واحدة من أكمل وأمتع وأنضج الروايات التي قرأتها في حياتي
كنت أستلذ سطورها وكأنني أقرأ شعرا
باموق نجح في خلق معادلة صعبة ها هنا
فأنت لا تكتفي بالتمتع بالحدوتة الشيقة الملغزة
بل هناك تصوير بارع
وملعومات مذهلة
وحبكة ممتازة
ووصف مبهر
وحكايات متضافرة تعيش معها أوقات ولا امتع

لو أنني ظللت أكتب وأكتب عن مدى تمتعي وشغفي بهذه الرواية فلن يكفني أبدا هذه الحروف المتبقية

هذه رواية تقطر المتعة منها
...

Havaalanında uçaga biniş kuyrugunda Orhan Pamuk'u gördüm. yanına gidip kendisine olan hayranlığımdan bahsedip bütün kitaplarını okuduğumu söyledim, fotoğraf çektirmek istedim. kendisi de gülerek sınav yaparım o zaman dedi. ben de tamam dedim cekinerek. benim adım Kırmızı'da katil kimdi diye sordu. 15 sene önce okumama rağmen nedense hala hatırlıyordum ve cevabı söyledim. biraz şaşırdı ve hoşuna gitti. ucaga biniste sıra vardı ve vaktimiz de olduğundan biraz sohbet etme sansımız oldu. bazı kitaplarıyla ilgili konuştuk, son kitabı kafamda bir tuhaflık ile ilgili sorular dordu, beğenip beğenmediğimi vs. cok keyifli bir sohbet oldu ve sonunda iyi bir okuyucu olduğumu falan söyledi. Orhan Pamuk'tan böyle bir övgü almak çok hoşuma gitti tabii. bu da böyle bir anımdır :)

It's a rare pleasure to read a book so richly layered. Contained within what is essentially a murder mystery is the history of Islamic art, miniaturists in particular, and its clash with European (Frankish) art in the late 15th/early 16th centuries, romance, a social history of Istanbul at that time, religious extremism, a seditious storyteller in a coffeehouse, Ottoman history, multiple parables and historic tales bathed in myth.

Pamuk tells the story through many different voices, each giving their perspective on events as they unfold and bizarrely including the murdered telling the tales of their own deaths. There was a point, probably 4/5ths of the way through, when the endless intricacies of Islamic representations of horses in particular began to pall (Dear Orhan, we get the message already!) but what I loved was the way in which the author makes us 'see' and think about this art form in its many different settings. He made me think quite deeply about visual artistry which is not something I'm prone to do very often (I'm too lazy).

I swithered whether to give this 4.5 or 5 stars. The translation of this edition is clunky. It's written in American English, e.g. the translator uses the word 'ornery' a lot which is meaningless on this side of the pond, and he uses abbreviations that a native speaker wouldn't ordinarily put into print, e.g. I'd've. I can't mark a book down for its translation though, just this edition. Although the descriptions of artworks were at times overly lengthy and the number of parables became a little bit tedious at times, I have to give it 5 stars simply because it is a luscious book overall and one that I have enjoyed losing myself in over the last few days.

إن لم تكن هذه الرواية هي البراعة بحد ذاتها، فأين ستكون البراعة إذًا؟

I had heard a lot of praises for My Name is Red by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and the book had been on my TBR for a long time before I finally got a chance to read it.

The story is set in the end of the sixteenth century in the city of Istanbul, the capital of the mighty Ottoman Empire. The Sultan of Turkey has commissioned a book in secret and one of the miniaturists working on the project is murdered. It won’t be the only murder of course!

miniaturist - A painter of miniatures or an illuminator of manuscripts

The main character of this novel is called Black. He had to drop out of a miniaturist workshop and leave Istanbul because he had the audacity to profess his life for his uncle’s daughter, Shekure. Anyway Black has finally returned and is still in love with Shekure, now a mother of two and whose husband went missing in a war.

There are rumours that the miniaturists, working under the supervision of Black’s uncle, had been imitating the styles of the “infidel” Franks in the secret book, and thus committing blasphemy.
The book has some elegant writing and the author has done an excellent job of fleshing out the complex characters. The narrative is also full of parables through which the characters would clarify and reinforce their beliefs on art and religious morality. The author has skillfully portrayed the various emotions and feelings of the humans – love, lust, fear, envy, bigotry,greed.

While reading this book, I couldn’t help comparing it with The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. By coincidence, I had purchased these two books on the same day. Since I had read book by Eco very recently it was still somewhat fresh in my mind and I could see the similarities and dissimilarities as well. I later saw that many readers have compared the two books

Both the books are historical fictions with multiple murders, though based in different countries and cultures. The Name of the Rose is around the Christian beliefs whereas My Name is Red talks about the Islamic view around art. The former had long discussions on religious beliefs in general while the latter dwelled at length on the religious morality and its impact on art particularly illustration and painting.

The murders in both the novels revolved around books because some individuals considered the content to be blasphemous.

The Name of the Rose was narrated by a single person while there are multiple POVs in My Name is Red, the living or even the dead get to tell their story.

The story plotted by Eco mostly revolved around monks but Pamuk’s novel gave a voice to people from different sections of the society. There was a feeling of suffocation in The Name of the Rose (due to the strict atmosphere of an abbey), but in case of My Name is Red, though there was fear, I felt the feeling of suffocation was less intense – probably because it was set in the outside world where people talked about art and love.

The book was a novel experience for me for it was my first book about Turkey. I learnt a bit about a new culture – their history, beliefs, mythology and way of life.

I enjoyed reading the book, but at times the narrative dragged so much – I was getting bored with the love triangle involving Black, Shekure and Hasan, Shekure’s brother-in-law. The long discussions on the morality and integrity of Ottoman art, though well written, were getting tiresome.

If you want a fast paced crisp thriller, then this book is not for you. But, if you don’t mind a historical fiction with lots of pages devoted to art and beliefs, then you can give it a try.

I am giving the book a rating of 3.5! I have deducted 0.5 because the narrative dragged so much at times.

Well, I am fence sitting on this one. The overwhelmingly positive reviews from fellow readers make me the outlier on this.

For me I found it a complex and demanding read, yet it was also repetitive and at times numbing in its detail (something I normally find appealing!). While all aspects of the multi-layered story appealed to me, the detail of the miniatures somehow overtook the miniatures as a whole, and I wasn't able to take as much from them as I had hoped.

Without a couple of days off work with a cold, I would probably have laboured harder on this book at its 670 pages of dense text - a larger investment than I am often prepared to make with so many other books awaiting my attention, but it did feel overlong and in my view could have be through a harder edit to reduce page count without affecting the story.

However, I thought it wrapped up much quicker than was necessary (no spoilers so I won't develop that theme much more) with the conclusion to the story of Master Osman and the Sultan's enquiry into the murder left unresolved other than a brief mention.

I am usually a fan of stories with in stories, but I found most of these a distraction - although I realise the reason for having them in the narrative - the formulaic three fables thing seemed to add to the tedium for me as I read.

So, as you can tell, I didn't love this novel. I do think it was masterfully crafted with the continually changing perspective, and aspects were excellent, but for me overlong and drawn out.

On this basis a solid 3 stars.

This started out amazing. The first chapter is narrated by a dead man, Elegant Enfendi. Each chapter after that is narrated by someone indicated in a subtitle, including the protagonist (arguable) Black; his love interest since childhood/also his cousin Shekure; the other main miniaturists, nicknamed Butterfly, Olive, and Stork; the murderer (the main suspects are the other three miniaturists); Black's uncle/Shekure's father/the head miniaturist who was overseeing a secretive book requested by his grace the Sultan that led to this murder, Enishte Enfendi; Esther, the clothier, local gossip, and matchmaker on the side, one of me favorite personalities ("Does love make one a fool, or do only fools fall in love?"); a coin, a tree, the color red ("colors are not known, but felt"; try to explain a color to someone who has always been blind.

Does this all seem confusing? Well, it was. Definitely found myself needing to reread; reading a lot of beautiful words and passages, but then having to question what exactly it was that I read.

As the novel went on it became more and more philosophical, becoming more confusing as it went. Most of it was interesting, though drawn out. By the last hundred pages, I really lost interest and moved on to another book before coming back to finish reading this. Even then, it was a little bit of work.

One of the things I always love about Orhan Pamuk is how he "cameos" in most of his novels. Here, he is the younger son to Shekure, the one who likes Black, while his older brother has a loyalty to Shekure's first husband and their father, missing for years now.

Obviously there is a lot of history here; the Ottoman time period, accurately portrayed, even very well portrayed from what I understand. Time and setting are there own characters here. Most of it went over my head, as I am the first to admit that history is not my forté. A chronology from around 330 B.C. until 1617 is even included as an appendix.

I did like the ambiance of the novel, the feeling and transporting experience that Pamuk is always able to masterfully create. A world with Sultans and swords, gilded illustrations and beautiful books, secret bills and illuminated manuscripts, jinns and ghosts, gold coins and palaces, dark alleys and open air markets, murder and intrigue, love and war. There is constant mention of the ancient story of Hüsrev and Shirin, in particular a scene where she falls in love with him after seeing his picture, a frame having from a tree in the countryside.

I found interesting the method used by Master Osman to determine the murderer. In a painting of a horse they know to be by the hand of the murderer, they notice an irregularity on its nose. To locate this same irregularity again would be to locate the murderer. At least according to the "courtesan method", which would uncover the hidden signature of the artist, borne by a horse which has been drawn from memory through the quick and skillful movement of the hand. The theory goes that artists draw from memory (even when copying another painting, the artist is looking at his own painting and hand as he paints, so for those few seconds from looking from the other painting to his own, is still painting from memory), and therefore in something so subtle could not be prevented. "Even mediocre artists must know a genuine illustration isn't drawn according to what the eye sees at any particular moment, but according to what the hand remembers and is accustomed to. The painter is always alone before the page. Solely for this reason he is always dependent on memory."

Incorporated with the above is the belief first expressed by the great miniaturist Bihzad that the greatest illustrators would be granted blindness by Allah in their later years. Many of the miniaturist of the old style still look upon blindness as a great virtue of Allah's Grace, and may even sit for weeks in the darkness in the dim light in order to learn how to receive the world like a blind man, despite not truly being blind. Bizhad blinded himself in order to avoid being forced to paint like the Venetians. Master Osman does the same. Black blinds Olive, the murderer, before he escapes (then is subsequently murdered). This is an interesting concept to me, as I do see a great amount of validity in the idea that the best artist should be able to draw and paint blindly.

The main art philosophy discussed is how the miniaturists (illustrators are called miniaturists here) should be painting. Namely, the Ottoman way is to follow tradition, to not try to stand out. Painting without its story is impossible. "Style" is imperfection. A perfect one needs no signature. "Signature" and "Style" are but means of brazenly The feared, "sinful" way is that of the French. The secret book (one painting especially) Enishte was is charge of, by request from The Sultan, was such a sin and was the cause of the murder and all the subsequent drama because 1) things were not depicted according to their importance in Allah's mind, but realistically, as they appeared to the naked eye; 2) The Sultan, The Caliph of Islam, was the same size as a pet; 3) Satan was also the same size, furthermore, in an endearing light; worst of all, 4) The Sultan, like the Christians and their idolatrous tendencies with their portraits, was as large as life and his face had full details!

Conclusion: Should have been a lot shorter. Has some great insights into Art Philosophy. Another great portrayal of the Turkish/Ottoman time period. Liked the metafiction/fourth wall aspects and Pamuk's cameo. Would have loved this if it were condensed.  

"Painting meant seeing this world yet depicting it as if it were the Otherworld."

" What we essentially want is to draw something unknown to us in all its shadowiness, not something known to us in all its illumination." (I disagree. I want something unknown to us in all its illumination. But something to think about.)

**** Spoilers ****

I guessed who the murderer was early on. One of the main clues for me was on Page 238.

Elegant Effendi believed that portraiture was the greatest of sins and it was because Olive was afraid he would reveal what they had all done (albeit unknowingly) for this secret book, shaming them all, that he died.

Aside from the art discussions, there is the story of protagonist Black. He had been in love with his cousin Shekure since they were young children. In fact, he left Turkey as a young teenager after being turned down by her on order to forget her. It is now right years later and he has returned from his world travels. Shekure had since married, but her husband went off to war and had yet to return. He did that his love for her had never died, and she has some for him (keyword "some". I never get the sender she truly loves him with any passion). In order to marry Black, she has to file for divorce by finding neighbors to pledge to her husband's death. I believe she is doing this for selfish reasons; because her husband's brother Hasan is determined to "keep" Shekure, almost as a slave. According to him, under the eyes of Allah, she belongs to him, the brother of a very much alive man who he has claimed for years will return very soon.

After the showdown amongst the illustrators, the murderer Olive stabs Black in the shoulder before his escape into the night; his plan is to board a ship the following morning. Hasan, mistaking him for one of Black's men who had abducted Shekure from his place in the middle of the night, murdered him before this could transpire. Black's wounds are not fatal, but does cause his shoulders to be uneven for the remainder of his life. As told by "I, Shekure" in the final chapter, he is depressed from then on; not, as most suspect, because of his neck that never completely heals. Shekure is not entirely sure why her husband black is depressed for the rest of his life, but I suspect it has to do with his loss of pride. It certainly does not help that her ex husband's brother Hasan was the one who killed Olive, the one deed Shekure had asked of him, to avenge her father's murderer. Shekure, in my opinion, never truly loves Black; is admittedly a little in love with Hasan.

The secret book with the sinful paintings, the book that started all these murders, was never finished.

Fără îndoială, este cea mai citită carte a lui Orhan Pamuk, însă voi fi foarte sinceră când voi spune că nu am găsit-o prea inovativă în ce privește construcția narativă. Cu toate acestea, nu am cum să nu recunosc genialitatea de uriaş povestitor a lui Pamuk.
La fel ca la Elif Shafak în Cele patruzeci de legi ale iubirii sau la Naguib Mahfouz în 1001 de nopţi şi zile şi aici avem de a face cu o istorisire multifaţetată în manieră arabă, "în ramă", a cărei valoare este dată nu atât de naraţiunea-pretext constând într-un şir de crime (precum la la Umberto Eco în Numele Trandafirului), cât de bogăţia informaţiilor despre arta orientală a miniaturiştilor de la Curtea Sultanului Murad al III-lea.
La sfârșitul secolului al XVI-lea, conservatoarea artă a miniaturii otomane este pusă în pericol şi coruptă de noile tehnici picturale veneţiene, de tehnica perspectivei şi tehnica portretului, ceea ce va da naştere conflictului dintre occidentalizare şi tradiţia orientală în pictură.
Acest conflict se va dovedi a fi fiind tocmai mobilul şirului de crime în jurul cărora este construit romanul, crime care însă nu îl transformă câtuşi de puţin într-un roman poliţist. Aşa cum s-a mai spus, a afirma că Mă numesc Roşu este un roman poliţist este ca şi cum ai afirma acelaşi lucru despre Fraţii Karamazov.
Copleşitoare, excesivă, uneori obositoare în arabescuri arhivistice despre miniaturiştii tradiţionali otomani şi lucrările lor, cartea lui Pamuk are, în cele din urmă, un mare merit: te îmbogăţeşte spiritual cu un pachet uluitor de detalii despre arta orientală, despre care nu aveai habar câtuşi de puţin, atunci când ai început să o citești.

It’s not a historical, though there is sort of history in it (Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, 1591). The mystery death of two master miniaturists doesn’t make it a murder mystery novel either. It’s not a philosophical novel though there are lots of discussions about illusrtation in European style concerning perspective, and traditional Eastern illustrating, which sees the world in the way Allah would see it.
What amazed me is, how Pamuk has taken a now forbiden discussion, to 5 centuries back, to stablish a better situation to discuss about tabus, concerning the distinctions between Islamic states and Western Europe. It's how the so-called Islamic style of illuminating lost it’s values to the so-called Frankish mode of painting, painting the earthly wealth, rather than images of what God creates on earth. In another word, demonstrating the creative abilities of the artist (European style) which Enishte effendi finds fascinating is forbiden in Islam, as if it’s kind of competing with God in creation. That’s why some other master miniaturists kill him to not loose their stabilities and honour as artists. It means that those who are not seeing the realilty of life and human being (idealists) are going to loose their style and power. This describes the restrained violence of the culture clashes which are so relevant to our world at this time through the allegory of artistic expression as European manner of representing the world, and that of the Islamic faith, in the novel!
اگرچه وقایع داستان در دوران عثمانی (1591) می گذرد اما نمی شود گفت "تاریخی"ست. جنایی هم نیست اگرچه وقایع حول و حوش دو قتل اتفاق می افتد. و اگرچه بحث، بیشتر در مقایسه ی دو شیوه ی هنری، مینیاتور جهان اسلام و نقاشی ونیزی یا مکتب فرانسوی ست، اما رمان در مورد فلسفه ی هنر هم نیست. یعنی نه آنقدر تاریخ در آن هست و نه فلسفه و نه جنایت. اهمیت اساسی در لایه ی دوم رمان است، همان گونه که در "برف"، رمان دیگر پاموک. دغدغه ی فکری پاموک مساله ی جاری زمان ماست، مقایسه و تقابل جهان اسلام و سنت از یک سو و جهان غرب و مدرنیته در سوی دیگر. مساله ای که ذهن اغلب روشنفکران در جهان اسلام را به خود مشغول داشته. انتخاب دو شکل تصویر سازی در دو جهان، به دلیل فلسفه ای که در پس ساختار مینیاتور (یک بعدی بودن آن و پرهیز از خلق دوباره ی جهان) و هنر نقاشی غربی (دید سه بعدی هنرمند از جهان) وجود دارد، انتخاب بسیار ظریف و استادانه ای ست از سوی پاموک، برای نشان دادن تقابل میان دو گونه تفکر در جهان معاصر، یکی سنتی و اقتدارگرا و دیگری مدرن و دموکرات. یکی در فراموشی انسان در مقابل خدا و دیگری در اهمیت به انسان به عنوان هسته ی اصلی جامعه ی بشری. با انتخاب زمان تاریخی در گذشته، پاموک این فرصت را به خود داده تا در مورد بسیاری از "تابوها"ی امروز در جوامع اسلامی، به راحتی و در کمال آزادی صحبت کند.

Some stories sink their teeth into your gut and don't let go. Others offer more cerebral pleasures (works by Borges comes to mind). This is more the second than the first, and I'm okay with that.

First and foremost, there are quite a few chapters in this book that read more like a chapter in a book on the history of Islamic illuminations than a chapter in a novel. In this respect, however, Pamuk can legitimately point to past antecedents in this vein: Tolstoy for one in War and Peace, Melville for another in Moby Dick. Me, I liked reading about the art of Islamic miniatures.

Secondly, and perhaps most crucially, this is not a novel about a crime set in the workshops of the Ottoman Sultan's miniaturists. Uh huh, I know what the blurb says. It's not. That's just the setting. The real jewel in the crown is the eulogy, the encomium to the lost art of Islamic illumination.

And that's what fired me up. That, and the fact that it's not just a novel about this fabulous lost art, it's a novel that seeks to replicate that art in the form of a novel and, by doing so, to bring us closer to understanding the tragedy of its loss.

Take a look at that picture above. It's an example of Islamic miniature art. Actually, it's an image of a great love story in Islamic literature. Look at it. And I mean REALLY look at it. See the contours of the man's face, the details of the landscape; notice the flatness and odd perspective of the scene; revel in the colours.

This image was produced and reproduced hundreds of thousands of times by different unknown artists in more or less the same way. This image was poured over by aficionados who would know the story by heart, who would even have memorized what the different elements making up the scene should look like.

This is not an image that can be taken in with a single cursory glance--"Oh pretty," you say, "Next!" That would be anathema to the ethos of the art. It wasn't even supposed to be a stand-alone image, but a decorative element in a book telling the story of the two lovers.

Look at that image. Not the story it tells, but the artistic elements, the ideas about the world embodied in it. That little piece of art is this book, and this book is that little piece of art. And when I finished the book, I mourned the loss of that art. Brilliant!

"اسمي أحمر" الرواية الأكثر شهرة للكاتب أورهان باموق وهي التي أوصلته إلى مكانة رفيعة في الأدب العالمي توّجت بحصوله على جائزة نوبل عام 2006. وقد ترجمت هذه الرواية إلى العديد من اللغات.
تدور أحداث الرواية في اسطنبول عاصمة السلطنة العثمانية خلال القرن السادس عشر. يستعرض فيها أورهان الصراع بين الأصالة والمعاصرة والصراع بين المدارس الفنية في الشرق والغرب في ظل منعطف تاريخي هام على صعيد الفن التشكيلي الإسلامي. من خلال عرضه لعالم فن المنمنمات الإسلامية ومدارسه وتطورها عبر الأجيال من هرات إلى تبريز إلى اسطنبول.
ما يميز هذه الرواية أنها مزيج ما بين الرواية البوليسية والتاريخية والدينية كما أنها تمتلك أيضا بعض عناصر السيرة الذاتية حيث تعكس الرواية جزءا من تفاصيل طفولة أورهان باموق من خلال أسماء الشخصيات المذكورة في الرواية "شكورة" الاسم الحقيقي لأمه، "شوكت" أخيه الأكبر ..و"أورهان". بالإضافة إلى التعمق في بعض المواضيع الفلسفية كتطرقها لموضوع "العمى" الذي يتعرض له النقاش كدليل على عظمته وتفانيه في عمله لأن الصورةوالألوان أصبحت محفورة في ذاكرته. وتطرقها للكثير من التساؤلات حول الموت وما بعد الموت.
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"اسمي أحمر" هي رواية عبقرية بلا شك، بل هي شديدة العبقرية، منذ صفحتها الأولى يجذبك أورهان باموق، حيث تبدأ السطور الأولى للرواية بالجريمة،" أنا الآن ميت ، جثة في قعر جب. "فنتفاجئ بأن هناك "جثة" تتحدث.و أن الراوي هو القتيل نفسه "ظريف أفندي". يخاطبنا من قاع الجب بعد أن أصبح جثة هامدة. لكنه لايخبرنا عن قاتله ولا عن سبب قتله. حيث يتولى هذه المهمة راوي الفصل الثاني من الرواية "السيد قرة".
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تتألف الرواية من تسعة وخمسين فصلاً، يقوم برواية كل فصل منها شخص مختلف ومن وجهة نظره الشخصية فأحياناً يكون الرواي (حصاناً، أو كلباً أو شجرة وحيدة أو مجرد قطعة نقودأو اللون الأحمر ذاته والذي يعطي للرواية أورهان اسمها حيث يستمد عنوانها من اللون الأحمر وهو اللون الأكثر استخداما في فن النقش الإسلامي).
"كم أنا سعيد لأنني أحمر، داخلي يغلي. أنا قوي. أدرك أنني مميز ، وأنكم لا تستطيعون مقاومتي…أن أدهن على نقش جميل وأن أمنح رسماً بالأسود والأبيض امتلائي وقوتي وحيويتي شعور جميل جعلني أتدغدغ فرحاً من نشري على الورقة بفرشاة من وبر القط. وهكذا أشعر عندما ألون انني أقول لذلك العالم: "كن: فيصبح العالم بلوني الدموي. من لا يرى ينكر ، ولكنني موجود في كل مكان. الحياة تبدأ بيّ، وينتهي كل شيء بيّ. ثقوا أنه بيّ."
بناء أورهان باموق السردي والروائي يقدم الرواية في قالب جديد مختلف ومبتكر يبرز ابداعه في السرد الروائي للأحداث المتشابكة في علاقتها مع الشخصيات المختلفة بكل براعة.
وتتناول الرواية تفسير فن النقش الإسلامي من خلال طرح عدة تعريفات النقش فتارة يكون النقش" متعة من أجل العين" أو هو "صمت العقل وموسيقى العين" أو يكون النقش هو البحث عن الرؤية الإلهية للعالم. كما تحتوي الرواية أيضاعلى كم هائل من التفاصيل والمعلومات الثقافية عن الفن الإسلامي من خلال تسليطها الضوء على الفنون المختلفة في بعض المدن العربية كبغداد وحلب ودمشق ، بالإضافة إلى الاشارة في أكثر من موضع إلى العديد من المؤلفات "كالشاه نامة" وكتب الغزالي وابن الجوزية، وقصة"خسرو وشيرين" لنظامي
n  n

. وقصة مجنون ليلى. .
n  n

وفي هذا السياق، يستحضر أورهان باموق العديد من الموضوعات الفكرية والثقافية والتاريخية خلال هذه الفترة.ويستعرض الكثير من قصص العشق والغيرة والحقد والمكائد بين نقاشي المنمنمات الإسلامية في البلاط العثماني.وفي ظل هذا الكم الهائل من التفاصيل يبقى كل ذلك ضمن أحداث الرواية من ناحية جريمة القتل التي ستظل غامضة حتى يحل غموضها في نهاية الرواية وقصة الحب بين قرة وشكورة التي ستنتهي نوعا ما نهاية سعيدة ترويها لنا شكورة في المقطع الأخير من الرواية:
"حكيت هذه الحكاية التي لا يمكن رسمها لابني أورهان لعله يكتبها. و أخرجت من صرتي الرسائل التي أرسلها لي قرة وحسن، ورسم الخيول المتبدد حبره والذي كان مع ظريف أفندي المسكين وأعطيتها له. إنه عصبي ومزاجي وتعيس دائما، ولا يخشى من أن يظلم من لا يحب. لهذا إذا ما قدم قرة تائها أكثر مما هو عليه، و صور حياتنا أصعب، وشوكت أسوأ ،احذروا من تصديق أورهان لأنه ليس ثمة كذبة لا يقدم عليها لتكون حكايته جميلة ونصدقها. "
وفي النهاية "اسمي أحمر" هي تحفة أدبية وفكرية و فن روحاني بديع الرواية تستحق بلا شك أن تقرأ وتقرأ مرات عديدة.
إن هذه الرواية ساحرة بحق. لقد تركتني في دهشة لم أعهدها منذ بدء قراءاتي حتى الآن. وأتمنّى للجميع وقتا ممتعا مع صفحات هذه التحفة الفنية الزاخرة بعبق التاريخ والفن.

I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a color?

Just imagine for a moment that you are that colour and that you are gifted with a voice. You will sing loudly and proudly of cloth worthy of a king or sultan, of battles and of the spilled blood, of gardens and secret passion and suffering. You are the colour of love. You are the colour of death.
This is your story.

“If love is part of the subject of the painting, the work ought to be rendered with love. If there’s pain involved, pain should issue from the painting.”

Orhan Pamuk is a rebel, a revolutionary. He sets out to break the rules of narrative point of view in order to offer us fresh perspectives on the artist and on his means of expression. He knows love and he knows pain, and this is why his chosen colour is red:
- the rich paint used by miniaturists in the sixteen century
- the blood spilled over issues of orthodoxy and progress [secularism vs modernism] in Islamic art

Pamuk also loves the city of Istanbul and so his books are poems dedicated to this incredible metropolis and to its rich history.

A city’s intellect ought to be measured not by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years. By this logic, doubtless, Istanbul is the world’s most intelligent city.

Such a crime is committed among the master miniaturists working on a secret book commanded by the Sultan, and the investigation of this murder will leads us to learn the traditions of manuscript illumination, as well as the pressures created by contact with the realist style developed in Renaissance Italy.

... genuine artists have an instinctive desire to draw what is forbidden!

Muslims are forbidden to make representations of people or to bow before idols, yet for over a century, Oriental rulers who have come into contact with barbaric invasions from the Far East, have commissioned precious manuscripts and poetry to give prestige and validation to their rule. Coming mostly from Persia, this miniature art form has reached its apogee with the work of Master Bihzad and, for several generations, countless artisans have copied his style faithfully for powerful local rulers, until another barbarian attack brought down that court and scattered its artists to other corners of the Islamic world.



As these artisans and their precious books arrived in Istanbul, either as plunder or as tribute, the Sultan himself is commissioning books to celebrate his rule or to impress his adversaries. He sponsors his own workshop under a disciple of Bihzad, Master Osman, yet the same Sultan is swayed by a portrait painted for him by a Venetian artist and by stories of the masterpieces to be found in Venice or in Florence. He tasks one of his ambassadors, Enishte Effendi, to secretly illustrate a book in a new style that could rival the achievements of the ‘Franks’.

But wouldn’t such a project break both the law and the spirit of Islamic law? Is the artist obliged to follow tradition, and remain safely within the narrow bounds set by religious extremists? Or is he allowed to follow his inner vision?

This question, as valid today as it was in 1591, will also give us the answer to why blood is spilled over what is ultimately a disagreement over style.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.

Orhan Pamuk identifies himself as a free-thinker, and he has been persecuted by bigots over his courage to speak up for what he believes in. In a sense this novel, and probably others of his that I haven’t read yet, is his manifesto.
My appreciation for his argument comes not only from the intensity of his criticism of censure, but from the fact that Pamuk can articulate clearly what he does believe in. He may present himself as non-religious, but he also declares that he is a ‘cultural Muslim’ – a fact that for me is one of the highlights of the present novel.
For a person educated almost exclusively on Western history and Western art, this palimpsest of the rich, sensitive and highly influential period in Islamic arts and letters made what I would otherwise consider a plodding and contrived long essay on art into an exhilarating and ‘illuminating’ journey.



I had to stop and take notes, look up examples of the art of Bihzad and of other masters of the Herat school, read more about cultural icons like Nizami, Jami, Firdusi, Ibn Araby, Rumi, Hafiz. I would then dream about the legends from ‘The Seven Thrones’ or ‘The Book of Kings’ , ‘The Convergence of the Stars’, about doomed lovers Leyla and Mejnun, Shirin and Husrev – as familiar to an Oriental reader as are Shakespeare and Cervantes to us. I imagined myself on a camel or a pure-bred horse, carrying in my satchel an unfinished manuscript page from one legendary city to another, where half-blind master miniaturists, calligraphers, gold-leaf painters and other artisans were exiled after their sultan was defeated in battle:
... from Herat to Bukhara, from Kazvin to Konya ... Shiraz ... Isfahan ... Khorasan ... Ghazni ... Nishapur ... Tabriz ... Damascus ... Istanbul.
At the end of the journey, the pages will be assembled, the book locked and forgotten in a sultan’s treasury, or burned in the sacking of a citadel. But the dream of the artist will journey on.

Thus I was better able to understand Ibn Arabi’s notion that love is the ability to make the invisible visible and the desire always to feel the invisible in one’s midst.



>>><<<>>><<<

Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

The novel itself is balanced between modernism and tradition: each chapter is a confession, a monologue addressing the modern reader directly from the point of view of a human actor or of a piece of scenery, or of an abstract idea. Yet each episode somehow follows the oral traditions of Arabian Tales: the rule of three, the nested stories, the meeting of the sacred and the bawdy, of battles and of bedroom games. It is both post-modern and firmly anchored in the author’s ‘cultural Muslim’ identity.

Embellishing ought to bring merriment to the page.

The joy of storytelling, either in an offending coffeehouse with a stand-up comedian or through the ornaments on a manuscript page, will put the reader in the ‘skin’ of a dog, of a tree, of a gold coin, of a horse, a corpse, a woman’s body, a couple of Kalenderi mendicants, a color, of Satan or of Death. There’s even an Easter egg in here for the patient reader  the names of the two children from Shekure’s first marriage, Shevket and Orhan, are actually the names of the author and of his elder brother, with many of the scenes between the two being personal memories of their own childhood. The author has inserted himself and his family into the novel
These are not exercises in style, but a way to depict the ‘invisible’ , the goal of every genuine artist, whose passion is not to reflect what his eyes see, but what his heart and his mind understand of the world.

“Were you meant to fade into the night, representing the darkness in the soul of a wretched and hopeless man?”

The artist is rarely rewarded for his struggles. More often than not, he is threatened by those who have chosen to close their minds and to rely only on ready-made dogma from preachers and politicians. Such is the case of the miniaturists working on the Sultan’s secret project. One of them is killed for his art, and Enishte Effendi sends Black, a former apprentice exiled for falling in love with his master’s daughter Shekure, to interview the suspects, who are the victim’s colleagues in the workshop of Master Osman.
Thus, the murder investigation gets entangled with the pursuit of love and with the debate about artistic expression. I can reduce it, with help from another Pamuk quote, to a single line:

Of course, good and evil do exist, and the responsibility for drawing a line between the two falls to each of us.

The lines are drawn, sometimes in secret love notes carried by the Jewish peddler Esther, who is also the local matchmaker, sometimes in the elegant single line that becomes a horse, or a tree. Black, Enishte, Master Osman and the artist suspects Butterfly, Stork and Olive exchange views on the history of their illustrations and on their reaction to the influence of the ‘Frankish’ method.

A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. Once a miniaturist’s artistry enters our souls this way, it becomes the criterion for the beauty of the world.

We may be speaking about the great Bihzad, and about the distant past, but I believe everything Pamuk writes here about miniatures is in fact about the condition of the writer in the present world. I don’t even have to limit myself to Turkey and to the local religious restrictions. Look at the attacks happening daily on books and authors, on what the artist should be allowed to write about in America in 2023.

We make our books in secret like shameful sinners. I know too well how submission to the endless attacks of hojas, preachers, judges and mystics who accuse us of blasphemy, how the endless guilt both deadens and nourishes the artist’s imagination.”
[...] What attracts us to writing, illustrating and painting is bound up in this fear of retribution. It’s not only for money and favor that we kneel before our work from morning to evening, continuing by candlelight through the night to the point of blindness and sacrifice ourselves for pictures and books, it’s to escape the prattle of others, to escape the community, but in contrast to this passion to create, we also want those we’ve forsaken to see and appreciate the inspired pictures we’ve made – and if they should call us sinners? Oh, the suffering this brings upon the illustrator of genuine talent! Yet, genuine painting is hidden in the agony no one sees and no one creates. It’s contained in the picture, which at first sight, they’ll say is bad, incomplete, blasphemous or heretical.

This is a rather long passage, and I have actually trimmed it down. Its only one of many, but I think these questions are important, and I would not take any of the philosophical and moral questions out of the novel, no matter how much they slow down the pacing.
An artist will rarely be remembered for following in the footsteps of his predecessors. He knows himself by testing the limits of his understanding, by travelling down the path less trodden, like Robert Frost.

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

Choosing the road not taken, the artist will not be guaranteed fame, or money, or immortality. In some cases,  They’d killed the storyteller  they will be punished for speaking truth to power.
In the end, the color red stands both for passion and for destruction. Nothing lasts forever, not even truth or masterpieces, but that doesn’t stop the genuine artist from trying to capture the ‘invisible’.

Indifference, time and disaster will destroy our art.

Today, we might look at 16th century miniatures as quaint and awkward, forgetting that in their own time the correct word was ‘revolutionary’ . Orhan Pamuk does justice here to his heritage, and I believe his are among the most deserved literary prizes.

Thus withered the red rose of the joy of painting and illumination that had bloomed for a century in Istanbul, nurtured by inspiration from the lands of Persia.