A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar & Erdag Göknar

Author:Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar & Erdag Göknar [Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi & Göknar, Erdag]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780982624630
Amazon: 0982624638
Publisher: Archipelago
Published: 2011-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

And she added, “I’m in awe over the way one poet could vanquish a city through verse this way. Every time I hear this couplet, Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais comes to mind ...”

Mümtaz rounded out her thought: “The couplet captures something grand, an essence that will never change.” This autumnal hour could only be described in such a manner. All indications were that summer had ended. This thought alone filled them with a feeling of foreboding within which they took in their surroundings.

Summer’s end saddened them. A few days beforehand, Nuran had pointed out an early flock of swallows passing south overhead. And this morning, he’d arrived at the yalı with three crisp oak leaves collected en route. Worms of death had gnawed the leaves along their edges and had slowly traced a path toward their centers within the cerise of an evening. The once pliant leaves had assumed a hardened, calcified form, as if plucked from nighttime itself.

The song of a solitary bird sounded two or three times in stark yearning, the way a flute solo might bestir among violins and violas in an orchestra. They contemplated the likely tragedy that had caused this affect, yearning doubtless linked in some unspecified measure to the accident that fed it and gave it poignancy. At present in sprawling woods, trees sensed their sap gradually recede and longed to link their branches and huddle together for warmth while their desiccated leaves fell from the slightest tremor. The panorama was as variegated as springtime. The mastic trees of autumn had turned red like the Judas trees of spring, though more sorrowfully.

“Early one morning let’s go to the Emirgân woods. It’s exquisite the way the trees virtually shiver as they wake.”

A cloud set into motion by a small wind kicking up out of nowhere first became a rose garden then, breaking into thin wisps, progressed until it was overhead, spreading out like a carpet before the forelegs of a fiery-maned black stallion.

Rising, they sauntered away. The shadowy road between the hills and yalı walls, under the twilight, resembled the tunnel of an ancient temple. Within this tunnel, from among the canopy of branches, they observed the nocturne that ambled together with them.

At this hour, when everything struggled under its own weight, they walked until Anadoluhisarı, holding hands and harboring intense intimations of fate. There they entered the small coffeehouse to the right of the pier. Night had completed its thorough descent. The dock was crowded with rowboats returning from bluefish runs. They watched their customary evening’s entertainment as if it were a rather exotic ritual. And if at that moment someone had asked whether they trusted life, both would have responded, “Nah, but we’re happy this is the way of the world!”

“Nah, but what difference does it make? We’re happy now.”

On the way back they mostly talked about the small apartment they’d just rented in Talimhane, near Taksim. Nuran’s mother had declared that she’d be unable to remain in Kandilli this coming year. And Tevfik’s rheumatism had flared up.

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