Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Mümtaz observed it all as the sky gradually changed hue. But there was a difference in his perception. It didn’t resemble the quotidian contact our senses made with their surroundings. It was rather like discovering these external objects and gestures within himself.

A clutch of crows broke away from the trees in the courtyard of the Şehzade Mosque. With sharp caws and metallic fluttering, they passed overhead. The scent of fresh bread from the bakery engulfed the entire street. The laborers who’d been repairing the rails were now before the mosque. The acetylene still burned, extending toward the lavish Rembrandt-like gilded dusk; between the molten radiance and the encompassing darkness, faces, hands, and bodies, each by shades, were transfigured. Mümtaz, a second time, watched in awe the movements of hands and the concentration of faces.

Our neighborhood. . His entire childhood ran toward him from this road and the surrounding streets. To have a neighborhood, a home, a routine, and friends, to live with them and to die among them… One way or another, this future-oriented life structure that he’d prepared for himself did not coalesce around him. Besides, he couldn’t see any of his ideas to completion. Material things, all artifacts, existed of their own accord. They gave rise to an inkling, like an echo, before others usurped their places. However oppressive, he longed to lose himself in the passageways of an idea.

As he passed through the Vezneciler district, he sensed that the scenery had grown lighter. When he arrived in Beyazıt, a commotion had begun in the coffeehouses on the causeway. The chairs were still stacked together inside, but the opportunistic garçons had prepared a couple of tables for early morning clientele. When one of them caught sight of Mümtaz, overjoyed he said, “Welcome, Mümtaz, good sir, the tea is presently steeping.” But this sudden flashback to university exam mornings didn’t arouse any reaction in Mümtaz. With a hand gesture, he indicated something approximating haste. The morning commuters on the side of the road that headed to Aksaray and the calls of newspaper hawkers and sesame simit and pastry sellers had begun to erect the city’s morning. Mümtaz looked in the direction of the mosque. A covey of pigeons floated toward the ground before ascending again. I wonder what it was that startled them? forgetting the que s-tion as soon as it had been posed. Yet he could still trace the persistence of his thoughts — at the very least through their absences. This doesn’t constitute lack of possibility but maybe apathy. I wonder if I’m indifferent toward all things in this way? Will I ever again be able to reconstitute the world within myself? Will memories ever again speak through me? Or am I growing delirious while yet in complete control of my senses? Before my own eyes, like this. .

The metal shutters of the after-hours pharmacy were still shut. A woman banged on the shutters and frequently stood on tiptoe to glance through the peephole. She held a prescription that she’d evidently crumpled up on her way here. She was exhausted and destitute.

Frequently she said, “Allah,” and again peered within on tiptoe, as if wanting to glide inside.

The pharmacist finally arrived. Both of them extended their prescriptions at the same time. Mümtaz received the medicine. He performed all of this with exceeding efficiency, like a man who didn’t want to lose a second’s time.

The situation actually necessitated this. The part of him that procured the medicine was lucid. It didn’t falter. Beyond that, his entire mental faculty labored between two extremes in the vacillation of one on the verge of slipping into narcosis; his mind had become a bewildering apparatus that adapted to its environment instantaneously, and after perceiving its object, immediately let it go. What’s happening to me? It was certain that a shroud existed between him and the world that he hadn’t noticed before. Something translucent, which permitted exceptional focus, separated him from the world.

But could he even be separated from the world? Life is so sublime… Living at this morning hour was a beautiful thing. Everything was beautiful, fresh, and harmonious. It greeted one with the pliancy of a smile, and Mümtaz had the conviction that at this hour he could tirelessly observe an acacia leaf, the face of a small animal, or a human hand in perpetuity. Because all of it, everything, was sublime. This light of subtlety was a symphony; there, in the mosque courtyard, its first rays danced like a woman disrobed. The fresh smell of simit s, the haste of walking men, faces lost in thought were all beautiful. But he wasn’t able to focus fully on any one. At such an hour? Perhaps it’s because I find objects to be so beautiful that I’m able to divorce myself from life. Why shouldn’t this be the case? Because this sense of the sublime and within it the accompanying jubilation like an orchestra was no everyday experience. It resembled an epiphany of sorts. It was a variety of epiphany that could come only at the last possible instant, at the moment when the intellect cut off all contact with everything and became its hermetic self, the moment when it functioned in the most idealized way. It was a reality located at the edge of the abyss. The clarity within him could only suggest the lucidity of the previous moment.

“How strange! Nothing is connected to any other thing. I perceive everything as atomized,” he complained.

The man beside him answered, “Of course it doesn’t connect. Because what you’re seeing is nothing but unmediated reality.”

“But yesterday and the day before, didn’t I also see things this way? Wasn’t I perceiving reality? Hadn’t I always encountered it before?”

He sensed the presence of the man beside him, but he couldn’t look him in the face, though this didn’t seem unnatural.

“No. . Because you’d been regarding your surroundings from the perspective of your identity. You were actually observing your own self. Neither life nor objects constitute a totality. Wholeness is a phantasy of the human mind.”

“All right then, don’t I have an identity?”

“No. That , my friend, is in my palm. If you don’t believe me, then take a look for yourself.”

He extended his palm toward Mümtaz’s face. A small, astounding being, a formation something like an exoskeleton or dermis that he didn’t recognize stirred in his palm with small contractions.

So, then, this is my identity! he thought. But he didn’t say anything. The man’s hand had stunned him.

Mümtaz had never before seen such a beautiful thing. Neither crystal nor diamond could produce this inherent glow — a dull illumination reserved only for him. This light within the palm, this small crablike being, his own identity according to what he’d been told, opened and closed with little contractions like an artery and was silently functioning on its own.

Timidly he asked, “Aren’t you going to give it back to me?”

“What?”

Mümtaz indicated with the tip of his chin. “That, my identity. That thing you call my identity.”

“If you’d like, take it. Take it if you want to go back into the realm of experience,” and the hand again opened at the level of his chin, but this time Mümtaz’s eyes focused on the radiance of the hand itself. Mümtaz knew that the man standing beside him, despite the impossibility of such an occurrence, was none other than Suad. If the dead roam the streets like this, could life offer any pleasure? With a sidelong glance he slowly looked, as if to say, “Is it actually him?” Indeed, it was Suad. But how he’d been transformed! He was much bigger and more handsome, something like an enhanced Suad. He was even more sublime and exquisite than the Suad he’d dreamed of a few hours before. Even the smirk Mümtaz had observed on Suad’s face that day in the hall of the apartment, the grimace that vilified everything, life in its entirety, had now become an opulent smile, emerging from depths and illuminating mysterious planes of being. The wounds on his hands, neck, and face also sparkled. Cruel and sublime. . He was suddenly shocked, and wringing his hands, he began to think: But what will I do now? He had to talk to Suad at all costs. But would he even be able to speak to such an exquisite and exalted Suad? I wonder if all the dead become sublime this way? He remembered how Suad had said that he was revolted by death and dying. He’s not only beautiful but powerful, too. . Yes, he was mighty; some force within him flowed toward Mümtaz continually, attracting him. He would speak to him.