Join us for a lecture by Christian Høgel (Odense / Uppsala) on Wednesday 23 March, at 16:15, in Humanistiska teatern, Engelska parken, Uppsala, organized by Greek and Byzantine Studies and the Retracing Connections research programme.
The early Greek translation (before 870 CE) of the Qur’an is known to us through 82 quotations in a treatise written by Niketas Byzantios in Constantinople (around 870 CE). Niketas quoted the Qur’an in Greek, sometimes extensive passages, in order to support his polemical arguments that included a variety of more or less true views of early Islam. The nature of his treatise, in addition to problems of text transmission, led many scholars to disregard the quotations and to see the translation as incompetent. But the translation is in fact produced by a person (not Niketas) who knew both Arabic and Greek very well, and who was even acquainted with some early Muslim discussions of how to interpret the Qur’an. We do not know who this person was or where he/she worked, but we can follow some of the working procedures, get an idea of the choices made and insight into an early reader of the Qur’an, who should be included as an early witness for the interpretation of the text. The translation also testifies to the importance of making the Qur’an available to Greek readers at an early stage and in general to cultural exchanges between Arabic and Greek in the centuries of wars and conflicts. And as a word-by-word translation it clearly reflects a need to get close to the Arabic original, both in terms of words and meaning.
The lecture will discuss several examples; no knowledge of Arabic or Greek is needed in order to follow!
In both fictional or autobiographical/biographical writing, there are certain topics that are difficult to address. Abuse, violence, severe poverty or childhood traumas… They are certainly challenging, but also quite compelling, which explains their popularity in several genres. For instance, the Swedish film Det nya landet (‘The new land’, 2000) is a fantastic example of how migration-related vulnerabilities can be told in a humorous manner by focusing on relations with the locals.
Image: Det Nya Landet (svtplay.se)
It is a very insightful story of a teenage boy and a middle-aged man going underground after losing hope that their asylum applications will be approved. The plot follows their journey, and even though it is very challenging to grasp all the complex feelings of hostility, anger, disappointment, hope, love, and jealousy, the film manages it flawlessly. The successful storytelling in such a film brings to my mind the value of writing traumatic experiences: journalistic storytelling is at least as complicated and also has its own obstacles when it comes to dealing with scarring experiences of the past.
Too narrow a gate, too real to relate
I have been interviewing people on issues related to migration, identity and marginalisation since 2014. The overwhelming burden of sensitive information and the responsibility of presenting these insights in a relatable manner have been a great challenge. Do you remember reading your first literary texts as a child? Empathy back then mostly worked as identifying with the characters, regardless of their position in the plot. Loving the prince meant dreaming of being one, and worshiping the superhero or the rebel meant seeing yourself as reaching goals through powers like theirs.
Empathy in a more grown-up sense came into our lives through young adult readings and gained power not by putting us in someone else’s shoes but by adapting someone’s entire being. Thanks to classics such as Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment or Les Misérables, this new kind of empathy was intriguing and almost addictive for a young reader. However, as someone who read these texts breathlessly, I could still not feel the same commitment that I felt when reading non-fiction books representing similar emotions and vulnerabilities. Despite the literary quality of such texts, somehow knowing that this particular real-life murderer took someone’s life and that they had quite reasonable reasons for doing so was much more difficult to tolerate than reading about Raskolnikov’s reasoning, actions and subsequent anxiety. In other words, it was much more disturbing and unbearable to read about someone’s real-life suffering in a memoir rather than in a novel. Ironically, knowing that there are such evils in our real world, along with the authenticity of the plot, lend such power to the narrative that it is painful to develop empathy for the character or incident: this time, the bare reality of adapting that person’s entire being can be quite painful.
Image: ‘Raskolnikov’, illustration by Mikhail Shemyakin to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1964)
Listening to people’s stories about being bullied or pushed to the edge of society based on ethnicity or class was equally painful – it was even scary to relate to. I remember leaving many interviews with a lump in my throat and a frozen gaze. And the question arose: why do I even have to relate to this? It is a one-page story in a magazine or newspaper, not a novel that people read for pleasure or education. The first answer to that question must be that being drawn into the story is necessary for reaching the best insights. Writers must relate to the traumatic experience they dive into and that is where the second answer to the same question comes in: the oral material must be put into writing so that the story is made relatable for the readers. For them, the story should offer neither the potentially repelling rough facts, nor less authenticity than it actually has. Then how should it be done? After years of struggling with this dilemma, I found my solution on a rooftop in the city Mardin.
Image: The city Mardin (hurriyet.com)
Facing a joke
I was working in Mardin in 2017 as part of the outreach team of an international refugee response NGO. Because of their cultural and linguistic capital, many of my colleagues were Syrians. The outreach team would do the initial assessment and then refer suitable individuals to the case management team. The case workers would conduct comprehensive assessments and create action plans based on each unique case so that some would be sorted within that team and some would be referred elsewhere, to psycho-social support, physical therapy or a child-friendly space, for instance.
Therefore, the whole team of fifty people were involved, due to this structure of the organisation, with the same families’ very difficult
recent past experiences in one way or another. The only easy part for me was that at least I didn’t have to write about them; this would soon change, dramatically and voluntarily.
I belonged to the minority of people who had no recent experience of being a refugee, but I started to note the chats of colleagues’ in the lunch room, in the car or during after-work beers. Contrary to the heart-breaking stories we heard during work hours, this kind of exchange of stories was based on common practices or observations and their sarcastic interpretation. For instance, a colleague who had to sleep in barns and caves during a three day-long walk to Turkey kept referring to those places whenever there was a mess in the common areas at work. She would use a sarcastic tone and make fun of the situation: “I did not walk for three days and sleep in caves with mice to see the same mess at work!”
Similar jokes were an inseparable part of daily life, so I realised that some people refuse to see themselves as victims, no matter how terrible the things they experienced. They decided to adjust their memory and its echo to their present perception, although they had experienced extreme situations as the consequences of war and forced migration. As if to be seen as ‘a victim’ or ‘unusual’ is based on willpower only, and not on actual destiny! Soon, the realisation of such a possibility of self-positioning in migration narratives encouraged me to search for humorous stories. The idea of talking to informants through comic incidents seemed not only to provide me with a solid lead as a research-based writer; this lead could also offer fresh and relatable insights to readers. The harsh situation of a vulnerable and exposed self during forced migration is not easy to place oneself in, and general audiences mostly engage with a migrant storyworld projected in national or international media – a storyworld in which migrants are powerless, victimised and demanding. In this way, refugees and migrants become people who experienced unspeakable things and their stories are not relatable for anyone who does not share that experience.
After moving on with this idea and starting to conduct the first batch of interviews in 2017, I found even more advantages of this approach, in addition to the main point of making migration narrative less epic and more relatable. I realised that humour can lift the heavy mood of the room during an interview by comforting both sides in different ways. It was refreshing for me as an interviewer discussing big traumatic events during migration, because I could acknowledge what happened but focus on some other incidents. This could create the ultimate indirect angle for me, but it could also provide the space and opportunity for both parties to grasp or ignore dramatic experiences. I could note that especially that, by the end of interviews or when the informants read the final pieces, the humour-based migration narrative was also refreshing for informants. After having written several columns with the same focus, I received similar reactions: informants tell the specific comic story with a lot of mostly sad digressions and actually really enjoy sharing that once-upon-a-time challenging experience. They find comfort and joy in telling an overall complicated and sad situation from a funny angle. In addition, when it is all over and the story is published there is another relief, this time in being able to reach out to others, who otherwise would not know about this reality.
New times, old story
For instance, an informant told a story from his childhood, knowing that the town he grew up in was demolished. Remembering the Kobane of the early 1990s made him nostalgic, of course, but it did not stop him from laughing at the childish essence of the anecdote around which I built my story. He grew up in a village near Turkey’s border with Syria and enjoyed being outside with other kids on long summer days. He told me the ache of being a teenage boy and how he and his friends did not know what to do with their sexual impulses as they grew older in that isolated town. Until one of the boys figured out that the soldiers on the border, which was the source of fear for all of their lives, had something that interested them very much: porn. He narrated how the village boys collected money and invested in a monthly magazine, how they tricked the soldier into selling them and how they shared the magazine for years. Tens of childish fights to share the pages, or finding that cooperation didn’t work or some other issue… He said, “We were just kids”, and added how he could see their vacant home, visible even today, from the Turkish side of the border.
As my column developed, I started to include migration stories not only from the Syrian-Turkish sphere, but also from other nationalities and countries. Ciwan (who is a PhD engineer in Berlin) shared the story of how English-speaking Turkish men in his circles lie about their nationality while dating. He told several stories of him or his friends lying about who they are, covering for each other, putting themselves in difficult positions by mistake or on purpose, and laughing about it afterwards. They lie about where they live with the intention of hiding the name of migrant-populated districts, or they lie about where they come from with the intention of tackling long-experienced racism and discrimination when the truth is exposed.
Image: The column with Birgitte’s story (February 2021, otdergi.com)
The other month, Birgitte (a university teacher in Istanbul) told me the story of how she was being objectified and found herself in similar situations over and over. Even though she was quite established with very close local friends, dating men resulted in a lot of questions about marriage and the migration regulations of Denmark. However, the focus of her story was about something else: how her local friends guided her through social norms and avoiding harassment thanks to a self-made map of safe streets to walk after midnight. Unfortunately, once she did not follow the map, which resulted in an assault. Her local friends were terribly upset when hearing about it the day after – so upset that she had to comfort them through a re-enactment of the incident in the real-life location, which ended with many laughs and loving hugs.
Old ache, new narrative
What these stories have in common is the organic interplay of friendship, foreign lands, identity, external threats, safe spaces and defence mechanisms as demonstrated in humorous narratives. Despite the fact that these types of stories are more difficult to spot, they are truly fulfilling for a journalist to track, comparatively smooth for informants to share, and hopefully more easily relatable for the audience.
A humorous angle on migration narratives may sound harsh. But as I have tried to show here, it offers the opportunity for people who experienced the trauma of being a refugee to tell others their story and still laugh at its absurd aspects – a kind of self-healing laughter. At the same time, looking at sad memories with a new set of eyes can help create a storyworld in which the audience can empathize with the storyteller.
Alev Karaduman
is a research-based writer and cultural consultant from Istanbul who works mostly within the area of diverse communities and identity issues.
She is currently based in Malmö and writes a column (in Turkish – https://otdergi.com) about humourist human situations related to migration.
How much Byzantium can fit onto a planet in an outer space, in a distant future? How do we build future storyworlds out of past civilizations? How would you like your entire cultural memory wrapped and handed down? Can meeting a linguistic alien make us ponder on the foundations of our own culture? Are we translatable? And what draws us so much to Empires we strongly dislike?
Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen follows the generous saint from Anatolia, across seas and rooftops, into a narrative rabbit hole.
On 2 November 2021, the rebuilt Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox church at Ground Zero in New York was opened. The old church was completely destroyed during the terrorist attacks on World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Image: Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church under construction in May 2021. Photo: Jim Henderson, CC BY 4.0; Source: Wikipedia
A new choral piece was commissioned to celebrate the occasion of the opening. The world-famous Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, composed a choral work set to a medieval Greek hymn on St Nicholas of Myra. The hymn was performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on October 31 and November 1, 2021 by the choir Artefact Ensemble under the direction of the conductor Benedict Sheehan. In this way, the late antique bishop who was eventually transformed into modern-day Santa Claus, has indeed come back to town.
I will not dwell on Santa Claus and the morphology of the bishop of Myra. That story has been told several times elsewhere (see, for instance). Instead, I want to focus on the ‘long eleventh century’– the period in which St Nicholas of Myra rises from one among many saints of Asia Minor to become one of the most popular saints, elevated to the level of the Apostles.
Last year, a reading group organized within the frame of the Retracing Connections research programme studied some Byzantine hymns and Lives of saints during the Covid lockdown. We chose to translate a hymn on St Nicholas attributed to Romanos the Melodist (c. 485-560 CE). The hymn had previously only been translated into Italian, so we decided to polish the translation and publish it. The final version was made by Thomas Arentzen and myself, with the collaboration of Christian Høgel.
The translation was published in Patristica Nordica Annuaria 35, 2020 in February this year. Since today, December 6, is the feast day of St Nicholas (in the Gregorian calendar), I found it suitable to present a few observations we made when translating and commenting the hymn on St Nicholas.
The hymn is a kontakion, a lengthy liturgical song, in no less than 25 stanzas in addition to an opening prelude-stanza. Despite the name of Romanos the Melodist appearing in the manuscripts, even the first, 19th-century editor of Byzantine hymns, J. B. Pitra did not think he was the actual author.
Most likely, the hymn was written in the first half of the 10th century. It testifies to the general interest in saints in the period after the Iconoclasm. The 10th century saw the advent of the Synaxarion of Constantinople and the Menologion by Symeon Metaphrastes, both huge undertakings in creating collections of saints’ Lives according to the church calendar.
The kontakion was probably the work of a poet connected to the Stoudios monastery. Several monks, most notably Joseph the Hymnographer (ca. 816-886 CE), wrote many hymns dedicated to the saints. Joseph seems to have been responsible for the promotion and elevation of St Nicholas of Myra. According to Joseph’s Life, St Nicholas visited him when he was imprisoned in Crete. The bishop of Myra set him free from prison. Although this episode in the Life probably is a later hagiographer’s invention, it still testifies to Joseph being closely connected with St Nicholas.
This close connection is visible in the manuscript tradition: Joseph was in charge of creating the New Oktoechos, a liturgical book with hymns and prayers used in the period from Pentecost until Lent. In this book, St Nicholas is celebrated each Thursday along with the Apostles. St Nicholas had now become isapostolos: equal to an apostle. The kontakion we translated also reflects this new status of the saint in stanza 17:
You became the apostles’ truthful companion, most esteemed one, and dedicated yourself to their way of life, father Nicholas, wise hierarch.
With this emphasis on the saint’s apostle-like position, it seems highly likely that the kontakion on St Nicholas emerged in an environment such as the Stoudius Monastery. However, many hymns were written in the same period to celebrate St Nicholas. No less than three more kontakia were written in his honour as well as several kanones, the other type of lengthy liturgical songs of which the monks at the Stoudios monastery produced a great many. Joseph the Hymnographer is said to have written 466 kanones, of which 385 are considered genuine.
We also find short hymns consisting of only one stanza dedicated to St Nicholas. One of these hymns, called a troparion, is sung on December 6 according to the Menaion, a book that Joseph the Hymnographer was also responsible for producing a version of. It contains hymns and prayers for each day of each month. It is this troparion that Arvo Pärt set to music to celebrate the rededication of the Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in New York. The troparion reads:
A rule of faith and a model of meekness, a teacher of abstinence hath the reality shewn thee unto thy flock; therewithal hast thou acquired: by humility – greatness, by poverty – riches; O Father hierarch Nicholas, intercede before Christ the God that our souls may be saved.
It is striking that this troparion as well as many of the hymns (including the kontakion by pseudo-Romanos) on the saint, do not at all tell the story that would later transform the bishop of Myra into Santa Claus. This is the famous story about how Nicholas secretly threw a bag of money through the window of a poor family’s house. They suffered so much that the father had chosen to send his three daughters into prostitution. This story became the basis of the gift-giving Santa Claus, a story that fits well with gift-giving consumerist Christmas.
Rather it is Nicholas, or Nikolaos (which is ‘People’s Victory’ in Greek), put forward as a humble and pious shepherd of his flock in Myra, always ready and willing to help people in danger, as one who fights against heretics, and one who supersedes many of the heroes from the Old Testament (Joseph, Moses, Elijah etc). Had it not been for the Stoudios monks’ prolific hymn writing, St Nicholas of Myra might never had risen to the fame he acquired in the long eleventh century. And had the hymnographers not emphasized his role as shepherd of his flock, always willing to help and intercede, the saint’s fate might have been like in the West, where he slowly turned into the white-bearded jolly Santa Claus in red clothes.
Image: The Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt. Photo: Eric Marinitsch Source: Arvo Pärt Centre (2011)
In the Byzantine storyworld that lives on in the Orthodox cultures of Eastern Europe, St Nicholas of Myra remains an important helper and intercessor for the faithful, someone who watches his flock and delivers them from perils. In the West, he gained fame when sailors from Italy ‘translated’ – rescued or stole – his relics from Myra to Bari in 1087. Since then he has been transformed several times, especially in the last two centuries.
As Santa Claus, he now inhabits several Western storyworlds and is accommodated to suit each culture, where his home is located in as diverse places as the North Pole, Greenland, Norway, Finland and Spain, to name but a few. In the East, he never left Myra, yet can appear anywhere when his flock needs help. This includes also New York on October 31 2021, where he was invoked by the voices of the Artefact Ensemble, singing the melodies of Arvo Pärt.
We present Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen, one of the Narrative Cosmonauts from our Storytelling & Narratology team.
His research focuses on hymnography and narratology. He is also very fond of music from the Eastern Mediterranean and an amateur performer of different kinds of traditional music. In October 2021 he visited the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul to conduct research.
“At Galata there is a drizzle, at Tatavla heavy rain” One day in the Fall of 2021, there was indeed a drizzle at Galata. The opening lines of one of the most well-known Greek songs about the City quoted above came to my mind. I did not go to Tatavla (modern day Kurtuluş), but the clouds loomed over the entire horizon in pale grey, so there was probably heavy rain at Tatavla. Songs about cities are numerus: from Sinatra’s anthem “New York, New York”, Robert Johnson’s blues classic “Sweet Home Chicago”, Rufus Wainwright’s slightly satirical “Hometown Waltz” about Montreal, to the beloved jazz standard “April in Paris”. Paintings, books and movies can represent the city in detail. Songs, at least in the modern era, are often less verbose. In the early recording industry in the 1910-1920’s songs were restricted by the technology, which only allowed for a length of about 3 minutes. This format has ever since dictated that a songwriter needs to be concise in order to get the message through. The media is the message.
The rain reflects the Galata Tower (Image UHE)
The Greek song mentioned above is “Eche gia, panta gia” or “Eche gia, Panagia” as it is also known. Set to a well-known and catchy tune from Asia Minor, the lyrics tell the story of a person getting drunk in the City, without mentioning it by name. Throughout the song the Greek neighborhoods in the City are enumerated. Besides Galata and Tatavla, we hear about Pera (modern day Beyoğlu), Genti-Koule (Yedikule), Tharapia (Tarabya) and Nichori (Yeniköy).
I have not been able to track its exact origins, but the first recordings of the song are from the early recording industry in the 1920’s. It was another version, however, that made the song rise to its present fame 50 years later. This version, originally recorded by the folklorist and singer Domna Samiou, in 1973, is the best know version, mentioning the areas of the City, here in a recent recording by the Istanbul-based ensemble, Café Aman Istanbul:
A peculiar issue revolves around the refrain. When Samiou recorded it in 1973, the refrain was “Eche gia, Panagia” (Farewell, Holy Mother”), but she was later informed that it was actually “Eche gia, panta gia” (“Farewell, always fare well”). It is claimed by many singers today, that the latter version of the refrain is the correct one. But the earliest recordings of the song from the 1920’s reveal a different story. Although the lyrics are entirely different, the refrain says “Panagia”, not “panta gia”. Whatever the original refrain might be, the refrain with “Panagia” actually reflects and continues to echo an ancient relationship between the City and its protector and defender, the Mother of God, Virgin Mary.
One of the earliest songs that was crucial in voicing this relationship is the Akathist hymn. It is a hymn of praise that celebrates Virgin Mary. It was probably composed in the 5th century, but an extra stanza was added in the 7th century which established a close relationship between the song and the city.
In 626, Constantinople was finally free from assailants (at least for a while). The Avars, the Slavs, and the Persians had tried to conquer the city, but with the help of the Mother of God, the citizens and the emperor Heraklios were finally freed. To celebrate this victory and give thanks to the Virgin, the city’s patriarch Sergios added the extra stanza which goes:
“To you, Mother of God, Protector and Leader in battle, I, your City, delivered from terror, dedicate songs of victory and thanksgiving!”
In these verses the city itself sings to Virgin Mary and by singing confirms the unique relationship between the two. Later, the word “city” was replaced with “people”, probably because the hymn became very popular in the liturgy in and around the Byzantine Empire. The specific historical and local connection had to be loosened so that other faithful could chant the hymn around the world.
However, the Mother of God could not protect the City forever against the Ottoman Turks who conquered the capital of the Byzantine empire in the end of May 1453. One year later, the Flemish composer, Guillaume Dufay, wrote a motet in which a mother – symbolizing both Virgin Mary and the Great Church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) – sings with tears to God the Father about the fall of the City and the Church. This is reflected in the title of the piece “Lament of the Holy Mother Church of Constantinople” (in latin Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae).
The events are not mentioned directly, but are alluded to through a paraphrase and expansion of the biblical Book of Lamentations 1.2 which bewails the fall of Jerusalem. The motet was probably written to be performed at a banquet in Lille in France, where Western noble men were eager to initiate a crusade to deliver the City from the Turks. Through the mediation of the Mother of God singing in her own voice to God, the City should once more be freed and protected. It obviously had a different outcome than intended.
Other songs were later written about the City, now firmly established as the Ottoman capital. These songs reflect the air of the Sultan’s Palace – and his harem. The Greek-Turkish song “O kaixis” (“The Boatman”, in Turkish “Gel, gel, kayıkçı”) was probably written in the 19th century. In the song, a man standing on the shore of the Golden Horn calls for a boatman to pick him up and sail him to the Sultan’s palace. He wants to free a beautiful lady, who is trapped in the Sultan’s harem.
The song mixes Greek and Turkish words and thus reflects the language of the Greeks living in the Ottoman city, called Istanbul by the Turks. Perhaps the beautiful lady could be interpreted as the Mother of God, but this theory would need some explaining of how she ended up in the harem in the first place.
Farther away from the capital, in the Balkans, another song brings tidings from the City, called Stambol in Slavic. This song is written from a Muslim perspective and is a well-known sevdalinka, the music style that is sometimes called the “Bosnian Blues”. In the song, “U Stambolu na Bosforu” (“In Istanbul upon Bosphorus”), we hear about a pasha who is sick and about to die. He promises his faithful servants that they are to receive six wives each from the harem, then he sheds a tear and dies. When his wife hears about his death, she also sheds a tear and dies.
In “U Stambolu na Bosforu”, which was made famous by the sevdah singer Himzo Polovina, the prayer call of the muezzin is recited, or rather just “Allah illallah”. This prayer call was and still is an audible reality in Bosnia as well as in the City. But like “O kaixis” and “Eche gia, Panta gia”, the song invokes a certain image of the City, which was already a distant past by the early recordings of the songs.
This brings me to the Retracing Connections research programme. Songs are, as noted above, often much shorter than literary poems, novels and movies, and do not allow for the same detail as such media or paintings do. In all the songs, the City is mentioned directly or indirectly, but not described in any detail. Rather, we hear what is going on in the City at a certain, but not clearly defined period in time, at very general geographic locations (Galata, at the harem, in the [mind of] Hagia Sophia).
In other words, listeners are invited to imagine the world in which these sung stories take place. The songs invoke storyworlds that draw on the listeners creative imagination. I am quite sure that the way I imagine Sergios’ praise of the Mother of God in 626 or the lamenting church in 1454 has very little to do with historical realities.
I am also quite certain that I have a slight orientalist reading of the songs “O kaixis” and “U Stambolu na Bosforu”, when I imagine the pasha or women in the harem. My knowledge about the harem at the Sultan’s palace is very limited and the image that pops up draws on a visit to the Topkapı palace some years ago as well as some brothel-like scenes from old movies.
I am convinced that most listeners function in the same way. In their minds, the songs do not prompt a historically informed image of the City, but rather an imagined Constantinople/Istanbul, a semi-fictional storyworld that blends all kinds of images, stories and impressions available to each listener. One can even sing the songs without knowing much about the history or geographical locations.
This was the case for a friend of mine, who is a Greek singer living in Denmark. She had sung “Eche gia, panta gia” a thousand times at tavernas and parties in Greece. When I told her that I was staying almost literally between Pera and Galata, she was surprised that Galata was a part of the City. She had never thought about the exact locations of the areas mentioned in the song. For her, the City in the song was almost completely an imagined city.
Indeed, we find an imagined Istanbul in the somewhat cheesy songs C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E by Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra from 1928 and the more famous “Istanbul (not Constantinople)” sung by the Four Lads in 1953, marking the 500th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople. These songs do not in any way reveal an intimate relationship with the City, but merely use the name to write a witty song.
However, the last song on my list, which is in no way exhaustive, might reflect an almost private relationship. The short-lived British pop group The Flyers – which was more or less based in Denmark – made a small hit with the song “Don’t be a fool in Istanbul”. The song is 80’s/90’s disco pop with some exotic elements like a synthesized “kanun” (a kind of zither) and a Turkish clarinet.
The singer begins the song by stating: “I can tell you a story, and I swear every word is true!” He then reveals that he met a “dark-veiled lady” who “through her mask was beautiful” but wanted him to be sure “not to break the rules”. As in every good tragic story, the singer of course breaks the rules and ends up in jail. Whether or not it is really true, as the singer claims, is not interesting. The interesting question is: why Istanbul?
An answer may be that “Istanbul” rhymes (almost…) perfectly with “don’t be a fool” which is the refrain of the song. Again, the lyrics do not give us any information or detail about the City, it rather invites the listener to imagine a city where dating rules are strict because the women are religious – did anyone say orientalist exoticism?
Despite the rain, many people visit the Galata Tower, while a shopkeeper sweeps away the showers. (Image UHE)
All these songs come to my mind that day, when there indeed is a drizzle at Galata. My imagined Constantinople/Istanbul merges with the real world Istanbul. I look at different places and spaces and try to reimagine where the stories told in the songs took place. The City is a symbol that embodies a whole civilization, ideologies, religions and empires.
The songs project storyworlds in which the City is an important setting full of emotions connected with for instance Hagia Sophia or the Harem. In some songs, the City even becomes one of the main protagonists: in the Akathist hymn, the City is victorious as in Epic, whereas the City and its Church of Holy Wisdom are tragic characters in Dufay’s lamentation.
In all the songs to the City, the lack of detail and description makes it possible for the listener to imagine the City in many ways, as a world, a storyworld, to inhabit for a short while when the song catches the attention of the ear, especially when not being present in the City. As the lyrics of Eche gia, Panta gia came to my mind, I initially wanted to follow the protagonist in the song, who wants to get drunk at Pera. However, I decided to adhere to the warning from the Flyers not to be a fool in Istanbul, so that I avoided ending up as a tragic character in my own storyworld.
Sources:
Beep!: Farewell, Virgin Mary (merphant.blogspot.com)
Έχε γειά Παναγιά | Δεν χρειάζεται να είσαι ΔΕΞΙΟΣ για να είσαι ΠΑΤΡΙΩΤΗΣ ούτε ΑΡΙΣΤΕΡΟΣ για να είσαι ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΗΣ (ttsiotikas.blogspot.com)
Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae - Wikipedia
Thanks to: Damir Imamović, Haris Theodorelis-Rigas, Alexandros Charkiolakis, Thomas Arentzen, Therese Helga Emborg, and Fedja Wierød Borčak.
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