呼愁 | Hüzün
by ORHAN PAMUK
Hanching Chung 译
“呼愁”一词，土耳其语的“忧伤”，有个阿拉伯根源：它出现在《古兰经》时（两次写作“huzn”，三次作“hazen”），词义与当代土耳其词汇并无不同。先知穆罕默德指他妻子Hatice和伯父Ebu Talip两人过世的那年为“Senetul huzn”，即“忧伤之年”，证明这词是用来表达心灵深处的失落感。但如果说“呼愁”起先的词义是指失落及伴随而来的心痛与悲伤，我自己所读的书却指出，伊斯兰历史在接下来几百年间有一小条哲学断层线逐渐形成。随著时间的推移，我们看见两个迥然不同的“呼愁”出现，各自唤起某种独特的哲学传统。
根据第一个传统，当我们对世俗享乐和物质利益投注过多时，便体验到所谓“呼愁”：其含义是“你若未对这无常人世如此投入，你若是善良诚实的回教徒，便不会如此在意世间的失落”。第二个传统出自苏菲神秘主义思想，为“呼愁”一词以及失落与悲伤的生命定位提供一种较积极、较悲悯的认识。对苏菲派来说,“呼愁”是因为不够靠近真主阿拉因为在这世上为阿拉做的事不够而感受到的精神苦闷。真正的苏菲信徒不关注死亡之类的凡俗之事，更不用说身外之物：由于与真主阿拉永远不够接近、对阿拉领悟得永远不够深刻，使他倍感哀痛、空虚、欠缺。此外，给他带来痛苦的，不是“呼愁”的存在，而是它的不存在。他由于未能体验“呼愁”而感知到它的存在；他受苦，是因为他受的苦不够。遵照此一逻辑，得以断定“呼愁”深受伊斯兰文化推崇。假如过去两百年来“呼愁”是伊斯坦布尔文化、诗歌和日常生活的核心所在，肯定部分是因为我们以它为荣。但若要了解“呼愁”过去一百年来的意义，若想传达其经久不衰的力量，便不能只提苏菲传统带给这词的荣耀。若想表达近百年来“呼愁”对伊斯坦布尔音乐的精神影响，了解“呼愁”何以主宰土耳其现代诗歌的基调及其象徵意义，何以跟古典诗歌的伟大象征一样，遭人滥用甚至误用，若想了解“呼愁”作为文化概念重要问题所表达的世俗失败、疲沓懈怠和心灵煎熬，便不能只去理解这个词的历史以及我们附加的荣耀。若欲传达伊斯坦布尔让儿时的我感受到的强烈“呼愁”感，则必须描述奥斯曼帝国毁灭之后的城市历史，以及——这点尤其重要——此一历史如何反映在这城市的“美丽”风光及其人民身上。伊斯坦布尔的“呼愁”不仅是由音乐和诗歌唤起的情绪，也是一种看待我们共同生命的方式；不仅是一种精神境界，也是一种思想状态，最后既肯定亦否定人生。
要探索这词的多重含义，我们得回头看一些思想家，他们不将“呼愁”视为一种诗学概念或获得真主恩宠的状态，而是视为一种疾病。根据El Kindi的说法,“呼愁”不仅是关于丧失或死去亲人，亦是关于其他的精神磨难，像是愤怒、爱、怨恨和莫须有的恐惧。（医师哲学家阿维森纳也以同样广义的角度看待“呼愁”，他之所以建议为陷入无助恋情的年轻人诊断把脉时，应当向男孩询问女孩的名字，正是出于这个原因。）这些古伊斯兰思想家列举的方式类似于17世纪初伯顿在其神秘而有趣的巨著《剖析忧郁》（其篇幅约一千五百页，使阿维森纳的大作《忧伤》看起来像本小册子）中所提出的。和阿维森纳一样，伯顿对于此种“黑色痛苦”採取广义的观点，将怕死、爱、失败、恶行以及各种各样的饮料和食物列为可能原因，而他所列举的疗法，范围亦同样广泛，他结合医学与哲学，规劝读者从理性、工作、听从、美德、纪律和斋戒当中寻求慰藉——斋戒一项又是证明文化传统截然不同的两本著作体现共同点的一个有趣例子。
因此,“呼愁”起源于和忧伤一样的“黑色激情”，其词源归于亚里士多德时代最早提及的基本体液（黑胆质），并指通常与此种感觉联系在一起的颜色及其暗指的滞塞之苦。但我们在此看见两个词的本质区别：以病痛为荣的伯顿认为，忧伤通往愉快的孤独；由于病者的想像力因之增强，有时忧伤是一种欢喜的确认；忧伤是孤独的结果或原因皆无关紧要，在这两种情况下，伯顿都将孤独视为忧伤的核心和精髓所在。但对于把“呼愁”视为既是神秘状态（因我们与阿拉合而为一的共同目标遭受挫折而引发）又是一种疾病的El Kindi而言，其关注的中心事物就和所有的古伊斯兰思想家一样，是“社玛”，即信徒社群。他根据“社玛”的处世准则判断“呼愁”，提出回归社群的方法。基本上，他把“呼愁”视为某种与社群目标相互牴触的体验。
我的起始点是一个小孩透过布满水汽的窗户看外面所感受的情绪。现在我们逐渐明白,“呼愁”不是某个孤独之人的忧伤，而是数百万人共有的阴暗情绪。我想说明的是伊斯坦布尔整座城市的“呼愁”。
在我描绘伊斯坦布尔所独有的、将城内居民团结在一起的此种感觉之前，别忘了，风景画家的首要目标，是在观看者心中唤醒画家内心激起的相同感受。这一观念在19世纪中叶的浪漫主义者间尤为风行。当波德莱尔断定德拉克洛瓦画中对他最具影响的是其忧伤之气，正如他们之后的浪漫派和颓废派，他是以一种全然正面的方式道出这词汇，作为赞誉。在波德莱尔阐述对德拉克洛瓦的看法（1846年）后六年，他的作家兼评论家朋友戈蒂耶访问伊斯坦布尔。戈蒂耶关于这城市的著述给后来的雅哈亚和坦皮纳等作家留下了深刻的印象，值得注意的是，戈蒂耶将城里某些景色形容为“忧伤至极”，亦为赞誉之意。
但此刻我想描述的不是伊斯坦布尔的忧伤，而是那映照出我们自身的“呼愁”，我们自豪地承担并作为一个群体所共有的“呼愁”。感受这种“呼愁”等于观看一幕幕景象，唤起回忆，城市本身在回忆中成为“呼愁”的写照、“呼愁”的本质。我所说的是太阳早早下山的傍晚，走在后街街灯下提著塑料袋回家的父亲们。隆冬停泊在废弃渡口的博斯普鲁斯老渡船，船上的船员擦洗甲板，一双手提水桶，一双眼看著远处的黑白电视；在一次次经济危机中踉跄而行、整天惶恐地等顾客上门的老书商；抱怨经济危机过后男人理发次数减少的理髮师；在鹅卵石路上的车子之间玩球的孩子们；手里提著塑料购物袋站在偏远车站等著永远不来的汽车时不与任何人交谈的蒙面妇女；博斯普鲁斯老别墅的空船库；挤满失业者的茶馆；夏夜在城里最大的广场耐心地走来走去找寻最后一名醉醺醺主顾的皮条客；冬夜赶搭渡轮的人群；还是帕夏官邸时木板便已嘎嘎作响、如今成为市政总部响得更厉害的木造建筑；从窗帘间向外窥看等著丈夫半夜归来的妇女；在清真寺中庭贩卖宗教读物、念珠和朝圣油的老人；数以万计的一模一样的公寓大门，其外观因脏污、锈斑、烟灰、尘土而变色；雾中传来的船笛声；拜占庭帝国崩溃以来的城牆废墟；傍晚空无一人的市场；已然崩垮的道堂“泰克”；栖息在生锈驳船上的海鸥，驳船船身裹覆著青苔与贻贝，挺立在倾盆大雨下；严寒季节从百年别墅的单烟囱冒出的丝丝烟带；在加拉塔桥两旁垂钓的人群；寒冷的图书馆阅览室；街头摄影人；戏院里的呼吸气味；曾因金漆顶棚而粲然闪耀的戏院如今已成害羞腼腆的男人光顾的色情电影院；日落后不见女子单独出没的街道；南风袭来的热天里聚集在国家管制的妓院门口的人群；在商店门口排队购买减价肉的年轻女子；每逢假日清真寺的尖塔之间以灯光拼出的神圣讯息，灯泡烧坏之处缺了字母；贴满脏破海报的牆壁；在任何一个西方城市早成古董的1950年代雪佛兰、在此地成为共乘出租车的“巴姆”，喘著气爬上城里的窄巷和脏街；挤满乘客的公共汽车；清真寺不断遭窃的铅板和排雨槽；有如通往第二个世界的城市墓地，墓园里的柏树；傍晚搭乘卡迪廓伊往卡拉廓伊的船上看见的黯淡灯光；在街头尝试把同一包面纸卖给每个过路人的小孩；无人理睬的锺塔；孩子们读起奥斯曼帝国丰功伟业的历史课本，以及这些孩子在家里挨的打；人人得待在家中以便彙编选民名单的日子；人人得待在家中接受户口普查的日子；突然宣佈宵禁以便搜找恐怖分子，于是人人诚惶诚恐地坐在家里等候“官员”的日子；报上无人阅读的一角刊载的读者来信，说在附近矗立三百七十五年的清真寺，圆顶渐渐塌陷，问何以未见国家插手干涉；繁忙的十字路口设置的地下道；阶梯破败的天桥；在同一个地方卖了四十年明信片的男子；在最不可能的地方向你乞讨、在同一个地方日复一日发出同样乞求的乞丐；在摩肩接踵的街上、船上、通道和地下道里阵阵扑鼻的尿骚味；阅读土耳其大众报《自由日报》上“古金大姐”专栏的女孩们；在夕阳照耀下窗户橘光闪烁的于斯屈达尔；人人尚在睡梦中、渔夫正要出海捕鱼的清晨时分；号称“动物园”的古尔韩公园，园内仅有两双山羊和三双百无聊赖的猫懒洋洋地待在笼子里；在廉价的夜总会里卖力模仿美国歌手、土耳其名歌星的三流歌手以及一流的歌手们；上了六年没完没了令人厌烦的英文课后仍只会说“yes”和“no”的中学生们；等在加拉塔码头的移民；散落在冬夜冷落的街头市场上的蔬果、垃圾、塑料袋、纸屑、空布袋和空盒空箱；在街头市场怯生生讲价的美丽蒙面女子；带著三个孩子艰难走路的年轻母亲；十一月十日清晨九点零五分，整个城市停顿下来为纪念土耳其国父而致敬，船双同时在海上鸣笛；铺了许多沥青而使台阶消失的鹅卵石楼梯；大理石废墟，几百年来曾是壮观的街头喷泉，现已乾涸，喷头遭窃；小街上的公寓，我童年时代的中产阶级家庭——医生、律师、老师和他们的妻子儿女们——傍晚坐在公寓里听收音机，如今同样的公寓中摆满了针织机和钮扣机，挤满拿最低工资彻夜工作以交付紧急订单的年轻姑娘们；从加拉塔桥望向埃于普的金角湾风光；在码头上等顾客上门时凝望风景的“芝米”小贩；所有损坏、破旧、风光不再的一切；近秋时节由巴尔干半岛和北欧、西欧飞往南方的鹳鸟，飞过博斯普鲁斯海峡和马尔马拉海上诸岛时俯
瞰整个城市；国内足球赛后抽烟的人群，在我童年时代这些球赛始终以悲惨的失败告终。我所说的正是这一切。
看见“呼愁”，并对表现在城市街头、景色、人民身上的种种形态表达敬意，于是我们终于处处察觉到它：隆冬之晨，当阳光忽然照耀博斯普鲁斯海，微微的水雾从海面升起时，你几乎触摸得到深沉的“呼愁”，几乎看得见它像一层薄膜覆盖著居民与景观。
因此“呼愁”与伯顿所谓孤独个体的忧伤之间有一大段形而上的距离；然而“呼愁”与列维—施特劳斯在《忧郁的热带》里所描述的另一种忧伤形式却很相近。列维—施特劳斯的热带城市不太像位于北纬四十一度线、气候较温和、地势较熟悉、生活较不艰苦的伊斯坦布尔。但伊斯坦布尔人民脆弱的生命，他们对待彼此的方式以及他们感受到的与西方各大重镇之间的距离，都让刚到的西方人不知如何了解伊斯坦布尔这一城市。由于不知如何是好，他们认为它具有“神秘感”，因而将“呼愁”等同于列维—施特劳斯的“忧郁”。“忧郁”不是某种牵动孤独个体的痛苦；“呼愁”和“忧郁”两者皆表明某种集体的感觉、某种氛围、某种数百万人共有的文化。可是这两个词及其描述的感觉并不完全相同，而我们若要指出其差异，不能光是说伊斯坦布尔远比德里或圣保罗富有。（若去贫民区一窥，这些城市及其贫穷形态事实上相似得很。）差异在于伊斯坦布尔辉煌的历史和文明遗迹处处可见。无论维护得多麽糟，无论多麽备受忽视或遭丑陋的水泥建筑包围，清真大寺与城内古迹以及帝国残留在街头巷尾的破砖碎瓦——小拱门、喷泉以及街坊的小清真寺——都使住在其中的人为之心痛。
这些东西可不像在西方城市看见的大帝国遗迹，像历史博物馆一样妥善保存，骄傲地展示。伊斯坦布尔人只是在废墟间继续过他们的生活。许多西方作家和旅人感到这点妙不可言。但对于比较敏感的居民而言，这些废墟提醒人们眼前贫穷杂乱的城市甭想再创相同的财富、权力和文化高峰。就像儿时眼见美丽古老的木造房屋一栋栋焚燬，这些与四周的尘土泥巴合而为一、无人照管的院落也同样无法让人引以为傲。
陀思妥耶夫斯基到瑞士旅行时，尝试领会日内瓦人对自己城市的过度自豪。“他们甚至凝视最简单的物件，像是路灯杆，彷彿这些灯杆是世界上最出色最美好的东西。”这位仇恨西方的爱国狂在一封信中写道。日内瓦人相当以他们的历史名城为荣，甚至在被问到哪条路最容易走时会这麽说:“顺著这条街直走，先生，经过那座典雅华丽的青铜喷泉时……”假使伊斯坦布尔的居民也这麽做，他可能会跟著名作家拉西姆的故事《贝迪亚与美丽的艾丽尼》中那样给人指路:“路过易卜拉欣帕夏的哈曼（公共澡堂），再往前走。在你右手边，隔著你刚刚经过的旧址（哈曼）眺望过去，会看见一间破房子。”今天的伊斯坦布尔人对外地人在这些悲街惨巷看见的一切感到不安。
足够自信的居民或许更喜欢用城里的杂货店和咖啡馆做地标，如今已成惯例，因为这些东西被视为现代伊斯坦布尔的瑰宝。但若想快速逃开废墟的“呼愁”，便得对一切历史古迹视而不见，对建筑物的名称或其建筑特徵不予理睬。对许多伊斯坦布尔居民而言，贫穷和无知在这方面很适合他们。历史成为没有意义的词汇，他们把城牆的石块拿来加到现代材料中，兴建新的建筑，或以水泥翻修老建筑。但“呼愁”并不放过他们：由于忽略过去并与之断绝关係，卑鄙而虚空的努力使他们的“呼愁”感更强烈。“呼愁”源自他们对失去的一切感受的痛苦，但也迫使他们创造新的不幸和新的方式以表达他们的贫困。
列维—施特劳斯所描述的“忧郁”，是一个西方人在审视热带地区的贫困大城市，注视熙熙攘攘的人群及其悲惨的生活时可能的感受。但他不是通过他们的眼睛看城市:“忧郁”意味著一个满怀内疚的西方人，他不让陈腔滥调和种种偏见歪曲他的印象，以此抚慰他的痛苦。但“呼愁”却非旁观者的感觉。奥斯曼古典音乐、土耳其流行音乐，尤其是1980年代广受欢迎的“阿拉贝斯克”，都不同程度地表达了这一情绪，一种介于肉体痛苦与悲伤忧虑之间的感觉。来这座城市的西方人往往没留意到，连奈瓦尔——他自己的忧伤终将逼他自杀——也说这城市的色彩、街头百态、暴力和种种仪式使他倍感清新，他甚至叙述在墓地听见女人的笑声。或许因为他是在伊斯坦布尔尚未开始追悼过去的奥斯曼辉煌时期造访此地，又或许他必须逃离自己的忧伤，促使他在《东方之旅》当中以大量笔墨书写灿烂的东方幻想。
伊斯坦布尔所承载的“呼愁”不是“有治癒之法的疾病”，也不是“我们得从中解脱的自来之苦”，而是自愿承载的“呼愁”。于是走回伯顿断言“快乐皆空／甜蜜惟忧伤”的忧伤；它呼应其自贬的智慧，敢于夸耀它在伊斯坦布尔生活中佔有的重要地位。同样地，共和国创立后的土耳其诗歌，当中的“呼愁”也表达了无人能够或愿意逃离的同一种悲伤，最终拯救我们的灵魂并赋予深度的某种疼痛。对诗人而言,“呼愁”是雾濛濛的窗户，介于他与世界之间。他投映在窗扇上的生活是痛苦的，因为生活本身是痛苦的。对于逆来顺受的伊斯坦布尔居民而言亦是如此。依然受到它在苏菲文学中获取的荣誉的影响,“呼愁”为他们的听天由命赋予某种尊严，却也说明了他们何以乐观而骄傲地选择拥抱失败、犹豫、挫折和贫穷，显示“呼愁”不是生命中种种辛酸与失落导致的结果，而是其主要原因。这也适用于我小时候土耳其电影里的主角们，以及同时期我心目中的许多英雄：他们都给人一种印象，那就是，由于生来便把这“呼愁”挂在心上，他们在面对金钱、成功或所爱的女人时不能显出渴望。“呼愁”不仅麻痺伊斯坦布尔的居民，也提供他们麻痺的夸张手法。此种感觉不会出现在巴尔扎克笔下的拉斯蒂涅身上，拉斯蒂涅雄心勃勃地传达并颂扬的是现代都市的精神。伊斯坦布尔的“呼愁”不是主张个人反抗社会，反倒是表明无意反抗社会价值与习俗，鼓舞我们乐天知命，尊重和谐、一致、谦卑等美德。“呼愁”在贫困之时教人忍耐，也鼓励我们逆向阅读城市的生活与历史，它让伊斯坦布尔人不把挫败与贫穷看作历史终点，而是早在他们出生前便已选定的光荣起点。因此，我们从中获取的光荣有可能引起误解。但它确实表明伊斯坦布尔承担的“呼愁”不是弥漫全城的绝症，不是像悲伤一样得去忍受的永恒贫穷，也不是黑白分明的失败难题：它是倍感荣幸地承担其“呼愁”。
早在1580年，蒙田即认为他所谓“忧郁”的情绪毫无光荣可言。（尽管知道自己是忧郁患者，他仍用这个词；多年后，同样被诊断有忧郁症的福楼拜也这麽做。）蒙田认为“忧郁”是独立自主的理性主义和个人主义的敌人。按照他的观点,“忧郁”不配跟智慧、美德、道德等高尚品德并列在一起，他还赞成意大利人把“忧郁”跟万恶之源的各种疯狂和伤害联繫在一起。
蒙田本身的忧愁如服丧般孤单，咬噬著这个与书独处的男人的内心。但伊斯坦布尔的“呼愁”却是全城共同感受且一致肯定的东西。正如坦皮纳描述伊斯坦布尔的长篇巨著《和平》当中的主人公们：源于城市历史的“呼愁”使他们一文不名，注定失败。“呼愁”注定使爱情没有和平的结局。就像黑白老片中，即便最感人最真实的爱情故事，若以伊斯坦布尔为背景，一开始便能看出男孩生来背负的“呼愁”将把故事导入通俗剧。
在这些黑白片中，就像在《和平》这类“精緻艺术”当中，认同的时刻始终相同。当主人公退避到自己的世界，当他未能表现出足够的决心或胆识，而是屈服于历史及社会加在他身上的环境时，我们才拥抱他们，同时整个城市也拥抱他们。展现在剧中的黑白大街风光无论多麽美丽、多麽驰名，依然闪耀著“呼愁”。有时我转换著电视频道，偶然发现已播放一半的片子，脑海里便闪现某种不寻常的想法。当我看见主人公走在某贫民区的鹅卵石路上，仰望某间木屋窗内的灯光，想著他那理所当然快嫁给别人的心上人，或者当主人公带著谦卑的骄傲回答一位有钱有势的厂主，决定接受生活的原貌，而后转身注视黑白影像的博斯普鲁斯，我便觉得“呼愁”并非来自主人公残破的痛苦经历，亦非来自他未能娶到他心爱的女子，反倒像是，充塞于风光、街道与胜景的“呼愁”已渗入主人公心中，击垮了他的意志。于是，若想知道主人公的故事并分担他的忧伤，似乎只需看那风景。对这些电影主人公来说，就像对坦皮纳的“精緻艺术”小说《和平》当中的主人翁而言，面对绝境只有两种方式：沿著博斯普鲁斯海岸行走，或者去城里的后街凝望废墟。
主人公惟一的办法是求诸群体。但对于受西方文化刺激并希望接触当代世界的伊斯坦布尔作家和诗人而言，问题更为复杂。除了“呼愁”带来的群体感之外，他们也渴望蒙田的理性主义和梭罗的心灵孤寂。不得不承认的是，20世纪早期参考这些影响所创造出的伊斯坦布尔的形象，现在仍是伊斯坦布尔的一部分，也是我的故事的一部分。
Hüzün, the Turkish word for melancholy, has an Arabic root, when it appears in the Koran (as huzn in two verses and hozen in three others) it means much the same thing as the contemporary Turkish word. The Prophet Muhmmad referred to the year in which he lost wot his wife Hatice and his uncle, Ebu Talip, as Senetul huzn, the year of melancholy; this confirms that the word is meant to convey a feeling of deep spiritual loss. But if Hüzün begins its life as a word for loss and the spiritual agony and grief attending it, my own readings indicate a small philosophical fault line developing over the next few centuries of Istamic history: With time, we see the emergence of two very different hüzüns, each evoking a distine philosophical tradition.
According to the first tradition, we experience the thing called Hüzün when we have invested too much in wortaly pleasures and material gain; the implication is, If you hadn't involved yourself so deply in this transitory world, if you were a good and true Mushin, you wouldn't care so much about your worldly losses." The second tradition, which rises out of Sufi mysticism, offers a more positive and compassionate understanding of the word and of the place of loss and grief in life. To the suhis, hüzin is the spiritual anguish we feel because we cannot be close enough to Allah, because we cannot do enough for Allah in this world. A true Sufi follower would take no interest in worldly concerns like death, let alone goods or possessions; he sutters trom griet, emptiness, and inadequacy because he can never be close enough to Allah, because his apprehension of Allah is not deep enough. Moreover, it is the absence, not the presence, of huzun that causes him distress. It is the failure to experience hüzün that leads him to feel it; he suffers because he has not suffered enough, and it is by following this logic to its conclusion that Islamic culture has come to hold hüzün in high esteem. If hüzün has been central to Istanbul culture, poetry, and everyday life over the past two centuries, if it dominates our music, it must be at least partly because we see it as an honor. But to understand what hüzün has come to mean over the past century, to convey its enduring power, it is not enough to speak of the honor that Sufi tradition has brought to the word. To convey the spiritual importance of hüzün in the music of Istanbul over the last hundred years; to understand why hüzün dominates not just the mood of modern Turkish poetry but its symbolism, and why, like the great symbols of Divan poetry, it has suffered from overuse and even abuse; to understand the central importance of hüzün as a cultural concept conveying worldly failure, listlessness, and spiritual suttering, it is not enough to grasp the history of the word and the honor We attach to it. If I am to convey the intensity of the hüzün that Istanbul caused me to feel as a child, I must describe the history of the city following the destruction of the Ottoman empire and-even more important- the way this history is reflected in the city s "beautiful" landscapes and its people. The hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry, it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating.
To explore the ambiguities of the word, we must return to the thinkers who see hüzün not as a poetic concept or a state ot grace but as an illness. According to El Kindi, hüzün was associated not just with the loss or death of a loved one but also with other spiritual afflictions, like anger, love, rancor, and groundless fear. The philosopher-doctor Ibn Sina saw hüzün in the same broad terms, and this was why he suggested that the proper way of diagnosing a youth in the grip of a helpless passion was to ask the boy for the girl's name while taking his pulse. The approach outlined by these classic Islamic thinkers is similar to the one proposed in The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton's enigmatic but entertaining tome of the early seventeenth century. (At some 1,500 pages, it makes Ibn Sina's great work, F'il Huzn, seem like a pamphlet.) Like Ibn Sina, Burton takes an encyclopedic view of the "black pain," listing fear of death, love, defeat, evil deeds, and any number of drinks and foods as its possible causes, and his list of cures ranges just as broadly. Combining medical science with philosophy, he advises his readers to seek relief in reason, work, resignation, virtue, discipline, and fasting- another interesting instance of common ground underlying these two texts that rise out of such very different cultural traditions.
So hüzün stems from the same "black passion" as melancholy, whose etymology refers to a basis in humors first conceived in Aristotle's day (melaina kole-black bile) and gives us the coloration normally associated with this feeling and the all-occluding pain it implies. But here we come to the essential difference between the two words. Burton, who was proud to be afflicted, believed that melancholy paved the way to a happy solitude; because it strengthened his imaginative powers, it was, from time to time, to be joyfully affirmed. It did not matter if melancholy was the result of solitude or its cause; in both instances, Burton saw solitude as the heart, the very essence, of melancholy. By contrast, while El Kindi saw hüzün both as a mystical state (engendered by the trustration of our common aim to be at one with Allah) and as an illness, solitude was not a desirable or even admissible condition. The central preoccupation, as with all classic Islamic thinkers, was the cemaat, or community of believers. He judged hüzün by the values of the cemaat and suggested remedies that return us to it; essentially, he saw hüzün as an experience at odds with the communal purpose.
My starting point was the emotion that a child might feel while looking through a steamy window. Now we begin to understand hüzün not as the melancholy of a solitary person but the black mood shared by millions of people together. What I am trying to explain is the hüzün of an entire city: of Istanbul.
Before I try to paint this feeling that is unique to Istanbul and that binds its people together, let us remember that the primary aim of a landscape painter is to awaken in the viewer the same feelings that the landscape evoked in the artist himself. This idea had an especially wide currency in the mid-nineteenth century among the Romantics. When Baudelaire identified the thing in the paintings of Eugène Delacroix that affected him most as their air of melancholy, he was using the word in a wholly positive way, as praise, like the Romantics and the Decadents who followed them. It was six years after Baudelaire set down his thoughts on Delacroix (in 1846) that his friend, the author and critic Théophile Gautier, paid a visit to Istanbul. Gautier's writings on the city would later imprint themselves deeply on Istanbul writers like Yahya Kemal and Tanpinar; it is therefore worth noting that when Gautier described some of the city's views as melancholy in the extreme, he too meant it as praise.
But what I am trying to describe now is not the melancholy of Istanbul but the hüzün in which we see ourselves reflected, the hüzün we absorb with pride and share as a community. To feel this hüzün is to see the scenes, evoke the memories, in which the city itselt becomes the very illustration, the very essence, of hüzün. I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus terries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one financial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city's greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their tacades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, rums since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unflinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke insing from the single chimney of a hundred-year-old mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men fishing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering affairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cutrate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuses, fifties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any Western city but serve here as shared taxis, huffing and puffing up the city's narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadiköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting "the officials"; of the readers' letters, squeezed into a corner of the paper and read by no one, announcing that the dome of the neighborhood mosque, having stood for some 375 years, has begun to cave in and asking why the state has not done something; of the underpasses in the most crowded intersections; of the overpasses in which every step is broken in a different way; of the girls who read Big Sister Güzin's column in Freedom, Turkey's most popular newspaper; of the beggars who accost you in the least likely places and those who stand in the same spot uttering the same appeal day after day; of the powerful whiffs of urine that hit you on crowded avenues, ships, passageways, and underpasses; of the man who has been selling postcards in the same spot for the past forty years; of the reddish-orange glint in the windows of Usküdar at sunset; of the earliest hours of the morning, when everyone is asleep except for the fishermen heading out to sea; of that corner of Gülhane Park that calls itself a zoo but houses only two goats and three bored cats, languishing in cages; of the third-rate singers doing their best to imitate American vocalists and Turkish pop stars in cheap nightclubs, and of first-rate singers too; of the bored high school students in never-ending English classes where after six years no one has learned to say anything but "yes" and "no"; of the immigrants waiting on the Galata docks; of the fruits and vegetables, garbage and plastic bags and wastepaper, empty sacks, boxes, and chests strewn across abandoned street markets on a winter evening; of beautiful covered women timidly bargaining in the street markets; of young mothers struggling down streets with their three children; of all the ships in the sea sounding their horns at the same time as the city comes to a halt to salute the memory of Atatürk at 9:05 on the morning of November tenth; of a cobblestone staircase with so much asphalt poured over it that its steps have disappeared; of marble ruins that were for centuries glorious street fountains but now stand dry, their faucets stolen; of the apartment buildings in the side streets where during my childhood middle-class families-of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and their wives and children-would sit in their apartments listening to the radio in the evenings, and where today the same apartments are packed with knitting and button machines and young girls working all night long for the lowest wages in the city to meet urgent orders; of the view of the Golden Horn, looking toward Eyp from the Galata Bridge; of the simit vendors on the pier who gaze at the view as they wait for customers; of everything being broken, worn out, past its prime; of the storks flying south from the Balkans and northern and western Europe as autumn nears, gazing down over the entire city as they waft over the Bosphorus and the islands of the Sea of Marmara; of the crowds of men smoking cigarettes after the national soccer matches, which during my childhood never failed to end in abject defeat: I speak of them all.
It is by seeing hüzün, by paying our respects to its manifestations in the city's streets and views and people, that we at last come to sense it everywhere. On cold winter mornings, when the sun suddenly falls on the Bosphorus and that faint vapor begins to rise from the surface, the hüzün is so dense you can almost touch it, almost see it spread like a film over its people and its landscapes.
So there is a great metaphysical distance between hüzün and the melancholy of Burton's solitary individual; there is, however, an affinity between hüzün and another form of melancholy, described by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques. Lévi-Strauss's tropical cities bear little resemblance to Istanbul, which lies on the 41st parallel and where the climate is gentler, the terrain more familiar, the poverty not so harsh; but the fragility of people's lives in Istanbul, the way they treat one another and the distance they feel from the centers of the West, make Istanbul a city that newly arrived Westerners are at a loss to understand, and out of this loss they attribute to it a "mysterious air," thus identifying hüzün with the tristesse of Lévi-Strauss.
Tristesse is not a pain that attects a solitary individual; hüzün and tristesse both suggest a communal feeling, an atmosphere and a culture shared by millions. But the words and the feelings they describe are not identical, and if we are to pinpoint the difference it is not enough to say that Istanbul is much richer than Delhi or São Paolo. (If you go to the poor neighborhoods, the cities and the forms poverty takes are in tact all too similar.) The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner-the Little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques- inflict heartache on all who live among them.
These are nothing like the remains of great empires to be seen in Western cities, preserved like museums of history and proudly displayed. The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins. Many Western writers and travelers find this charming. But for the city's more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its former heights of wealth, power, and culture. It is no more possible to take pride in these neglected dwellings, which dirt, dust, and mud have blended into their surroundings, than it is to rejoice in the beautiful old wooden houses that as a child I watched burn down one by one.
While traveling through Switzerland, Dostoyevsky struggled to understand the inordinate pride Genevans took in their city. "They gaze at even the simplest objects, like street poles, as if they were the most splendid and glorious things on earth," wrote the Westhating chauvinist in one letter. So proud were the Genevas of their historic city that, even when asked the simplest directions, they'd say things like "Walk down the street, sir, past that elegant, magnificent bronze fountain." If an Istanbul resident were to do likewise, he might find himself uttering such instructions as are found in the story Bedia and the Beautiful Eleni by the great writer Ahmet Rasim (18651932): "Go past Ibrahim Pasha's hamam. Walk a little farther. On your right, looking out over the ruin you've just passed [the bath], you'll see a dilapidated house." Today's Istanbullu would be uneasy about everything the foreigner might see in those miserable streets.
A more confident resident might prefer to use the city's grocery stores and coffeehouses as his landmarks, now common practice, as these count among the greatest treasures of modern Istanbul. But the fastest flight from the huzun of the ruins is to ignore all historical monuments and pay no attention to the names of buildings or their architectural particularities. For many Istanbul residents, poverty and ignorance have served them well to this end. History becomes a word with no meaning; they take stones from the city walls and add them to modern materials to make new buildings, or they go about restoring old buildings with concrete. But it catches up with them: By neglecting the past and severing their connection with it, the hüzün they feel in their mean and hollow efforts is all the greater. Hüzün rises out of the pain they feel for everything that has been lost, but it is also what compels them to invent new defeats and new ways to express their impoverishment.
The tristesse that Lévi-Strauss describes is what a Westerner might feel as he surveys those vast poverty-stricken cities of the tropics, as he contemplates the huddled masses and their wretched lives. But he does not see the city through their eyes. Tristesse implies a guilt-ridden Westerner who seeks to assuage his pain by refusing to let cliché and prejudice color his impressions. Hüzün, on the other hand, is not a feeling that belongs to the outside observer. To varying degrees, classical Ottoman music, Turkish popular music, especially the arabesque that became popular during the 1980s, are all expressions of this emotion, which we feel as something between physical pain and grief. And Westerners coming to the city often fail to notice it. Even Gérard de Nerval (whose own melancholv would eventually drive him to suicide) spoke of being greatly refreshed by the city's colors, its street life, its violence, and its rituals; he reported hearing women laughing in its cemeteris. Perhaps it is because he visited Istanbul before the city went into mourning, when the Ottoman Empire was still in its glory, or perhaps it was his need to escape his own melancholy that inspired him to decorate the many pages of Voyage en Orient with the bright Eastern fantasies.
Istanbul does not carry its hüzün as "an illness for which there is a cure" or "an unbidden pain from which we need to be delivered": It carries its hüzin by choice. And so it finds its way back to the melancholy of Burton, who held that "All other pleasures are empty / None are as sweet as melancholy"; echoing its self-denigrating wit, it dares to boast of its importance in Istanbul life. Likewise, the hüzün in Turkish poetry after the foundation of the Republic, as it too expresses the same grief that no one can or would wish to escape, an ache that finally saves our souls and also gives them depth. For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. The screen he projects over life is painful because life itself is painful. So it is, also, for the residents of Istanbul as they resign themselves to poverty and depression. Imbued still with the honor accorded it in Sufi literature, hüzün gives their resignation an air of dignity, but it also explains their choice to embrace failure, indecision, defeat, and poverty so philosophically and with such pride, suggesting that hüzün is not the outcome of life's worries and great losses but their principal cause. So it was for the heroes of the Turkish films of my childhood and youth, and also for many of my real-life heroes during the same period: They all gave the impression that because of this hüzün they'd been carrying around in their hearts since birth they could not appear desirous in the face of money, success, or the women they loved. Hüzün does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Istanbul; it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.
No such feeling operates in heroes like Balzac's Rastignac, who in his turious ambition comes to convey, even glorify, the spirit of the modern city. The hüzün of Istanbul suggests nothing of an individual standing against society; on the contrary, it suggests an erosion of the will to stand against the values and mores of the community and encourages us to be content with little, honoring the virtues of harmony, uniformity, humility. Hüzün teaches endurance in times of poverty and deprivation; it also encourages us to read life and the history of the city in reverse. It allows the people of Istanbul to think of defeat and poverty not as a historical end point but as an honorable beginning, fixed long before they were born. So the honor we derive from it can be rather misleading. But it does suggest that Istanbul does not bear its hüzün as an incurable illness that has spread throughout the city, as an immutable poverty to be endured like grief, or even as an awkward and perplexing failure to be viewed and judged in black and white; it bears its hüzün with honor.
As early as 1580, Montaigne argued that there was no honor in the emotion he called tristesse. (He used this word even though he knew himself to be a melancholic; years later, Flaubert, likewise diagnosed, would do the same.) Montaigne saw tristesse as the enemy of self-reliant rationalism and individualism. Tristesse, in his view, did not deserve to be set in capital letters alongside the great virtues, Wisdom, Virtue, and Conscience; he approved of the Italian association of tristezza with all manner of madness and injury, the source of countless evils.
Montaigne's own sorrow was as solitary as mourning, eating away at the mind of a man who lives alone with his books. But the hüzün of Istanbul is something the entire city feels together and affirms as one. Just like the heroes of Tanpinar's Peace, the greatest novel ever written about Istanbul: Because of the hüzün they derive from the city's history, they are broken and condemned to defeat. It is hüzün which ordains that no love will end peacefully. Just as in the old black-and-white films-even in the most affecting and authentic love stories- if the setting is Istanbul, it is clear from the start that the hüzün the boy has carried with him since birth will lead the story into melodrama.
In these black-and-white films, as in works of "high art" like ranpinar's Peace, the moment of identification is always the same. it is when the heroes have withdrawn into themselves, when they have failed to show enough determination or enterprise, submitting instead to the conditions imposed on them by history and society, that we embrace them, and at that same moment so does the whole city. No matter how picturesque, how famous the scenery in the drama unfolding on the city's black-and-white streets, it too will shimmer with hüzün. Sometimes, when I am changing channels on television and happen upon one of these films at some random point in the middle, a curious thought occurs to me. When I see the hero walking along the cobblestones of a poor neighborhood, gazling up at the lights in the windows of a wooden house and thinking of his beloved, who is of course about to marry someone else, or when the hero answers a rich and powerful factory owner with humble pride and, resolving to accept life as it is, turns to gaze at a black-and-white Bosphorus, it seems to me that hüzün does not come from the hero's broken, painful story or from his failure to win the hand of the woman he loves; rather, it is almost as if the hüzün that infuses the city's sights and streets and famous views has seeped into the hero's heart to break his will. It then seems that to know the hero's story and share his melancholy I need only to look at the view. For the heroes of these popular films, as for the heroes of Tanpinar's Peace, there are only two ways to face the impasse: Either they go for a walk along the Bosphorus or they head off into the back streets of the city to gaze at its ruins.
The hero's only resort is the communal resort. But for those Istanbul writers and poets who are excited by Western culture and wish to engage with the contemporary world, the matter is more complex still. Along with the sense of community that hüzün brings, they also aspire to the rationalism of Montaigne and to the emotonal solitude of Thoreau. In the early years of the twentieth century, some drew upon all these influences to create an image of Istanbul that is, it must be said, still part of the city and so part of my story too.