THE WORK OF TURKISH NOVELIST ORHAN PAMUK

M. REPENKOVA

Candidate of Philological Sciences

The work of Orhan Pamuk, who is called the "Turkish Umberto Eco"*, has been extremely popular for the last 20 years not only in Turkey, but also far beyond its borders. The writer's novels, translated into many languages of the world, have been awarded prestigious international literary prizes, among which the Nobel Prize occupies a special place.

The logic of the Nobel Committee, which awarded the victory to O. Pamuk in 2006, is quite understandable. This writer combines what Swedish academics value most-the unquestionable literary virtues of creativity and irreconcilable political beliefs, for which one of the most original novelists of our time is being persecuted by the authorities in his homeland.

As you know, in the early 1990s, O. Pamuk spoke out in defense of the Kurds, and in 2005 he made a statement in the press about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, which led to a criminal case with the wording " for publicly insulting the national feelings of the Turks." The writer's books were burned in the streets, and the author himself almost went to jail. Only under the pressure of the world community was the trial in his case stopped. In the same year, 2005, the German Booksellers ' Union awarded O. Pamuk with the Peace Prize, which is awarded annually to writers "whose creativity and social activities contribute to the consolidation of peace on earth".

Repeated threats against Pamuk from Islamic radicals and Turkish nationalists, whom he ridicules and parodies in his novels, made the writer seriously think about emigrating to the United States, where in 2005 - 2006 he worked as a guest lecturer at Columbia University. He openly stated his plans at a press conference, stressing that the atmosphere around him was particularly heated after the murder of famous Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul in January 2007.

Apparently, not without taking these facts into account, the Swedish Academy's literary prize was awarded for the real merits of the Turkish writer's work - for the fact that "in search of the melancholy soul of his native city, he discovered new symbols of the clash and interweaving of cultures." Indeed, melancholy permeates the complex structure of his novels, dedicated to the search for harmony between the individual and society, reason and feelings, fiction and reality, East and West.

According to his literary tastes, O. Pamuk is a Westerner. His favorite writers are James Joyce, Michel Houellebecq, and Jorge Luis Borges. At the same time, he believes that there is an endless chasm separating East from West, Turk from European. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Quarera dela Sera in February 2007, when asked if the Turks would ever be able to understand Europeans, the writer replied that " to do this, the Turks first need to understand themselves."

Orhan Pamuk was born in 1952 to a wealthy family in Istanbul. After graduating from the prestigious American Robert College, at the insistence of his parents, he entered a Technical University, because according to family tradition, he was supposed to become an engineer. Pretty soon it turns out that technical science is not his element. He drops out of school and enters the Faculty of Journalism at Istanbul University,

* Umberto Eco (born 1932) is an Italian thinker, semiotic specialist, philosopher, medievalist, literary critic, and writer (postmodern novels-The Name of the Rose, 1980; Foucault's Pendulum, 1988; The Island on the Eve, 1994; Baudolino, 2000). Umberto Eco's name is one of the most famous in the modern culture of Western Europe.

which ends in 1976. His first reports, essays and short stories have appeared in the press since 1974, but they have not been preserved in the memory of the reading public. At the same time, Pamuk is working hard on the novel "Cevdet bey ve ou ullari".

In his debut novel, Pamuk acts as a realist writer. Avoiding experimentation in the field of novel form, he creates a family chronicle, in which many critics have seen the influence of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. The writer focuses on three generations of the rich Istanbul family of Yııkçı against the background of the socio-political cataclysms of Turkish society in 1906-1971: the founder of the dynasty, a major merchant Cevdet Bey, his son Refik and grandson Ahmed. The characters find themselves at the tragic crossroads of cultures (Asian and European), trying in vain to find a middle ground between them.

A representative of the nascent Turkish bourgeoisie, Cevdet Bey, in 1906 created a large company selling electrical goods. All his thoughts are aimed at increasing the capital of the company. He learns from the Europeans how to work. He learns French so that he can read the French Economic Bulletin every day, and tries to create a home and family based on the knowledge gained from French novels, following the European model. However, the ambitious plans of the hero are not understood either among relatives with their traditional Eastern inertia and concerns about observing religious rites, or among merchants, at that time mainly Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Cevdet Bey feels disharmony with the surrounding world. He is lonely and unhappy. Even his own brother, who lives at his expense, despises him "for his addiction to money."

Thirty years later, Djevdet Bey's son Refik also "breaks out" of his social environment. Unlike his father, who lived only for himself, Refik lives exclusively for others. The goal of his life is to enlighten the Turkish people, " to bring a ray of light into the dark kingdom." Refik spends his share of the legacy on creating a "people's publishing house", which publishes the best works of Western literature in an adapted," accessible to the understanding of the people " form. But people do not understand and do not buy these books, the publishing house goes bankrupt.

Refik's family is also unwilling to understand his good intentions. The wife, having taken two young children, goes to her parents ' house. The older brother, rather tired of the "quirks" of the Refik, stops helping him with money. Refik is forced to move from a comfortable apartment to an attic, where he dies as a lonely, abandoned old man.

Refik's son Ahmed is depicted during the military coup of March 12, 1971, when mass demonstrations of young people who were at the mercy of anarchic terror served as an excuse for the army to interfere in the political life of the country. Ahmed is an artist. He creates for people, completely giving himself up to this high goal. He does not want to imitate fashionable Western artists and seeks to find his place in national art. Creativity for him is at the same time an endless process of self-discovery and self-improvement. It is to this hero that Orhan Pamuk leaves the opportunity to achieve harmony of his own " I " with the outside world.

The novel, written in 1978-1979, was published for a long time - the difficult political situation in the country, the crisis in the publishing industry, and publishers were also deterred by the considerable volume of the book (about 800 pages) by an unknown author. Only in 1983 the Milliyet publishing house published Cevdet Bey. And the novel was awarded the Orhan Kemal Prize, the most prestigious national prize in the field of novelistics, the very next year.

In 1983, Orhan Pamuk's second novel, The Silent House (Sessiz ev), was published, and in the same year it was awarded the national Madarala Prize, and in 1991 - the international prize" European Discovery " (Prix de la D∅couverte Europ en ene). This novel to a certain extent repeats the idea of "Cevdet Bey", connected with the search for ways of harmony of the individual with society.

The plot of the novel is quite simple. Three members of the younger generation of an intelligent Turkish family (historian Farouk, revolutionary student Nilguen, and lyceum student Metin) spend a week in the hot summer of 1980 in the family home built 70 years ago by their grandfather, Selahattin Bey, who was expelled from the capital for political reasons. Grandchildren have different life interests. Farouk is most interested in history, so he spends a lot of time in the archives of the municipality of Gebze, happily studying old newspapers, magazines, and court cases. Nilgyun, who studies sociology, like many students, is passionate about the ideas of rebuilding society. Metin sees his future in business. His desire is to get into high society, go to America and get rich there.

From the stories of grandmother Fatma-khanim, grandchildren learn about the past of their family. It turns out that the whole life of their grandfather, an encyclopedist, was devoted to the desire to "close the gap between East and West in one fell swoop."

At their grandmother's house, the young men first meet their uncle Recep, a silent dwarf. Over time, it turns out that Recep is associated with a group of right-wing extremists. With his direct participation, Nilgyun is killed.

From this point on, the novel changes the form of narration. The author-narrator "leaves" the text, giving the floor to the narrators, each of whom interprets the events taking place in the family and the country in his own way on the eve of the military coup of 1980. "Silent House" ends with a significant phrase for the further work of O. Pamuk, once said by his hero Selyakhattin Bey:"...If you have a book in your hand, no matter how confusing and incomprehensible it may be, when it ends, and you want to try again to understand life and something that is beyond your understanding, you can go back to the beginning of this book and read it again, can't you Fatma?"

All subsequent novels of the writer will be linked to the world as books, encyclopedias, and texts. Only the text and the meanings generated by this text will now become the reality of Orhan Pamuk, a post-modernist.

The publication of the next novel, "The White Fortress" (Beyaz kale, 1985), can be likened to a bomb explosion. The Turkish reader, who was not previously familiar with postmodernism, was shocked. Fiction, mysticism of Poe's "scary stories", mysterious manuscripts, dreams, labyrinths of H. Borges, allusions to the philosophical ideas of existentialism were interspersed with easily guessed quotations from Muslim literature ("Tales of 1001 Nights", Djelaleddin Rumi, Evliya Celebi...). Pamuk was accused of plagiarism, "fashionable experimentation" (a well-known professor -linguist T. Yudzhel, critic H. Shaheen et al.). However, an interesting adventure story in the spirit of mass book production, leading to the Ottoman Empire, in the XVII century. and also containing an intellectual riddle, attracted and fascinated the reader. In 1985 alone, the novel was reprinted more than 10 times.

The development of postmodern creativity of the writer was promoted by his three-year internship in the United States in the late 1980s. It was during this time that he studied the experience of American postmodernists (Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, John Hawkes, etc.). After returning to his homeland, O. Pamuk publishes his postmodern novels with enviable regularity (every four years). "Black Book" (Kara kitap, 1990), "New Life" (Yeni hayat, 1994), "My Name is Red" (Benim adim Kirmizi, 1998), "Snow" (Kar, 2002), in which he actively continues to develop the technique of collage, citationism, intertextuality, and detachment through language integration. masks. He is increasingly focused on the new reader who accepts the rules of the multiplicity of language games of postmodernism and is happy to participate in them.

O. Pamuk also tries his hand in the field of journalism. In 2003, the book "Istanbul: a City of Memories" is published, in which the biography of the writer, his memories of childhood and youth are intertwined with the history of the majestic city located at the junction of Europe and Asia. Pamuk shows readers how the spirit of the mysterious city with its narrow streets and old Ottoman mansions gradually fades into oblivion under the influence of modern times. At the same time, we can see how the views on the life of the artist himself are changing. Thus, a portrait of an artist in his youth becomes a portrait of an artist in the city.

Orhan Pamuk's work has been extremely popular in Russia for the last 5 - 6 years, where the writer has already visited several times to present his books. Almost all of his novels, which are not stale on the shelves of domestic bookstores, have been translated into Russian.

We invite readers to read a short excerpt from O. Pamuk's first novel "Dzhevdet Bey and Sons", which has not yet been published in Russia.

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