in the murder threatened Pamuk: Turkish murder suspect warns Nobel's Pamuk 24 Jan 2007 By Daren Butler and Paul de Bendern ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A key suspect in the murder of Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink, whose funeral attracted 100,000 people, issued a warning on Wednesday to Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. Yasin Hayal, handcuffed and escorted by police under heavy security shouted "Orhan Pamuk should be careful" as he was taken to an Istanbul court house over the killing of Dink last Friday. Hayal, a known nationalist militant, served 11 months in jail for the 2004 bombing of a McDonald's restaurant in his home town Trabzon on the Black Sea. He has admitted to inciting his friend Ogun Samast, 17, to kill Dink. Thus, Pamuk himself is in no small way part of the traditionalist-modernist conflict that is the theme of Snow.
Ka: Turkish poet, living in political exile in Germany, returns to Turkey for his mother’s funeral, travels to the small city of Kars, bordering Anatolia, ostensibly to report on an outbreak of suicides among young women who have been forbidden to wear head scarves. But he also knows that the beautiful Ipek, with whom he has been in love for years, has been separated from her husband and is living in Kars. Ipek Hanim: Beautiful woman, from Ka's past, recently divorced Kadife Yildiz: leader of the headscarf girls, Ipek's sister, Hande: Kadife's friend; Mesut is in love with her. Sunay Zaim: Theatre stalwart who leads the military coup to free the people of Kars from Islamist hedonists. Turgut Bey: Ipek and Kadife's father Lazuli : Islamist radical, in hiding Muhtar Bey: Ipek ex-husband Necip: kid from the religious school, Ka's friend Ataturk: The founder and the first president of Republic of Turkey, to whom the author pays the tribute in each of his books by mentioning him and his contributions to his country in his novels Z. Demirkol : Old communist and writer, one of the instigators of the theatrical revolution Fazil dart: Necip's best friend. later marries Kadife. At one point, is in love with Teslime, has never spoken to her. “I saw her once from far away, and she was pretty well covered. But as a soulmate, of course I knew her very well; when you love someone above all others, you know everything there is to know about her. Marianna: The daily mexican soap about an impoverished girl that the most of the population of Kars watches at 4 pm. Teslime watched it with her family before committing suicide. Hans Hansen Bey: salesman at Kaufhof, Frankfurt. Later Ka gives this name to an (imaginary) contact at a Frankfurt newspaper. Sheikh Saadettin Effendi : Islamic leader Serdar Bey: Journalist and owner-editor of Border City Gazette Saffet: Cop from Kars Osman Nuri Colak: A Colonel in the army who helps in the coup. Vural: An ex goalkeeper Funda Eser: Actress Tarkut Olcun: Ka's elderly friend in Frankfurt Zahide Hanim: Maid in Tergut's household Melinda : porn star, favourite of Ka De Sunay: An actor who stages the coup Blue: An Islamist terrorist, Kadife's lover, onetime lover of Ipek Hicran: Name given to Kadife by Necip, who's in love with her. Muzaffer Bey: Lawyer Mesut : Necip's friend, in love w Hande Uncle Mahmut : Kars policeman (resembles a big uncle from Ka's childhood) Orhan: Ka's friend Kasim Bey : beer bellied asst chief of police in Kars Rustem : heroic character in persian tale Fahir : Muhtar's friend, modenist, mediocre poet Nuri Yilmaz : Director of the Institute of education, who records his last conversation with his Islamist assassin Nuriye Hanim : literature teacher Kazim Karabekir : turkish general who occupied Kars. Earlier it had been under the Armenians and the Russians, and was also an independent state for some time after WW 1. Suhrab: Rustem's son Hakan Ozge : Kars Border Television’s effeminate young shiny-suit-wearing host and disc jockey, who had been making mischievous jokes and sly insinuations about our glorious Islam and now constantly referred to God and prayer time on his program. Teslime : Kadife's friend. commits suicide. Ka visits the family. Recai Bey : manager at telephone office Maruf Bey : wealthy merchant who trades w Soviet union Taner : Ka's journalist friend, suggests he visit Kars to see the real Turkey Aunt Munire: a relative remembered by Ka for stubbing out a cigarette on orange peel. Shah Efrasiyab : wicked shah of Turan, in story Cavit : hotel clerk at Snow Lion Hayrullah effendi: fundamentalist leader Mahmut : leftist; Muhtar and Ka's friend Place names: Ni˘gar the Poetess Street When he was a child, there was a man on Nigar the Poetess Street who cursed that way whenever a ball landed in his garden. Snow Lion hotel Faikbey Avenue Kâzım Karabekir and Karadag avenues Ardahan Road road to Sarıkami Turan : place in persian tale Halil Pasa Arcade Nisantas : affluent neighbourhood in Istanbul New Life pastry shop Yılmaz Company's bus