Copied from an Abandoned Notebook
Sometimes I think of my past, which passed in the grief and suffering of an unsuccessful artist, in an illogical and vagrant rebellion of passions. This is an incomplete and disconnected novel, an abyss whose unknown depths are filled with the ridiculous and painful memories of many opposites that have no relation to each other whatsoever. There are mournings about the fine arts, elegies for the death of moths, the meanings in the gazes of goldfish, poems about the coughs of an unloved woman, odes to the laughter of nights, the handshakes of shadows. Then at the edge of this abyss there is a vagrant actor—that’s me—who has done everything that exists on the stage of life once: all kinds of hunting, from falconry to boar and deer hunting, all amusements; all passions from the most wretched to theater and drinking parties; from photography to painting, carving, sculpture, from cycling to horses, rowboats, gymnastics, even wrestling—he has done them all, and the confusion of thoughts arising from this diversity of occupations has stolen from him all things like “constancy and seriousness” and left in their place an incomprehensible chaos, a causeless restlessness. He has studied several languages; starting from mathematics to literature, medicine, theology, philosophy, chemistry, philosophy, physiology, even law—whatever independent and non-independent sciences and arts exist, he has entered them all once, spent at least six or seven weeks of his life in each, and from this vagrant journey, this restless travel, has deduced a truth that dominates all his sensations: “He who wants to learn everything can learn nothing”—a truth he claims no one in the world has felt and confirmed as much as he has. Then this actor’s loves… The most wretched and common loves, and the purest, whitest loves… First the tall, thin, fiery women who presented “forget-me-not” flowers when passing the fountain of separation on the way back from picnics, and then widows of unknown sensibilities to whose children affection was first bestowed. Girls who didn’t yet know what love meant, excited by natural impulse.
Among these mixed shadows, these shadows of love memories, I suppose only one is connected to myself, to my personal spirit that can never settle. Because this is connected to the memory of a coincidence that makes me most sensitive. The others… The other loves… They were all a false role. Things done not to feel, I don’t know why, done only to be occupied. While holding the hand of a woman I pretended to love, I would think of things furthest from love, stare into that poor woman’s eyes and wouldn’t blink. Sometimes she would ask: “You’re lost in thought. Why?”
“Guess, oh, you can’t feel this.”
And indeed she couldn’t feel it; knowing that my most lasting desires, the most eternal ones, set within a limited imaginary eternity of six weeks, I would imagine the lover who would hold this hand after me, the color of her eyes, her manner, the harmony of her voice. These loves, quickly abandoned and renewed, would fill my notebooks with little stories; I would read these things belonging to no one to my friends, and listen to appreciation and praise only for their words, their harmony, their external beauty.
But here is a face… She, a small, thin, delicate girl from my relatives who, in the near past, just two years ago, used to address me as “brother.” Like everyone who writes, I too am defeated by the need to read and have someone listen to what I’ve written. It was my habit to read to her the poems I wrote in the vast loneliness of long winter nights that passed empty and friendless. When my writing was finished I would call out: “Belkıs…”
She would run carefully. Then, leaning her delicate arm on my desk, she would listen and always—without exception, always—would appreciate it. Her enthusiasm for reading had forced her to read all the books I had. Sometimes she would read to me the letters she wrote to her friends, to her father who was away, to her brother who was an officer, and would wait for a word of praise from me. Later she developed an inclination for poetry; she was so intelligent that I taught her prosody in one lesson. We would continue composing poetry together: “Fe’ülün fe’ülün…” How much she loved this and called it “the meter of drops.” For bahr-i hafif “the harmony of pain,” for bahr-i hezec “the melody of stillness,” for bahr-i muzari “the meter of sorrow,” for that old bahr-i remel “the creak of the garden waterwheel”—in short, she would give names to all of them, to all the meters. One day something suddenly passed through my mind about this little poetess: couldn’t she be my wife? I decided on this without daring to deliberate at length for fear that I would abandon it, give up this desire. That very night I wrote a theatrical poem, a “true dream,” celebrating the happiness of our married future. The next day I read it to her with meaningful looks and small, special details. She understood, appeared not to have understood. In fact, this desire was growing increasingly in my soul with the breadth of affection. In my material hours, far from my spirituality, I would analyze this new and pure love: “Look,” I would say, “I am a dreamer… She is a little flatterer who loves and appreciates my poems, awakening in me a very natural feeling, a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness. I involuntarily mistake this feeling for love and deceive myself.”
One night I was again reading her a poem: “The Promises of Your Eyes.” After finishing, fixing my eyes on those inviting eyes, before allowing the oaths poured forth lavishly with the usual appreciation and praise with the introduction “Oh, this has turned out so beautiful that…”, I said: “But, Belkıs, don’t you understand, this is for you.”
She was startled as if a cannonball had exploded next to her ear and had opened her eyes wide. Embarrassed by her excessive astonishment, I involuntarily lowered my eyes. Was my loving her so unexpected, so unnatural?
“I’m joking,” I tried to repair, “joking, Belkıs!… So, has it turned out well?”
For the first time she objected: “No, my dear, there’s something in all the things written about eyes, a vulgarity that can also be felt in this. A vulgarity that makes me smell a moldy odor from it.”
And she continued: “True, you will say, ‘Since it’s about a subject, there must be a connection between it and things written on the same subject,’ but it’s not so…”
Müekkilat-ı esiltire i’tild-mahmam Handelerden selam-ı dar-a-dar Gönderen gözlerinde en mahmar Seherlerin o derin reng-i müphemiyyeti var…
“Oh, have you read this?”
“No.”
“But I had read it in your newspapers. This too is a poem written for blue eyes, but it’s poetry. Which of all that pile of scribbles does it resemble?”
I was stuck. What would I answer to this gentle student of mine, this small, beautiful and obedient disciple whom I imagined to be infatuated with me? This was gilded, soft gunpowder that had suddenly exploded. I murmured: “Whose is this?”
“Sahir’s!”
With a mechanical care I grabbed the poem in front of us and tore it up. I took in my hand a book with fresh, unopened and unread pages from my desk; now I wasn’t seeing her. This was a book about methods of color photography. I was reading and understanding nothing. Between the lines I was seeing a poet envied by all young literature enthusiasts, strolling mockingly and with dignity, swinging the cane of a hunchbacked maid.
Sahir… That night I slept very restlessly and late, thinking about Sahir all the time. In a crushing jealousy, in a hellish jealousy I had never felt until then… I knew only the signature of this poet who spoke of women to the point of exhaustion. But here, a hatred, a rage was coming alive in my heart for him; I hated this absent rival, this unknown being I didn’t know.
In my dream I insulted him with my choicest vulgarities. This was exactly the young man who appeared to me between the lines of the photography book. A handsome young man with black and thin mustache, possessing black and fiery eyes, a hunter who was constantly hunting women. In the undulating mirages of my dream, surrounded by an endless garland of life consisting of all women holding hands, he was advancing indifferently. My little student too had been magnetized to him, had entered that bouquet of women, had become a particle of light in that halo. While I spent days, weeks filtering through old books, Taberis, so-and-sos… all those dusty, wild volumes preserving the imaginary exploits of that old Belkıs to invent a mythological metaphor for her name, my rival, content and comfortable, had triumphed over me with a poem, with a single line. For example… Yes, perhaps with just this:
I have an excessive respect for womanhood.
A week hadn’t passed before I had forgotten everything: my student, my jealousy, the memories of my unknown rival that tormented me. I pride myself on possessing the ability to forcibly forget anything that can make me suffer, to take revenge on it through oblivion. Therefore, no pain from the past has created a serious grief in me. I had returned again to my aimless life that leads to no result, my way of life that only harvests fatigue with kilometers. A bright, happy, coquettish day. We were returning exhausted and full of labor from a private gymnastics competition. My companion, who had never been occupied with intellectual and imaginative arts, was a fierce athlete.
“Let’s take the tram,” he said, “today’s fatigue is enough…”
“Very well.”
The tram was very empty; I had never seen the Aksaray line so empty at such a late hour. It was probably because the weather was nice. Two children were looking outside, holding onto the iron and thin bars of the window across from us, and an old servant was watching over them. And also in the corner, a thin young man huddled as if clinging to the partition separating the women’s section…
We bought tickets; I wiped my sweaty face with my handkerchief; my companion was doing the same as me. Occupied with placing his white linen handkerchief around his neck, he leaned toward me and said quietly: “Do you know him?”
He was pointing to the young man across from us.
“No,” I said.
“That’s Sahir.”
“Sahir?”
“Yes!”
He, unaware of us, was sometimes looking outside and sometimes watching the beaded and dirty curtain of the women’s section. This was a fairly tall, very delicate and gentle, almost a child, possessing a feminine face and very frail. He absolutely, absolutely didn’t resemble that unknown rival I had slapped in my dream, Sahir with black thin mustache and black fiery eyes. His beardless face, blue eyes, abundant hair cast an indescribably innocent shadow on him. Before this weak body I was feeling a compassionate respect; I was regretful and sorry for my hatred, my jealousy toward him—yes, the souls of all women should belong to him.
He had crossed his legs, his very thin legs, one over the other. Looking at my muscular legs thickened by fencing exercises, I was thinking of the difference between him and me. He was a poet, a true poet… The souls of all women who love and feel were captive and worshipful to him with a grateful submission without reproach. And this was very just. For a moment his blue and deep eyes’ ambiguous reflection met my eyes. Like a bandit who had violated and transgressed the right of his soul, embarrassed and wretched, I lowered my eyes. Before this revered body as delicate and gentle as a feminine imagination, I was being crushed, falling into an ambiguous and endless whirlpool deepening and churning with the mixed and countless shadows of dumbbells, hunting gear, dogs, bicycles in the void opening in my imagination.
My companion quickly stood up. “Quick,” he said, “we’re passing the mold maker’s, our fezzes…”
And jumping out through the door to the street. I, I too followed him.
Ömer Seyfettin
