Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“I even read the letters that German students had written to their families during the last war. They all sounded like mystics of humanity. .”

“Mystics you say? The worst of all fates. Above all don’t let your feet leave the ground. Then you’re susceptible to anything. Anything contracted through the air. Because white noise speaks through your being. Mystics of humanity, mystics of power, mystics of race, the abomination of mystics of torment… Because divinity hangs beside us like a theater costume, and it’s so easy to simply slip it on… Mind that mankind doesn’t attempt to deify itself. Mind that it doesn’t believe it’s an Absolute Idea or that it’s the only vehicle through which truth can be found.

“Young man, whatever I have faith in torments me as much as what I doubt. As a result, I bring harm to nobody. Meanwhile, mystics are not that way. They have a mission. .” He laughed like a boy. Mümtaz, heartened by the innocence of this laugh, waited for him to begin talking again.

“When I was little, a mad Koran chanter, a hafiz , would visit us. This man claimed he’d subdued a djinn and had become its master. My father, you see, was bent on discovering treasure. The hafiz spent his days and nights in the men’s quarters of our house. . They’d wake up early and go off to who knows where. As I came and went from those quarters, I’d sometimes see him seeking out treasure spots through intercession from beyond. He’d commune with the spirit world. Turning to face the wall, and as if speaking on the telephone, he’d converse with the unseen or with the deficiencies in his own psyche. I could follow the outlines of the conversation from his responses and line of questioning. A kook, apparently, a harmless lunatic. But there’s no such thing as a harmless lunatic. Young man, a madman is always dangerous. And the trance states of divine communion are terrifying.

“One day when my father was out, the hafiz was again speaking to the walls. Apparently he’d been told that in order for the treasure to be located, a young, adopted Arab girl needed to be sacrificed in the empty adjacent lot. Mayhem broke out in the house. The mad hafiz entered the kitchen and began to sharpen all the meat cleavers while reciting bizarre prayers and incantations. The chef first grew leary of the glint in the madman’s eye, then of the words he overheard. . Mind you, he was both sharpening knives and speaking to the unseen. .

“Thank goodness he was detained in time. What trials and tribulations my father suffered before he’d had the man locked up in Toptaşı. And the hafiz didn’t keep his peace there, either. Every day he submitted denunciations of my father to the palace.”

“Did it at least cure your father of his obsession with treasure?”

“Yes, but this time he fell sway to alchemy, and everything we owned ended up going to a con man from Marrakech…” He let out a deep, sorrowful sigh. “Recovering from this variety of illness isn’t as easy as it seems. There are so many overlapping symptoms. Take today’s Nazi sadism. . I can almost see the emergence of tomorrow’s masochistic literature, a complete underground literature spawned through their worship of power. . It’ll all be submission and tears: Kill me, tear me apart, for as I suffer cruelty and pain, I find myself… Later the reactionary rebellions will begin. Oh, take pity on the individual. . The rights of the individual are being trampled upon, the individual is being oppressed. . Individuals are nothing but the bloody bricks and tiles of this flesh and blood Tower of Babel. . Do you remember those who were spouting such blather a decade or so ago?”

The doctor puffed out his broad chest in the night. “Health, Allah, bestow health upon us. . Not strength, but health. . The health of humankind. . Healthiness that accepts life inherently the way it is. . We don’t want an existence resembling that of the gods. . Let’s live a life specific to us. . Let’s live humanely. Let’s live without being deluded by anything, without telling lies to ourselves, let’s live without worshiping our own lies and apparitions. .”

Mümtaz thought, This one’s a prophet of another magnitude. .

It relieved him to enter their neighborhood. This degree of thought, this contradictory and speculative stream of consciousness, disturbed him. As if wanting to thrust it all off his shoulders at once, he thought of Nuran. When he’d been beside her, life had been so steady. A world in which everything was arranged according to its own value… But Nuran was quite a distance away, and in the house they were approaching rested an infirm man whose condition was a riddle. A man whom he dearly loved. . Only one hundred paces at most, only one hundred paces.

The pain of living with countless barriers and limits racked his nervous system.

What’s going on with me? Others have also suffered emotional pain. .

He couldn’t complete his thought. Ahead of them on the road a shadow darted through the stinging nettle. The doctor made a start. Mümtaz said, “Don’t be startled. . He’s an old Bektashi dervish. He sleeps in an abandoned cistern around here. . The neighborhood looks after him.”

An elderly man stopped and stood before them. “ Hû , greetings, companions of holiness. .” He brought his hand to his heart and forehead and recited a couplet by Shaykh Galip:

Mind you minister to yourself, chosen of the worldly realm Mankind, you’re the apple of the eye of the living

In a deep and sonorous voice, as if feeling the surface of a bas-relief, he recited the letters and the syllables, exposing the full force of their intensity. As if he had no other concern besides being understood, being heard and understood, he bore no particular style of expression, no specific poetic flare. The effect was more stunning because he was at a remove from all variety of proselytizing, or even calling. He just left them face-to-face with a truth before vanishing; and this truth was a truth that described their torment. But was it only theirs? No, near and far, it constituted the torment of the world. This couplet was the first instance of a signpost within the night — and all previous nights — within the webbing they traced, the dark and labyrinthine catacomb that they couldn’t manage to escape.

The doctor: “Fine, but he’s no Bektashi, he’s a Mevlevî. .”

“No, he’s a Bektashi. I’ve spoken to him often. Many nights İhsan, myself, and he have commiserated over rakı together. . He’s Bektashi through and through; he recites beautiful strains of verse, and he’s particularly fond of this couplet. One day he’d said to me, ‘The sole reality is this: One ought to hold humanity in high regard. We ought to sense this regard within us without effort.’ In his opinion, this was more important than love. . In short, he’s one who displays respect toward others and humanity…”

“He has respect for humanity. . In that case, he’s completely mad.” Then he abruptly changed his tone. He gazed at the houses that appeared pale next to the handlike objects illuminated by a feeble light, at the lot overgrown with weeds, and at the face of his companion, whose fatigue could just be discerned. A rooster, fluttering its wings somewhere above them, emptied its radiance into the night like an elixir of molten rubies and agate concealed within its being.

“The East,” he said, “my beloved East… From without, it appears lazy, foolish, helpless, and impoverished. . But from within, it has resolved never to be deceived. . What could be more beautiful? When will we learn to satisfy people from within? When will we understand the meaning of the phrase, ‘Mind you minister to yourself ’?”