Breathless Red, breathtaking Red

Sample these abridged lines from Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, which I am currently reading.

Indifference, time and disaster will destroy our art. [...] Greedy, shameless mice will nibble these pages away; [...] Child princes will scrawl over the illustrations with toy pens. They'll blacken people's eyes, wipe their runny noses on the pages, doodle in the margins with black ink. [...] While mothers destroy the illustrations they consider obscene, fathers and older brothers will jack off onto the pictures of women and the pages will stick together, not only because of this, but also due to being smeared with mud, water, bad glue, spit and all manner of filth and food. Stains of mold and dirt will blossom like flowers where the pages have stuck together. [...] Not only our own art, but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect: [...], your red-tinted pictures of love and death, yours and all the rest, all of it will vanish ...

Ethereal, isn't it? Pamuk manages to vividly illustrate the ephemeral nature of man's artistic creations in the passage. But at the same time he makes you appreciate the timelessness of art. You can detect a hint of defiance in the artist's passionate outburst when he is speaking of art doomed to face extinction. An almost breathless (and breathtaking) outpouring of devotion and resignation from the artist. The missing parts probably take away some of the beauty of the passage, but that should in turn be an incentive for you to buy & read the book (You don't seriously expect me to type out two pages of the fiery stuff, do you? :-) ).

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet

Posted by Rajat @ 11:36 PM