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the quest, the self must always return to worldly experience and “resuming the quest because the state of attainment cannot be sustained”.
100
As a consequence, Sufi framework of identity formation is applied in this research for several reasons. First, it helps to unfold the question of identity as
Pamuk first coined in The White Castle “ Why am I what I am” Pamuk White
58 and compulsively reappear as the soul of his novels along with the longing of past nostalgia and searching for lost love.
Second, Sufi framework of identity formation offers a different paradigm to examine the complexity of identity construction in P
amuk’s novels. As identity searching is part of Sufism, therefore Sufi framework of identity formation will
be a rich instrument to decipher the identity formation in Pamuk‘s tales. The last reason is that Sufi identity framework is the least developed theory used to
understand and analyze Pamuk’s identity quest and its indirect influence on Pamuk’s narrative technique.
D. Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvre and His Background
Ferit Orhan Pamuk, who is widely known as Orhan Pamuk for his long trail of literary excellence, is the author of much loaded novels such as My Name is
Red and Snow. His books have been successful and widely translated into 60 languages including Catalan and Bahasa Indonesia. In 2006, he was awarded the
Nobel Price of Literature and Time magazine called him as one of the most 100 influential people in the world.
100
Aron Aji and Katrina Runge, “Haroun’s Mystic Journey: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories” In No Small World Vision and Revisions of World Literature. Ed. Michael Thomas
Carrol Illionois: National Council of Teachers of English 1996, 131-145: 143.
38
Orhan Pamuk, born in Istanbul, June 7, 1952, was a grandson of a prominent Turkish engineer who owned factory and build a railroad. Pamuk
longed to be a painter. However as a young man bounded to his Europeanized, bourgeois family tradition he study engineering and architecture instead of
painting. P amuk’s ‘willingness’ to please his family last for a short time and
eventually he abandoned his engineering and architecture course and he gave up his ambition to become an architect and an engineering. He then went to
school of journalism in Istanbul University although he never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up
everything else “retreated into his flat” and began to write.
Although Pamuk and his generation had not experienced firsthand the foundational reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1881
–1938, “a sense of dividedness and of a double life slipped into Pamuk’s childhood.”
101
As he described in his memoirs Istanbul and Memory of a City,
102
he was troubled by the fantasy of a second Orhan who lived in another part of the city. The fantasy
of an alter ego is a rec urring motif in both Pamuk’s memoirs and in his works
such as The White Castle, The Ne Life, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence. His fantasy of doubling reveals his favor of having two souls for Turkey.
For him, the approach to impose one soul on Turkey: to be secular West or to be eternally traditional and Islamic, is deteriorating themselves. Pamuk
101
Kader Konuk, “Istanbul on Fire: End-of- Empire Melancholy in Orhan Pamuk’s IstanbulMemories and The Cities” The Germanic Review 86 4 2011: 5.
102
See Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul Memory and the City, trans. Maureen Freely New York: Vintage International, 2008.
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believes that a country can have two souls like a person and these two souls are continually in dialogue with each other, sparring with each other and
transforming each other.
103
103
Orhan Pamuk PBS interview Talking Turkey Web. April 25.2013.
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CHAPTER THREE SUFI FRAMEWORK OF MEANINGS IN RELATION TO THE
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF IDENTITY FORMATION IN ORHAN PAMUK’S THE BLACK BOOK, SNOW, AND THE MUSEUM OF
INNOCENCE
A hundred thousand secrets will be known When that surprising face is unveiled and shown- Attar
104
This chapter will address the first research question in this study on how Pamuk’s The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence breathe the Sufi
framework of meanings in terms of symbolism, metaphors, and the stages of identity formation. The journey of love is somehow similar in nature with the
journey of discovering the true-self. In the Sufi tradition human love is a metaphorical love and the soul needs the wings of love to fly toward the Divine
love. Identity formation in all its essence will lead to the Divine love. As the
104
Farid ud-din Attar, a Persian poet who was born at some time during the twelfth century in Nishapur where Omar Khayyam had also been born, in north-east Iran, and died in the same city
early in the thirteenth century. His name, Attar, is a form of the word from which we get the ‘attar’ of ‘attar of roses’ and it indicates a perfume seller or a druggist. Those unfamiliar with the writings
of S ufis could have no better introduction than Attar’s Mantiq ut-Tair The Conference of the
Birds where thirty birds lead by Hoopoe hudhud in their quest of their king, the mystical Simurgh that resides in mount Qaf. After perform hazardous journey: the birds must cross seven
valleys in order to find the Simorgh: Talab Yearning, Eshq Love, Ma’rifat Gnosis, Istighnah Detachment, Tawheed Unity of God, Hayrat Bewilderment and, finally, Fuqur and Fana
Selflessness and Oblivion in God. These represent the stations or all obstacles the soul must pass through to realize the true nature of God. They eventually discover that the Divine bird, Si murgh,
is nothing but themselves. Being”thirty birds”si murgh in Persian. See Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystical Dimension of Islam Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1975:
303-307.
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ultimate end of both journeys, either love or identity is wholeness or unity with the other self or the Beloved.
105
The stories of the three novels in the present study recount the story of human love to represent Divine love. Human love, in Sufi tradition is considered
as “the ladder leading to the love of the Merciful”.
106
One of the most favorite Sufi
verses in the early days says that “And in everything there is a witness for Him. Which point to the fact that he is One”.
107
In Sufi tradition, all hopes, desires, loves that people have are desire for God but He is veiled from Him by love for different things- parents, money, friends,
sciences and everything loved in the world.
108
Therefore in Sufi tradition they recognize that “human love is called metaphorical love in contrast to the pure,
true, Divine love. Love of human being is the ladder leading to the love of the Merciful.”
109
This so-called Divine love or the highest level of love will be achieved when a person encounters the experience of overwhelming love.
Therefore, to decipher the relation of Pamuk ’s tales with the ideals’ trait of
Sufism, this study employs Sufi framework as the theoretical concept and there will be two subchapters where each chapter will contain three and four sub
headings respectively. The first sub chapter will present the symbolism in Pamuk
’s novels that reveal the ideals of Sufism where four sub headings: night,
105
William C. Chittick, Sufism A Beginner Guide Oxford: One World Publication 2008: 94-98.
106
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 68.
107
Ibid, 45.
108
A.J Arberry, The Discourse of Rumi London: J. Murray, 1961, 35.
109
Schimmel.1982, 68.
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raki, mirror, and the beloved’s belonging, as common symbolisms in Sufi
tradition will be discussed here. The concept of Sufi mystical experience in Pamuk’s three novels in this
study will be scrutinized in the following sub chapters where three sub headings will be elaborated here, namely 1 initial union as the first level of love, 2 the
pain of separation as the purification level, and 3 the reunion as the ultimate level of love. Each of the fore coming symbolism and stages to mention and
discuss are not neat and discrete but overlapping and recursive.
A. The Sufi Symbolism in The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence
