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“I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning”: MY NAME IS RED
April 14, 2008 in book reviews
I FINALLY. FINISHED. THIS BOOK.
What took me so long? Let me tell you a few things about My Name Is Red. Let’s begin with a plot summary of sorts:
A sixteenth-century sultan commissions a workshop of miniaturists to paint his portrait in the Western artistic tradition. Two of the miniaturists are killed, presumably to protest the blasphemy of illustrating from the Western perspective—that is, from depicting the world as Man sees it, rather than as Allah sees it. By summoning a variety of perspectives (including characters from a miniature hanging in a coffeeshop) and a parade of parables, Pamuk (himself a former aspiring artist) unravels a narrative that is at once a conventional mystery and a profound—at times, baffling—exploration of the Turkish mind.
The most rewarding aspect of My Name Is Red is the opportunity to read up on Islam’s complicated relationship with art. Because of the commandment to “not make unto thee any graven image, or likeness of anything,” figurative painting is forbidden. Furthermore, those miniaturists who do paint strive to perceive and depict the world as Allah sees it—and thus, the injunction against perspective (A fly 2 inches away from the viewer, depicted as larger than a minaret 200 yards away, would be deeply insulting). The difference between the Venetian approach to art and the Turkish approach is summed up as “They paint what they see, whereas we paint what we look at” (emphasis mine).
In the same vein, blindness is the ultimate state of grace for a painter—only then will he draw from a kind of platonic ideal, rather than be influenced by the world as he sees it. The goal of a Turkish miniaturist is to paint the meaning, rather than the thing. Style is a conceit and a sin. The Eastern aesthetic opposes the Western cult of personality: “Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity…What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.” The artist is not the creator, but merely the conduit or servant of a perfect, objective perspective.
The miniaturists of My Name is Red radiate the same passion and clarity of purpose that Pamuk brings to his own writing. One of the miniaturists exclaims: “God must’ve wanted the art of illumination to be ecstasy so He could demonstrate how the world itself is ecstasy to those who truly see.” This sense of ecstasy is one that appears again and again in Pamuk’s writing; by separating the function of seeing from authorial judgment, he is able to revel, to truly marvel at his characters, Istanbul, and the world. All in all, the novel displays truly brilliant ideas on art, artistry, and representation. I was struck by the passage in which the miniaturist Olive explains:
“To see is to know without remembering…It is impossible, at one and the same time, to look at the horse and at the page upon which the horse’s image appears. First, the illustrator looks at the horse, then he quickly transfers whatever rests in his mind to the page. In the interim, even if only a wink in time, what the artist represents on the page is not the horse he sees, but the memory of the horse he has seen.”
Therein lies a manifesto’s worth of ideas about seeing, representation, and the freedoms and limitations of an artist—ideas I’d love to bring to any roundtable. But even as Pamuk questions the very philosophy of art, he, too, is limited by his medium.
This is, after all, a novel. And no dizzying heights of rhetoric can make up for the fact that the novel plods along. The story disappears under anecdotes, vignettes, and parables. The characters—most often, the female ones, slaves to pettiness, hysteria, and manipulation—are more symbolic than real. (Take, for example, the miniaturists, who announce themselves in scare quotes—My name is “Butterfly,” My name is “Stork”—they are almost self-consciously archetypes rather than characters). It’s unfortunate that I’ve never seen a fully developed female character in Pamuk’s fiction. Only in his memoirs does a single woman come alive, and it’s his daughter.
Perhaps My Name is Red is intended to be more of a vehicle for thoughts on Turkish art than a full-fledged novel, but if that’s the case, then I highly resent the back copy for promising me a “fiendishly devious mystery [and] a beguiling love story.” Not like I was in it for the narrative goods, but after reading Snow, I was expecting as much driving narrative as political philosophy.
If you’re going to follow my lead, be aware of what you’re getting yourself into: this murder mystery comes with a heaping side of Symposium.
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This article is helpful because I’m working on a thesis based on this book. What other books by Pamuk that you’ve read?
I’ve also read Snow and Other Colors, and I’m currently reading Istanbul.