A Different Kind Of Melancholy

Ferit Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey's most prominent novelists, was bom in 1952 in Istanbul. He began his writing career in 1974 and completed his first work. Mr. Cevdet and His Sons in 1979. He was recognized as one of the most outstanding contemporary novelists in Europe and a great master of literature in Turkey. His work My Name Is Red and Istanbul:Memories and the City received an international reputation for him. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature. In its citation, the Academy said:'In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, [Pamuk] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.'This citation told exactly the true living and writing state of Pamuk.Based on unique context of Turkish history and culture, Pamuk's novels are intended to explore the mixing identity and confusion emerging from the relations between the East and the West, otherness and the self, tradition and the present, Islam and European culture. He put forward to an ideal of hybridism in cultural development. Based on the reality of contemporary cultural conflicts and development between the East and the West, he looks into trends of future development and claims that hybridism is a new pattern of life. He also brings the different artistic techniques between the Eastern and Western literature in creative writing to form an artistic style of hybridity. He himself also said:"All my stories are about the barrier and intermediation between East and West."This thesis attempts to analyze the root of'Huzun'and itsrefied in his novels form cultural roots, the historical background of the times and writer's personality.The adoption of cultural exchange, and self-identity of the person with his confusion and identity such as a series of dialogues, combined with Sufism Theology, to seek a new symbol of culture conflict and integration to understand the Pamuk's'Huzun'represented in his novels.The first chapter focus on Huzun's meaning and its form of expression in the Pamuk novel. First, we analysis religious meaning of'Huzun', and then how it with the development of society,'Huzun'developed to the'sad', and it is becoming an indispensable spirit of Turks.'Huzun'sentiments not only is people's grief, but also a nation's grief. We specifically mentioned in this chapter'Huzun's form manifestation in the novel. My Name Is Red is a kind of style and culture of the East-West conflict; New Life and Snow are the traditional and contemporary issues, namely conservative and Westernization issues; White Castle and Black Book, are explain distress of identity between self and others. Finally, the mood of this tragic in Istanbul:Memories and the City, transformed into'Huzun'.In chapter two mainly analyzed the the value of this'Huzun'of'anxieties'in the Turkish people, and it had become a philosophical sense of the existence, covered with the whole Turkish people and has become a worries of survival. And through the "Remembrance", the author approached to recover the happy past of Turkey's life, and seek the spiritual home. These have highlighted the'Huzunnfrom the'missing'of survival.In chapter three of the novel, we explained by black book that "Huzun" is derived from the confusion that they can not do themselves'and sadness of seeking themselves, and focus on the relationship between self and others of their identity and the origin of the identity; in fact the Huzun refleced that they could not find their spiritual affiliation, and expect to redefined themselves again in the new world, and find a joining point of modern living, and adjusting the modern man's balance between the past and the existence of the real world. Pamuk argued that Turkey lost their identity in the history of East and West and the present, so each of his works topic are looking for identity.Pamuk who is experecing'Huzun'do not indulge in this mood at the sametime, based on the Eastern and Western culture and literatures'reference and reflection of inheriting and carrying forward the traditional literature and on the reflection of the loss Empire Center, and presented the sadness to the readers in his works. Generally speaking, identity and cultural intergration are the main-line of his novels.