Persica 21, 9-32. doi: 10.2143/PERS.21.0.2022784BIHZAD MEETS © 2006-2007 BELLINI by Persica. All rights reserved. 9 BIHZAD MEETS BELLINI ISLAMIC MINIATURE PAINTING AND STORYTELLING AS INTERTEXTUAL DEVICES IN ORHAN PAMUK'S MY NAME IS RED1 P. de Bruijn Leiden University INTRODUCTION ORHAN PAMUK Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most prominent writer, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 2006, started publishing at the beginning of the 1980s.2 Turkish society in the late 1970s and early 1980s was considerably polarized. You were either very leftist (Marxist, Trotskyite or Maoist), or an extreme rightist: such as the Grey Wolves. This polarization affected literature as well. Social realism was the main trend in Turkish literature since the fifties. Writers were generally spoken leftists and they described the poverty and abuses of people living in the Anatolian countryside and the slums of metropolitan areas. After the military intervention of 1980, this polarization gradually diminished and politi- cal commitment became less important in art and literature, as it did throughout Europe. 1 The analysis of Pamuk’s My Name is Red, is based on: Erica van Boven and Gillis Dorleijn, Literair Mechaniek. Inleiding tot de analyse van verhalen en gedichten, Bussum, Coutinho, revised edition, 2003 and Suzanne Keen, Narrative Form, Hampshire and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 2 Orhan Pamuk, (Istanbul 1952-) - 1982 Cevdet Bey ve Ogulları (Cevdet Bey and his sons), not translated into English. - 1983 Sessiz Ev (The house of silence), not translated into English - 1985 Beyaz Kale, The White Castle, translated by Victoria Holbrook, Manchester 1990, New York, 1991. - 1990 Kara Kitap, The Black Book translated by Güneli Gün, New York 1994. - 1992 Gizli Yüz (The secret face, script), not translated. - 1994 Yeni Hayat, New life translated by Güneli Gün, New York, 1997. - 1998 Benim Adım Kırmızı, My Name is Red translated by Erdag M. Göknar, New York, 2001. - 2002 Kar, Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, New York 2004. - 2003 Istanbul, Hatıralar ve ≤ehir (Istanbul, memories and city), Istanbul, Memories and the City, translated by Maureen Freely, New York 2005. 10 P. DE BRUIJN There was room for a different sound in Turkish literature and Orhan Pamuk’s Cevdet Bey was in this respect the right book at the right time. It is a rather conventionally told story about a bourgeois Ottoman businessman Cevdet Bey and the next generations. Orhan Pamuk was not the only author and not the first to have departed from social real- ism, but his success had a great impact on the style and themes in Turkish literature from 1980. A clear development can be detected in Orhan Pamuk’s oeuvre from realistic to postmodern and back again to a more moderate postmodernism.3 In Sessiz Ev (The House of Silence), a different character is the focus of each chapter. The doppelganger motif in Beyaz Kale (The White Castle) stressed the fictional natures of identities. Kara Kitap (The Black Book) combined the motifs of the search for identity with Islamic mysticism.4 Kara Kitap was the pinnacle of Pamuk’s Postmodernity. In the following novels he elaborated the main theme of his œuvre ‘Turkish identities between East and West’ in a less postmodern and more accessible manner. Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red), first published in 1998, is one of them. MY NAME IS RED In the broadest sense the novel covers a period of sixty-two years from 1555 until 1617. The main events take place in 12 winter days in the year 1591 AD; which crucially is the year 999 in the Islamic lunar calendar. Analepses reveal the historical background and events in the youth of the main characters. At the end of the novel there is a short descrip- tion of what happened in the 26 years after the central events. In 1591, Sultan Murad III’s reign (1574-1595) was coming to an end. The Ottoman Empire was past the peak of its grandeur, partly because of internal bureaucratic stagnation and partly because of the ex- panding power of the European nation states: a process of decline that lasted until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. In 1591, the Sultan was still very powerful, but his au- thority was challenged on two fronts: by Europeans (Venetians and Habsburgs) in the West and the Shiite Safavid Shah Abbas (1587-1629) in the East. The Ottoman Empire considered itself the successor of the medieval Caliphate of Baghdad (750-1258) and thereby the protector of Sunni Islam. Under the rule of the Safavids, Shia Islam had be- come the state religion in Iran. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Otto- mans and Iranians fought several wars in which their religious differences were a factor.5 My name is red consists of several parallel storylines; all connected with each other and with the main storyline of the book. One of the most important is the love story be- tween ≤eküre (Shekure6) and Kara (Black). Kara became an orphan at a very young age and became an apprentice with his uncle, Eni≥te Effendi, who was a book dealer and an expert on miniature painting. He was a writer and painter of amatory miniatures. At an 3 Murat Belge, “Orhan Pamuk”, in: Edebiyat Üstüne Yazılar (Articles about literature), Istanbul, Ileti≥im, 1998, pp. 480-482. 4 See for articles on these books: Kara Kitap Üzerine Yazılar (Articles about The Black Book), Nüket Esen ed., Istanbul, Ileti≥im, 1996 and Orhan Pamuk’u Anlamak (Understanding Orhan Pamuk), Engin Kılıç, ed., Istanbul, Ileti≥im, 1999. 5 Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Empire of the Gazis. The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire 1280-1808, vol. 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 169-216. 6 Anglicized names as used in My Name is Red translated by Erdag M. Göknar, New York, 2001. BIHZAD MEETS BELLINI 11 early age, Kara fell in love with his daughter ≤eküre. Eni≥te Efendi, however, didn’t want to marry her off to Kara. The latter therefore had to leave his house. He traveled to Iran where he worked as a writer/clerk and messenger for the Sultan. Like Eni≥te Efendi, he became a go-between for the illumination of manuscripts. However, he could not forget ≤eküre. After twelve years, Eni≥te Efendi asked him to return to Istanbul to collaborate on a secret book, commissioned by the Sultan, on which he was working with the best illu- minators of the court workshop. In the twelve years of Kara’s absence, ≤eküre had mar- ried an army officer to whom she bore two sons. ≤evket and Orhan. This officer had been missing for four years and thought to have died in the Persian war (1578-1590). His brother Hasan wanted to marry ≤eküre, and tried to seduce her. For this reason, ≤eküre returned to her father’s house with her two children. Under the pressure of circumstances, the murder of her father, ≤eküre agreed to marry Kara. Her dead father served as a wit- ness in the marriage ceremony. However the marriage was never as happy as Kara had hoped. Just as important is the detective story which, with the love story, is one of the two main story lines. It is the story of the murders of Zarif Efendi (Elegant Effendi) and Eni≥te Efendi. One of the most talented illuminators, Zeytin (Olive), had murdered first his colleague Zarif Efendi and later Eni≥te Efendi, because he was afraid that illegal mat- ters would be depicted in the miniatures of Eni≥te Efendi’s secret book for the Sultan. The Sultan ordered Kara and Üstat Osman, the head of the court workshop, to solve these murders within three days. They solved the murder by a meticulous study of the style of the three most important miniature painters of the court workshop. These three painters were also involved in the illumination of the secret book. A rough sketch of a horse with abnormal nostrils had been found on the body of Zarif Efendi. Kara and Üstat Osman searched the treasury of the Sultan, where all illuminated books are kept, until they found an album wherein horses were depicted in the style of the sketch found on Zarif Efendi’s corps. This clue led to the murderer, Zeytin. Together with the other miniaturists Kara visited the murderer. After a long discussion Zeytin stabbed Kara and fled. He was in- vited by the Great Moghul to join his court workshop. India was another center of sub- lime miniature art in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. On his way to the harbor, he decided to pay a last visit to the workshop. Hasan was waiting there for Kara. Assuming Zeytin was one of Kara’s men, he stabbed him to death. The detective storyline and the love storyline form the frame tale for the storyline of the storyteller and the preacher. The storyteller gives voices to the subjects sketched by the miniaturists in the coffeehouse; the same items as they are painting in the last double miniature for the secret book of Eni≥te Effendi. The storyteller criticizes the millenarian preacher Nusret Hoca (Nusret Hoja). In the end, Nusret Hoca’s gang of heavies destroy the coffeehouse and the pictures and kill the storyteller. Pamuk might have wanted to cre- ate a parallel with the end of the traditional Turkish Karagöz shadow play, where Hacivat, one of the main characters, accuses Karagöz that he has destroyed the screen of the pup- pet player. This symbolizes the transition from the fictional world of the theater/novel to real life.