A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  “This is the tragedy. But there’s more. Even the most indecisive are still in the midst of the fracas. Therefore, everybody believes only his own evidence. This belief is goading the most insane actions by Hitler. But that’s not all, gradually we’ve come to believe that war is the only option. And that’s not all.

  “We assume that there will be war, one of the great wars of history. Meanwhile, the world has united before the faces of politicians, has linked incidents together, and is preparing for a civil war. Civil war, that is, one of the ways in which civilizations slough their skins. We’re living through the metamorphosis of such a great organism, so great as to be incompre-hensible within its own reality, that it resembles a delirium or nightmare of nature. We’re at a point, if the term is appropriate, a physiological point, in which the entire context has prepared for collapse and made it inevitable . . . It’s so easy to avoid a political war . . . An abrupt change of course or the temporary return of common sense could resolve the whole problem. But overcoming a crisis of civilization or maintaining one’s state of mind in the midst of its stumbling, is like trying to confront it without losing control of the rudder, being swept away by flood, drowning in a typhoon, or being pulverized in a meteor shower . . .”

  “You’re quite a fatalist, doctor . . .”

  “Because I’m a man who believes in processes of nature. For years I managed a physiology lab. I saw tens of thousands of patients. I think I can now tell the difference between what can be avoided and what can’t . . . I can tell from a distance the precise spot death has chosen to settle . . .”

  “But isn’t this a separate matter?”

  “Wherever there happens to be the organization of a system, there you will find more or less the rule of biological laws ... Don’t think for a minute that I’m being pessimistic in order to take a comparison to its furthest limit. I believe that interventions will always be possible: I’m a physician; that is, I’ve been trained in the discipline of interventions. However, the condition has been intentionally exacerbated to spread throughout the organism . . . Look at it from another perspective.

  “In an era in which everything’s in a muddle, in which disconnected questions are posed independently, parallel to each other, in which each door of hope reveals a dragon’s maw, just consider the catastrophe of a human fate held in the hands of a cadre of half-mad fanatics, irresponsible false prophets, determinists of production and overproduction, of utopians who clearly express good faith only through the report of weapons, who find their mettle through death sentences, and who hide behind masks of truth. Take for example Stalin’s pact. What a chain of events. An event that could be described as paranoia from Hitler’s perspective, is nothing but perfectly premeditated malice for Stalin. Don’t forget the way Lenin’s mongoloid, prophetic profile turned suddenly Machiavellian beyond all description. How it all became an intrigue worthy of a detective story. How Stalin kept the promise of his own persona and of the stare in his photographs.

  “In the name of an ideal that would foster a paradise on earth, how he trained a weapon of death, which bore the possibility of one day being turned upon him, onto the entirety of humanity. He’s openly promoting war, preparing the possibility of its outbreak. He’s saying, ‘Do not fear me, have conviction!’ A trivial, but if you want to know the truth, extremely cunning, gesture. The chroniclers of old would have praised him to the skies. But this is nothing but resorting to crime, even if it’s for the sake of protecting his own hide. It’s like prodding the hand holding the torch toward the hearth. If we enter into his logic, maybe he’s justified from his own perspective. But only from his point of view . . . Meanwhile, in today’s world, there should be no vantage point reserved only for oneself. It’s possible to explain this to you, to myself, to the banker in Antwerp, the railroad engineer in Brussels, I don’t know, to everybody. Yet how could one ever explain this to a mystic, to people who assume the world is a vast stage upon which they’re only players, to people who start with the assumption that death in cold blood is a viable answer to their desires? One declares, ‘Allah determines my role,’ while the other claims, ‘I’ve emerged through historical determinism.’”

  In the narrow alley onto which they’d turned, the redolence of flowers wafting over the walls of a manse of time-past in the still night settled deeply into Mümtaz with a poignant and lethal sensation – as if through the nostalgia of lost happiness and hope as well as obliterated dreams, like a qualm, like the mercilessly unforgiving consciousness of a criminal affront against the nefs of one’s desires, afflicting one like an angel of torment for the duration of one’s life; yes, just like the dominant melody of the recently played concerto discovering itself more fully at each flare and flourish, yes, ripple by ripple, pulling gradually away from the abundance as its own self, and finally, like a golden serpent, recoiling within one’s being.

  He felt exceedingly miserable. He suffered as if he’d committed all of these crimes himself, and he understood to a deeper degree, through this torment he bore due to no fault of his own, the extent to which humanity was a totality, and how every transgression against the whole amounted to a primal sin.

  He no longer conceived of any of them in isolation: Neither Nuran, nor cousin İhsan, nor aunt, nor Macide, nor the unfinished book, none of them existed. He now saw only the newspaper headlines he’d read yesterday morning, or that he took in rather, without comprehension: BRITISH NAVY MOBILIZED; LAND & AIR RESERVES CALLED UP; GERMANY MAKES 16-ARTICLE ULTIMATUM TO POLAND; FRANCE HONORS ITS OBLIGATIONS. Despite so many intervening ordeals, troubles, and personal crises, he regarded these bulletins inherently as they were, fully aware of their actual meanings.

  “D’you know, young man, what the tragedy of the situation is?”

  Mümtaz knew the tragedy of the situation. Death’s wings had stretched out over the globe. But he listened nonetheless: “Mind that humans aren’t deluded into thinking that a sinister possibility is a new horizon. Mind that humanity doesn’t catch sight of the abyss. For it won’t be able to turn back. It’ll adopt that eventuality. Don’t ever consider the sale of an item of cherished value – a rare manuscript, a nice gramophone, a Persian carpet – to be something of an opportunity. Don’t ever be tempted to divorce your wife, if you’re married, or to break up with the lady you love, if you’re in a relationship. Should you do so, as a consequence, no matter how much you resist repeating such acts later on, you’ll do the same thing as if conditioned, as if others were prodding you from behind. Restraint in human existence doesn’t exist. Especially for humans en masse. Especially once the open abyss beckons or the black tongue of death speaks.”

  Had he or Nuran conceived of the breakup first? In which of them had the destructive desire stirring within humanity to annihilate both itself and all of its endeavors first gained momentum? I’m a measly narcissist. Look at what’s plaguing the world and at what I’m worried about. There’s a sick relative at home, and as soon as I stick my head out of my hole, I find that the lives of millions hang in the balance. And all for the sake of a woman.

  He couldn’t continue this line of thought, because this woman wasn’t as trivial as he supposed, and for the measure of a year she’d erected the most sublime bridge between himself and the everyday world that he had sensed and experienced and been exposed to through Nuran’s attributes and body. My sailboat, my sea, and in the final analysis, a lone man . . . She was his horizon of truth; he’d deepened his thoughts and had established an inner life through her. But in which one of us did the abyss first speak? I admit I strained the ropes . . . But she was the one who frayed and tore them apart. No, it wasn’t like that. She’d made the decision to separate. She’d reasoned, “Seeing that Fâhir is returning, seeing that he says he’s heartsick, dependent on me, and he’s Fatma’s father, and that I shouldn’t reject his overtures, I’m obligated to take him back. I know I won’t be happy, but I’m obligated to do so for peace of mind . . .” As she’d said this, how distraught h
er expression had been; but this distraught face and the twomonth effort that Nuran had exerted to come to this decision was nothing next to the debate that raged within Mümtaz. Over two months he’d become a shadow of his former self, a variation, waiting at a fork in a road, devastated and overwrought. Mümtaz liked to think that the separation had emerged out of Nuran’s necessity to “revamp herself,” but it didn’t. He knew quite well that it didn’t. She might be able to love Fâhir somewhat, at the most, because affection and commiseration were forms of ardor. He thought of the last day that they’d spent together. They’d traveled down the Bosphorus to Istanbul together. Until the Galata Bridge, he hadn’t mentioned a single word to Nuran about her decision, but once at the bridge he’d again implored. It was vastly different than his former entreaties. It contained the retribution of a spurned lover, wounded self-esteem, and every last thing. “Come back today,” he’d said. “You must change your mind!”

  “Don’t expect me – because I won’t be coming. From now on I can offer you nothing but friendship . . .”

  Mümtaz wanted nothing of her friendship. “That’s impossible,” he’d said. “Under these circumstances the last possible thing we could offer to each other is friendship. You know as well as I do that when I sense the withdrawal of your emotions, it spells catastrophe. I turn into the most miserable of creatures. I lose my harmony and focus. I become pitiful and small . . .”

  Then came the fateful retort: “Enough already, Mümtaz . . . I’m tired and fed up,” she’d said. Mümtaz knew that as Nuran spoke, everything he’d suffered over the past year on her account revived within him. At that moment I’m certain she carried not one single positive memory of me ...

  Afterward they said good-bye awkwardly. Nuran went her way, and Mümtaz roamed for hours randomly over darkened and narrow streets, gazing absently at small secondhand salvage shops, street mongers selling food which he couldn’t imagine himself or anyone eating, at pitiful houses exuding the misery of rain from every corner, and their deathly black windows whose illumination by inner joy was beyond possibility. He seemed to have left the city of his familiarity and knowledge; as if everything in his midst had appeared along with the incessantly falling, tacky rain – whose gloom didn’t diminish even when it stopped. His anguish became his tattered soul’s universe. In the course of time, he found himself in Dolmabahçe, by the Bosphorus, intently watching a small crimson sloop unloading wood onto the quay.

  All or nothing . . . That was the conviction he’d had at that instant.

  All or nothing, that is, death. He came to realize that he was speaking in madness, just like Hitler. You’re either with us or against us. Either world empire or the blackest death.

  In the order of nature, however, “all” or “nothing” didn’t exist. When “all” or “nothing” appeared together, the mind of man, that consummate apparatus of balance, malfunctioned. When this machinery of exception was deluded by its own perfection, this syllogism emerged. Pity to the one who takes it as a premise, who regards this chaotic life from that vantage point! From such a triangulated perspective, humanity might think that all of life rested in its control. From such a vantage only we exist, or, more precisely, merely one facet of us. For even if we should analyze “all or nothing” a little, if the scale should veer just a hair’s breadth from its absolute equilibrium, it would lose its orientation, and the realm of torments, delusions, hopes, and regrets would begin. All or nothing. No, not at all, rather, a little bit of everything.

  Mümtaz wanted to scramble out of the thoughts into which he’d fallen. But he failed. The doctor shifted his considerable weight and leaned onto his arm with a certain sense of purpose. He stopped. Once again he took a deep breath and exhaled as if confiding to the night.

  “Just a few people can change everything, d’you understand? A decent group . . . This being the case ... Consider this tranquil nighttime hour. Now, just think of tomorrow morning.”

  Tomorrow morning opened before Mümtaz like a black well. The doctor, however, didn’t even look into the well that he’d conjured.

  “Regrettable, isn’t it? First a nation or a class of people is provoked by means of a series of instigations. Next a madman or a plan concocted behind the scenes ensures the exploitation and appropriation of the masses, who are dragged into the abyss after being bumped from rock to rock as if possessed by a djinn . . . Just take Germany, for instance. Think about it individual by individual . . . Then look at how it can be manipulated en masse once in the hands of a sadist . . . In turn, sadism, worship of power, blind trust in fate, the thought that ‘only I can set things straight,’ through a retribution taken to excess, passes to others, even those in the opposition . . . A terrifying door is opening up; a barrier is being torn down, beyond which rests only endless catastrophe.” Mümtaz stopped short, as if refusing to pass through this doorway.

  “I even read the letters that German students had written to their families during the last war. They all sounded like mystics of humanity . . .”

  “Mystics you say? The worst of all fates. Above all don’t let your feet leave the ground. Then you’re susceptible to anything. Anything contracted through the air. Because white noise speaks through your being. Mystics of humanity, mystics of power, mystics of race, the abomination of mystics of torment... Because divinity hangs beside us like a theater costume, and it’s so easy to simply slip it on ... Mind that mankind doesn’t attempt to deify itself. Mind that it doesn’t believe it’s an Absolute Idea or that it’s the only vehicle through which truth can be found.

  “Young man, whatever I have faith in torments me as much as what I doubt. As a result, I bring harm to nobody. Meanwhile, mystics are not that way. They have a mission . . .” He laughed like a boy. Mümtaz, heartened by the innocence of this laugh, waited for him to begin talking again.

  “When I was little, a mad Koran chanter, a hafiz, would visit us. This man claimed he’d subdued a djinn and had become its master. My father, you see, was bent on discovering treasure. The hafiz spent his days and nights in the men’s quarters of our house . . . They’d wake up early and go off to who knows where. As I came and went from those quarters, I’d sometimes see him seeking out treasure spots through intercession from beyond. He’d commune with the spirit world. Turning to face the wall, and as if speaking on the telephone, he’d converse with the unseen or with the deficiencies in his own psyche. I could follow the outlines of the conversation from his responses and line of questioning. A kook, apparently, a harmless lunatic. But there’s no such thing as a harmless lunatic. Young man, a madman is always dangerous. And the trance states of divine communion are terrifying.

  “One day when my father was out, the hafiz was again speaking to the walls. Apparently he’d been told that in order for the treasure to be located, a young, adopted Arab girl needed to be sacrificed in the empty adjacent lot. Mayhem broke out in the house. The mad hafiz entered the kitchen and began to sharpen all the meat cleavers while reciting bizarre prayers and incantations. The chef first grew leary of the glint in the madman’s eye, then of the words he overheard . . . Mind you, he was both sharpening knives and speaking to the unseen . . .

  “Thank goodness he was detained in time. What trials and tribulations my father suffered before he’d had the man locked up in Toptaşı. And the hafiz didn’t keep his peace there, either. Every day he submitted denunciations of my father to the palace.”

  “Did it at least cure your father of his obsession with treasure?”

  “Yes, but this time he fell sway to alchemy, and everything we owned ended up going to a con man from Marrakech ...” He let out a deep, sorrowful sigh. “Recovering from this variety of illness isn’t as easy as it seems. There are so many overlapping symptoms. Take today’s Nazi sadism . . . I can almost see the emergence of tomorrow’s masochistic literature, a complete underground literature spawned through their worship of power . . . It’ll all be submission and tears: Kill me, tear me apart, for as I suffer cruelty a
nd pain, I find myself... Later the reactionary rebellions will begin. Oh, take pity on the individual . . . The rights of the individual are being trampled upon, the individual is being oppressed . . . Individuals are nothing but the bloody bricks and tiles of this flesh and blood Tower of Babel . . . Do you remember those who were spouting such blather a decade or so ago?”

  The doctor puffed out his broad chest in the night. “Health, Allah, bestow health upon us . . . Not strength, but health . . . The health of humankind . . . Healthiness that accepts life inherently the way it is . . . We don’t want an existence resembling that of the gods . . . Let’s live a life specific to us . . . Let’s live humanely. Let’s live without being deluded by anything, without telling lies to ourselves, let’s live without worshiping our own lies and apparitions . . .”

  Mümtaz thought, This one’s a prophet of another magnitude . . .

  It relieved him to enter their neighborhood. This degree of thought, this contradictory and speculative stream of consciousness, disturbed him. As if wanting to thrust it all off his shoulders at once, he thought of Nuran. When he’d been beside her, life had been so steady. A world in which everything was arranged according to its own value ... But Nuran was quite a distance away, and in the house they were approaching rested an infirm man whose condition was a riddle. A man whom he dearly loved . . . Only one hundred paces at most, only one hundred paces.

  The pain of living with countless barriers and limits racked his nervous system.

  What’s going on with me? Others have also suffered emotional pain . . .

  He couldn’t complete his thought. Ahead of them on the road a shadow darted through the stinging nettle. The doctor made a start. Mümtaz said, “Don’t be startled . . . He’s an old Bektashi dervish. He sleeps in an abandoned cistern around here . . . The neighborhood looks after him.”