Istanbul: Memories and the City

Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City takes an autobiographical look into the life of the author as he grew up in a transforming Istanbul.  From his first love to the descriptions of the painters that recreated his city, Pamuk goes to many lengths to ensure that his reader has a firm grasp on what the city of Istanbul means to him.  One of the most reoccurring, as well as more interesting defining characteristics of Istanbul is the concept of hüzün, or melancholy that plagued the city.  This sense of hopelessness and distraught was a constant throughout Pamuk’s time in Istanbul and it left one of the deepest impressions on him as a writer and an individual.

The troubled history of Istanbul played a primary role in creating this sense of hüzün throughout the city.  As an Empire that has travelled from an elite power of the East to being an impoverished nation, Turkey has a definite sense of loss and melancholy within it.  As the world around begins to modernize, Istanbul’s environment leaves a resounding feeling of times long ago lost and wealth that may never be regained.  As Pamuk describes this aura of depletion, “The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible.  No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner- the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques- inflict heartache on all who live among them” (101). 

A similar feeling is also portrayed when Pamuk describes the reasons that he and his first love never held hands while within the city.  He said that the “melancholy of the poor neighborhoods, of ruined, ravaged Istanbul, had long sense engulfed us” (334).  To Pamuk, the despair of the city had an effect on him to the point where he was unable to be openly happy within its confinements.  To me, this shows how Pamuk had become the city in a way and shared with it a sense of hüzün.