HÜZÜN
İstanbul 2009-2019
© Jan Bielikowski 2022. All rights reserved, please do not copy.
Hüzün, the Turkish word for melancholy, has an Arabic root; when it appears in the Koran (as huzn in two verses and hazen in three others) it means much the same thing as the contemporary Turkish word. The Prophet Muhammad referred to the year in which he lost both his wife Hatice and his uncle, Ebu Talip, as Senettul huzn, the year of melancholy; this confirms that the word is meant to convey a feeling of deep spiritual loss. (...)The hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry, it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating. (...) For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. The screen he projects over life is painful because life itself is painful. So it is, also, for the residents of Istanbul as they resign themselves to poverty and depression. Imbued still with the honor accorded it in Sufi literature, hüzün gives their resignation an air of dignity, but it also explains their choice to embrace failure, indecision, defeat, and poverty so philosophically and with such pride, suggesting that hüzün is not the outcome of life’s worries and great losses but their principal cause. Orhan Pamuk “Istanbul: memories and the city”.