🦋 Whose Name is Red?
Ah ok, I got it, not just a distinct character but a distinct type of character -- by my count there are three or four types of narrators so far in this book: {Black, Mr. Uncle, Mr. Elegant, the Murderer, Orhan, Shekure, Esther, and the various miniaturists}; {Dog, Tree, Gold Coin}; and {Red} -- Maybe the Murderer should get a set of his own. Pamuk has impeccable timing. As evidence of this look at the following paragraph, ignoring the minor infelicities of the translation. Red tells how he came to be: Hush and listen to how I developed such a magnificent red tone. A master miniaturist, an expert in paints, furiously pounded the best variety of dried red beetle from the hottest climes of Hindustan into a fine powder using his mortar and pestle. He prepared five drachmas of the red powder, one drachma of soapwort and a half drachma of lotor. He boiled the soapwort in a pot containing three okkas of water. Next, he mixed thoroughly the lotor into the water. He let it boil for as long as it took to drink an excellent cup of coffee. As he enjoyed the coffee, I grew as impatient as a child about to be born. (The paragraph goes on with more description of the mixing and preparation.) The position of the last sentence quoted here is sublime. It makes the description of preparing red dye, which is starting to feel just like reading a recipe, concrete, locating it in time and giving it a personal dimension.Chapter 31 feels very important to me in a similar way to chapter 29 of Snow. It comes about halfway through the book, just after a couple of important plot elements have occurred, and it distances the reader from the immediacy of the narration. And I think we may be seeing the heart of the book in this passage: "What is the meaning of red?" the blind miniaturist who'd drawn the horse from memory asked again."The meaning of color is that it is there before us and we see it," said the other. "Red cannot be explained to he who cannot see." "To deny God's existence, victims of Satan maintain that God is not visible to us," said the blind miniaturist who'd rendered the horse. "Yet, he appears to those who can see," said the other master. "It is for this reason that the Koran states that the blind and the seeing are not equal."
posted afternoon of Saturday, September first, 2007
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