Chapter 8 - Sketching the City with Words

Summary

A complex tapestry of interwoven themes spanning many centuries, Istanbul is a kaleidoscopic patchwork, a city of polar contrasts, and we are not lost for ways to explore the city and its denizens of times past. Istanbul is a city of the mind, an imaginary space that spurred writers and poets to document it in not only Turkish literature but also literature from many other cultures. Ottoman-Turkish literature alone portrays the rich andheterogeneous imagery of Istanbul ina variety of genres, including poems, plays, chronicles, memoirs and novels, and this article explores that literary tradition. It draws upon selected works that range from the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453 up until the early 19^th century, and then beyond that time when a burgeoning print culture grew, when new literary forms arose such as novels, plays and short stories. Authors of the selected texts comprise writers and poets such as Latifi, Zaifi, Fikri Çelebi, Gelibolulu Ali, Veysi, Evliya Çelebi, Nedim, Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, Muhammad Kibrit, Tevfik Fikret, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, İlhan Berk and Orhan Pamuk. Most of these authors’ works suggest that, unlike other great cities of the world, one’s perception of Istanbul is rooted somewhere within one’s soul.