Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red and historical framing in Ottoman and modern Turkey

Orhan Pamuk's My Name is red and the idea of "Casting the Present in the Past" as it relates to the Ottoman Empire and Present day Turkey

Cultural pluralism in the past and present: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

The unusual perspective of My Name is Red is evident immediately from the first chapter, entitled "I Am a Corpse." "I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well...I was happy; I know now I that I'd been happy. I made the best illuminations in Our Sultan's workshop." So begins the story of the murder of master illuminator and gilder "Elegant" Effendi, and more importantly begins the novel's delineation of the conflict between Westernized and traditional Turkish design during the late 16th century. The 2002 novel illustrates (no pun intended) the culture clash between Islam and the West on two levels: one on an artistic level, but also on a personal and philosophical level. The West, in the schema of the novel, idealizes progress, innovation, and individualism. More realism in art and more representation of the artist's self-conception in art are considered 'better.' In contrast, Islam idealizes tradition and a depersonalized representation of the artist in a visually represented work of art.

Although the author, the Turkish Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk, does not appear to take sides on the culture clash of East vs. West, his own use of multiplicity in the novel and the depersonalized voices of the various narrators imply some favoring of the latter. To avoid seeming to favor one point-of-view or side of the artistic debate, each chapter is identified with the voice of a new character, spanning everything from the first "happy" voice of the corpse, to the murderer, to images in miniaturist painting and animals. Yet this innovative, postmodern technique also suggests that Pamuk embraces Westernization, thus Pamuk seemingly has sympathy for both sides of the cultural divide. Pamuk treats with respect certain images, like the violent self-mutilation of one of the characters that might horrify a Westerner as much as an act of Islamic-inspired violence against another person, but his main protagonist is a Western-influenced man named "The Black" who views Western aesthetic ideals with great sympathy.

The conflict behind the clash in evolving miniaturist styles arises because Islam prohibits the execution of images of the divine. Traditional Islamic miniaturist art usually contains very few images at all, and those that it does contain do not represent 'real' individuals. But miniaturists like the soon-to-be a corpse Elegant Effendi were asked to Frankish methods, using perspective, shadows and images taken from real-life individuals upon the command of the Sultan Murat III, to execute their art in the form of an illuminated manuscript for this Renaissance-era Ottoman Sultan. The result of this commission was death and destruction. Thus cultural divides between East and West, and the Muslim and Judeo-Christian world are graphically depicted, in image and in murder.

For devotees of the old ways, there is no point of dialogue between the two aesthetic and cultural styles of painting. Multiplicity and other methods of cultural interaction must be cut off -- shut off like the great miniaturist Osman's vision itself. Osman blinds himself rather obeys the command to paint in a Western fashion. He is not the first miniaturist to do so, noting that "Master Bihzad" another famed miniaturist blinded himself in the service of traditional art, while still another had his apprentice blind him, saying "I refuse to paint in any other way." In a quietly horrifying scene, Osman uses the same needle to pierce his eyes as a former miniaturist, thus following the tradition of his admired masters, much as his painting is traditional and removed from life. His spoken voice on the page is as detached as his painting, as he decides that self-mutilation in the name of his faith and art is his best recourse, rather than disobedience to the Sultan, the master miniaturists who have cone before him, and his art. To address the conflict of demands of art and politics Osman says he: "I bravely, calmly, and firmly pressed the needle into the right eye."

Osman's fusion of faith with his art is clearly expressed, when he explains to 'the Black' why Islamic art must be depersonalized: "What exposes us [as Islamic artists] is not the subject, but the hidden sensibilities we include in the painting as we render that subject...When a painter renders the fury and speed of a horse, he doesn't paint his own fury and speed; by trying to make the perfect horse, he reveals his love for the richness of this world and its creator, displaying the colors of a passion for life -- only that and nothing more." In other words, to paint the self, and inject the romantic, artistic ideal of the individual self like a Westerner into miniaturist painting is not simply bad art, but anti-Islam, and thus blasphemous. As another miniaturist, nicknamed Olive says: "Through our colors paints art and love we remember that Allah had commanded us to see. The personal presence of the artist not Allah in Western art is why to use such Western methods were considered radical and blasphemous in the Ottoman Empire. Attempts to encapsulate 'real' beings meant to aspire to create life, to create what is real, what was the province of Allah alone.

The novel evolves as a kind of detective story, when Enishte's nephew Black is called back from Istanbul to investigate his uncle's death as to why the shift to Frankish methods would inspire a murder. Three other artists still survive from the project, Olive, Butterfly, and Stork. Black questions them all. He learns Elegant was going denounce the project to followers of the fundamentalist Nusret Hoja, who had attributed "the catastrophes that had befallen Istanbul in the last ten years [the story is set in 1591] -- fires, the plagues that claimed tens of thousands...to disregard for the strictures of the Glorious Koran...tolerance toward Christians, to the open sale of wine and to the playing of musical instruments in dervish houses." Art and cultural pluralism lead to Islam's cultural demise, preaches Hoja. A miniaturist echoes this sentiment of traditionalism, applying it to his art: "If the picture is to be perfect...the way the masters of old would have made it, it ought to have been drawn at least a thousand times before I attempt it."

On one hand, if Pamuk had adhered to such a viewpoint, My Name is Red would not exist, as it is unlike what has come before, revealing multiple perspectives on the subjective nature of art and culture are presented through unconventional narrative styles, even while Pamuk's lack of 'presence' in the work, like the ideal miniaturist is required combines the voices of a variety of more than individuals, spanning the gamut from a horse to the murderer. Every chapter shifts to a different perspective because of Pamuk's willingness to embody many people in a postmodern fashion, in defiance of tradition. Yet the novelist is also compliance with the miniaturist who becomes his subject, and seeks to create perfect art, rather than life. In fact, Osman notes that one reason miniaturists have been said to blind themselves are the result of gazing on perfect miniatures. People wish to see nothing else, after gazing at such perfection.