67
These ideas taken up by Pamuk were represented by the characters on his The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence who constantly search
places to discover their Beloved and be united with them. Thus three stages endured by the lovers are a journey for them to get an answer to their own
question on the place where they can discover their Beloved, a question that does not solely raise their predicament but also becomes a medium leading them to
discover their true self.
1. The State of Initial Union
The nature of union here shows the portrayal of the union of the lovers which started from worldly scene or the physical union encountered by the
characters that shows the primordial level of love. The qualities of physical union of the lovers will be examined from the setting in which the lovers first
encountered their first meeting as the point of departure of their “journey”. The Black Book recounts the story of a
“world-weary” lawyer, Galip who plods around Istanbul for a week in search of his missing wife, Rüya, a Turkish
word for mystical dream or vision. Galip has looked up the meaning of Rüya in an old Ottoman’s Turkish dictionary in the first time he saw Rüya’s picture in one
his grandmother’s postcard. So it does not surprise him that Rüya means dream BB, 8. In Sufi tradition, mystical dream points to the alam al-mithal,
“the world of symbols and similitudes, which exist between the sensible, phenomenal world
and the world of intelligible noumena”.
141
Rüya, in the end of Galip’s journey
symbolizes Galip’s longing to discover his true self. Eventually, Galip discovers
141
Laleh Bakhtiar, Sufi: Expression of the Mystic Quest New York: Thames Hudsn, 1976, 116.
68
his wholeness which is achieved following Rüya’s disappearance and his effort to locate her.
Galip suspects that Rüya has abandoned him with Celâl, her half-brother, a famous newspaper columnist whom Galip admired as a boy. Later Galip tries to
figure out the secondary meaning of his name and Celâl, he is amazed to discover that Galip means victory and the meaning Celâl besides a Turkish word for
“fury” is divine or one of God’s 99 names in Muslim tradition Jalal, in Arabic. Salik,
Celâl’s family name attaches intimately with his first name since it means “spiritual traveler”. Galip decides that the key to find Rüya is by figuring out the
nature of Celâ l’s columns focusing on reading the universe as the forest of signs
which when he interprets correctly will lead him back to his beloved, Rüya, the raison d’ être of his existence. In the opening of the novel, the readers are invited
to follow Galip’s search for his wife, Rüya who has left him one evening upon his arrival after work. Galip embarks on a more intellectual journey by searching
Celâl, his uncle, following his futile literal journey to locate his runaway wife in the backstreet of Istanbul. As Galip assumes that Celâl is the sole way for him to
discover his wife, the reader then starts to suspect that this novel is not solely a search for a lost-lover but also a search for an authentic self.
The tale of Snow narrates a story about Ka, a poet who decides to visit Kars, a rural Anatilian village in northeastern Turkey following his mother’s funeral in
Istanbul. Having lived for twelve years of exilic life as political refugee in Frankfurt, Germany, Ka embarks a journey to Kars in order to write an article
about a wave of suicides by young Turkish girls protesting the official ban of
69
wearing headscarves. His clandestine motif however, is to search out a Turkish beauty to be his wife, and
he secretly hopes that the lady is İpek, once his schoolfellow in Istanbul, who now is separated from her husband. Snow shares
similar core of quest with The Black Black Book, Snow opens with thes story of Ka who is searching for an ideal Turkish beauty to be his wife. As his journey
takes him closer to İpek, Ka discovers his muse that has been disappearing during his solitude life in Frankfurt.
Ka’s search for İpek is not simply a search for a lover but eventually a search for his muse that makes his life as a poet complete.
Similar encounter is experienced by Ke mal, the hero in Pamuk’s The
Museum of Innocence, who falls desperately in love with a poor 18 year old distant relative, Fü
sun, before his engagement with “proper” lady from his class. Unable to end his relationship with Sibel, Kemal looses Füsun who disappears
with her family after his engagement party. Kemal spirals into a bottomless well of agony and his mind becomes consumed by Füsun; memories of her scent, her
speech, and her smile engulf him from the glee of life. In The Black Book, the lovers union is depicted by the hero gazing at his
sleeping beloved and terrified with the thought of what might be there in his wife memory, in Rü
ya’s garden BB, 3. ‘The First Time Galip Saw Rüya’ is the first chapter and the first sub heading of The Black Book where the readers get the
picture of Galip’s initial union with Rüya. The depiction of the state of union in The Black Book is shown in the profusion of how Galip longs to see the beautiful
Rüya which keeps recurring right from the beginning of the work . Galip’s longing
shows the deep love and adoration he feels towards her. Whereas in Snow, Ka, the
70
hero meets his lover for the first time after his visit to Kars in Snow palace hotel run by his beloved’s father. And the hero in The Museum of Innocence encounters
his first meeting with his Beloved in one of the boutiques where she works as a shop girl, when he wants to purchase Jenny Colon handbag for his girlfriend.
Kemal experiences his first physical contact with Füsun when he returns the handbag that happens to be counterfeit one. This handbag issue embarrassed
Füsun badly and she gets severely aggravated. Kemal ’s infatuation and his sexual
attraction towards Füsun start when he wraps his arms around Füsun to console her grief for the embarrassing moment of the small argument they have about the
fake handbag. Aware of his “forbidden’ feeling, he is providing a “hide out” place for them to meet personally. Being afraid of his society response with his
encounter with this shop girl, Kemal uses Merhamet apartment, where his family has a flat that his mother uses to store old furniture and outdated stuffs. Besides
being his refuge when he cannot concentrate on his study or his work, this Merhamet apartment keeps his childhood nostalgia that he still inhales the scent of
its memory every time he spends his time there. In his family apartment Kemal ultimately has his physical union with Füsun. They spend approximately forty-
four times of sexual union as the ini tial stage of Kemal’s journey to the next level
of love. In similar tone with Kemal’s tales, Ka in Snow, after waiting desperately to
have lovemaking with İpek, has finally gets the opportunity after succeeding in
plotting a meeting between Islamist prominent figure represented by Blue, the ex- Communist represented by Turgut B
ey, İpek’s father, and Kurdish nationalist
71
represented by Serdar Bey to make a joint announcement to send to the West on the issue of military coup in Kars. This plot is ultimately drags Turgut Bey out of
his hotel and Ka eventually has his physical union with İpek as she is willing to
make love only if his father does not stay under the same roof as hers. ”I could
never make love with my father so near, in the same house ” Snow, 89.
These three works share similar depiction that plays beauty as their locus of the protagonist in the state of union. However, in The Black Book, Rüya which
means dream vision in English, is mostly depicted as the one who is busy wandering on the garden of her memories and cut herself off from the rest of the
world. There is only light evidence that shows how Rü ya’s beauty is adored by
Galip and other characters in the stories. The way Galip passes his clumsy hands through Rü
ya’s “black silken hair” is one of limited evidences that reveal Rüya’s outward beauty. The biggest part in The Black Book that portrays the initial union
between the lovers is Galip ’s lamentation on the mystery of Rüya’s garden of
memory that closed to him, and how he longs to step inside and to find out Rüya’s
secret life. Here, Rüya description of her physical appearance in the initial union is not depicted as much as the other two female
characters; Füsun and İpek in The Museum of Innocence and Snow respectively.
In this regard, the presentation is different either in Snow or The Museum of Innocence. In both of these novels, there is a profusion of evidence from the
beginning of the novels that signifies the beauty of the beloved. In The Museum of Innocence, Fü
sun’s alluring beauty distracts Kemal’s mind since their first meeting at the boutique where she works as a shop girl. Fü
sun’s slender figure,
72
her honey-hued arms, and her elegant gestures are able to tug Kemal ’s ghost from
his body to embrace and kiss her MoI, 7. Her beauty is not merely fascinating to Kemal but to other men and women even children realize how mesmerizingly
beautiful Füsun is and shows his fascination by asking if she is an actress.
142
Füsun ’s beauty has also been the source of Kemal’s pride and happiness
especially when people think that Füsun is his lover. Later, the narrative of Füsun
’s beauty is recurring until the closing of the novel when Kemal shows her photograph to Pamuk and tells him how gorgeous she is; he kisses her photograph
lovingly before he gives his last word about his state of feeling to his readers. He said “Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life” MoI, 532.
Similarly in Snow, the B eloved, İpek is constantly portrayed in a splendid
beauty since Ka’s intention to visit Kars, although he worries that he might forget how beautiful İpek as her beauty was not caught his interest in his university days.
It is until Ka finds that İpek had separated from Muhtar that he starts to remember how beautiful she was and his intention to marry her aroused. His wonder is
replaced by his shock when he discovers that İpek’s beauty is far more radiant and
livelier than she had been at university days.”Her lightly colored lips, her pale complexion, her shining eyes, her open, intimate gaze-unsettled Ka
” Snow, 31. Similar to the way Kemal in The Museum of Innocence feels so proud of
Fusun’s beauty, Ka shares similar pride as he is the one who able to have this Turkish beauty in his arms. Ka even feels prouder as he notices that of all the
ladies he m eets in Kars, none overshadows İpek’s beauty, not even her sister,
142
Pamuk reminds his readers that in that days late 70 and early 80s the way to tell girls they were beautiful is by asking if she is an actress.
73
Kadife. This fact showers him with wave of pride. However, Ka and Kemal do not have commonalities on the way they treat their feeling.
For Ka, he openly reveals his feelin g toward İpek and he is embraced in
perfect happiness that he can show ev eryone that he is in love with İpek and that
two of them are perfectly happy to be together. Things that Kemal un able to do on his relationship with Füsun is to declare his love for her in public. Yet Kemal
possesses more confidence compared to Ka who seems to have none. Ka always finds that happiness is impossible for him as he constantly expects pain that will
immediately take away his joy and sorrow and will steal happiness from him. In Kemal case, he believes that all the pain he suffers from loving Füsun will be
rewarded with immense happiness if they manage to be together one day. The union that the three characters in the BB, Snow, and MoI encounter can
be categorized as the first level of love in Sufi tradition. This union still shows the predominance of lower self in each character, be it Galip, Ka, or Kemal. In the
case of Galip, his anguish leads him into anger he addressed to Rüya. Ka on the other hand is blinded with his obsess
ion to find a wife and to view İpek as the object o
f his desire and consider that İpek is a widow that makes his effort to get her less difficult. Ka al
so sees İpek as his refuge to console his long solitude while he lives in Frankfurt. Ka believes that by
winning İpek’s heart, marrying her, and taking her to Frankfurt, he will find remedy for his solitary life. Similar issue is
undergone by Kemal. Füsun is the object to secure his childhood memory. In Füsun, Kemal can bridge his long forgotten past and Füsun takes back all sweet
memories that he does not even remember that he has it.
74
The state of initial union of the characters in the three novels under this study shows how the characters encounter what Sufi tradition calls the first level
of love. The state of love encountered by the three characters in the three novels in this study is the manifestation of love that eventually leads them to the higher
state of love: love toward the real purer love. Their love is “the ladder toward the
love of the Merciful”.
143
In order to ascend to the next level of love, a person has to travel to the next station in mystical experience which is known as the state of
separation where the pain of this state is necessary for the lover in order to purify themselves and achieve unity with their Other
’s self. The state separation and the pain of separation will be analyzed in the following two sub headings.
2. The State of Separation
