A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  While Mümtaz remained immersed in thought, Emin’s taksim improvisation, in the first selam, returned the Ferahfezâ with which the composer confronted listeners seven times, each through distinct variations, like a time span that now belonged to them – in the first instance simply as something sublime and unexpected, a self-discovery, next as a memory that furthered the conservation of an inner life, and consequently, increased its individuality and intensity. And Mümtaz realized that the suite of Ferahfezâs, arrived at by the neyzen like an inevitable conclusion, like the final station where one’s existence discovered its true face, helped constitute their identities – one end of which rested in shadowy presences interred in the measureless blackness of time-past; he realized he’d frequently relive the music along with the others, and, simply due to the sedition he’d observed in Suad, the ceremonial would rule his passions with a mystery illuminated by shooting stars and the glimmering whorl of nebulas.

  If one doesn’t limit music to technical details or ideas, its effects are subjective. Undergirding each piece recollected in profundity are the peculiarities of the episode in which it was encountered; and in certain respects, the venture of this episode is but the transfusion of the music into one’s life.

  During the Ferahfezâ ceremonial, Mümtaz, always taking the fugue with him, escaped into an array of phantasies relating to his surroundings, his inner self, and his mental processes. İsmail Dede’s melodies independently took refuge in the multihued, fragile, and fragmentary shapes and semblances of images congregating around Nuran’s face, which Mümtaz regarded from an arm’s length, images dispersing from her to the age of Sultan Selim III, to Shaykh Galip, to the era of Sultan Mahmud II, to Mümtaz’s own aestival reminiscences, to Kanlıca twilights, to the Kandilli hill, and to the astounding play of light on Bosphorus daybreaks. Had these visions remained restricted to the music that produced them, like flames in a hearth, they would have burned fleetingly and vanished. Not so. In the passing despair Mümtaz observed on Suad’s face, this complex of visions augmented – he realized that the true meaning of revolt, disdain, and ire that he thought he read in Suad’s expression was simply despair. And just as the melodies that emerged from the makams of Sabâ, Nevâ, Rast, Çârgâh, and Acem resolved on the Ferahfezâ, just as the manifestation of that woeful, memory-laden suite prepared to bear and usurp the meaning of the totality of their lives, Suad’s despair appropriated all these visions, and by means of his own cruel experiences, introjected them into Mümtaz. Instead of the gradual dissipation – as with the other listeners when the ney ceased – of the dreamy twilight conjured around the music and the realm of color gradations evoking life in a spectral rainbow, this gloam settled even deeper into Mümtaz under the contingencies of augmented intensities and natures. And throughout the performance, no matter which stations his imagination attained as it orbited Nuran, this sense of despair, contracted from Suad, united with notions of Nuran.

  Once the performance had concluded and Tevfik and Emin Dede again played compositions and semâis flirting with the same makam, Mümtaz listened to these long-familiar works through the same despair. And even when he tried, as always, to distill Nuran’s voice, which accompanied her uncle’s, he conjured the phantom of a hindrance between her voice and himself. He perceived her voice from across great distances and through mist-shrouded dawns. The tense transfiguration that a la turca music caused in the expressions of its singers seemed not to be exertion but a sign of separation or distance. As if captive in climes of Sultanîyegâh, Mahur, and Segâh, Nuran was summoning him to rescue her. But Mümtaz couldn’t reach her.

  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 taksims, 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.

  VI

  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?”

  İhsan responded in place of Suad. “We were just now discussing it,” he said. “Suad was unimpressed.”

  Suad raised his head, “It’s not that I didn’t like it, but I just couldn’t find what I was looking for . . .”

  İhsan: “You want music to seize Allah, bind Him hand and arm and surrender Him to you. This is an impossibility! You only find what you yourself bring! Allah is neither in Dede Efendi’s back pocket nor anyone else’s for that matter.”

  “Perhaps” he snipped. “But I have no complaint to make about that. What bothers me is that incessant gyre, circling around nothingness . . . that flailing in the form of an idée fixe. That is what annoys me.”

  He raised the glass before him. “Haydi! Here we go!” he cried out to the crowd. “Maybe there’s some consolation in this drink. At the very least the consolation of forgetting!”

  İhsan slowly whispered into his ear, “You’ve come primed for something specific, haven’t you?” Then he passed to the other side of the table, joining the company of his wife.

  Suad: “To the health and prosperity of our hosts,” and finished his drink in one gulp.

  “What’s the urgency, Suad?” Macide said.

  Ruminating, and with a hint of derision directed at no one in particular, Suad answered, “Excuse me, Macide . . . I’m forced to hurry.” Then he repeated again, “To hurry!” adding, “Those who don’t have time hurry... Everybody’s born with a sense of one’s allotted time. My concern demands urgency.”

  İhsan, half joking, half serious, protested. “You certainly are speaking in riddles, Suad! You’re like the Sphinx.”

  Suad shrugged. His eyes alighted on the bottle in Mümtaz’s hands, and he laughed at the young gentleman, smiling like a boy expecting indulgences: “Please, another glass . . . The train will embark shortly. Would you like to know the worst of it? Not knowing the precise time of departure. To always be thinking it’s today, no, it’s tomorrow. And thereby frittering away this freely allotted time in the most absurd ways.” He stopped, taking backto-back swallows; he deposited his half-filled glass on the table. Mümtaz, pricking up his ears, continued to listen: “Macide pities me and worries. In a little while she, and perhaps all of you, will attempt to give me wise words of wisdom. I’ve listened to such advice all my life. But no one considers that I’m a man who’s come to the station early and that, naturally, my life will pass at the kiosk counter . . . What else d’you suppose I could do? Like the rest of you, I’m not at home enmeshed in my everyday affairs . . .”

  Nuran gazed at Mümtaz; bottle in hand, he filled the glasses including his own but refrained from drinking. What a perplexing, mutual tie we have, don’t we? My former friend and my beloved, his relative ... but the quantities he consumes . . . Then she recalled the comparison often made about Suad, back in their college days: Most horses don’t drink this much . . . Maybe they never drink. Raising an eyebrow, she rifled through her mind: No, it’s not that they never drink . . . I read in the paper somewhere that certain racehorses drink beer or wine. But of course they don’t drink this much. In trepidation she looked at Suad’s glass, which he’d again emptied. When she used to conjure the bit about Suad’s resemblance to a horse, she’d laugh. But not this time; so, it’s an awkward situation. And because Mümtaz also sensed it, he refrained from drinking. In that case, she wouldn’t drink either . . . But I so need to drink . . . this music has kneaded me for hours. At times I felt like I’d taken on the form of divine clay ... She wanted the alchemy of alcohol. But she would not drink.

  Next, it was Selim’s turn. He’d fled the Caucasus as a boy in the wake of the Mondros Armistice: “Before the Great War, in Russia, students would drink at the kiosks of large train stations. My father used to tell us the story. A chosen leader, bell in hand, would take up the train schedule, reading it at the top of his voice. For instance, he’d announce, ‘We’ve arrived at so-and-so station, our train will remain here for twenty minutes, allowing us three glasses of Bordeaux or one bottle of vodka.’ In such a manner, they’d order their rounds. At each station, the alcohol they drank, along with appetizing local delicacies, made for a touristic excursion of sorts. Those who drank themselves under the table before the bell rang again had in effect ‘disembarked’ at that particular station and the train continued on its route . . .”

  He glanced about; nobody was listening. He shrugged his shoulders. As a rule, no one listened to the stories Selim learned from his father. On account of these Russian recollections, his friends had dubbed him “Papa’s nostalgia.” Yet Selim was a fellow who recognized his shortcomings. He took no offense. He sidled up to İhsan. Orhan, seeing Selim in their midst, put an arm around his shoulders with sincere affection. Another of Selim’s fates was to serve as something of a leaning post for Orhan, who was twice his size. For some time now, to avoid this embrace, he’d attempted to keep his distance, but under the dismay of his disregarded story, he’d surrendered himself to this clutch of his own volition. Destiny, he repeated a number of times internally, and slouching under the weig
ht bearing down upon him, laughing at his own foolishness, he listened to İhsan:

  “I’m not sure if it’s worth crying over the absence of what amounts to a fiction. If you ask me, our lack of a notion of original sin in Islam, our lack of attention to this matter of the fall from paradise, as in Christianity, affects every field of knowledge from theology to aesthetics. We’ve given short shrift to spiritual conservation. We should interpret our context intrinsically, as it is.” He’d lost track of how he’d begun. He spoke hastily to avoid giving Suad an opening. “There isn’t even a foundation for dialogue and debate between these two worldviews. Religion and social constitution diverge. Note that in Western civilization everything is predicated on notions of salvation and liberation. Mankind is delivered in the first instance through Jesus’s descent to earth, his crucifixion, and the acceptance of his sacrifice. Later, sociologically, through class struggles, first city dwellers and then peasants find salvation. In contrast, from the beginning we’re already considered free by Muslim tradition.”

  Suad, having finished his third glass, glared at İhsan. “Or forsaken . . .”

  “No, first of all free. Free despite even the presence of slaves in the social body. Fıkh, Islamic jurisprudence, insists upon human liberty.”

  Suad persisted: “The East has never been free. It’s always been mired in anarchic individualism restricted by despotic groups. We’re predisposed to forgo freedom as quickly as possible . . . and by all means.”