A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  And this couplet conveyed a truth. Emin Dede was a man concealed in his material being and culture. It was futile to seek, in such a venerated artist, any pretentious flourish or affect fostered by withdrawing to a corner and wallowing in inner fugues. Rather, he resembled a small sea stone licked, swallowed, and ground down over centuries by repeated waves that pounded eternal shores; a stone whose particularities had been erased; one of those smooth, dense stones, thousands of which one sees while walking along the coast! Nor did he give any indication that he’d preserved the final rays of a worldly realm that had withdrawn from our midst to become its affluent treasurer of sorts. In humility, friendship, and equality before one and all, he knew nothing of transformations in social existence or the repeated renunciations that made his person and his art a glorious vestige, a ruin, or even the final setting of a blazing sun.

  Mümtaz observed him, seated like anybody in the garden, under autumnal sunlight in his black garb, and he thought unwittingly of much-venerated virtuosi now resident in other worlds and masters who’d formed Emin’s seasons of the soul, about which the master himself scarcely knew a thing.

  A Beethoven, a Wagner, a Debussy, a Liszt, or a Borodin was at such variance from this luminary of the literature sitting before him. They were possessed of maddening ire and vengeance, of desires that treated life in its entirety as a banquet spread before them, of a hubris taut with improbable Atlas-like exertions of the single-handed shouldering of such temperaments – of numerous theories and eccentricities that cast their personalities in various lights, and of natures, whose mildness alone cut like the swipe of a leonine claw. Meanwhile, the life of this little-known dervish consisted of repeated self-renunciations. Such denials, the resolve to twice disappear in absolutely reciprocal love and in the general commotion of being, weren’t things that solely concerned one such as Nuri. By perpetually pressing his persona – eclipsed by his own will, or by the cultivation of his culture – into the past, it was possible to uncover Ottoman musicians like an Aziz Dede, a Zekâi Dede, an İsmail Dede, a Hafız Post, an Itrî, a Sadullah Aǧa, a Basmacizâde, a Kömürcü Hafız, a Murat Aǧa, or even an Abdülkadir-î Merâgî; in sum, to reclaim one of our traits, and perhaps a genealogy of our most opulent sensibilities. These men preferred to live reclusively as single stalks within a bushel of wheat. They hadn’t driven themselves to the point of obsession, but through a pure ideal they were content to unleash numerous springtides out of the burgeoning and bleary incipience of their inner worlds; they recognized their art not as a means of avowing selfhood above all else, but as the sole path to vanishing in sempiternal oneness. Interestingly enough, their contemporaries also saw the matter this same way. The most individualistic of the lot, who by-the-by contaminated us with numerous maladies of the divine, the younger brother of Abdülhak Molla, in his diary, deigned to refer to Dede Efendi in such simplistic terms, as if ignorant of the import of his artistry, almost in a state of blithe ignorance. When İhsan one day lamented the vacuous material relating to the virtuoso Dede Efendi in Hafız Hızır İlyas Aǧa’s Reminiscences from the Inner Palace, his interlocutor Emin Dede replied, laughing, “My holiness, you’re barking up the wrong tree . . . Others make art. We simply abide in a state of pure devotion. You know, in some religious orders having one’s name inscribed upon a tomb was considered bad form, let alone creating works of art.” This, you see, was the way of the East. According to Mümtaz, the East that was both our incurable affliction and our infinite strength! In this extraordinary renunciation, Emin Dede was the people’s last heir, one who might snuff out the lightning flash of his own existence were it within his power.

  Emin spent a large portion of his pure and pristine life beneath the harsh wardship of his older brother. He didn’t indulge in alcohol or cigarettes and had no excesses. Very soon, they’d all witness him speaking as the voice of a civilization through humble observations. He told countless amusing anecdotes relating to masters like Aziz Dede, his actual mentor Neyzen Hüseyni Efendi, Cemil Bey, Zekâi Dede, and their forebears. Apparently Aziz Dede was a harsh, meticulous, portly, and unlettered master who was exceedingly chaste. One day, as the story went, he noticed that the pen he’d dipped into his inkwell bore no trace of ink, and interpreting the meaning of this portent, he resolved to embrace Allah through heart and devotion alone. By resting his ney onto his considerable paunch, which made him resemble certain mullahs, he simply played it wherever the urge struck him.

  One night he’d entered a tavern around the Beylerbeyi ferry landing, thinking it was a coffeehouse, and after losing himself in the Bosphorus seascape, he was moved to improvise on his ney. Because he played with eyes closed, eyes that normally burned like two hearths beneath black, bushy eyebrows, he hadn’t noticed that the establishment had gradually filled and that a stream of spirit-soaking habitués had congregated at the table of spiritual inspiration, where they absorbed without a peep, and the waiters came and went on tiptoe to avoid disrupting him. When the taksim improvisation had concluded and Aziz Dede saw the crowd and the rakı glasses around him, he darted from his spot. Whenever he related this story, he ended with the following sentence: “My holiness, I felt such humiliation that I didn’t leave the house for three full days, and I was afraid to see any of the brethren for another month.”

  Despite this, Aziz Dede’s disciple didn’t object to alcohol being drunk at the table. He only cautioned, “Don’t overdo it. Elation fills me today . . .

  One doesn’t see good Tevfik that often anymore! And be wary about plying Cemil with drink lest he slip up when he plays.” As he said this, the depths of his eyes smiled. He actually admired Cemil greatly. They’d come here on his insistence and after considerable rehearsal. Cemil made no secret of Mümtaz’s partiality to the Ferahfezâ and the Sultanîyegâh.

  Emin Dede savored the blessings of the table. His older brother Vasfi, a master calligrapher, was renowned for his culinary prowess; his roast turkey in parchment was ballyhooed throughout Istanbul. They’d nicknamed the dish “turkey with death shroud” in the sybaritic sensibility of ancient Rome.

  Yet he said nothing about the meal except for sparse words in praise of the sumptuous fare. Only when the pullets prepared according to his own brother’s recipe arrived at the table did he exclaim, “Doubtless your uncle Tevfik taught you how to prepare this delicacy!”

  Tevfik, grinning: “If talents don’t pass from hand to hand, they wither . . .” He’d been upset the entire afternoon. Activities with which he’d once easily occupied himself now strained him. He’d forgone all pursuits with a resentment brought about by senescence and limited physical activity. Now he recalled a creature that had reached a sclerotic phase in anticipation of death. As if out of his existence and surroundings he was preparing a sarcophagus of diversions. Traditional music was its most vivacious aspect; with each melody he remembered another day, but rather like something that wasn’t his, like this seasonal hour absorbing the bright sunlight of the luculent diamond over his head, enticing him by reminding him of mortality, a memento mori of faded leaves of garnet and agate, of distant pomegranate and Trabzon persimmon trees that he compared to a vanishing evening, and of the buzzing apiarian drone, not as something he experienced viscerally in flesh and blood, but only as a blessed cornucopia to which he was but an invited guest.

  Emin went on to describe his avid interest in gastronomic delights and the sumptuous feasts he’d once hosted. With the same distinguished and essential human joviality, he recounted, mirabile dictu, the characters of old Mevlevî lodges, the chef-cum-dervishes that he’d personally known, and the lamb pilaf banquets they’d held. As Mümtaz listened to him he thought, So the a la turca style that so repulses us is really something else altogether . . . Then the topic passed to Nuran’s father. Emin knew full well about the ornamental plate designs and calligraphy that he’d made for the Yildiz ceramics factory. He himself was a calligrapher besides. Some claimed that if not for the iron rule of his older brother, he would have
honed this talent. Mümtaz, listening to Emin’s discussion of arts and music, noticed that he always maintained an earnestness close to folk sensibilities without any notable aesthetic discernment. His tolerance toward styles late to enter Turkish tastes and traditions, rather degenerating them, also arose from this humility. This Mevlevî possessed of politesse had come of age amid changing sensibilities, feeling in his being the reverberation of every new stirring. Thereby he had no desire to seek out and feel pure forms of the past, which had entered our tastes through the poet Yahya Kemal. Just as the previous generation displayed a regard, which approached the esteem of proponents of classical verse, for a gazel written in the ornate language of the fin de siècle Servet-i Fünun school, Emin simply resigned himself to various transformations in writing, painting, and music. He wasn’t one to make comments by interpreting particular themes on the subjects he broached. He rarely indulged in such rhetoric. Despite this, he instinctively knew how to be discerning. However he’d managed to protect himself from the transformations in tradition with respect to calligraphy or music, he similarly guarded himself in his oratory. He spoke of his art with the care of a meticulous artisan, without any jargon, and, though unwittingly, he became the center of gravity of the table and the gathering. For his sake, Macide had forgone the visit to her lamented daughter beneath a canopy of white clouds and had been liberated from her anxieties regarding Mümtaz’s final fate; meanwhile, Nuran had surrendered herself to this experienced master, to an affection for patriarchs and elderly men that dominated her life, and to an accompanying sense of deference. By admiring and listening to Emin Dede, she felt the absolution of countless sins and transgressions.

  Claiming it would upset his stomach, Emin Dede declined the offer of ice cream. He concluded his meal with nothing but a demitasse of traditional coffee without sugar, as dictated by custom.

  IV

  The houseguests truly came to savor Emin Dede’s exception when he began his ney performance in the second-floor hall, where they’d retired after the meal. Few musicians could thus transform to assume postures dictated by virtuosity.

  First he inquired of Tevfik, “My lordship, are you up for performing the Ferahfezâ?” Tevfik hadn’t recited this piece in years. But he was up to the challenge; this amounted to revisiting his youth in a completely unexpected season. During Emin Dede’s introductory taksim improvisation, Tevfik rummaged through his memory for the ceremonial piece that he’d added to his repertoire while yet in the civil service. Thereafter, kudüm drums in hand, he waited half recumbent on the sofa, in that peculiar position necessitated by a la turca instruments when seated cross-legged, one foot adangle.

  Emin Dede briefly made the rounds of the various melodic progressions and then embarked upon Dede Efendi’s peşrev instrumental prelude in the rhythmic cadence of devr-i kebir. Mümtaz had heard this piece played a few times by Cemil. But now it issued before him as a completely different fugue. Beginning with the first notes, a strange yearning, nay, pining overwhelmed them in its resemblance to lust for the sun amid thousands of deaths; then, without any dissipation of the effect – Mümtaz regarded the particular substantiation of Nuran before him through this sensation – they were scattered about leaf by leaf in an autumn eerie and eternal.

  A serene pool in whose waters floated reflections of gilded firmaments, large bronzed leaves, and extraordinary water lilies, expanded in an unknown dimension, perhaps – yes, without a doubt – in a dimension of their own selves.

  Emin Dede’s ney, with no wane in timbre of breath or wind, in a metallic or, more precisely, idiosyncratic and variegated crescendo, emitted a tone in which cohered the sparkle of gemstones and the pliancy of foliage. Yet how resonant, voluminous, and broad. The music filled the large hall, gushed out windows, and through its effect the garden, overcome by the remorse of final flowers and yellowed leaves, was effectively transfigured. At times everything melted as if reverting to its own essence and from there to a more profound quintessence; beneath the cascade of sound resembling a deluge of roses, the small chandelier hanging from the ceiling blazed in stunning rainbow spectra, and then, with a brazen hairpin bend – or, with that implausible and entwined climb seen only in ivies, wisteria, and fine fibrous plants that conformed to shape without relinquishing any color – it was born of its very self as the ostinato of a short while before. As Mümtaz sought out Cemil’s ney amid his master’s voice, the first section, or hane, came to an end. The second hane pranced out of the melancholic nostalgia conjured by this denouement in a more solemn tone. Yet again they were spirited away by repeated gusts, passed through squalls of the soul, and regarded their solitude in the mirror of drastic yearning – lo, the anxiety that all was lost in perpetuity. And the Ferahfezâ peşrev, or the soul attempting to forge impassable deserts of seclusion, plunged for a fourth time into nostalgic hüzün, that crepuscular realm that blazed beneath water.

  Each listener was seemingly scattered by the gale of a life span. Only Emin Dede remained standing in his meticulous and straightforward outfit, his expression hardened, like a symbol, a personification of the sentinel of mystery and melody. The entire secret of being that was centered in himself rested in the physical firmness of his inner countenance; beside him a bit to the rear, Artist Cemil, with his fair Saxony bone-china countenance and its sweet smile, though slightly narrower than before, seemed to gaze over the terrain they’d just now passed. Opposite them, Tevfik waited, kudüm on lap, in that disconcerting discomfort that a la turca instruments added to his reclining form.

  Unable to restrain himself, İhsan said in a very soft voice, “My dervish, you possess an exquisite palette of colors . . .”

  Emin Dede, with an eye on Tevfik, who was prepared to play his kudüm drums, answered with the glance of a true neyzen and in the same soft voice: “My Holiness, forget not the succor of the master . . . furthermore, what you refer to as ‘color’ in our lamented Dede Efendi, I’d actually call ‘love.’” Emin didn’t just refer to old virtuosi and patrons as if they were still in our midst, he erased both the remoteness of their deaths and his self through deferential terms like “our master,” “our elder,” or “our lord,” thereby unifying himself, his life, the master to whom he alluded, and the abstract time of death.

  But the true marvel began with the Mevlevî musical rite itself.

  Dede Efendi’s Ferahfezâ ceremonial was not simply devotion or the striving of a faithful soul seeking Allah. It was arguably one of the most rambunctious pieces of music that never abandoned the secret, the élan vital, the very traits of mystical inspiration, and the express, compelling impetus of immense and unyielding desire. Emin Dede had so managed its progression, which consisted of roaming the makams of a la turca music with small flourishes, transformations, and resolutions, that the ceremonial inherently transformed into a symbol all its own.

  After revealing the entirety of the Ferahfezâ makam’s attributes in the first two couplets of Rumi’s Mesnevi, which began the ceremonial like two bejeweled façades of a single palace – “Hear the lament of the ney whisper stories of separation/Since I’ve been pulled from the reed bed men and women weep at my wailing” – within varied phrasal arcs resembling a prolonged excursion, he ran the makam a number of times, in an arrangement that resembled distinct variations achieved through consistent structural motifs, before slowly abandoning the melodic progressions to associated ones. Thereby the entire ceremonial sequence, in the first lines – or couplets – became a universal journey of sorts within the lust of the lucid and majestic Ferahfezâ that struck the ear; the ear, which never forgot such delicacies, or rather the soul, which never forgot the yearning for transcendence bedazzling it such that acoustic sense and soul grew ecstatic in the conviction of the measure-by-measure approach of desire and delight. However, as soon as this satisfaction was revealed, the eternal longing, the journey, began anew in the softer or simply variant tenor of the Nevâ, the Rast, or the Acem. Apparently, Dede Efendi wanted to manifest the complete
predestined course of mystical experience through this bewildering piece. Ephemerally, absolute spiritual truth, or the spirit that was absolute truth, sought itself and its purpose in expansive time and space, disturbed the dormancy of material objects, bowed toward the essence of all things, withdrew into great seclusions, bounded over Milky Ways, and everywhere discovered desires and thirsts akin to its own. It passed from the tenor of the Acem, revealing the Ferahfezâ makam to be all but a “rightly guided path” of sorts, to the Dügâh, the Kürdî, the Rast, the Çârgâh, the Gerdaniye, the Sabâ, and the Nevâ; all things were lost, sought, and found within each of them. And the Ferahfezâ, during the entirety of this journey of febrile yearning, extended its bejeweled chalice – that chalice of a singular lyrical line and flourish – at surprising junctures, appearing now like a kaleidoscopic vision, now as a memory or dream of its own self. This quest, this dissolution and self-realization, was at times exceedingly humanist, and Dede’s inspiration either exclaimed, “So what if you remain unseen, I bear you within my being!” or fell into desperation as dense as matter.