One of the best books I have read in a long time is Orhan Pamuk’s My name is Red; a fantastic read. How do we describe a book where art and reality seem to seamlessly merge into one another? As I read the novel I was under a spell. I was carried away by the force of the story and the plot as well as the power of the storyteller’s point of view, but could I miss the novelists’ playfulness, his comic seriousness and his mockery of the storyteller’s tale. The novel revels in pitching up a high ground of philosophical debate; one that has gone on for centuries and is yet to be resolved: the primacy of life over art: the power of the artist over God. Is the artist indebted to Allah for it is his creation which gives him the inspiration? Is the permanence of art greater than the impermanence of life or is this permanence itself a curse, destined never to cross the realm of inertia and breathe the madness and headiness called life for which reason life the gift given by God is far greater and no painter, artist, engraver, miniaturist or calligrapher should ever come to believe or admire his work or any art work as more lifelike than life itself.
The tale might sound simple; a murder mystery and a love story crossing paths in a philosophical abstraction, but Pamuk’s way of storytelling grips the novel and binds it with that extra element of mystique and suspense. The expositions on various nuances of painting, the courtesan method for example with which the novel abounds illustrate Pamuk’s scholarship and his deep love for the art and craft of painting and representation.
‘The East and the West belong to God ‘
There is an admirable passage on love. When passion wanes love is no more. Or there is no such thing called love, only different shades of it, the love of a burning with passion lover, the love of a couple that comes after their lust is satiated, of a cooing, caressing kind; the love of compassion and the love of mercy. Above all, the love of God or the love of Nature which is all encompassing.
Do we have the power to represent so much of love? Does the artist paint from memory or does he paint by looking at reality? Is seeing or sight more powerful than blindness? If one does look at reality, is it that reality which is transformed or transferred by the artist’s vision of reality (the medium of the artist ) the thinking process, his /her philosophical setting, milieu (this is a question on the essence, origin of meaning itself) then what is it that is represented: reality, or the artist’s vision of reality. Painters used to go blind to have a vision of how God destined the world to be. Does this blindness bestow the ultimate vision? The vision of eternity, the vision of Paradise.