Different aspects of melancholy in the museum of innocence

Abstract

 

Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence offers prevalent examples of melancholy which is based on the pratoganist Kemal’s state of mind. Even before losing the object of desire, Kemal mourns about the future separation which signals the beginning of melancholy that increases after the end of the affair with Füsun and turns into a mood of life that lasts as long as he lives. Attached to the lost object (Füsun) and the gesture of its loss, Kemal yearns to be a part of Füsun’s life. Therein resides the cause of his attachment to the objects that belong to Füsun which he gathers in Merhamet Apartment that already functions as a museum. This paper analyses object attachment and the idea of museum that devoloped from this which direct us to the concept of the “aura” and transmissibility of the past to the future.

Keywords

• Orhan Pamuk,The Museum of Innocence,Melancholy,Collector,Loss

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