Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“Okay, what about action?” Nuran made a gesture with her hand. “I mean in the sense of accomplishment. Challenging oneself on paths of greatness.”

Mümtaz was overcome with self-doubt: “There’s no path great or small. We only have our pace and stride. Sultan Mehmet II conquered Istanbul when he was twenty-one. Descartes presented his philosophy when he was twenty-four. Istanbul was conquered just once. As is customary, a lecture is written only once. But there are millions of twenty-one- and twenty-fouryear-olds in the world. Should they perish because they aren’t a Mehmet the Conqueror or a Descartes? It’s enough that they live their lives to the utmost. I mean, the magnitude of what you call a path of greatness resides within.”

Nuran stared intently at the young man. “But action, you’re not discussing action.”

“I did so discuss it… Everyone’s obligated to act. Everyone has his fate. I don’t know, I like to live this fate by appropriating aspects of it and its inner world. That is to say, I like art. Maybe art presents us with the most benign faces of death, those that we can acknowledge most easily. Certainly one’s life can sometimes be as beautiful as a work of art. When I encounter that…”

“For example?”

“Take the poet Shaykh Galip in the eighteenth century… He died very young, during his most prolific age. He underwent training and etiquette that constituted a cache of wisdom all its own. From the start, this education forestalled a number of mishaps and detrimental influences. He neither developed through a dawn nor an afternoon. Like a serene evening, he’d already been constituted beforehand by movement, by the play of light, by fealty to what we admire; for example, İsmail Dede Efendi around the same time. He composed close to a thousand pieces of music. Look at his life: like any ordinary life. But it was all his own.”

“Doesn’t the era itself contribute something?”

“Of course. But the exception transcends the era. One might be tempted to assume that they lived lives of privilege. For example, neither of them attempted to reform the world. Meanwhile, your neighbor of fame, the seventeenth-century preacher Vanî Efendi, did just that, and in the process spoiled everybody’s peace of mind and contentment. He was defeated by despair… My first two examples are artists who discovered the secret of living in a manner faithful to their inner selves. It seems to me that the others are but deluding themselves.”

Mümtaz gazed about as if wanting to escape the convoluted diatribe into which he’d fallen. Dusk began a vast suite of traditional Ottoman music. Every instrument of light prepared to play the swan song of the sun. And every single entity was one such luculent instrument. Even Nuran’s face, even her hand fiddling with its coffee spoon…

“Do you think we should go somewhere from here?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Büyükdere or İstinye…”

The day was coming to a close now. But he didn’t want it to end. Maybe there, farther on, the sunlight would continue.

“Why don’t you explain what you mean by despair, Mümtaz?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Despair is the consciousness of death, or rather the way death affects us… the array of snares it sets in our lives… the teeth of a vise that constricts our every move. Every act, regardless of type, is a result of despair. Particularly in this period of open fear that won’t scab over… One by one, our continual rejection of cherished things. The fear of turning into one’s father. And, finally, the realization that whatever one does, death is inescapable. At least, they say, let death catch me at an extreme, while hurtling toward one of the poles: either while singing ‘the Internationale’ en masse or while goose-stepping…”

He himself, at this moment, was somewhat in the throes of this dread. A golden light shone in the house windows of the opposite shore and embellished the Bosphorus waves. He felt that this light alone saved them. Without it, they’d suffocate, they’d be interred at the base of this chinar. He was honestly content and wanted to act within this happiness. Though his old dilemma was afflicting him as well.

Nuran no longer asked any questions. She’d become lost in her own thoughts, resigning herself to the will of the twilight. The fresh air had fatigued her. The following question confronted her ad nauseam: What will the end result of this ordeal be? The best thing to do was to forget, to not think about anything. She was experiencing the serene pleasure of surrendering herself to the moment. İclâl, however, ruminated. İclâl wasn’t affected by the will of the twilight. She hadn’t even once brought to mind the etiquette cultivated by death. The petite, innocent youth, dedicated to everything around her, simply lived. Countless days stretched before her, and she dressed them in her hopes like little puppets. She dressed all of them in the fabric and accoutrements of love, longing, a stable household, of work hours, expectations, and even, if necessary, of toil and of friendship. She knew just how they should be appointed. But she couldn’t see their faces; their faces were turned toward the wall known as the future. At the appropriate time, these faces turned backward one by one, faced İclâl and curtsied before her, then slowly and without remonstration removed those exquisite glittering garments, and said, pointing into the distance, “Apparently I’m not the one, it’s most certainly another in line,” before passing beside her and lining up next to all the rest that had gone beforehand. This very spring was also that way. Spring, the spring she’d so anticipated and longed for in the midst of winter…

“Should we visit the historic lodge?” İclâl had suggested this seeing as they were so close anyway.

“At this hour of the evening?”

“Why not? And besides, it’s not evening yet. We’re in a hollow, so it only seems that way to us. It isn’t even six o’clock. Not to mention all we’ve been talking about. It isn’t easy, I haven’t seen anyone for almost a week. So much detritus has accumulated in me.”

Nuran conjured a vision of Mümtaz, this fellow who repudiated action, afloat in his caïque, blockading the ferry landing. An exertion made out of pure despair. But this neophyte knew how to insinuate himself into a woman’s life. She nurtured a strange feeling of compassion and admiration for him. Mümtaz knew how to summon his mate. But how lonely he must be to call out with such patience and force. He should have at least been able to clear his mind.

The lodge wasn’t as Nuran had anticipated. It had no grandeur. For his favorite beloved, Sultan Murat IV had merely had this small house built. It was barely large enough for her and Mümtaz to live… And this thought endeared the lodge to her. She wanted to commit the floor plan to memory, because it might be of use one day. At least while lying in bed tonight as she thought of Mümtaz. Mümtaz informed them that this must be the Bosphorus overlook of the original structure. “Maybe the woods above had first belonged to this property.” Even if that wasn’t the case, another, larger manor house certainly once stood here.

Nuran roamed about trying to read the old Ottoman calligraphy on the wall panels and watched her apparition hover in antique mirrors of time past. The peculiar redolence of the historic lingered everywhere. This, our scent within history, was so reminiscent of who we were.

Nuran tasted of this elixir distilled from the alembic of ages. Mümtaz’s imagination churned elsewhere. It cast Nuran as a beloved of old, like a favorite odalisque of the age of Sultan Murat IV. Jewelry, shawls, fabric adorned with silver embroidery, Venetian tulle, rose-peach slippers… a mound of cushions surrounding her. And he revealed his thoughts to her.