A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Yet Rumi was justified: Yearning was the solitary secret of the ney. Should someday one make a daring, synesthetic interpretation of Turkish instruments similar to that made by Rimbaud for vowels in the poem “Voyelles,” doubtless one would most certainly see in this simplest of a la turca instruments the flesh-hued longing of nightfall. The ney should be untainted by the sounds of European or a la franga flutes, horns, and even the deep emerald green or blood red timbre of the remarkable hunting strains that have for centuries delineated bestial dispositions. In their need to re-create or rediscover nature in new ways, such instruments often forsake the very longing that ought to be one of art’s true domiciles. For the ney articulates by usurping the place of the nonexistent, by pursuing that very absence.

  Why does desire comprise the lion’s share of our spiritual lives? Do we pine for the oceanic expanse, one droplet of which constitutes each of us? Are we in the pursuit of the quiescence of matter? Or do we bemoan ephemeral and long-vanished aspects of ourselves because we’re children of time, an amalgam prepared in the crucible of time, or because we’re victims of time? Do we genuinely seek a state of perfection? Or do we object to the cruel order of time: zalim zaman nizamı?

  Ottoman music is perhaps the art form that best articulates desire through an arrangement that disrupts what it has created and reduces, with a cursory glance, the dais of time known as the present to nothing but ephemera – the ney being its most eloquent implement.

  Perhaps İsmail Dede Efendi, feeling such yearning in his soul, began his ceremonial with couplets on longing from the Mesnevi. The four-stepped threshold of the devr-i kebir talea sufficed to deliver the listener to the realm’s doorstep. For here, traditional music, as with the peşrev, didn’t just satisfy itself with affect; it seized and extracted one from one’s place, transforming and shaping one into a kind of vessel whose body and soul would accept deaths of a different magnitude, deaths beyond this world yet full of reminiscences – an echo of sorts. No, this was neither the realm of a moonlit Büyükdere night, of chalices of light shattering across molten emerald and agate, nor of saffron roses scattering petal by petal. The yearning in their presence emerged from beyond a thousand deaths and was directed at all animate things. Therefore, it had no sharpness, no points. Nuran seemed to perpetually awaken anew in an unknown locale, then within the rhythm of the fire dance, suddenly and repeatedly transfigured through inscrutable incarnations before again drawing one of the heavy and excessively gilded clouds over herself at a refrain in the makams, under which she’d descend into an enchanted sleep, before yet again slipping away beneath one edge of this heavy shroud as if she were a coral and yellow artery of light, filtering from the clouds of an evening; involuntarily she gathered again in another place, and again in her exceptional dance became a realm of pure essence, expanded, grew, fragmented, laughed in matter estranged from herself then again as herself, multiplied, pushed the thresholds of improbability, and therein scattered one leaf and one branch at a time like a freshly bronzed autumn. If not for the plodding accompaniment of the kudüm, which reached them from subterranean depths as it cast off the ashes of hundreds of thousands of deaths, perhaps she would have flown free completely and vanished, together with the totality of her hylic being. The deep rhythm, however, amid entities transfiguring at each moment, pointed the way for a self no longer hers through the invitation of a time no longer ours, and through wondrous percussion parted certain shrouds in the depths; indeed, Nuran, following in its percussive wake as if she were the counterpart of a twinned soul, sought her self, her other half, perhaps even her totality, in the malleability of this realm of pure essence.

  Into the aureate abyss of the ney, Tevfik’s voice tossed gems of unfamiliar words, ever so slowly displaying the glint of each facet; now the first shout of “beloved” in Farsi, of a “beloved, beloved of mine!” alighted within the vision of a blazing mainmast at sea, and the “mine” syllable, which he depressed fully upon the song, deepened like a silver- and coral-framed mirror of yesteryear, in which Nuran, without clearly discerning her semblance tattered by great gale in wild badlands, at times spied Mümtaz’s gaunt face behind eternally closed doors, and at times heard Fatma’s voice pleading, “Mother.” In this stunning music, all things became a static and profound tragedy in shadows.

  The second-floor hall became a galleon tossed about on seas of devotion. Everybody seemed to bid adieu to a sun casting final rays upon familiar shores, the shores of their own lives. Mümtaz gazed at the sun and the surroundings in never-before-felt absentmindedness. He feared the eternal loss of Nuran, who sat two steps away from him; such did the gale of the ney verge on scattering them across expanses. This was something of a rüya; and as with first dozes that prepared the way for all dreams, it intrinsically affected consciousness, dispersing the self. Nonetheless, this dispersal wasn’t total. As the fabric of the music unfolded bolt by bolt, Mümtaz came to realize what it was that defined a genius of ruin. Neither Abdülkadir-î Merâgî’s Segâhkâr, nor Itrî’s naat ode to the Prophet bore the emotional shudder of this ceremonial, nor the Isfahan song – again by Itrî – which Mümtaz had coincidently heard one night at Ahmet’s house, sung by the host himself. These pieces sought Allah or the Absolute without ambivalence, conveying their venture of the soul through sturdy architecture and the great wellspring of spirit concentrated within them. Perpendicularly they soared. Yet at present, the struggle was two-fold: The soul couldn’t manage to escape the world-worn realm from which it strove to separate. This was neither doubt nor the shortfall of love but a flailing at the confluence of two divergent currents.

  Mümtaz seemed to favor one of the two zephyrs in the duel between Tevfik’s voice and Emin Dede’s ney. The Ferahfezâ Tevfik recited in traditional ritual technique was different from the same composer’s other Ferahfezâs, which served to instill modes of affection and anguish in Mümtaz. This version found the architecture of the venue somewhat alienating. Perhaps the Farsi lyrics, perhaps tradition itself, had transformed Tevfik’s voice, which he knew well, giving Mümtaz a taste of the turquoise hue of tiles in old Seljuk mosques, of the oil lamps within them alight with prayers now illuminating their way, and of the timeworn wood of old folding Koran stands. The timbre and style of the ney acknowledged nothing as traditional or modern, but chased after zaman without zaman, timeless time, that is, after fate and humanity as unrefined essences. And not only that. From time to time, into ney and human voice mingled the sound of the kudüm that emerged from depths, as if from beneath the ground, an awakening casting off the detritus of a thousand slumbers and laden with forgetting and being forgotten, or rather self-realization amid a multitude of cultures. And these awakenings and self-realizations never succumbed to futility. The sound of the kudüm always bore the enchanted call of ancient religions, its percussion contributing an order of earthly substantiation to the celestial journey.

  The first ceremonial selam ended in a melody without resolution, like a wounded wing in final flutter. Nuran sought Mümtaz’s eyes; they stared at each other like strangers. The music had transfigured each into a vision familiar only to the seer – as in a dream. How disconcerting! thought Mümtaz.

  Emin Dede grinned at İhsan as if in the wake of an initiation the gathered had traveled collectively. Then, with a sweet smile at Tevfik, he placed the ney to his lips.

  Tevfik, along with the sound of the ney – and perhaps to avoid entering into a contest that might ruin the piece – this time all but transformed his voice into a very subtle bas-relief upon a finely cut, precious gemstone, barely discernible to the naked eye. During certain moments of the devotional prayer his voice expanded and intensified. Mümtaz, from his coign of vantage, noticed Nuran waiting her turn at the abyss of music, prayer beads in hand, as if expecting to be sacrificed; she seemed to be saying, “Set me ablaze, oh eternity!” She revealed such an anguished, withdrawn face, yet her shoulders stood strong. Self-assured by all she avowed, she resisted this tempest eternal like the
stern of a golden galleon.

  Mümtaz pondered the possibility that during a similar ceremonial, Beyhan Sultana, alone bearing five centuries of Ottoman fortitude in her shoulders, resembling Nuran, had gazed at Shaykh Galip from behind lattices in an area designated for royal ladies in the Yenikapı Mevlevî lodge. Whirling Mevlevîs, their ritual robes spinning in the aether, sparkled in a vision of supplication through the refinement of centuries, as one of the dervishes folded his arms before the presence of the one standing behind him.

  Mümtaz saw sultan and composer Selim III – to whom he’d never listened, appearing rather like a gardener who, in advanced years, planted an exquisite rose sapling in his garden, with full knowledge that it was meant for some indeterminate future – genuflecting like a gilt and silver icon in the royal loge of a mosque, his face recalling the dervishes of Khorasan, a substantial ring adorning his hand, amid elegant melodies whose potential his royal highness himself had composed.

  But what about Dede Efendi? Who was the man who’d arranged this venture of the soul with such fastidiousness, what was he like? On the day that the Ferahfezâ ceremonial was first performed, early in the nineteenth century, Sultan Mahmud II, rising from his sickbed, came to the Yenikapı Mevlevî lodge. All of Istanbul was present, including its most prominent figures, refined foreign guests, palace dignitaries, and opportunists mad with yearning to step onto some or another threshold of fortune. All of them came to hear this new ceremonial composed by Hamamîzâde İsmail Dede Efendi, Royal Chief Müezzen to His Exalted Excellency. Amid this enigmatic tempest, Mümtaz sought Sultan Mahmud II’s face, sallowed like worn oilcloth by consumption, beneath a heavily tasseled fez and above the collar of the European-style navy blue uniform with gold epaulets mandated by the sovereign. After moving through the crowd of applauding onlookers lining the streets, members of the sultan’s entourage arrived on well-groomed Arabians and listened to these melodies – the ancient protocol of the orient still strong. Within the forge of music, all of them had forgotten the rebellions that had overtaken Anatolia and the entire empire, as well as the foreboding threat of what lay ahead hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles; they’d become diminutive subjects of Allah, thinking only of the salvation of the soul, and they sank into a reckoning of their lives by turns, exclaiming, “While artworks of such magnitude are yet being created, we won’t be destroyed; we’re still living through our springtime!”

  The third selam transported Mümtaz to completely different horizons. Now they entered into the yürük song. Here, with increasing momentum, escape from the worldly became a necessity. But this didn’t occur. Muslim liturgy bore no symbols; and moreover, prayer and worship existed only through the congregation. This was the case on Sufi paths as well. Spinning steps quickened pace as ritual robes made narrower and more imperceptible undulations. But how bizarre: As the Mevlevî ceremony approached a trance, it abandoned melancholy and solemn aristocratic expression to assume cadences of folk effusiveness. The rhythm became an unfamiliar pastoral, folk celebration. In the lithe dance of the melody, Mümtaz discovered that great wellspring that gave villagers their joy and Anatolia the fortitude to withstand such suffering.

  Elsewhere a thin partition cracked. A green sprout came to life like the wonder of a morning. The abode of the soul collapsed beneath burgeoning roses . . . Purple, stunning rose blossoms ... Nuran wanted to soar, to hurtle through the ceiling by her own momentum, to ascend into the skies. She bore her entire world within her self. To soar, verily, to vanish. Why had this music, through its agile expression, recalled the Bairams of her childhood? Why had it erupted in the elation of free and easy times, when the taste of every pleasure came unaccompanied by pangs of conscience? Was it right to resurrect so many of the dead all at once? Through this elation did one arrive at Allah? Or at life itself? She didn’t know. Just as during those carefree Bairams, she sensed that as she once faced being bereft of amusement and joy, she now ever so slowly prepared to forgo everything, and felt even the desire to soar abandon her. Oddly enough, she felt isolated. Her inner life was as vast as creation. “I am a world unto myself,” she thought. Yet she was not in control of this inner world.

  And the ney persisted. The ney had become the secret of constructive and destructive natures. Through its breath, all things, all of Creation, transformed within formless becomings; and from where she was heaped in a state of great devotion, she witnessed this phenomenon unfolding at the center of her self. Here an ocean rose, there a forest burned to ash, the stars kissed, and like honey Mümtaz’s hands dripped from his knees.

  Mümtaz shuddered. They were now in the fourth selam. Shaykh Galip himself verged on joining the ceremony as he grasped the front of his robes. He, too, had to temporarily burn to ash beneath the sun of Shams of Tabriz, to burn in his eternal forge of adoration! During the last of the exclamations, Nuran seemed to grab Mümtaz by the shoulders and implore, “Let us perish together!”

  Emin’s ney played the two yürük harmonies that completed the ceremony, then moved through a brief and multihued progression, a taksim that wandered the zodiac of melodic progressions as if sketching a map of the firmament, before moving from the distinct Ferahfezâ of twinned yürüks to the dominant melody of the prelude, a melody transfiguring everything in its midst into a furnace of desire, before falling silent.

  Tevfik let the kudüm slip from his hands; he wiped his forehead. The gathering was exhausted, as if it had wrestled with a colossus, the deev of time. Emin called out to Tevfik, “You won’t be growing old anytime soon! Your future bears nothing of age!” They glanced at each other with affection, the pleasures of which younger generations knew nothing.

  “Each of you is a miracle,” İhsan said.

  V

  Suad made an arrival toward the middle of the first selam. Though he’d passed through the door with a joyous expression, when he noticed the music and the solemnity of the scene, he sat silently beside İhsan in a manner that bespoke tedium. He sought Nuran and Mümtaz in the gathering, exchanging greetings through glances. From the horizon of intricate return to which the music had transported Mümtaz, he noticed Suad nearly snickering at him amicably, with a hint of derision, before staring at Nuran almost shyly and desperately. Then he severed all exchange with others and focused his attentions on the music. To such a degree that Mümtaz thought, What a pity he’s missed the initial Ferahfezâs. Toward the middle of the second selam, Suad’s concentration intensified. Resting an elbow on a knee, he placed his head on his right hand and began to listen, spellbound. But soon – as if unable to locate what he’d been seeking, as if the music offered only empty chalices, as if the climes that the ney and Tevfik’s voice explored in tandem amounted to only deceptive mirages – he raised his head in sedition. Mümtaz noticed the glimmer of caustic scorn and revolt, even wrath, in Suad’s eyes. He also caught Suad’s ogles, and not only were his emotions wrenched by a vague sense of jealousy, as had happened when Suad just now greeted Nuran, but he felt intimidated. Later on, while trying to gather his recollections of the evening, he considered how Suad’s expression had contorted like a forest under gust and gale. And Mümtaz considered how this restless forest had been illuminated by the lightning of revolt and fear in Suad’s gaze. Yes, he was convinced that such feelings lurked beneath the derision in Suad’s expression.

  Mümtaz, distraught by Suad’s presence in their midst, was no longer jealous of him. His mind was nevertheless strangely preoccupied. Suad’s affections for Nuran and their friendship made him an agonizing part of Mümtaz’s life, elevating him to another plane; Suad, whom he’d long known, whose sarcasm and insolence unsettled and disturbed him, yet whose offhandedness and quirks he liked, whose intelligence and leaps of intellect he admired, but from whom he kept his distance because they traced different life trajectories. Consequent to the letter Suad had written Nuran, Mümtaz hadn’t spent three consecutive hours in which he hadn’t thought of him. From that day forward, Mümtaz sensed something resemb
ling the lure felt by all victims toward their victimizers – felt by the sparrow toward the hawk. This wasn’t unnatural; as a French poet had put it, between them existed “the hidden allure of the deadly”; they’d confronted each other through Nuran’s love. Whatever the status of each in this love, between them arose something like malice. But now in the midst of the music, the revolt Mümtaz had seen overtaking Suad cast him in a different light. He asked himself repeatedly, I wonder what’s happened, what’s bothering him? Then the question became more explicit: What was he seeking in the music that sent him into such revolt? He again glanced at Suad. But this time he could discern no meaning or expression in his face. Suad again listened ever so politely in an open and even pitiless state of attentiveness – respectful toward the musical performance and to the musicians growing weary in its creation – yet revealing the depletion of his faculties of free thought. Suad’s indifference bothered Mümtaz as equally as his previous state of revolt and only through willful determination could he follow the finale.