Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

He no longer conceived of any of them in isolation: Neither Nuran, nor cousin İhsan, nor aunt, nor Macide, nor the unfinished book, none of them existed. He now saw only the newspaper headlines he’d read yesterday morning, or that he took in rather, without comprehension: BRITISH NAVY MOBILIZED; LAND & AIR RESERVES CALLED UP; GERMANY MAKES 16-ARTICLE ULTIMATUM TO POLAND; FRANCE HONORS ITS OBLIGATIONS. Despite so many intervening ordeals, troubles, and personal crises, he regarded these bulletins inherently as they were, fully aware of their actual meanings.

“D’you know, young man, what the tragedy of the situation is?”

Mümtaz knew the tragedy of the situation. Death’s wings had stretched out over the globe. But he listened nonetheless: “Mind that humans aren’t deluded into thinking that a sinister possibility is a new horizon. Mind that humanity doesn’t catch sight of the abyss. For it won’t be able to turn back. It’ll adopt that eventuality. Don’t ever consider the sale of an item of cherished value — a rare manuscript, a nice gramophone, a Persian carpet — to be something of an opportunity. Don’t ever be tempted to divorce your wife, if you’re married, or to break up with the lady you love, if you’re in a relationship. Should you do so, as a consequence, no matter how much you resist repeating such acts later on, you’ll do the same thing as if conditioned, as if others were prodding you from behind. Restraint in human existence doesn’t exist. Especially for humans en masse. Especially once the open abyss beckons or the black tongue of death speaks.”

Had he or Nuran conceived of the breakup first? In which of them had the destructive desire stirring within humanity to annihilate both itself and all of its endeavors first gained momentum? I’m a measly narcissist. Look at what’s plaguing the world and at what I’m worried about. There’s a sick relative at home, and as soon as I stick my head out of my hole, I find that the lives of millions hang in the balance. And all for the sake of a woman.

He couldn’t continue this line of thought, because this woman wasn’t as trivial as he supposed, and for the measure of a year she’d erected the most sublime bridge between himself and the everyday world that he had sensed and experienced and been exposed to through Nuran’s attributes and body. My sailboat, my sea, and in the final analysis, a lone man. . She was his horizon of truth; he’d deepened his thoughts and had established an inner life through her. But in which one of us did the abyss first speak? I admit I strained the ropes. . But she was the one who frayed and tore them apart. No, it wasn’t like that. She’d made the decision to separate. She’d reasoned, “Seeing that Fâhir is returning, seeing that he says he’s heartsick, dependent on me, and he’s Fatma’s father, and that I shouldn’t reject his overtures, I’m obligated to take him back. I know I won’t be happy, but I’m obligated to do so for peace of mind. .” As she’d said this, how distraught her expression had been; but this distraught face and the twomonth effort that Nuran had exerted to come to this decision was nothing next to the debate that raged within Mümtaz. Over two months he’d become a shadow of his former self, a variation, waiting at a fork in a road, devastated and overwrought. Mümtaz liked to think that the separation had emerged out of Nuran’s necessity to “revamp herself,” but it didn’t. He knew quite well that it didn’t. She might be able to love Fâhir somewhat, at the most, because affection and commiseration were forms of ardor. He thought of the last day that they’d spent together. They’d traveled down the Bosphorus to Istanbul together. Until the Galata Bridge, he hadn’t mentioned a single word to Nuran about her decision, but once at the bridge he’d again implored. It was vastly different than his former entreaties. It contained the retribution of a spurned lover, wounded self-esteem, and every last thing. “Come back today,” he’d said. “You must change your mind!”

“Don’t expect me — because I won’t be coming. From now on I can offer you nothing but friendship. .”

Mümtaz wanted nothing of her friendship. “That’s impossible,” he’d said. “Under these circumstances the last possible thing we could offer to each other is friendship. You know as well as I do that when I sense the withdrawal of your emotions, it spells catastrophe. I turn into the most miserable of creatures. I lose my harmony and focus. I become pitiful and small. .”

Then came the fateful retort: “Enough already, Mümtaz. . I’m tired and fed up,” she’d said. Mümtaz knew that as Nuran spoke, everything he’d suffered over the past year on her account revived within him. At that moment I’m certain she carried not one single positive memory of me…

Afterward they said good-bye awkwardly. Nuran went her way, and Mümtaz roamed for hours randomly over darkened and narrow streets, gazing absently at small secondhand salvage shops, street mongers selling food which he couldn’t imagine himself or anyone eating, at pitiful houses exuding the misery of rain from every corner, and their deathly black windows whose illumination by inner joy was beyond possibility. He seemed to have left the city of his familiarity and knowledge; as if everything in his midst had appeared along with the incessantly falling, tacky rain — whose gloom didn’t diminish even when it stopped. His anguish became his tattered soul’s universe. In the course of time, he found himself in Dolmabahçe, by the Bosphorus, intently watching a small crimson sloop unloading wood onto the quay.

All or nothing. . That was the conviction he’d had at that instant.

All or nothing, that is, death. He came to realize that he was speaking in madness, just like Hitler. You’re either with us or against us. Either world empire or the blackest death.

In the order of nature, however, “all” or “nothing” didn’t exist. When “all” or “nothing” appeared together, the mind of man, that consummate apparatus of balance, malfunctioned. When this machinery of exception was deluded by its own perfection, this syllogism emerged. Pity to the one who takes it as a premise, who regards this chaotic life from that vantage point! From such a triangulated perspective, humanity might think that all of life rested in its control. From such a vantage only we exist, or, more precisely, merely one facet of us. For even if we should analyze “all or nothing” a little, if the scale should veer just a hair’s breadth from its absolute equilibrium, it would lose its orientation, and the realm of torments, delusions, hopes, and regrets would begin. All or nothing. No, not at all, rather, a little bit of everything.

Mümtaz wanted to scramble out of the thoughts into which he’d fallen. But he failed. The doctor shifted his considerable weight and leaned onto his arm with a certain sense of purpose. He stopped. Once again he took a deep breath and exhaled as if confiding to the night.

“Just a few people can change everything, d’you understand? A decent group. . This being the case… Consider this tranquil nighttime hour. Now, just think of tomorrow morning.”

Tomorrow morning opened before Mümtaz like a black well. The doctor, however, didn’t even look into the well that he’d conjured.

“Regrettable, isn’t it? First a nation or a class of people is provoked by means of a series of instigations. Next a madman or a plan concocted behind the scenes ensures the exploitation and appropriation of the masses, who are dragged into the abyss after being bumped from rock to rock as if possessed by a djinn. . Just take Germany, for instance. Think about it individual by individual. . Then look at how it can be manipulated en masse once in the hands of a sadist. . In turn, sadism, worship of power, blind trust in fate, the thought that ‘only I can set things straight,’ through a retribution taken to excess, passes to others, even those in the opposition. . A terrifying door is opening up; a barrier is being torn down, beyond which rests only endless catastrophe.” Mümtaz stopped short, as if refusing to pass through this doorway.