Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

He knew it was absurd. He realized that the tragic contingencies of his childhood had instilled the tendency to think and feel this way, to consider everything he cherished as being far away, in a region of inaccessibility; just as he’d first been exposed to love in conjunction with death and sin during impressionable years — as the award and agony of what lay beyond absolution — so too had this notion of distance taken root within him. Not to mention that Mümtaz himself had exacerbated these childhood legacies of his own free will during a maladapted adolescence, cerebral and prematurely inaugurated by poetry’s influence — legacies that persisted until his introduction to Nuran. In his opinion, the true destiny of poetry lay beyond objects and hopes. Poetry resembled the blaze of an entire life bursting aflame like a dry leaf pile. Weren’t all the poets he’d read and admired, Poe and Baudelaire foremost among them, princes of “nevermore”? Their cradles swung under celestial signs of negation and their lives passed in the lands of nihilism. How might honeycombs of poetry be filled without transporting one’s existence to a horizon of intricate return? Mümtaz hadn’t simply denied himself the countless banquets of life and youth, he’d accepted the acrimonies of life as the only clime worthy of experience, despite his elation, his almost algebraic observations, and his diverse appetites for life. As he’d confided to Nuran on the night they’d wandered beneath the August moon, each idea or passion matured within him only once it assumed the form of torture or torment. Short of this, he felt his poetry wouldn’t merge with lived reality. That melding and synthesis only occurred at unendurable temperatures, short of which he’d be relegated to the peripheries of a pilfered language.

Perhaps such processes churned in his adoration of Nuran. Mümtaz wouldn’t have been so bound to her if not for the enduring legacy of the “Song in Mahur,” and the dominance with which she entered his life, brought about by prior love and marriage. The insecurity Nuran showed when confronted by social and emotional life, her surrender to the status quo, and her contentment with what the day offered — in short, her resignation to complacency had fostered a semi-divine persona. Mümtaz had full familiarity with the force behind these tendencies. He sought an inner, emotional order for himself. He was in pursuit of a fiery catalyst that would bring words and images to life. But the rules of the game had changed, and in the trial that he’d willingly entered, he’d failed. A bewildering thought. From time to time Mümtaz awoke from his happy complacency to ask, I wonder if it’s excessive? The question alone turned the paradise of their love into a mock heaven. Throughout the summer of his content, he’d lived a life that was effectively doubled. And strangest of all was that the suspicion he nurtured against his emotions, his self-scrutiny, neither diminished his affections toward Nuran nor prevented his suffering from the torments of love.

He now spoke to himself in a similar vein: I’m a fool. . I insist on incriminating myself . Each time his gaze fell on Nuran, he felt he wasn’t seeing her as usual, but rather through the mediation of memory. This sensation persisted, changing form. He was to love the lady in his midst, who laughed in his embrace, as nothing more than an absence.

Why was Suad in such despair? What was he thinking about? Had he truly listened to Dede with the longing to believe and discover? Or did he begin with a sense of rejection? Why was he so distraught? As such questions entered his thoughts, he succumbed to bewildering qualms. How did Mümtaz himself interpret this so-called devotional ceremony? One by one he recollected the places his thoughts had taken him during the Ferahfezâ. Not once during the entire performance had he felt any mystical awakening. The associations he’d conjured congregated around either Nuran or the book he was in the process of writing. Was Dede Efendi responsible for this lack? Or was it just a function of Mümtaz’s nature? Now he, too, was astounded at his impoverishment of spirit. Or was his stance toward a la turca music completely affected? Had he appropriated it as well, like so many other facets of his life, like his love of Nuran, in which he so exalted, as nothing more than a means to an end? Was he only involved cerebrally, forcibly flogging his imagination? Had he furthermore entered into this matter hoping against hope that he’d end up, as a matter of course, in a genuine nadir of his own? How did he feel when listening to other musicians? Did he feel the same while listening to Bach and Beethoven? Aldous Huxley had written, “God exists and is apparent, but only when violins play. .” The novelist, whom he quite admired, had written this about the Quartet in A minor. Mümtaz had listened to this quartet long before he’d read the book. Alas, he couldn’t reign in his feelings.

Suddenly he staggered. In the midst of Dede’s “Acemaşiran Yürük Semâi,” Nuran’s voice wailed in Farsi:

Wheresoever you reside Therein our paradise does abide

But why did Nuran’s voice reach him from across such distances? In this moment of nervous tension, had a presence or an absence intervened between them? Was he seeing her reflected in a mirror of despair? Or was he seeing her like the mortal spark of an Absolute illuminating itself? Mümtaz looked at Suad, as if only he could provide the answers to such questions. But Suad’s face was firmly shut.

And perhaps for the sake of doing something, anything, Mümtaz stood from his spot, and went to the spigot in the water closet to wash his face. When he returned, Emin Dede was performing yet another of his celebrated taksim s, as always in the Ferahfezâ makam. Music isn’t an appropriate vehicle for love… For music toiled beyond time. Music, the ordering of time — zamanın nizamı — elided the present. Meanwhile, contentment existed in the present. As he wasn’t able to attain satisfaction, why should he even bother expressing affection?

But who was content? The plea of the ney wasn’t in vain. Didn’t this voyage through the cosmos reveal the futility of felicity? Had Suad come here to be heartened? Of course not. Were he presently with one of his little damsels, naturally he’d be a thousand times happier. Yet, he had come to pester Mümtaz. He’d make both of them suffer; they’d make each other miserable. This was what people did, each day, as if created for this express purpose. Suad listened to the ney , his forehead resting on his left hand, elbow on knee. Yet it was evident from his posture that his entire being was cocked and primed. He didn’t hear the ney ; he was simply bored, impatient, expectant. And Mümtaz began to anticipate what would emerge from this hiatus of expectation. He himself began to long for Emin Dede’s imminent departure, curious about Suad’s first order of action.

Still, the ney persisted in its voyage through a realm of spectral illumination.

Emin requested permission to leave upon completing his taksim . He entrusted Cemil to them, with the proviso that they not tire him excessively. Mümtaz saw his guest out to the street leading down the hill. He returned to the house reluctantly. Suad’s presence had all but made him forget his responsibilities as host. Never before had he felt the desire to flee, to escape in the name of salvation. He wanted to abscond, to hide away. Before the entrance, he counted, One, two, three. . one, two, three . Seeing Suad filled him with dread.

He entered and found the rakı table laid out. But no one had begun to indulge. Everybody stood, chatting. He found Suad and İhsan beside the table, where alcohol-filled crystal tumblers cast large luculent clusters beneath the electric light. He approached them: “How did you like the concert, Suad?”