English
Everyone who was lucky enough to read Istanbul, City and Memories written by the Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk can certainly confirm that he has an extraordinary ability to describe this city by the means of his memories. And also how he encourages the reader to ponder the complex relationship between literature and reality and the different ways in which the first influences the second.
If the aforementioned book mentions this differential characteristic of the city by describing its sights not in regards to their public presentation but as part of their surroundings where life happens then The Museum of Innocence reflects the similarities between novel and museum, both spaces to gather details of our lives that are doomed to disappear with time. According to Pamuk the purpose of gathering objects is to hold on to the past.
Although the novel is about an extreme love and shows the same conventions just like a melodrama, a musical or a romantic movie that coined Turkish cinema in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, his novel is more personal and intimate without being too dependent on the experience of the author or the incidents that happen to the narrator.
He is a member of one of the wealthiest families in Istanbul and is passionately in love with one of his cousins who is much younger than him and has lower social status. This love turns his life upside down and it seems like he is sleepwalking through streets, cafes, restaurants, bars, cinemas and houses looking for signs and things she might have left. With those he creates a museum, a map of rituals and habits of Istanbul’s society and the broken heart of a man who finds comfort in these objects.
In the district Çukurcuma the author himself created a museum about the daily life in the city of the time, when the novel took place.
Paul Oilzum
The museum is expected to open in 2011. If you rent apartments in Istanbul you might get lucky to visit the museum that describes The Museum of Innocence.?
