Benim Adim Kirmizi by Orhan Pamuk was phenomenal bestseller in Turkey when it was published in 1998. The English translation by Erdag Goknar was published in 2001, with the title My Name is Red and received with great critical acclaim. Pamuk was compared to the world’s finest writers. Many felt this recognition was long overdue. My Name is Red is multi-layered novel held together by an intertwined murder story, a love story and a discourse on painting. The setting is sixteenth century Istanbul - a city that straddles both Europe and Asia. Throughout Pamuk draws together, and contrasts, Turkey with its western and eastern neighbours.
The novel is preceded by three quotes from the Koran, including:
To God belongs the East and the West
The novel encompasses a grand sweep of history and places Turkey firmly at the crossroads of many civilization. The title of the book also refers to the colour of the Turkish flag. An excellent chronology at the end, defines historical dates. The novel is set in the reign of Sultan Murat III (1574-95). The confidence of Ottoman Empire (1300-1922) has been shaken by the rising power of Renaissance Europe. The European victory against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) has delivered a crushing blow to Ottoman control of the Mediterranean. The defeat appeared particularly ominous to Muslims because it coincided with the approaching 1000th anniversary of The Hegira (AD 622) – the date of the Prophet Mohammed’s emigration from Mecca to Medina. The Hegira also marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar (AH) which is based on the lunar cycle.
The novel is set in 1591 – a year before 1000 AH. By then, the political and economic problems of the Ottomans and the loss of state patronage for miniature painting in neighbouring Persia meant hardship and penury for skilled miniaturists and calligraphers. The spectacular achievements of Renaissance art in neighbouring Europe – the development of perspective, the use of painting to celebrate individuality and the human figure – began to generate a new debate on the nature of painting among Islamic miniaturists. Some perceived this as a threat to the style and purity of traditional miniature painting. Many were being enticed to the Mughal court of the newly rich Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) where an intermingling of traditional miniature painting and renaissance perspective was taking place (p. 194).
The conflict between a rigid interpretation of Islam and the spirit of creativity and enquiry which propelled a dynamic Islamic thought and culture runs through the narrative, as does an intricate philosophic debate on Islamic art. Fine books were as prized as jewels in the Muslim world. They were presented as a gift to emperors and kings and kept in the royal treasury. Furthermore, traditional miniature painting was perceived as the means of highlighting and illuminating the most important scenes of a narrative.
My Name is Red revolves around a secret book that an elderly artist and bookmaker, Enishte Effendi has been commissioned to make by the Ottoman Sultan, inspired by Venetian paintings. Enisthe Effendi, who has been to Venice, was at first bewildered at paintings which were single works without an accompanying text. He did not understand “to which scene and story the pictures belonged” (p. 31). He was stunned and mesmerized by the portrait of a nobleman, so life-like that he and his features would be remembered for ever, and in which the artist had included everything significant in the subject’s life, ranging from a farm and a forest, to metaphorical objects. Enisthe decides it would befit the Sultan to be so portrayed and “rendered with everything He owned, with the things that represented and constituted his realm.” He wants to overawe and overwhelm Europeans with the symbols of the Sultan’s power and also demonstrate the mastery of the Sultan’s painters.
Enisthe Effendi, surreptitiously engages the four best miniature painters from the Sultan’s workshop. Master Osman, the Head Illuminator at the workshop has trained them. They are known by the nicknames he has given – Butterfly, Olive, Stork and Elegant – to symbolize their skills. They are preparing The Book of Festivities for Master Osman, also commissioned by the Sultan.
Master Osman has taught his painters that the skill of a miniaturist depends on his ability to suppress his individuality and follow rules set by their predecessors. Furthermore, while they admire the dazzling masterpieces of past masters, such as the great Bihzad, who did indeed leave his own distinct style and changed the art of the miniature, they are steeped in lore which asserts that for an artist to have an individual style or signature is a flaw: it will reveal a sub-conscious influence or desire, resulting in exposure, violence, disorder. This makes Renaissance painting both compelling and repugnant to his painters, with its emphasize on realism and individuality and the celebration of an artist’s unique style and signature. Enisthe Effendi urges the painters to break the rules of Master Osman’s workshop and draw from their imaginings (p. 304) but he will not allow them to see the book or the final illustration that they are working on, in its totality.
When Master Osman finally learns of Enisthe’s unconventional book and looks through it (p. 290), he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But it transpires later, that Master Osman too has been forced to compromise his art when the Sultan sat for a portrait painting by the Venetian, Sebastiano and asked Master Osman to copy it (p. 408).
The debate that runs through the book is whether Venetian paintings, particularly portraits, are blasphemous or not, since Muslims are forbidden to make life-like images, lest they become objects of worship. Furthermore, Venetian paintings placed the human figure and other elements at the centre of the painting, while traditional miniature painter presented “God’s view” of the universe from above.
The novel is filled with deeply symbolic parables, influenced by Sufi thought: Sufism being a mystical sect of Islam, with intellectual and creative traditions, which revolve around the awareness of the inner consciousness. Pamuk also brings out the diversity of Muslim thought and the enormous contrasts between two starkly different schools of Islam: the free-thinking order of the Kalanderi dervishes and a violent, puritanical and fanatical creed, embodied by the preachings of Nusret Hoja of Erzurum.
There are several references to the influential Islamic philosophers, al-Ghazali (1050-1111) and Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) and the famous illustrated texts of the Persian poets Firdawsi, (c.935-c.1020), Nizami (1141-1209) and Jami (1414-1492) among others. The book also interweaves great romantic legends of the Islamic world such as Husrev and Shirin, or Layla and Majnun. In Sufi lore they are endowed with a mystical dimension, in which the Lover is the Seeker, and the Beloved is the Divine, which can only be attained after many hardships.
My Name is Red begins with the murder of the miniaturist Elegant. The Murderer is one of the three surviving miniaturists. He says:
Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity (p. 22).
He covers his tracks so skilfully, that it is difficult to tell the three miniaturists apart. The concept of trinity runs through the text: the book is preceded by three quotes from the Koran; there are three questions which determine a good miniaturist; each answered by three parables; the book has three main stories. In Islamic numerology, which has always intereted Pamuk, three is the number of the soul (vegetative, animal, rational), the three kingdoms of creation (mineral, plant, animal), the astral agents of the Universal Soul (signs of the Zodiac, the Sphere, the Planets), the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, poetry) and division of the universe into the material, astral and universal.
The first story is that of the murder. The second revolves around Enisthe Effendi’s nephew, Black, who returns to Istanbul after an exile of 12 years. Enisthe (which means “uncle”) summons him back because he wants Black to produce a text for the book, linking the illustrations – which breaks the rules of both Venetian and Islamic miniature painting. The third strand of the narrative is the love story of Black and Shekure, Enisthe Effendi’s daughter and only child. In Ottoman society, Muslim men and women led segregated lives, but men fall in love with Shekure from afar, having only heard stories of her beauty. Unlike her other suitors, Black, her cousin and a poor relative, often had the opportunity to see her because he virtually grew up in Enisthe’s home. He was expected to observe the bounds of propriety and keep his love for Shekure a secret. Instead he made a declaration to her. Her father considered this an abuse of hospitality and an act of insolence and banished Black from his home.
Over the years, Black has travelled extensively, worked as a bureaucrat and spent many years in Tabriz, making books for important clients. He has been haunted by the memory of Shekure but has no portrait of her to recall her features, though as a young man he was in the habit of secretly copying miniatures of the legendary lovers Shirin and Husrev and painting his own face and Shekure’s in place of theirs. He finds that Shekure has married a cavalryman, who has been missing in action for sometime, but he has not been pronounced dead. Neither wife nor widow, she lived with her husband’s family, according to custom, until her brother-in-law Hasan, tried to rape her (p. 95). Consequently, she has moved into her father’s home with her young sons, Shevket and Orhan.
The intensity of Black and Shekure’s forbidden love is built up with great skill; it is also a vivid portrayal of the secluded, vulnerable, lives of women and the ruses they use to try and circumvent social restrictions. Shekure looks through a peephole in the back of a built-in closet to observe Black with her father. She questions her sons with feigned casualness. (p. 34) She sends notes to Black through her maid who gives them to a well known go-between, Esther, a Jewish peddler, who has free access to many people and many homes. Black, in turn, sees Shekure at a window, finds her features reflected in that of her younger son, (p. 37) Orhan, and is intensely aware that she is probably observing him from a peephole – and so the imagination of each feeds their desire.
The secret of Enisthe’s book, the secret of Black and Shekure’s love affair and the secret of the murderer’s crime, all have parallels. Each reveals how mystery and secrecy generate speculation and curiosity to create a compelling, intricate and powerful narrative. The Murderer tells Black (p. 478)
Your Enisthe taught Elegant Effendi that he was involved in some forbidden project by covering up the final picture, by revealing only a specific spot to each of us and having us draw something there – by giving the picture an air of mystery and secrecy, it was Enisthe himself who instilled the fear of heresy ... what would an artist with a clear conscience have to fear?
There is no omniscient narrator however, The narrative is built up through a series of different voices, which include the inanimate or abstract, such as a tree (p.56), a coin (p.124) – and the colour red (p.224). Each has its own story to tell - a technique reminiscent of itinerant storytellers. The whole revolves around the idea of perception, of different ways of seeing, in which the painter’s eye, his notion of reality, is but a metaphor.
The opening chapter of the novel “I am a corpse” is narrated by the murdered miniaturist, Elegant and begins with the lines:
I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Though I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer , knows what’s happened to me (p.3) .
Elegant describes his tormented soul is in limbo and reveals that the murderer crushed his skull with a stone, broken his bones and threw him into a well full of ice-cold water. He declares:
My death conceals an appalling conspiracy against our religion, our traditions and the way we see the world (p.6)
The second chapter (p.7) is narrated by Black. He notes the changes which have occurred in Istanbul during his long absence, including economic decay and a drastic devaluation of money. A fire-breathing cleric, Nusret Hoja from Erzurum, has been gathering support on the streets for preaching that such catastrophes are due punishment for the faithful for straying from the Word of God. In a coffee house, Black observes a storyteller produce the sketch of a dog and tells the Dog’s tale, which becomes the next chapter “I am a Dog” (p. 12). The dog’s narrative also provides a biting caricature of Nusret Hoja who condemns coffee, coffee houses, painting and much else as sinful.
The fourth chapter (p.17) “I will be called a Murderer ” knots and expands the three preceding ones. The Murderer is in the coffee house too. His tormented thoughts, are mixture of guilt, horror, compulsion and pride. He says:
Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colours, as attentive people like yourself might examine footprints to catch a thief. This in turn is an issue of “style” which is now of widespread interest. Does a miniaturist, might a miniaturist, have his own personal style? A use of colour, a voice of his own?
The discourse on style and individuality are integral to the novel’s East-West debate. Master Osman believes that a skilled miniaturist should be so well versed with his craft that he can draw with equal ease blindfolded and indeed, blind. Olive explains
Before the art of illumination, there was blackness and afterward there will be blackness. Through our colours, paints and art and love we remember that Allah has commanded us to ‘See!’ To know is to remember what you’ve have seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness. The great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that colour and sight arose from darkness, longed to return to Allah’s blackness by means of colour (p. 92 ).
Thus blindness was a great miniaturist’s fate, having committed to memory the paintings he had seen known he “saw” them with a greater clarity once his corporeal vision had faded.
The theme of “seeing” and “blindness” is symbolized by the very name of Black, who investigates the murder. Black’s relationship with Enisthe and later, Master Osman, is that of father and son, guide and disciple. But Enisthe is murdered, and Master Osman blinds himself. Black is left to unearth the truth alone.
The plot continues to be built up by a succession of voices, many of them recurring, including Enisthe, Orhan, Esther, Shekure, Master Osman, Olive, Stork and Butterfly. The first half leads up to two simultaneous events: Black’s secret’s assignation with Shekure and the murder of Enisthe Effendi. Enisthe is alone in the house, when the troubled Murderer arrives (p. 187). The Murderer , (who is also in love with Shekure), wants to see, in its entirety, the final illustration that he has been working on. Enisthe Effendi prevaricates. The Murderer reveals that the late Elegant thought Enisthe Effendi’s combination of Venetian and Ottoman styles of painting “will strip us of our purity and reduce us to being their [the infidel’s] slaves.” Enishte asserts “Nothing is pure”. He reminds his visitor that miniature painting has been influenced by many traditions, including Mongol-Chinese painting (p. 194). The Murderer becomes more and more agitated. He says Elegant was killed because he planned to reveal the contents of Enisthe’s book and set Nusret Hoja’s henchmen upon all miniaturists (p. 196). Finally he bursts out “It is I, I’m the one who murdered Elegant Effendi.” (p. 199) Stunned, Enisthe gathers his wits, feigns sympathy and keeps on talking. Unwittingly, he offends the Murderer who crushes Enisthe’s skull (p. 209) with an inkpot – of red – that Black presented to Enisthe as a gift.
The poetic title chapter, “My Name is Red” (p. 224) is a celebration of that vibrant colour, symbolizing life and death and which cannot be concealed. “Red cannot be explained to he who cannot see” (p.228). The chapter divides the novel into two equal parts.
The second half leads up to the resolution of both the murder and the impediments to Black and Shekure’s happiness – while the growing strength of Nusret Hoja puts an end to royal patronage of both traditional miniature painting and the exploration of Venetian techniques, consigning it to memory and darkness. Pamuk’s conceit of naming the child Orhan – which Pamuk has often said is himself – as the future storyteller (p. 503) who will illuminate those events, lifts the book in time and space, so that the conflicts of the sixteenth century AD/1000 AH, resonate with those of our age - fifteenth century AH/2000 AD.
Shekure’s grief at her father’s death, is combined with the fear that her troublesome in-laws will become her legal guardians (p. 229). With great presence of mind, she conceals Enisthe’s murder (p. 218) and asks Black to find a judge to declare her widowhood. She marries Black during a tense, stage-managed charade with the “dying” and “inaudible” Enisthe propped up in a darkened room (p. 246). Shekure imposes a condition on Black however: their marriage will not be consummated until her father’s killer is found. The plot takes many twists as Shekure tries to cope with her two sons, one of whom, Shevket, runs off to his paternal family.
Black is arrested for Enisthe’s murder (p 300). He has aroused the suspicion of the Sultan’s Head Treasurer, who has disbursed the Sultan’s funds for Enisthe’s book. The Sultan himself appears, intervenes and gives Black three days to clear his name. Black also learns that the Sultan had commissioned ten illustrations from Enisthe, but one is missing, stolen by the Murderer (p. 274).
Master Osman is asked to help in the investigation because he knows the work of his miniaturists so intimately that he can often pick out the individual hand of each, through tiny telltale details, even when they have tried innovative styles for Enishte. Shekure’s initiative in extracting from Elegant’s wife the drawing of horses (p. 321) found by Elegant’s corpse, provides a major breakthrough. The artist is clearly the same as the one who has drawn a horse for Enisthe, but the style is too different from the norm to reveal his identity. Master Osman detects one microscopic slip – the horse has split nostrils. Master Osman insists that “even the flaw of a master miniaturist has its origins” (p. 360). He believes that the Murderer, when asked to draw from his imagination, has unconsciously fallen back on a buried, artistic influence. Master Osman’s quest takes him and Black into the dark, musty and cluttered recesses of Sultan’s Treasury to look for a painting, which will “identify the technique we now see as a mistake” (p. 360).
Black and Master Osman’s exploration of the Sultan’s manuscripts embroiders upon an earlier discourse in the book (p. 83) on time and painting and how books and styles develop, change, mutate and echo across history. The two men feast upon the most fabled of books including Firdawsi’s Book of Kings which was commissioned by Shah Tahmasp of Persia, and presented to the Ottoman Sultan Selim on his accession, along with the needle that the elderly Bihzad, who did not paint for this volume, blinded himself. Master Osman concludes Bihzad preferred blindness because “after he attained the perfection of the old masters” (p. 391) he wanted to “avoid tainting his painting with the desire of any other workshop or Shah”. Master Osman wonders if Shah Tahmasp sent the needle because the Shah lost interest in painting or because he believed that anyone who looked at it “would no longer wish to see anything else in the world” (p. 393). To Black’s consternation, Master Osman blinds himself too (p. 394). He tells Black of the great shame he felt because his royal patron the Sultan had made him copy a portrait in the Venetian style and now the miniaturists he had trained and loved had betrayed him and their whole artistic tradition, by secretly working on Enisthe’s book (p. 408). All this has eroded his entire life’s work. But Black is still able to talk to him about a drawing of a horse with split nostrils, which Black stumbles across (p. 398), painted in a Chinese style and which ultimately enables Black to find the murderer .
In the outside world Black discovers Shekure beset with many problems. In the street, the Nusret Hoja and his henchman, armed with clubs, attack the coffee house and its clientele and kill the storyteller. In the midst of this turmoil and destruction, Black seeks out Butterfly, Stork and Olive, unmasks the Murderer and extracts a confession (p. 476).
The Murderer treats Black with scorn. He reveals that he killed Elegant because Elegant had told him he had seen the last picture and thought Enisthe’s use of perspective – presenting pictures from perspective of the human eye, not God’s eye from above - was a sin so grave that his conscience was deeply troubled. He feared Elegant would tell Nusret Hoja’s “dull congregation”, about the book, and confirm widespread opinion that “all miniaturists are mired in heresy”. The Murderer says “I committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the entire workshop.” (p.481)
The Murderer, a member of the Kalanderi order, did not object to the paintings for Enisthe’s book on religious grounds. He believed that Enisthe created the myth of an illicit book sanctioned by the Sultan to aggrandize himself. But he had murdered Enisthe, on an impulse, because Enisthe had not taken him seriously enough and belittled him and because he believed that Master Osman was the “true father” of the miniaturists and they had wronged him by working for Enisthe.
The tormented Murderer ’s commitment to Master Osman and traditional art is explained further, when he displays the illustration he stole from Enisthe.There, in the centre, instead of a portrait of the Sultan, the Murderer had painted his own. He says (p. 486)
This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fair resemblance of myself, revealed to me what we’ve known all along without admitting it: The proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to attain. Had Enisthe Effendi’s book been completed and sent to them, the Venetian masters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would have reached the Venetian Doge - that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans have given up being Ottoman and would no longer fear us. How wonderful it would be if we could persist on the path of the old masters! But no one wants this, neither His Excellency Our Sultan, nor Black Effendi... In that case sit yourselves down and do nothing but ape the Europeans century after century! Proudly sign your name to imitative paintings...
As the book draws to an end, Black and Shekure find personal happiness, but the world that they knew comes to an end. Sultan Murat III successor, turn his back “on all kinds of artistry” and his pious successor smashes a clock with statues send as a gift by Elizabeth I. The centre of miniature painting passes to the court of the Emperor Akbar in India.
(Page numbers quoted are from Faber & Faber edition, UK, paperback, 2002)
3958 words
Citation: Shamsie, Muneeza. "Benim Adim Kirmizi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16880, accessed 21 November 2024.]
