BY ORHAN PAMUK
According to
Orhan Pamuk, the melancholy of Istanbul is huzun, a Turkish word whose Arabic
root (it appears five times in the Koran) denotes a feeling of deep spiritual
loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life, "a state of mind that is
ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating."
For the Sufis, huzun is
the spiritual anguish one feels at not being close enough to God; for Saint
John of the Cross, this anguish causes the sufferer to plummet so far down that
his soul will, as a result, soar to its divine desire.
--The Washington Post
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