Remembrance of Things Past: Intertwining of Mnemonics and Cultural Memory in Orhan Pamuk's The Red-Haired Woman

Abstract

Memory and imagination are indispensable in shaping literature. The production of an image is rather a recreation of tracing the long-lost memories combined with poetic imagination. Orhan Pamuk’s statement, “Novels are machines for collecting memories”, is pragmatized in most of his oeuvre. The narrators being haunted by the history of Istanbul and their traversing past long-drawn tedium of life are echoed in his narratives. The Red-Haired Woman, winning wide acclaim, announces his mastery over the myth and how myth reassures and relives timelessly. Keeping apart the Freudian school of thought, The Red-Haired Woman draws heavily on the East-West geographical analogies. The link between memory and fiction is that fiction relies on memory to create a sense of authenticity. Cem, the central character in the novel reincarnates the canonical Sophoclean hero, Oedipus, who depicts how cultural memory takes a turn in his life as the plot progresses. Relentless storytelling between the Master and his apprentice is fashionably presented in the novel. The traveling theatre, which earns a livelihood to the titular red-haired, rewinds the reel to the BCs, picturizing the tragic mother com wife of Oedipus, Jocasta. This paper examines how Mnemonics plays the central role in the life of Cem and Master Mahmut and how the canon possesses longevity and recurs in the present time through cultural memory.