The rise of spiritual Islam in Turkey`s identity quest : understanding Orhan Pamuk`S Oeuvres through sufi framework.

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Abstract

Sri Hariyatmi 2014. The Rise of Spiritual Islam in Turkey’s Identity

Quest: Understanding Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvres Through Sufi Framework Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program of English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University

This study explores the issue of Turkey’s identity quest in Orhan Pamuk’s conception, with particular reference to his novel The Black Book (1990), Snow (2002), and The Museum of Innocence (2008). These three novels deal primarily with the issue on Turkey’s identity construction. The nation’s cultural identity quest is contested between two polarities; i.e European and Islamic values, Kemalist secularism vis- à-vis Ottoman past. These conditions tear apart the characters in Pamuk’s three novels in this study and the country as a whole and bring profound sadness and confusion on their identity construction. Drawing on Sufi framework as theoretical concept, the aim of this studyis to explore Pamuk’s conception on Turkey’s identity quest and to discuss the influence of Sufi framework in Pamuk’s works in order to get a better understanding on Pamuk’s narratives (through Sufi framework).

The analysis demonstrated that Pamuk’s three novels under study bear the concept of identity formation within the framework of Sufism. The symbolism in the three novels are common symbolism in Sufi framework leading to the union of the Beloved. The multilayered search which embarked upon the searching of the lost love and ended in finding the true self is the common metaphor in Sufi framework. The journey of Turkey’s identity formation in the three novels showed that Turkey underwent three stages in their identity quest as the three-fold structure of Sufi framework (union, separation, and re-union). The three phases can be outlined as follows: The Meeting between the Old and New Cultural ‘Costume’ signifying the union phase; the separation phase that came as a result of The Replacement of the Ottoman Heritage with the Secular Western Identity; and the union phase resulting in a dynamic-Self; that is an Amalgam of re-Union between the Old and the New Cultural Identity.

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ABSTRAK

Sri Hariyatmi. 2014. Kebangkitan Spiritual Islam Dalam Perjalanan Pencarian

Identitas Turki. Memahami Karya Orhan Pamuk dalam Bingkai Sufism.

Yogyakarta: Kajian Bahasa Inggris, Program Pasca Sarjana. Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi isu perjalanan identitas Turki menurut konsep Pamuk dengan menggunakan tiga novelnya The Black Book (1990), Snow (2002) dan The Museum of Innocence (2008). Tiga novel ini berbagi isu yang sama tentang konstruksi identitas Turki yang terkontestasi diantara dua kutub berbeda yang terus bersinggungan; nilai-nilai Eropa dan Islam serta Kemalis sekularis dan kejayaan masa lalu Ottoman. Sebuah kondisi yang seolah-olah dalam skala kecil membelah keutuhan karakter dalam ketiga novel Pamuk dan berkelindan dengan isu konstruksi identitas Turki sebagai sebuah bangsa yang sarat problematika. Dengan menggunakan framework Sufisme sebagai landasan teori, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggali konsep perjalanan identitas menurut Pamuk serta melihat bagaimana konsep perjalanan identitas dalam kerangka Sufi menjadi sarana untuk memahami karya-karyanya.

Berdasarkan analisis yang telah dilakukan, ditemukan bahwa bahwa ketiga novel Pamuk dalam penelitian ini sarat dengan konsep konstruksi identitas dalam kerangka Sufi. Simbolisme dalam tiga novel Pamuk adalah simbolisme yang umum digunakan dalam kerangka Sufi yang nantinya akan menuju penyatuan dengan yang terkasih. Pencarian berlapis yang diawali dengan pencarian sang terkasih yang menghilang, pada akhirnya berakhir pada penemuan keutuhan jati diri adalah metaphor dalam kerangka Sufi. Dalam perjalanan pencarian jati dirinya Turki melalui tiga tahap yang sama dengan tahapan pencarian jati diri dalam kerangka Sufisme. Tahapan dimaksud adalah perjumpaan, perpisahan, dan perjumpaan kembali yang dikategorikan sebagai berikut; Perjumpaan antara Kostum Budaya Lama dan Baru yang mewakili fase perjumpaan, fase perpisahan terjadi sebagai akibat dari Penggantian Warisan Kebudayan Ottoman dengan Identitas Sekuler Barat, dan tahap perjumpaan kembali menghasilkan Identitas yang Dinamis sebagai amalgamasi antara Identitas Kultural Lama dan Baru.

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THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

UNDERSTANDING ORHAN PAMUK’S OEUVRES THROUGH SUFI

FRAMEWORK

A THESIS

Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum) Degree in English Language Studies

by Sri Hariyatmi

Student Number: 126332037

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

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A THESIS

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

FRAMEWORK

by Sri Hariyatmi

Approved by

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A THESIS

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

FRAMEWORK

Presented by Sri Hariyatmi

Defended before the Thesis Committee and Declared Acceptable

Chairperson : __________________

Secretary : __________________

Members : 1. __________________

2. __________________

Yogyakarta, , 2014 The Graduate Program Director Sanata Dharma University

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else’s ideas,

phrases, or sentences without proper references.

Yogyakarta, 12 Mei, 2014

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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN

PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma :

Nama : Sri Hariyatmi Nomor Mahasiswa : 126332037

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul :

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

UNDERSTANDING ORHAN PAMUK’S OEUVRES THROUGH SUFI

FRAMEWORK

beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, me-ngalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal : 12 Mei 2014

Yang menyatakan

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is perhaps a cliché to begin an acknowledgment section with a statement about the difficulty of adequately thanking those who have helped me with my work. In fact, I find that the thought of writing these acknowledgments is almost as daunting as that of writing the thesis itself because the impossibility to acknowledge all the input, assistance, and encouragement that went during the preparation of this thesis. They will go unnamed here, but I hope that they know who they are and that I thank them.

Thank God for the wisdom and perseverance that He has been bestowed upon me during this research project, and indeed, throughout my life. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work extensively with Fr. Bagus Laksana, SJ.,Ph. D.who has made this research a process which has been deeply rewarding. He led me to develop this research (which had its genesis from his short statement on Sufism and identity construction) that I have loved to work on, offered ears to my ramblings, and nudged me when I wandered off the track throughout the research process with an astonishing patience. I am cordially grateful to his guidance, advices, constructive insights, generous engagements and for everything that I learned from him during this period of time.

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the insightful and friendly academic discussion, shared either in a class or in a casual conversation.

I am also grateful to all my classmates, who have been helping me in my school life. Adesia Kusuma Wardani was there when I began my time as a graduate school student. I owe her huge thanks for catching all that I’ve been

thrown at her and I hope she knows how much I appreciate that. Elizabeth Natalina Huwa for her sincere encouragement, Catharina Brameswari, Maximus Nitsae, Adrianus Seto Adi Nugroho, Diksita Galuh Nirwastu, Gisela Swaragita, Maria Agatha Rina Widyastuti, for their friendshipand for calling me to ‘remain in play’ whenever I feel lost in this struggle. Special thanks to Gregoria Mayang

Dwi Andhesti, the best short-time roomie I could possibly ask for. This piece of my journey here is coming to an end but I believe we will continue to be a great friend.

I also indebted to Jeffrey Williams for his priceless and endless encouragement to follow my dream….whatever it may be. My words will fail but

there are moments of time which transcend anything the thought can’t comprehend.So…I know that you know how much I thank you.

I cannot thank enough my unbiological sister Calandra Artemis Luna for always listening to me, for sharing tears and amusement, and she never left me alone during this study, despite the distance. I enjoyed ‘stealing’ her nights peaceful sleepto proofread my work and I’m glad shecould do nothing about it.

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Kimura, Dewantoro Ratri, Ezgi Bircan Bahçe, Fatima Mohammed, Kadek Ari Natarina, Luciana Marchetti, Marina Anokhina, Mícheál Cathasaigh, Vitor Marconi, Yannik Herawati, and Zeehan Ali, thank you for sharing the ‘world’

with me and teaching me all different new colors that enrich my horizon.

To Dra. Zita Rarastesa, M.A, I cannot thank enough for all the encouragement through my academic journey and her trust that I can achieve anything in my life even in the time when I do not have any in myself. To Prof. Dr. Dyah Bekti Ernawati in heaven, I hope she knew that her support, guidance, and memories will always be one of the talismans to lift me up whenever I’m

down.

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Notes on Transcription

Throughout this thesis, there are Turkish spelling for personal name and places. Therefore, some indications on pronunciation are given to assist the readers who are not familiar with Turkish.1

C, c j as in jam Ç, ç ch as in church

Ğ, ğ soft g lengthens the preceding vowel and is not sounded, thus Erdoğan is pronounced Erdoan

I, ı without a dot, pronounced like the first syllable of ‘earnest’ İ, I a dot, somewhere between “in” and “eel”

Ö, ö French eu as in deux Ş, ş sh as in shame

Ü, ü French u as in lumière

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This study explores the issue of Turkey’s identity quest in Orhan Pamuk’s conception, with particular reference to his novel The Black Book (1990), Snow (2002), and The Museum of Innocence (2008). These three novels deal primarily with the issue on Turkey’s identity construction. The nation’s cultural identity quest is contested between two polarities; i.e European and Islamic values, Kemalist secularism vis- à-vis Ottoman past. These conditions tear apart the characters in Pamuk’s three novels in this study and the country as a whole and bring profound sadness and confusion on their identity construction. Drawing on Sufi framework as theoretical concept, the aim of this studyis to explore Pamuk’s conception on Turkey’s identity quest and to discuss the influence of Sufi framework in Pamuk’s works in order to get a better understanding on Pamuk’s narratives (through Sufi framework).

The analysis demonstrated that Pamuk’s three novels under study bear the concept of identity formation within the framework of Sufism. The symbolism in the three novels are common symbolism in Sufi framework leading to the union of the Beloved. The multilayered search which embarked upon the searching of the lost love and ended in finding the true self is the common metaphor in Sufi framework. The journey of Turkey’s identity formation in the three novels showed that Turkey underwent three stages in their identity quest as the three-fold structure of Sufi framework (union, separation, and re-union). The three phases can be outlined as follows: The Meeting between the Old and New Cultural ‘Costume’ signifying the union phase; the separation phase that came as a result of The Replacement of the Ottoman Heritage with the Secular Western Identity; and the union phase resulting in a dynamic-Self; that is an Amalgam of re-Union between the Old and the New Cultural Identity.

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ABSTRAK

Sri Hariyatmi. 2014. Kebangkitan Spiritual Islam Dalam Perjalanan Pencarian

Identitas Turki. Memahami Karya Orhan Pamuk dalam Bingkai Sufism.

Yogyakarta: Kajian Bahasa Inggris, Program Pasca Sarjana. Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi isu perjalanan identitas Turki menurut konsep Pamuk dengan menggunakan tiga novelnya The Black Book (1990), Snow (2002) dan The Museum of Innocence (2008). Tiga novel ini berbagi isu yang sama tentang konstruksi identitas Turki yang terkontestasi diantara dua kutub berbeda yang terus bersinggungan; nilai-nilai Eropa dan Islam serta Kemalis sekularis dan kejayaan masa lalu Ottoman. Sebuah kondisi yang seolah-olah dalam skala kecil membelah keutuhan karakter dalam ketiga novel Pamuk dan berkelindan dengan isu konstruksi identitas Turki sebagai sebuah bangsa yang sarat problematika. Dengan menggunakan framework Sufisme sebagai landasan teori, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggali konsep perjalanan identitas menurut Pamuk serta melihat bagaimana konsep perjalanan identitas dalam kerangka Sufi menjadi sarana untuk memahami karya-karyanya.

Berdasarkan analisis yang telah dilakukan, ditemukan bahwa bahwa ketiga novel Pamuk dalam penelitian ini sarat dengan konsep konstruksi identitas dalam kerangka Sufi. Simbolisme dalam tiga novel Pamuk adalah simbolisme yang umum digunakan dalam kerangka Sufi yang nantinya akan menuju penyatuan dengan yang terkasih. Pencarian berlapis yang diawali dengan pencarian sang terkasih yang menghilang, pada akhirnya berakhir pada penemuan keutuhan jati diri adalah metaphor dalam kerangka Sufi. Dalam perjalanan pencarian jati dirinya Turki melalui tiga tahap yang sama dengan tahapan pencarian jati diri dalam kerangka Sufisme. Tahapan dimaksud adalah perjumpaan, perpisahan, dan perjumpaan kembali yang dikategorikan sebagai berikut; Perjumpaan antara Kostum Budaya Lama dan Baru yang mewakili fase perjumpaan, fase perpisahan terjadi sebagai akibat dari Penggantian Warisan Kebudayan Ottoman dengan Identitas Sekuler Barat, dan tahap perjumpaan kembali menghasilkan Identitas yang Dinamis sebagai amalgamasi antara Identitas Kultural Lama dan Baru.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I am living in a culture where the clash of East and West, or the harmony of East and West is the lifestyle. That is Turkey- Orhan Pamuk1

A. The Issue at Hand

Turkey is an exceptional country where two civilizations, i.e. East and West, meet. It serves as a bridge that stretches out between two horizons of dominant believes system in which the unique amalgam of Eastern and Western traditions mingle. The real major bridge lying over the Bosphorus strait unites these two worlds: the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. Back to its glorious past as one of the grandest world empire, Turkey is a historical rendezvous2 of diverse civilizations, especially Greece, Persia, Byzantium, and Ottoman, that makes it a meeting point of numerous traditions. This meeting brings a distinctively unique atmosphere in Turkish identity construction.

Turkey’s position as a bride between the two continents Asian and European

is hypothesized by Huntington in his controversial book The Clash of Civilization

and the Remaking of World Order (1996), being a bridge between cultures,

cements Turkey’s position as a country whose sense of identity will remain

forever torn. Huntington believes that as a rendezvous amongst two civilizations, Turkey exhibits ‘a fair degree of cultural homogeneity, but is divided over

1_{Quoted from Brian Lavery,}_{“In the Thick Change Where Continents Meet,”}

New York Times (27

August 2003), 3.

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whether its society belongs to one civilization or another. Turkey is, the most obvious and prototypical,torn country.’3

Turkish Nobel Laureate 2006, Orhan Pamuk, who is recognized worldwide for his most acclaimed work Benim Adim Karmizi (My Name is Red, 1998, 2000), and Kar (Snow, 2002, 2004) seems to grab Huntington’s notion of “torn country”.

The reason is that he focuses his works on the melancholy of Turkey’s identity construction within its East and West conflicts.4 However, he argues with Huntington’sthesis that the confrontation between East and West will forever tear

his country apart. In his Paris Review he observes:

I’m an optimist. Turkey should not worry about having two spirits, belonging to two different cultures, having two souls. Schizophrenia makes you intelligent. You may lose your relation with reality-I’m a fiction writer, so I don’t think that’s such a bad thing-but you shouldn’t worry about your schizophrenia. If you worry too much about one part of you killing the other, you’ll be left with a single spirit. That is worse than having the sickness. This is my theory. I try to propagate it in Turkish politics, among Turkish politicians who demand that the country should have one consistent soul- that it should belong to either the East or the West or be nationalistic. I’m critical of that monistic outlook.5

In this commentary, Pamuk recognizes that identity formation is an ongoing process and requires an interaction with others, with the world around. It is an endless flux of negotiation with outward milieu which is dynamic and fluid in nature. Pamuk’s complex understanding of the East and West identity recalls Said definition that “identity does not necessarily imply ontologically given and

3_{Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order (New York:} Simon, 1996), 42.

4_{David N. Coury, “”Torn Country”: Turkey and the West in Orhan Pamuk’s}_Snow_,”_{Critique 50. 4} (2009): 340-349, 345.

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eternally determined stability, or uniqueness, or irreducible character, or privileged status as something total and complete in and of itself”.6

Therefore, Pamuk points out that rejecting other elements that make up identity will be even worse than having ‘schizophrenia’. In a similar tone, Rumi,7

the darling of the world’sdevout seeker, says the following:

This human is guesthouse every morning a new arrival a joy, a depression, meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture. Still treat each guest honorably. He may be cleaning out for some new delight. The dark, thought, the shame, the malice met them at the door laughing and invite them in, be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from the beyond.8

Rumi suggests that in his quest, a person is a craft for innumerable experience of diverse interactions he encounters with other people. To achieve the wholeness, he should celebrate all similar grace that comes along visiting him; either the good or bad thing, as they are essential elements on his travel to seek his true self.

6_{Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 315.}

7_{Rumi, the Sufi poet par excellence, was born in Balkh, northern Persia (contemporary northern} Afghanistan) in September 30, 1207 and died in Konya (a town in contemporary central south eastern Turkey) in December 17, 1273. His father Baha'uddin, a respected Islamic scholar and mystic, led the family on a twelve year migration, (likely due to the imminent arrival of the Mongol army), across Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, eventually settling in Konya, the capital of Rum around 1229. Rumi's relocation from one place to other places shows that his life was not the life of an ordinary man living peacefully in a settled family and society. This state of affairs that tear him away from the soil that had been the home of his family affects his tales that yearning for union. One can feel and imagine Rumi’s longing and agony for his ‘home’ in his masterpieces:

Mathnavi, Diwan-i- Shams-i Tabriz, and his table talk Fihi ma Fihi (Discourse of Rumi). See

Rumi The Masnavi Book One, trans. Jawid Mojaddedi (Oxford: Oxford UP 2008): xiii-xix. 8_{Rumi Masnavi III, 3256 qtd in Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Dimension of}

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However, Turkey’s unique role as the bridge between two dominant

civilizations breathes a certain melancholy of predicament or a confusion of loss identity brought by the conflict amongst European and Islamic values, between Kemalist secularism and their Ottoman past. The secular reorganization of the Ottoman Empire began with the tanzimat (restructuring) reforms of 1839. Sultan Mahmud II executed a series of reforms by virtue of which the empire was to assert itself vis-`a-vis Western accomplishments.9

With the determined leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,10 the elite who founded the Turkish Republic on the ashes of the empire in 1923, Turkey pursued a more radical modernization. He proposed the principle of secularism, in which the religion would be controlled by the state rather than separated from it, as the cornerstone of his reforms11. These reforms represented a radical leap and a cultural separation from the past, partly because they disowned the Islamic heritage of the Ottoman system, as Ataturk wanted to create a new Turkish identity opposed to Ottoman identity with its roots in Islam. Ataturk believes that

9 _{Charter Vaughn Findley,}_{“The Tanzimat” in}

The Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Kemal H.

Karpat (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008): 11-37, 11-12.

10_{Atatürk means “father Turk, ancestor of Turks” was the name given to Mustafa Kemal by the}

Grand National Assembly of Turkey following the Law on Family Names in 1935, and nobody is allowed to use this surname as it is reserved exclusively for Mustafa Kemal. See Soner Cagaptay,

Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey. Who is a Turk? (London: Rouledge, 2006)

for more details on Westernization project in Turkey.

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to achieve his modernization agenda, the logical step he should take was to annul the cultural identity of being a Muslim.12

Atatürk’s Republic closed down various religious sects in Turkey and

destroyed the hybridity of Ottoman or Turkish Islam. The decision to choose Ankara as the state capital instead of Istanbul, which was the soul of the Ottoman empire for 450 years, the use of Latin alphabet instead of Arabic script, the regulation to have a family name, the abolition of medrese-religious college and dervish lodges as they symbolize the backwardness, and the abolition of the caliphate13 along with the office of Syeh-ul-islam14 were some of radical reforms executed by Atatürk. The outlaw of fez15 was considered as a great symbolic revolution since it was an important symbol of Muslim culture.16

These cultural and political discontinuities between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey have unavoidably created a cultural vacuum, which produced an identity crisis.17 The westernization agenda that provides two extreme choices for Turkey, i.e. completely Western or totally Eastern would

12_{Soner Cagaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey. Who is a Turk (London:} Rouledge, 2006), 65.

13_{Islamic leadership of the community of Islam in the period of Ottoman Empire (1260-1923).} 14_{The highest religious community in the Ottoman Empire.}

15

Headgear worn by Muslim men. It was also an official headgear of the army and civil service in the era of Ottoman Empire. In 1925 Turkey enacted the Hat Law that required the Turkish to wear Western hats instead of their fez. This law forbade the use of any other head gear. Mustafa Kemal considered that the law was an important tool for him to modernize Turkish society and join European civilization. SeeCamilla T. Nereid,” Kemalism on the Catwalk: the Turkish Hat Law of 1925”Journal of Social History (Spring 2011): 707- 726, 723.

16

Sooner Cagaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey. Who is a Turk? (London: Rouledge, 2006), 13.

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bring danger for the future of the nation. On the one hand, if the westernization project were taken by the negation of Ottoman system and the adoption of Western mode, Turkey would lose its national distinctiveness. On the other hand, if the Islamic legal frame of Ottoman legacy were maintained, Turkey would not be able to modernize and become part of ‘civilized world”.18

This dilemma has been haunting Turkey’s national identity and has resulted in a certain melancholy in Turkey’s identity quest.

For Pamuk, however, this identity crisis becomes his sea of inspirations. As the Ottoman Empire andAtatürk’s westernization long for inventinga new image to transform Turkey, Pamuk skillfully interweaves these crisis for the newness of life and for adoption of another culture as a natural void inside us into a unique tapestry of identity quest. This searching for other-self becomes the soul of his novels. He weaves this transformation and sprinkles it with the nostalgia of the past glory and the dynamics of modernity that Turkey undergoes in their past and present days.

The agenda of modernity in Turkey’s history is characterized by the abolishment of Turkey’s cultural root (Ottoman Islam heritage). This abolition

resulted in a certain melancholy as Turkey has to abandon their cultural identity and replace it with totally new culture (Western culture). In Pamuk’s novels this melancholy is intertwined with the pain of separation from the beloved or the longing for the alterity in order to achieve the so called wholeness.

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The story of The Black Book (1990)19 that Galip recites to the BBC film crew, narrating a nineteenth century prince who tries to become his own self by getting rid of people, books, furniture, and anything that might make him wants to be someone else. Allthough boredom and solitude take over his life; he never stops trying to clear his head of alien matter. The prince’s effort shows that to resist newness is to reject the stuff of life. He envies the “stones in the desert for just being themselves,” until he dies in his loneliness in a practically vacant room

painted white.

The story reveals that the capacity to be in relation with the other is an essential part of the self in identity construction as humans are naturally open to outside influence, change, and a new experience. Therefore, Rumi reminds us that within people there are always longing and desire, that even the whole world were theirs to own, still they would find no rest or comfort. Refusing new idea or imposing one particular concept will be a blunder in identity construction as fixity of the self is an illusion in identity searching. Identity, as Bauman shows, ‘is not secured by a long life guarantee, it is eminently negotiable and revocable’.20

Identity in Pamuk’s tales is his best companion in narratinghow his country

came into being21. This enormous theme is always contested and negotiated within the mist of East and West’s dichotomy and enveloped inside the richness

19_{Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book, trans. Maureen Freely (London: Faber and Faber, 2006). Unless} specified, all further reference to The Black Book henceforth BB.

20 _{Zygmunt Bauman, Identity: conversations with Benedetto Vecchi (Cambridge: Polity Press.} 2004), 11.

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of Turkey’s history. The way Pamuk flirts with history and mixes it with a

breathtaking love story takes his readers into a maze of imaginative bewilderment with‘a number of fresh, intact, and new possibilities’.22

Erdağ Göknar 23 _{states that historicity has been an issue in all of Pamuk’s}

works which focusing around four major ideas: “Ottoman history in European

context, the transition from Ottoman Empire to modern Middle East, the early-twentieth- century Kemalist revolution, and the legacy of all three on present day Turkey”.24_{Pamuk’s oeuvre in general, is characterized by constant exposition of}

the tension between East-West long standing relations as well as the quest of Turkish identity vis-à-vis the pull of Islam and the lure of European modernity.

Interestingly, the tension between East and West in Pamuk’s novels offers multi-faceted prisms of meaning and the meaning of identity formation which will never be the same again after he transforms the characters in his novels by using his distinctive way. Pamuk intimately flirts with the bipolar notion of East and West then collaboratively paints it on his canvas of thought.

In the end, he tickles his readers with a new color of paradigms that lies between these two endless sources of ‘inspiration’. Pamuk’s novels that

thoroughlyconstructed as synthesis of East and West’s along with its legacy and the influence of other literary figures is inevitable because “all fables are

22_{Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors, trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knof. 2008).}

23_{Erdağ M. Göknar is Assistant Professor of Turkish Studies at Duke University and an}

award-winning literary translator for his translation on OrhanPamuk’s My Name is Red.

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everybody’s fables”.25_{Pamuk’s galaxy of ideas displays fluidity of East and West}

everlasting bond. Apparently, Pamuk succeeded to weave Rumi’s idea that either

the Westerner or the Easterner is stranger to one another.26

How Pamuk’s knits the‘sacred’meeting between East and West along with the complexity of his country’shistory and intertwines it with a love story within

an individual identity predicament into a delicate wave of tapestry, raise my interest to do research based on his oeuvre. Reading Pamuk’s tales along with the

narration of his country, Turkey, will inspire the readers to explore the richness of various perspectives in solving issues related to identity formation and cultural plurality. It will encourage Indonesian readers to study more about their differences as they will encounter labyrinth of identity quest coated with the ghostly presence of the past lost glory and the dynamics of modern life’s contested identity within its plurality. Pamuk’s oeuvre will also take us into different angle in deciphering a problem, as he offers an appealing alternative to the obstacles a multicultural country has to deal with.

Understanding Pamuk’s tales means raising our awareness to be more

tolerant in perceiving difference and in solving issues and conflicts from different point of view as life is richer than it seems. Inclination toward specific or essential dogmas in the midst of diversity will merely leave one of us scarred.

Critics argue that Pamuk’s corpuses are highly influenced by Western

literary figures. His first and last political novel, Snow (2004), evoked comparison to Frantz Kafka’s The Castle. The New Life (1994) is described by reviewers as

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James Joyce’s Ulysses with the light touch. The Black Book is acclaimed as a

combination of the narrative trick of Italo Calvino and the medieval esoteric of Umberto Eco. His memoirs Istanbul: The Memories and the City (2006) is placed alongside JamesJoyce’sDublinand Robert Musil’sVienna.27

Pamuk himself also acknowledges the influence of those writers in his writing. As he confesses in Other Colors:

All my books are made from a mixture of Eastern and Western methods, styles, habits, and histories, and if I am richit’sthanks to these legacies. My comfort, my double happiness, comes from the same source: I can, without any quilt, wander between two worlds, and in both I am at home. Conservatives and religious fundamentalists who are not at ease in the West, as I am, and idealist modernist who are not ease with tradition, will never understand how this might be possible.28

Thus, East and West are a career29 for Pamuk. He earns his international standing from his restless effort wandering between these two worlds-resulting in in- between amalgams of these two distinctive houses of civilizations that become part of his career. He also clarifies that he admires some Russian writers and dedicates four chapters in his essay to discuss the books of Nabokov, Hugo, and mostly Dostoyevsky. These authors are those who leave foot prints in his heart for the beauty of their texts.30

Apart from the influence of Western canonical literary figures, the traits in Pamuk’s novels are identity predicament folded in a blanket of the melancholy of

27_{My own summary based on National Book Festival 2010 in Washington DC.} 28

Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors Trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knof. 2008), 264. 29_{A modification based on the original version}_“_{The East is a Career}_{” of Disdraeli’s 1847 novel}

Tancred used by Said as the opening quotation in his Orientalism.

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nostalgia he refers as hüzün in Istanbul: Memories and the City. He weaves the yearning and despair for newness of the Venetian slave and his master Hoja in

The White Castle. He also flirts constantly with loneliness that he portrays in “his

first and political novel” Snow.31 It is a tale that depicts inconsolable solitude of wandering poet Ka. He is torn betweenhis Western’s intelligentsia and his East’s ‘backward’origin.

The agony of losing memory and identity is beautifully written in The Black

Book. His last novel The Museum of Innocence32recounts an obsessive tragic love story within the dynamic of Turkish modernization and the immortal theme of East and West meeting. These novels reveal that the soul of Pamuk’s tales

somehow whispers similar voice with Rumi’s doctrine in his Mathnavi (the spiritual verses of Rumi’s masterpiece which contains 25.700 couplets, amassed

in six volumes).

Mathnavi demands the “listeners to hear the story of human love and

separation”.33

The opening of Mahnavi opens with The Song of the reed, the

opening poem in Rumi’sMathnavi in which Rumi uses the metaphor of a reed cut

from a reed bed and then made into a flute which becomes a symbol of a human separated from its source, the Beloved. And as the reed flute wails all day, telling

31_{Orhan Pamuk, Snow, trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).} 32

Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). All future reference to The Museum of Innocence will henceforth by MoI.

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about its separation from the reed bed, Rumi wails all day telling about being separated from his Beloved and the deep longing to reunite with it again.34

Similar song is sung in Pamuk’s tales; it sings the ecstatic longing for the

lossof Turkey’s origin in the present Turkey’s life. Being cut from the continuity of OttomanEmpire’s legacy and Turkey’s cultural root, the characters inPamuk’s novels are wandering constantly between two different polarizations, trapping in a deep lamentation of losing their cultural roots and suffering from profound bewilderment of choosing one identity over another on their travel to their ‘true’

self in their identity quest.

Hence, to unfold the dynamic of Turkey identity’s predicament as well as

the solution that Pamuk has to offer, this study formulates the research questions as follows:

1. How is the Sufi framework of meaning in the The Black Book,

Snow, and The Museum of Innocence shown in terms of

symbolism, metaphors, and the stages of identity formation?

2. How does Sufi framework indirectly influence Pamuk’s concept of identity formation in The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of

Innocence?

B. Towards a Contribution

The present work hopes to anticipate its major contribution toward a better understanding of Pamuk’s three novels in terms of mystical understanding through the Sufi framework of identity formation as the theoretical concept.

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This study is expected to provide an alternative on the diversity of literary horizon, particularly literary oeuvre from Middle East/ Turkey which is still less explored by Indonesian scholars specifically scholars from Sanata Dharma University. As Turkey and Indonesia share comparable history as well as contemporary issues of contested identity within plurality, studying Turkish literature will be beneficial for Indonesian scholars to attain better understanding of other cultures as well as their own. In view of this, certain parallel in the identity quest of Indonesia and Turkey may emerge.

Another hope is that this study will provide more angles and perspectives in conducting research on identity formation by employing the concept of the Sufi framework of identity construction. Sufism is astoundingly not merely about Rumi and the exquisite beauty of his love poems, but it also offers rich layers of identity searching theory.

The widely known theory used in exploring the identity formation or doubling identity is Freud’s psychoanalysis theory; Lacan’s mirroring stage35, and Bhabha’s poscolonial concepts (mimicry, hybridity, and liminality).36

35_{One example of a research that used}_{Jaques Lacan’s}_{Mirroring Stage is a Ph.D. dissertation of}

Semra Saraçoğlu’s entitled Self Reflexivity in Modern Text: a Comparative Study of the Works of

John Fowles and Orhan Pamuk.( Turkey: Middle East Technical University, 2003).

36_{The example of a research that used Bhabha’ theory of mimicry is research article of}

Nagihan Haliloğlu entitled “Re-Thinking Ottoman Empire: East West Collaboration in Orhan Pamuk’sThe White Castle,”In Re-Thinking Europe Literature and (Trans)National Identity Vol. 55. Eds.

Bemong Nele, Mirjam Truwant, and Pieter Vermeulen. (Amsterdam: Rodopi,2008); a research article that also applied Bhabha’s theory of hybridityand in-betweenness is written by Rezzan Kocaöner Silkü,“Nation and Narration”: Cultural Interactions in Orhan Pamuk’sMy Name is Red, Aesthetic Education 37 (2003): 1-13; another research that employed Bhabha’s concept of

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However, only few researches explore identity construction by using the Sufi’s framework of identity formation.

As corollary to the above, this work hopes to supplement the limited corpus of studying Middle Eastern literature on Orhan Pamuk’s works. Finally, it is the

hope that the spiritual dimension of the Sufi framework of identity formation may be promoted by this work.

C. Scope of the Study

The study will be focusing on three novels of Orhan Pamuk: The Black

Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence in order to unravel how Pamuk

exposes the dynamics of identity formation in the structure and direction in these three novels, and how far the Sufi framework of human identity quest helps us to understand the overall and deeper structure of his narrative.

All the three novels selected in this study exemplify Turkey identity quest that evokes the concept of identity construction within Sufi framework. Therefore, this study should reveal the influence of Sufi framework of identity formationin Pamuk’s identity concept.

D. Research Method

This study is a library research where data gathering is divided into two categories: primary and secondary data. The primary data of this study is Orhan Pamuk’s novels, particularly The Black Book (1994), Snow (2004), and The

Museum of Innocence (2008). The secondary data will be taken from criticism,

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works. In addition to these, Orhan Pamuk’s biography, Istanbul Memories of the City (2006), his collected essay Other Colors (2007) and his other novels37 will also be employed as the source of secondary data.

This library research will employ descriptive qualitative method to describe the collected data. The data are piled by close reading of the novels, summarizing the conflicts, actions, textual evidences, and interpretations. Afterwards, the data will be analyzed to answer the research questions in the preceding subchapter.

E. Chapter Outline

The material of this work is divided thematically. Chapter one is to provide the basic information on the subject matter which comprises of the background of the study, research questions, significance of the study and methodology of the study. Chapter two is literature review that presents a brief summary of related previous studies conducted on similar literary works, the theory employed in the study, and the theoretical framework of the study. To familiarize the readers with Orhan Pamuk and his oeuvre, the summary of his selected literary works and his brief biography will also be presented in this chapter. The next chapter will discuss the answers to the research questions. Each answer would deserve one chapter discussion. Thus, chapter three will discuss the Sufi framework of meaning in terms of symbolism and the stages of identity formation that shown in the three novels in the present study. Chapter four will examine the tension and complexity of identity formation in Pamuk’s novels and the influence of Sufi

37_{So far Pamuk has written eight novels including the three novels used as the primary data in this} study. Other novels written by Pamuk are Cevdet Bey and His Son (1982- no English translation available until now), The Silent House (1983, English translation available in 2012), The White

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framework of identity formation on Pamuk’s identity quest presented in The

Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence. The final chapter concludes

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CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

Everyone is sometimes a Westerner and sometimes an Easterner - in fact a constant combination of the two- Pamuk38

A. Review of Related Theory

Defining identity is apparently the heart of Turkey in its relationship with the West and modernity. This notion of identity quest and nationhood is hard to answer. The binary choices they have: to remain completely Eastern or to become totally Western, are problematic,39 as identity construction itself is inseparable from the other self, as reiterated by Galip in TheBlack Book, “I am both myself and also another”40

. Galip discovers a simple truth that unless he interacts with outward milieu he will not develop as a subject. As Bhabha also argues, identity formation is a result of long contact with one another and this contact leads to the process of identity construction.41

Pamuk’s narratives, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, deal a lot with

the journey of identity construction. This theme is echoed continuously in his oeuvres and apparently becomes the main issue in almost every tale he writes. The so called identity quest in Pamuk’s tales offers multiple layers of

complexities. People will undergo in their search for their real self as identity

38_{Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors, trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knof, 2008), 370.} 39

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constructions provides dynamism in its nature. As Pamuk writes in Snow, longing for new identity will elevate diverse complexity as undergoes by the poet Ka. He is bewildered between his Western upbringing and his Turkish origin. The Western values he holds dearly gives him a solitude life in return, whereas the traditional ‘backward’ ethics of his native country rewards him the sound of his muse that has been absent for four years and break the tumult of writing block he suffers while he lives in Frankfurt.

In Sufi perspective, identity quest is part of its grand narrative. Sufism addresses the few who yearn for answer on the deepest level to the question of who they are and in a manner that would touch and transform their whole being. The Sufi path is the means within the Islamic tradition of finding the ultimate answer to this basic question and of discovering our real identity.42

Identity searching is an endless journey as long as the heart is still beating. Therefore every created self will continue developing and unfolding their “I”. Sufi perspective believes that no self has achieved its final selfhood as each creature dwells in change and flux. “Every time that I thought I had come to

the end of the path,” confesses Abu Yazid al-Bistami, “it was made known to me

that this was the beginning of it.”43

In travelling this path, the self will start to climb from one ‘station’ to another as a means to access the inner reality. Sufi

definition of ‘station’ is what is considered by another as a ’stage’.44

42_{Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The}_{Garden of Truth. The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical}

Tradition (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 4.

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People do not know the full answer of what they are because they are only what they are at the present moment, and at every moment of their existence, they are something new. They are not created by finite, finished identity and they will never be such being.45They live today and they will live forever in the process of change. “The Sufi is the child of the moment”. Sufi lives in a constant awareness

that his self is nothing but what he is at the present moment.46 1. A Brief Introduction to Sufism.

There is no love but for the First Friend whose naked glory you hide

under hundred of veils-Annemarie Schimmel47

In order to approach Sufism, it is worth relaxing for a moment to bear in mind on the idea of mysticism as relating to “something mysterious, not to be

reached by ordinary means or by“intellectual effort”, but by closing “the eyes” as

45

William C. Chittick Sufism a Beginner’s Guide(Oxford: One World Publication, 2008), 61. 46_{Ibid, 54-55.}

47 _{Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) was a professor of comparative religion in Harvard} University. She was a German orientalist, fascinated with the Muslim world and wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism. She was also a much sought after lecturer who could lecture without a manuscript in German, English, Egypt, Turkish, or with manuscript in French, Arabic, Russia, and Urdu. Her teaching post included Ankara University which gave her ‘obsession’ with Rumi, Bonn University, and Harvard University. Her classes on Sufism were well attended and her teaching materials resulted in her most celebrated book Mystical Dimension of Islam. The book is considered classic in the field on Islamic mysticism.

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the Greek myein root suggests.48 The origin of Sufism can also be traced upon via the etymology of the Arabic word tasawwuf, referring to the action of being Sufi. As Hujwiri, an eminent medieval scholar and authority on Sufism summaries his treatise on Sufism:

Some assert that the Sufi so called because he wears a woolen garment (jāma-i şūf), or others that he is so called because he is in the first rank

(saff-i awwal), others say (saff-it (saff-is because the Suf(saff-is cla(saff-im to belong to theashāb- i

Şuffa(the people of the Bench who gathered around the Prophet’s mosque). Others, again, declare that the name is derived fromşāfā(purity).49

Another definition is that the word Sufi is derived from the word suf, wool, and modern scholars have concluded that Sufi most likely original meaning is one

who wears wool.50Of their own origins, the Sufis themselves have this to say: Sufism is founded on eight qualities exemplified in eight apostles: the generosity of Abraham, the acquiescence of Ishmael, the patience of Job, the symbolism of Zacharia, the strangerhood of John, the pilgrimhood of Jesus, the wearing of wool by Moses, and the poverty of Muhammed.51

Sufism or commonly recognized as generally accepted name for Islamic mysticism is a teaching about the different paths or methods human beings should follow in order to get closer to God and eventually unite with Him. William Chittick states that Sufism is the universal manifestation of Islam, in which ‘man

48

Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1975), 3.

49 _{Al-Hujwiri Ali B. Uthman al Jullabi, The Kash al Mahjub; The Oldest Persian treatise on}

Sufism, Trans& ed R.A. Nicholson (Great Britain: Lowe& Brydone, 1911), 30 qtd in Annemarie

Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1975), 14.

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transcends his own individual self and reaches God”.52

Most Western scholars like William Stoddart think that Sufism is to Islam what Yoga is to Hinduism, Zen to Buddhism, and mysticism to Christianity.53 In Schimmel worlds Sufism is “an exteriorization of Islam, a personal experience of the central mystery of Islam, that of tauhid“to declare that God is One.”54 It is “the esoteric or inward (bātin)

aspect of Islam, is to be distinguished from exoteric or “external” (zāhir)”.55

Broadly, Sufism has been demarcated by scholars and commentators, traditional and contemporary, as sober and intoxicated.56 The sober Sufism is characterized by the courtesy of a servant’s relationship with his Lord. Sobriety

allows for clear differentiation between God and correlates with the absolute distinction between Creator and creatures and is associated with wonderment, awe, contraction, and fear.57 Sober Sufism tends to attract the more educated practitioners who are willing to devote long hours to study texts that are as hard as the works on jurisprudence, Kalam, or philosophy. They discover their natural home in prose, which is perfectly suited for the theological abstraction and legal analysis.58

52 _{Chittick, The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2005), 9.}

53 _{William Stoddart, Sufism- The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam (Wellingborough:} Thorsons Publishers Limited, 1976), 19.

54_{Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (North Carolina: The University of North} Carolina Press, 1975), 17.

55_{Titus Buckard, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008), 3.} 56

William Chittick,Sufism a Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: One World Pulication, 2008), 34. 57_{Ibid. 32.}

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In contrast, the intoxicated Sufism is characterized by attaining the eternal source of all beauty and loves within themselves and tend to de-emphasize the

Sharia and declare union with God openly. 59They see God in all things and lose the ability to discriminate between Him and His creation.60 Intoxication is associated with expansion, hope, and intimacy with God. Intoxicated Sufism celebrates God’s presence in the medium of poetry, which is ideally suited to

describe the imaginal realm of unveiled, unitary knowledge. 61 Unlike sober Sufism, intoxicated rarely demonstrates interest in juridical issues or theological debates. They see God in all things and lose the ability to discriminate between Him and creation.62

The classic example of the contrast between two literary figures of high point in the Sufi tradition is Ibn‘Arabi and Rumi. The former wrote voluminously in enormously erudite and exceedingly difficult Arabic prose and address theoretical issues arises in Islamic thought and practice that only those most learned in Islamic sciences could hope to understand them. The later wrote over 70,000 verses of intoxicating-poetry in a language that any Persian speaking

59_{William Chittick,}_{Sufism: a Beginner’s Guide}_{(Oxford: One World Publication, 2008), 32.} 60_{This credo encourages dispute between Sufism and Orthodox Islam. The notion of the highest}

point in Sufism’s spirituality regarded as the greatest sin in Orthodox Islam. The most wellknown story about the clash between these two polarities is the execution of Husayn Ibn Mansûr, known to fame as al Hallâj (cotton-carder) who once declared his union with God openly by his most celebrated of all Sufi claims “ana Al- Haqq, I’m the Absolute Truth.” A claim that equivalent to

“I’m God.” As a result, Hallaj was beheaded on 26 March 922. Despite of this occurrence, Hallaj’s name, as Attar puts has become “a symbol of martyr of love, unitive experience, and a lover greatest sin to divulge the secret of his love. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of

Islam (New York: Columbia UP, 1975): 62-68 and R.A. Nicholson, The Mystic of Islam (Indiana:

World Wisdom, 2002): 106-7. 61_{Chittick, 2008, 32.}

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Muslim could understand.63 However, the contrast between these two writers should not suggest that Rumi was anti-rational or unlearned, or that Ibn ‘Arabi was not a lover and a poet. Rumi and Ibn ‘Arabi are the model of human perfection yielding differences in perspective and rhetorical means, despite a unity of purposes. Henry Corbin argues strongly that Rumi and Ibn ‘Arabi belongs to a similar group of fidèles d’ amour.64

Sufism briefly is composed of mystic teachings and methods of gaining what is considered by Sufis to be true knowledge. It is at the same time a ‘way of Love’ that leads to total unification with God. 65

Moving beyond the sharia or the Islamic Law, and focusing their attention on the tarīqa or the mystical path and the haqīqa or the truth, the ultimate goal of Sufism is to be intimately re-united with the Divine Beloved.66

The entire process of striving intimacy with the Divine Beloved involves the purification of one’s character, both spiritually and morally. This refinement in Islam is known as the basis of “greater holy war” and is characterized by struggling against one’s nafs or carnal soul. This struggle can manifest in rituals

of self-mortification and the dispelling of the bodily and worldly attachments.67 The path or journey that man takes toward the union with God:

63_{William C Chittick,}_{Sufism: a Beginner’s Guide}_{(Oxford: One World Publication, 2008): 31-5.} 64_{Henry Corbin,}_{Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi}_{(London: Rouledge, 2007):70-1.} 65 _{William Stoddart, Sufism-The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam (Wellingborough:} Thorsons Publishers Limited, 1976), 48.

66_{Eric Geoffrey, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010),} 14.

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is “expressed by the portrayal of human-in-separation, in which the lovers are “torn” apart from each other. The separation is characterized by a quest and a journey back to each other fraught with pain, agony, and intense longing”.This state of affair symbolizes the consciousness of the human soul of its separation from its source (God), and a yearning to return to it.68 Therefore, most of widely known love romances and allegorical stories in Sufi poetry such as the tales of Laylâ and Majnûn, Yûsuf (Joseph) and Zulaykhâ, the Moth and the Candle, the Nightingale and the Rose, are:

Shadow-pictures of the soul’s passionate longing to be reunited with God. The soul is likened to a moaning dove that has lost her mate; to a reed torn from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music fills the eye with tears; to a falcon summoned by the fowler’s whistle to perch again upon his wrist; to snow melting in the sun and mounting as vapor to the sky; to a frenzied camel swiftly plunging through the desert by night; to a caged parrot, a fish on dry land, a pawn that seeks to become a king.69

In Rumi words, this agony of longing is beautifully depicted in The Lament

of the Reed, one of the best Sufi poems ever written:

Now listen to this reed-flute’s deep lament About the heartache being apart has meant: Since from the reed-bed they uprooted me My song’s expressed each human’sagony, A breast which separation’s split in two Is what I seek, to share this pain with you: When kept from their true origin, all yearn For union on the day they can return.70

It is the account of the separation of the lover and the yearning to reunion personified as the ney, reed flute to use as a music instrument by being burned through its core. That ney reed symbolizing human soul expresses the agony of separation from its root (Divine Reality) as well as its emotional longing to

68_{Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun&Gita Govinda} (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008), 4.

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remedy the separation of the reed flute of his heart from his Beloved.71This poem reveals that the longing and emptiness we feel for a lost loved is only a reflection, “a hologram, of the longing we feel for God; it is the longing we feel to become

whole again, the longing to return to the root from which we were cut”.72

Thus Rumi’s classis poem, the Mathnavi, initiates with the lament of the reed that

“leads the reader into the complexities of human love and separation”.73

Separation is “the human predicament: love is both the cause of, and the solution

to, this predicament”.74

In Sufism, the learning is passed on to disciples from a master. Thus, Sufism is “an initiatory path where a master- disciple relationship enables the transmission of spiritual blessing”.75

The final goal of Sufism is to be united with God in paradoxical way as in Islamic tradition “there is no continuity of substance

between God and creation”.76

Therefore Sufi ultimate aim is to vanish in God (fana). It means that Sufis are:

removed from from the various temptations of the world, the initiate then knows the intoxication of immersion in the divine Presence. Being completely unaware of himself as subject-consciousness, he becomes a mirror in which God contemplates Himself.77

71_{Shams-i Tabriz,}_{Rumi’s Sun: The Teaching of Shams of T}_{abriz, trans. Refik Algam and Adam} Helminski (Canada: Morning Lights Press, 2008), viii.

72

Jonatan Star, Rumi in the Arms of Beloved (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 18.

73_{Rumi, Spiritual Verses, trans. Allan Williams (London: Penguin Books, 2006): xvi-xvii.} 74

Ibid. xvii.

75_{Eric Geoffrey, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010),} 2.

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2. The Mystical Stages of Union

As Sufi ultimate goal is to become one with Truth, divine Being, oneness of Being, or God. Thus, Sufi “sees God in all being, in every manifested thing.”78

It is worth noting that in Sufi tradition the Sufi perceive that all creations are created to discoverGod in them as stated in the Quran “We shall show them Our signs in the universe and in themselves until they see that it is the Truth [God].79 The Quran alsosays, “To God belong the East and the West: wherever you turn, there is the face of God. For God is All-pervade, All-Knowing”80

Unio Mystica, the ultimate aim of union with the Divine is achieved at

through a process of transformation. Transformation emerges through three stages of mystical development, namely, union, separation, and reunion. Union refers to the state of initial union, a primordial state of the souls and reflects the original, paradisiacal divinity of man. In contrast to union, separation is “the fall of man from his divine state, and the severance of the self from its Center, it involves the crushing of the self or ego and involves great trial and tribulation”,81

or blessing in disguise because without them the Beloved would not be accomplished. 82 This stage is crucial in journey to union with the Beloved. It is

78

Eric Geoffrey, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010), 13.

79_{Quran 41: 53.}

80_{William C Chittick,}_{Sufism: a Beginner’s Guide}_{(Oxford: One World Publication, 2008), 30.} 81

Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun& Gita

Govinda (Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008): 47-48.

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in separation that reunion is possible. Separation is to transform the self to the next level of his quest. Mysticism symbolizes this transformation in terms of Alchemy, as explained by Buckhardt as follows:

For true alchemy, the lead or other base metal that was to be transmuted into gold was only a symbol- a very adequate one- of the human soul sunk in the darkness and chaos of passion, while gold represented the original nature of man, in which even the body is ennobled and transfigured by the life of the spirit.83

However,“this process is voluntary, embarked upon by the sole motivation of love as the underlying motif of love is not as means to an end but the end in itself.”84

Hence, the mystic path to the Beloved is depicted by the predicament of the soul as a result of its separation from the Beloved.The last stage of unio

mystica is reunion, which

[It] denotes the state of union regained by the human soul after the experience of earthly realities, or separation. Although this state shares similarities to the bliss of union; it is different in that it is concerned of intellectual penetration of the heart, not with the bliss of innocence. The re-union refers to a spiritual return, in which the soul realizes its true self leading to a direct vision of, and identification with the Ultimate Reality.85 In the context of Pamuk’s oeuvres, the deep longing for a new identity as well as the agony of separation from their traditional self (the Ottoman’s legacy)

which is harshly taken from them apparently is the heart of his tales. This endless predicament between being completely East or totally West eventually becomes a unique experience in Pamuk’s hand. He stitches the collective feeling of

83_{Titus Buckhardt, Miror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, Trans.} and ed. William Stoddart (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 180.

84 _{Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun& Gita}

Govinda. ( Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008): 48.

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melancholy shared by the whole nation into a personal tale of identity quest enveloped in the bittersweet agony of searching for true love, soul- destroying separation from the lover, and the ecstatic longing to reunite with the beloved in worldly context that indirectly expresses ideals associated with the Sufi mystical experience.

Accordingly, the issue to be addressed in the present study is the implicit string between the quests of Turkey’s identity in Pamuk’s tales and the identity

formation in Sufi framework. B. Review of Previous Study

Numerous studies have been done based on Orhan Pamuk’s oeuvres that

investigate the intertwined relationship between East and West; the tension between modernity and the deep loss of separation from the Ottoman legacy; the longing to find the new ideal identity and the parallelism between Pamuk’s text

and other texts.86

A research article by Ian Almond, entitled Islam, Melancholy and Sad, Concrete Minarets: The Futility of Narrative in Orhan Pamuk’s “The Back

Book”examines how Islam is involved in the sadness of Pamuk’s works. Almond

employs deconstruction theory in his study and discovers three kinds of sadness

86_{The other literary studies and inquires carried out on Pamuk’s oeuvres such as Can V. Yeginsu.} “Exile, the Turkish Republic, and Orhan Pamuk”,World Literature Today ( November-December

2006); David J. Gramling. “Pamuk’s Dis-orient: Reassembling Kafka’s The Castle in Snow (2002)”TRANSIT,3(1), 2007; Grant Fared. “To dig a well with a needle”: Orhan Pamuk’s Poems

of Comparative Globalization”The Global South 1.2 (Fall, 2007): 81-99; Kübra Zeynev Sariaslan. Pamuk’s Kars and its Others: An Ethnography on Identifications and Boundaries of Ethnicity,

Nationalism, and Secularism, Unpublished Master Thesis (Turkey: Middle East Technical

University, 2010); Mary Jo Kietzman. “Speaking “to All Humanity”: Renaissance Drama in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow”.Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 52.3 (Fall, 2010): 325-352 are not

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in The Black Book as a result of Islam’s involvement in this novel. The first sadness results from the death of the mysteryand the second sadness arises from the death of identity. In The Black Book, Islam is implicated on the nostalgia for a “true” identity in two ways: it helps to establish and it is also used to dismantle

the notion of a self. The last melancholy is the grief of our own weakness as a consequence of our own unhappiness.87

Nagihan Haliloğlu’s research article’s Re-Thinking Ottoman Empire:

East-West Collaboration in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle discusses the

relationships between the East and West collaboration by employing Bhabha’s mimicry and Said’s Ori

The rise of spiritual Islam in Turkey`s identity quest : understanding Orhan Pamuk`S Oeuvres through sufi framework.

Abstract

ABSTRAK

Sri Hariyatmi. 2014. Kebangkitan Spiritual Islam Dalam Perjalanan Pencarian

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum) Degree in English Language Studies

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

A THESIS

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

A THESIS

THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL ISLAM IN TURKEY’SIDENTITY QUEST:

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

UNDERSTANDING ORHAN PAMUK’S OEUVRES THROUGH SUFI

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Notes on Transcription

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ……….

CHAPTER II LITERATUREREVIEW………

REFERENCES ……….. 187

ABSTRAK

Sri Hariyatmi. 2014. Kebangkitan Spiritual Islam Dalam Perjalanan Pencarian

CHAPTER I

A. The Issue at Hand

Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey. Who is a Turk? (London: Rouledge, 2006)

B. Towards a Contribution

C. Scope of the Study

D. Research Method

E. Chapter Outline

CHAPTER II

A. Review of Related Theory

2. The Mystical Stages of Union