Handout: Istanbul: Memories and the City (2005)

<Istanbul: Memories and the City> Orhan Pamuk

1. Background Information

(source: Whereig.com)

Glorious past: once the capital of

Ÿ Roman Period (196-330)

Ÿ Byzantine Empire (330-1453)

Ÿ Ottoman Period (1453-1922)

自19世纪中叶起，帝国因连连战败而日渐衰弱，老城涌入大量移民，甚至于最宏伟的皇家建筑都开始现出贫穷和败落的痕迹。

From the middle of the nineteenth century, as a string of military defeats was eroding the empire, the Old City was swamped by immigrants, and even the grandest imperial buildings began to show marks of poverty and ruin.

Ÿ Modern Period (1923-present):

after the Turkish War of Independence, Ankara replaced the city as the capital of the newly formed Republic of Turkey à Westernization

Ÿ The author was born in 1950s; the book was first published in 2003 in Turkish.

2. General introduction of this book

Ÿ Hüzün (a simple definition)

Sounds like "hoo-zoon"

呼愁/A sense of deep sadness and loss

Ÿ The author tries to show this “Hüzün” via

- his personal experiences and observation (mostly in childhood and teenage years)

- other people’s perspectives (painters, “four lonely melancholic[Dn1] writers”, newspaper, books about Istanbul)

è Intertwine personal subjective feelings and objective facts from multiple aspects.

è Everything related to “Istanbul”

3. Some impressive parts

1) Westernization

a) Personal museums of rich people

但不只是没人弹的钢琴而已。每一间公寓里还有一个上锁的玻璃柜，柜子里陈列着没人碰过的中国瓷器、茶杯、银器、糖罐、鼻烟盒、水晶杯、玫瑰香味的水壶、餐具和香炉，虽然我偶尔在这些东西当中找地方藏小汽车。屋内有珍珠镶嵌的废弃书桌，不见头巾的头巾架，后面未藏任何东西的日式屏风和新艺术风格帘幕。书房里的玻璃柜内，放着我那医生伯父积尘的医学用书：从他移民美国之后二十年来，谁也没碰过这些书。在我童稚的想法里，这些房间的布置不是为活人，而是为死人。

But it wasn’t just the unplayed pianos; in each apartment there was also a locked glass cabinet displaying Chinese porcelains, teacups, silver sets, sugar bowls, snuffboxes, crystal glasses, rosewater ewers, plates, and censers that no one ever touched, although among them I sometimes found hiding places for miniature cars. There were the unused desks inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the turban shelves on which there were no turbans, and the Japanese and Art Nouveau screens behind which nothing was hidden. There, in the library, gathering dust behind the glass, were my doctor uncle’s medical books; in the twenty years since he’d emigrated to America, no human hand had touched them. To my childish mind, these rooms were furnished not for the living but for the dead. (p. 23-24)

客厅不是让你坐得舒服的地方，它是为某位假想中的访客展现这是一户西化家庭而布置的小型博物馆。

Sitting rooms were not meant to be places where you could lounge comfortably; they were little museums designed to demonstrate to a hypothetical visitor that the householders were westernized. (p. 24)

b) Gaze from western people

阅读西方旅人描写的伊斯坦布尔，我的不平之感事后尤然：这些包括杰出作家在内的观察者提及并夸大的许多本地特色，在指出后不久便在城内消失。这是一种残酷的共生关系：西方观察者喜欢点出让伊斯坦布尔别具异国情调、不同于西方的事物，而我们当中的西化者却把相同的每件事物看做障碍，应当尽快从城市表面铲除。

Many of the local features these observers, some of them brilliant writers, noted and exaggerated were to vanish from the city soon after having been remarked. It was a brutal symbiosis: Western observers love to identify the things that make Istanbul exotic, nonwestern, whereas the westernizers among us register all the same things as obstacles to be erased from the face of the city as fast as possible. (p. 308)

…外国人一描写，它们便消失无踪。

…no sooner described by foreigners than they vanished. (p. 309)

西化，让我和伊斯坦布尔的数百万人得以把我们的过去当做“异国”来欣赏，品味如画的美景。

Westernization has allowed me and millions of other İstanbullus the luxury of enjoying our own past as “exotic” of relishing the picturesque. (p. 307)

2) Bosphorus

a) What does it mean to Istanbul people?

而是对许多伊斯坦布尔的家庭来说，博斯普鲁斯是他们仅有的慰藉。

for many Istanbul families, the Bosphorus was their only solace. (p. 87)

它们渐渐消失：一栋接一栋烧毁的雅骊别墅，我父亲曾指给我看的捕鱼器，划着小船到一户户雅骊兜售的水果贩，母亲带我们游泳的博斯普鲁斯沿岸沙滩，在博斯普鲁斯海里游泳的乐趣，在变成花哨的餐厅之前废弃不用的渡船站。把船停靠在渡船站旁的渔夫，如今也走了，想租他们的船小游博斯普鲁斯已不可能。

Slowly they disappeared: the yalis that were burned down one by one, the old fish traps my father used to point out to me, the fruit sellers who used to go from yali to yali in their caïques, the beaches along the Bosphorus where my mother would take us to swim, the pleasure of swimming in the Bosphorus. The ferry stations that had stood abandoned turned into fancy restaurants; the fiermen who would pull their boats up next to the ferry stations are gone. It is no longer possible to hire their boats for little tours. (p. 87)

但对我来说，有件事始终不变：博斯普鲁斯在我们心中占据的位置。和我童年的时候一样，我们仍将她视为我们的健康之泉、百病之药、良善之源，支撑着这座城市以及城里所有的居民。

But for me, one thing remains the same: the place the Bosphorus holds in our collective heart. As in my childhood, we still see it as the font of our good health, the cure of our ills, the in' nite source of goodness and goodwill that sustains the city and all those who dwell in it. (p. 87)

b) Counting boats passing through Bosphorus

但我的数船癖好，我与许多人共有的这项癖好，基本上是由于恐惧使然，这种恐惧也吞噬着城里的许多人。

But my ship-counting habit, this habit I share with so many others, is essentially fed by fear, one that eats away at many others in the city too. (p. 264)

他们眼见中东的财富溢出它们的城市，目睹从奥斯曼人败给苏联和西方以来日渐衰落，城市陷入贫困、忧伤和败落——伊斯坦布尔人成为向内看的民族主义的人民，因此我们怀疑任何新的东西，尤其任何带洋气的东西（尽管我们亦对之垂涎）。

After seeing all the wealth of the Middle East seep out of their city, after witnessing the slow decline that began with the Ottoman defeats at the hands of Russia and the West and ended with their city falling into poverty, melancholy, and ruin, İstanbullus became an inward-looking nationalist people; we are therefore suspicious of anything new and most especially of anything that smacks of foreignness (even if we also covet it). (p. 264)

过去一百五十年来，我们胆怯地企盼灾难带给我们新的失败与废墟。想办法摆脱恐惧和忧伤依然是重要的事情，这就是为什么发呆地凝视博斯普鲁斯，也能像是一种责任。

For the past 150 years, we have lived in timorous anticipation of catastrophes that will bring us fresh defeats and new ruins. It’s still important to do something to 6 ght o- the dread and the melancholy, and that is why the idle contemplation of the Bosphorus can seem like a duty. (p. 264)

城里居民记得最清楚并且忐忑不安地等待着的灾难的类型，自然与博斯普鲁斯的船舶事故有关。这些事故把全城居民连在一起，使整个城市像个大村落。由于这些灾难终止了日常生活的规则，且最后总是饶过“我们这等人”，因此我私底下（尽管心怀内疚）喜欢这些灾难。

The types of disasters that the city remembers best and awaits with greatest trepidation are, of course, the accidents involving ships in the Bosphorus. These bring the city together and make it

feel like a large village. Because these disasters suspend the rules of everyday life and because, in the end, they spare “people like us,” I secretly (if also guiltily) enjoy them. (p. 264)

3) Black-and-white photos

帝国时代多元种族文化的大伊斯坦布尔到此结束，城市停滞，掏空自己，成为单调、单语的黑白城镇。

It was the end of the grand polyglot multicultural Istanbul of the imperial age; the city stagnated, emptied itself out, and became a monotonous monolingual town in black and white. (p. 304-305)

观看黑白影像的城市，即透过晦暗的历史观看它：古色古香的外貌，对全世界来说不再重要。即使最伟大的奥斯曼建筑也带有某种简单的朴素，表明帝国终结的忧伤，痛苦地面对欧洲逐渐消失的目光，面对不治之症般必须忍受的老式穷困。认命的态度滋养了伊斯坦布尔的内视灵魂。

To see the city in black and white is to see it through the tarnish of history: the patina of what is old and faded and no longer matters to the rest of the world. Even the greatest Ottoman architecture has a humble simplicity that suggests an end-of-empire gloom, a pained submission to the diminishing European gaze and to an ancient poverty that must be endured like an incurable disease. It is resignation that nourishes Istanbul’s inward-looking soul. (p. 60)

若想看黑白影像的城市，看笼罩它的雾气，呼吸城里居民共同拥抱的忧伤，你只需从某个富裕的西方城市飞过来，直奔熙来攘往的街道。若是冬天，走在加拉塔桥上的每个人都穿同样黯淡的茶色衣服。我那时代的伊斯坦布尔人已避免穿他们荣耀的祖先们穿的艳红、翠绿和鲜橘色。在外国游客的眼中，仿佛他们是刻意这么穿着打扮，以达到某种道德目的。他们并非刻意——但在他们沉重的忧伤中带有一丝谦逊。这是黑白城市里的穿着打扮，他们仿佛在说：这是为一个衰落一百五十年的城市哀悼的方式。

To see the city in black and white, to see the haze that sits over it and breathe in the melancholy its inhabitants have embraced as their common fate, you need only to ) y in from a rich western city and head straight to the crowded streets; if it’s winter, every man on the Galata Bridge will be wearing the same pale, drab, shadowy clothes. The İstanbullus of my era have shunned the vibrant reds, greens, and oranges of their rich, proud ancestors; to foreign visitors, it looks as if they have done so deliberately, to make a moral point. They have not—but there is in their dense gloom a suggestion of modesty. This is how you dress in a black-and-white city, they seem to be saying; this is how you grieve for a city that has been in decline for a hundred and fifty years. (p. 60-61)

- Snow & Night

4) Ruins/relics

这个诞生于城墙外荒凉、孤立、贫困街区的梦想，我们可称之为“废墟的忧伤”，假使通过局外人的眼睛观看这些场景（如同坦皮纳），就可能“美丽如画”。忧伤最初被看成如画的风光之美，却也逐渐用于表达一整个世纪的败战与贫穷给伊斯坦布尔人民带来的悲痛。

We might call this dream—which grew out of the barren, isolated, destitute neighborhoods beyond the city walls—the “melancholy of the ruins,” and if one looks at these scenes through the eyes of an outsider (as Tanpınar did) it is possible to see them as picturesque. First seen as the beauty of a picturesque landscape, melancholy also came to express the sadness that a century of defeat and poverty would bring to the people of Istanbul. (p. 322)

这些东西可不像在西方城市看见的大帝国遗迹，像历史博物馆一样妥善保存，骄傲地展示。伊斯坦布尔人只是在废墟间继续过他们的生活。许多西方作家和旅人感到这点妙不可言。但对于比较敏感的居民而言，这些废墟提醒人们眼前贫穷杂乱的城市甭想再创相同的财富、权力和文化高峰。

These are nothing like the remains of great empires to be seen in western cities, preserved like museums of history and proudly displayed. The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins. Many western writers and travelers * nd this charming. But for the city’s more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its former heights of wealth, power, and culture. (p. 138)

4. Hüzün

- Collectively

城市、街道、风景向我们传递的一些基本情感——忧伤、疲惫、卑微、谦恭——通常也会出现在它们前面的人或者人们的表情里。

(translated) The basic emotions conveyed by cities, streets, and landscapes—sadness, weariness, humility, and modesty—often also appear in the expressions of the people or individuals associated with them.

伊斯坦布尔所承载的“呼愁”不是“有治愈之法的疾病”，也不是“我们得从中解脱的自来之苦”，而是自愿承载的“呼愁”。

Istanbul does not carry its hüzün as “an illness for which there is a cure” or “an unbidden pain from which we need to be delivered”. (p. 140)

“呼愁”为他们的听天由命赋予某种尊严，却也说明了他们何以乐观而骄傲地选择拥抱失败、犹豫、挫折和贫穷，显示“呼愁”不是生命中种种辛酸与失落导致的结果，而是其主要原因。

…hüzün gives their resignation an air of dignity, but it also explains their choice to embrace failure, indecision, defeat, and poverty so philosophically and with such pride, suggesting that hüzün is not the outcome of life’s worries and great losses but their principal cause. (p. 141)

- How this book displayed this “Hüzün” to readers?

但此刻我想描述的不是伊斯坦布尔的忧伤，而是那映照出我们自身的“呼愁”，我们自豪地承担并作为一个社群所共有的“呼愁”。感受这种“呼愁”等于观看一幕幕景象，唤起回忆，城市本身在回忆中成为“呼愁”的写照、“呼愁”的本质。我所说的是太阳早早下山的傍晚，走在后街街灯下提着塑料袋回家的父亲们。隆冬停泊在废弃渡口的博斯普鲁斯老渡船，船上的船员擦洗甲板，一只手提水桶，一只眼看着远处的黑白电视；在一次次财务危机中踉跄而行、整天惶恐地等顾客上门的老书商；抱怨经济危机过后男人理发次数减少的理发师；在鹅卵石路上的车子之间玩球的孩子们；手里提着塑料购物袋站在偏远车站等着永远不来的汽车时不与任何人交谈的蒙面妇女；博斯普鲁斯老别墅的空船库；挤满失业者的茶馆；夏夜在城里最大的广场耐心地走来走去找寻最后一名醉醺醺主顾的皮条客；冬夜赶搭渡轮的人群；还是帕夏官邸时木板便已嘎嘎作响、如今成为市政总部响得更厉害的木造建筑；从窗帘间向外窥看等着丈夫半夜归来的妇女；在清真寺中庭贩卖宗教读物、念珠和朝圣油的老人；数以万计的一模一样的公寓大门，其外观因脏污、锈斑、烟灰、尘土而变色；雾中传来的船笛声；拜占庭帝国崩溃以来的城墙废墟；傍晚空无一人的市场；已然崩垮的道堂“泰克”（tekke）；栖息在生锈驳船上的海鸥，驳船船身裹覆着青苔与贻贝，挺立在倾盆大雨下；严寒季节从百年别墅的单烟囱冒出的丝丝烟带；在加拉塔桥两旁垂钓的人群；寒冷的图书馆阅览室；街头摄影人；戏院里的呼吸气味；曾因金漆顶棚而粲然闪耀的戏院如今已成害羞腼腆的男人光顾的色情电影院；日落后不见女子单独出没的街道；南风袭来的热天里聚集在国家管制的妓院门口的人群；在商店门口排队购买减价肉的年轻女子；每逢假日清真寺的尖塔之间以灯光拼出的神圣讯息，灯泡烧坏之处缺了字母；贴满脏破海报的墙壁；在任何一个西方城市早成古董的1950年代雪佛兰、在此地成为共乘出租车的“多姆”，喘着气爬上城里的窄巷和脏街；挤满乘客的公共汽车；清真寺不断遭窃的铅板和排雨槽；有如通往第二个世界的城市墓地，墓园里的柏树；傍晚搭乘卡德柯伊（Kadıköy）往卡拉柯伊（Karaköy）的船上看见的黯淡灯光；在街头尝试把同一包纸巾卖给每个过路人的小孩；无人理睬的钟塔；孩子们读起奥斯曼帝国丰功伟业的历史课本，以及这些孩子在家里挨的打；人人得待在家中以便汇编选民名单的日子；人人得待在家中接受户口普查的日子；突然宣布宵禁以便搜找恐怖分子，于是人人诚惶诚恐地坐在家里等候“官员”的日子；报上无人阅读的一角刊载的读者来信，说在附近矗立三百七十五年的清真寺，圆顶渐渐塌陷，问何以未见国家插手干涉；繁忙的十字路口设置的地下通道；阶梯破败的天桥；在同一个地方卖了四十年明信片的男子；在最不可能的地方向你乞讨、在同一个地方日复一日发出同样乞求的乞丐；在摩肩接踵的街上、船上、通道和地下通道里阵阵扑鼻的尿骚味；阅读土耳其大众报《自由日报》（Hürriyet）上“古金大姐”专栏的女孩们；在夕阳照耀下窗户橘光闪烁的于斯屈达尔；人人尚在睡梦中、渔夫正要出海捕鱼的清晨时分；号称“动物园”的古尔韩（Gülhane）公园，园内仅有两只山羊和三只百无聊赖的猫懒洋洋地待在笼子里；在廉价的夜总会里卖力模仿美国歌手、土耳其名歌星的三流歌手以及一流的歌手们；上了六年没完没了令人厌烦的英文课后仍只会说“yes”和“no”的中学生们；等在加拉塔码头的移民；散落在冬夜冷落的街头市场上的蔬果、垃圾、塑料袋、纸屑、空布袋和空盒空箱；在街头市场怯生生讲价的美丽蒙面女子；带着三个孩子艰难走路的年轻母亲；十一月十日清晨九点零五分，整个城市停顿下来为纪念土耳其国父而致敬，船只同时在海上鸣笛；铺了许多沥青而使台阶消失的鹅卵石楼梯；大理石废墟，几百年来曾是壮观的街头喷泉，现已干涸，喷头遭窃；小街上的公寓，我童年时代的中产阶级家庭——医生、律师、老师和他们的妻子儿女们——傍晚坐在公寓里听收音机，如今同样的公寓中摆满了针织机和纽扣机，挤满拿最低工资彻夜工作以交付紧急订单的年轻姑娘们；从加拉塔桥望向埃于普的金角湾风光；在码头上等顾客上门时凝望风景的“芝米”小贩；所有损坏、破旧、风光不再的一切；近秋时节由巴尔干半岛和北欧、西欧飞往南方的鹳鸟，飞过博斯普鲁斯海峡和马尔马拉海上诸岛时俯瞰整个城市；国内足球赛后抽烟的人群，在我童年时代这些球赛始终以悲惨的失败告终。我所说的正是这一切。