1914 - Luciano Canfora

This is a brief essay about the sequence of events that, over the course of a few weeks, triggered what has come to be known as The Great War or World War I. The year is 1914. Europe has enjoyed almost fifty year of peace, marked by economic growth, scientific and technological progress and social reforms. There still are some unresolved issues, neglected tensions and unsatiated appetites in the air though, and the situation will come to a critical point in the summer of that year.

Istanbul: memories and the city - Orhan Pamuk

I’ve seen this book on the same shelf of my parent’s house bookcase for a few years. I thought it was a novel, I don’t know why. When I finally picked it up I found out that it is actually a collection of memoirs. Every chapter deals with a different topic. Sometimes it’s an area of the city, sometimes a person, a building, a situation, a life phase. This work doesn’t feature a proper narrative thread. It is rather a set of recurring themes - mostly sensations - that keeps together not only the pages of the book, but - the author feels - also the city and the people who live in it.
Istanbul - aka Byzantium or Constantinople - and its inhabitants are torn between the desire for modernization and westernization on one hand, and the melancholy and longing for a glorious past which is no more on the other: poverty, mess and filth are always there to remind one of the reality of that loss.

The real mosaic - Istanbul, Turkey

 








Photo of olives at an Istanbul market, by Fabio Pulito

Boats like splinters thrust into the Golden Horn,

the ripples of the Bosphorus clotted by an optical rennet:

it's not a still frame or a digital shot,

but a painted landscape by a visionary vagrant.

Posing like a bantering, whimsical model,
the city looks at history that hurries, tugs and raves.

Mosques and Churches squeeze buildings and bazaars,

the pressure pushes up bell-towers and minarets.

The real mosaic is not stuck to the naves,

it's tiles of history, customs and faces.

But the complicated structure of stone and colors

is simplified from a terrace,

with black olives and tea.

Istanbul, autumn 2009