Book- MEMORIES OF DISTANT MOUNTAINS
Author- Orhan Pamuk,
Published by- Hamish Hamilton,
Price- ₹1,299
Are diaries meant for posterity? Or should authors publish them in their lifetime? The Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk, has invigorated this debate with the publication of Memories of Distant Mountains, an illustrated reproduction of his jottings and sketches excerpted from his private journals. Spanning over a decade, from 2009 to 2022, Memories, translated by Ekin Oklap, offers a kaleidoscope of Pamuk’s reminiscences of events, activities, people and landscapes. The last is important as the book introduces Pamuk the spontaneous artist who can, as a pointillist, a miniaturist, an impressionist, and as a Chinese landscapist, visualise vivid moments from near and far. The visual representation of distant mountains, seas and ships metaphorises Pamuk’s imaginative quests for dreams, desires and freedoms, quests that also enable him to fulfil his ode to Istanbul and its surroundings. The desire to publish his paintings was always there as he says in one of his early entries, “Before I die — I would like to write a book called distant mountains. A book about painting and imagining distant realms and misty mountain landscapes.”
Pamuk’s book encourages the reader to enjoy his colourful sketches, scattered inventories of daily activities, notes on personal projects, and quirky observations about travel and food. But is there more? In a recent interview, Pamuk defended the authorial right to publish diaries by asserting that it was André Gide, also a Nobel laureate, who radicalised the “idea of journal keeping” by publishing his private journals “when he was still alive”. Pamuk asserts that by doing so, Gide transformed the idea of a private diary into a “living space, a creative space”. In Memories, as an inheritor of Gide, Pamuk self-consciously organises his entries in an “EMOTIONAL order”. Untying the chronological unity of a conventional diary, Pamuk’s journal allows room for revisiting the past as he says that he would often leave empty spaces for later incorporation of words or sketches. In one of his entries, he says, “I like to leaf through my journals every now and then, scribbling and sketching on any empty pages.” Elsewhere, he writes, “Sometimes I think of this notebook as a museum whose pages (the vitrines) I keep adding new items to.” He also mentions that when he decided to publish the extracts, he carefully selected the pages, arranged their order, and evaluated their literary prospects.
Yes, Pamuk reorders the inner space of his diary by innovating on its timeline, but how does he contribute to it as a serious writer? The question arises as several entries, which show Pamuk’s continuing engagement with literature, history and politics, are so brief and elliptical that they leave the reader puzzled. For instance, while preparing a lecture for his students, Pamuk offers a significant observation about Joseph Conrad’s writing about Latin America in Nostromo without having spent sufficient time there: “There is a literary and human problem here. How innocent really is our desire to represent others, to describe others to those who do not know?” True, the novelistic need for representing others is never innocent, but Pamuk offers no further comments on the subject. Similarly, while his reflections on the role of writers of the Global South are thought-provoking, they remain frustratingly unelaborated. In his journal section on India, after his meeting with the writer, Amitav Ghosh, Pamuk ruminates, “Third world writers who live in the West should criticize, should be able to criticize, their own countries, their people, their everyday culture… But even talking about this subject is difficult.” One couldn’t agree more, especially since Pamuk has been an outspoken critic of the prevailing regime in his country. However, instead of addressing the matter further, Pamuk lets the ambience of the dinner table overtake his thoughts and he closes the matter with a bland one-liner: “I like Amitav and I wouldn’t want to start an argument!”
It may be argued that Pamuk’s cryptic comments are not signs of narrative weakness but demonstrations of the episodic nature of the diary as a literary form. Unlike autobiographies, diaries don’t always privilege continuity or consistency of thought or of action; rather, they provide room for change and variation. While the generic features of the diary might explain why Pamuk doesn’t elaborate on his ideas, it cannot be denied that the literary scope of the work is reduced as Pamuk marginalises his well-known writerly self in favour of his unknown painterly self. Besides its diminished literary takeaways, Memories also prompts the reader into questioning the validity of publishing the ‘personal’ in a public form. The diary is essentially a private form, and Pamuk is aware of the risks involved as he wonders whether he is “doing the right thing by publishing these things”; a caution which is redoubled by his spousal injunctions about not publishing “anything too personal”. Has Pamuk succeeded? The reader must decide.