letter to edmund de waal
i strongly believe
i need to live
by the sealike an imperative, an urgency
will i be a better writer?if I could smell the salt
not just taste it
18 May
i have just finished reading Letters to Camondo.
sitting in the sun—
in-between all the rains we finally capture some warm rays in Zeeland.
Near the North Sea,
i couldn’t think of a better place to read Edmund de Waal again, and read his new book, too.
Reading The Hare with Amber Eyes then immediately after, Letters to Camondo, diving deep.
i have been collecting seashells,
and pressing flowers.
(the more i read de Waal, the more i understand my own obsessions)
“This wasn’t about art. It was what art carries.”
i believe this sentence will haunt me for a long time. i have been looking for this, i have been searching for this particular understanding of art. of my own art. of why i make art.
it is not about the art, it is about what it carries.
so: what does my art carry?
an ongoing process and exploration.
the fluidity of our identities.
a family history spanning from Crimea, the Balkans, South-East Turkey, Bursa… to Germany, to Belgium, to Switzerland, to America, to the Netherlands, to all the places where it is possible to eat. to feed. to be fed. ‘doğduğun yer değil, doyduğun yer ev’
one letter,
inexistent in any of my other languages,
disappears to leave space
to a whole other sentence—
a sentence in French. Is it a sentence to live in Western Europe as a Turkish Citizen? a Muslim woman? as a migrant from Turkey? with everything that that identity carries?
it isn’t about art,
it is what art carries.
19 May
i needed to dive into Edmund de Waal’s writing again. into its many layers. without further distractions. i had read The Hare with Amber Eyes, and i have started The White Road, but never really stayed in. When Letters to Camondo came out, i took immense care in finding and ordering a signed copy from a local bookshop. Only UK bookstores had signed copies. So, i defied the new Brexit taxes and ordered two copies, one for myself, one for my dear Laura (i could never enjoy having this book without getting one for Laura. Our love for Edmund de Waal is deep. His work is part of our history).
So: now that I re-read The Hare, followed immediately by Camondo, i have also dived again into The White Road. It seems that i needed the distance to properly welcome that book into my life, into my thoughts, and into my emotions. It feels right, right this moment.
All the connections,
they also appear,
re-appear,
they make sense.
like those white shells
i found on the beach,
so thin and beautiful.
all the broken ones
i always prefer to the fully shaped, unbroken.
(i can hear the waves as i write these lines, nothing compares to this experience).
nothing truly compares to the North Sea (dearest Edmund de Waal, our common friend Paul H. would agree. We share a love for Ostend and all the paintings of Léon Spillaert).
but i digress.
Taking the time to dive into your writing (here i am talking to you suddenly).
i must admit, although i do love reading on my Kobo (how extraordinary it is, to have hundreds of books by my side as i travel), your books need to be read on paper. Every edition i own is so beautifully printed and designed with care. The end papers, the fonts, the weight of the paper, its grain. The book itself as an object is part, entirely part of the stories you tell.
i have the copy of Camondo with me here in Zeeland, but am reading White and The Hare on my Kobo— i cannot wait to be back home to get those in my hand, and turn those pages, looking at the illustrations.
All my editions have been signed by you.
One, in Amsterdam, and dedicated to me, that night i came, with Laura, to listen to you in conversation with A.S. Byatt in November 2016 (and how wonderful to find out that i have a recording of this talk; i promise, it is for my personal archives and i shall never share it without permission). which makes me think; what does it mean to keep a personal archive when no one knows who you are? or, well, it isn’t completely true - (some) people do know me; i have published work, spoken at events, my works and talks are recorded, published, archived. So: my archives also matter. and someday, they will matter more.
i want to leave a trace, dear Edmund.
not out of ego or a narcissistic gesture— even though i love to be seen, heard, read, discussed, and archived, too.
i am creating a body of work that is partly public, and partly private (i am working on getting these public, but certain things deserve time).
it is not art, it is what art carries;
like you wrote in Camondo, i cannot stop thinking about that, how it has suddenly opened a new window for me to consider my own work.
Talking of which: you cannot know how touched i was to see, earlier this morning as i was exploring your Library of Exile that two poetry books that i have translated from Turkish were also part of your collection. The thought that you may even have read them moved me deeply. The journey of these translations is so dear to me, and they truly connect with your work, the necessity to keep stories accessible, giving another life, another breath to them. If that isn’t an immense achievement, what else is? i am proud, but more importantly, deeply moved (but i said that already— repetition has its merit).
“I am not sure what I am coming back to.”
you write in Letters to Camondo. In that same letter you add:
“But where do I belong?
I use porcelain which is a migratory material. It has come a long way. I make things that are susceptible to breakage. I stand up and tell stories. I write, but now when I write I think of palimpsests, the writing over one text by another. I seem to spend a lot of time in archives.”
and later this:
“I think you can love more than one place. I think you can move across a border and still be a whole person.”
i will now paste a few newspaper clippings onto the next pages, and will explain them later…
as you can see, i couldn’t help turning those newspaper clippings into collages, including paper i bought from a bookshop in Middelburg (such a lovely town).
you will also see the page about Laura (below); with the white feather i found on the beach on my first day here. i have posed the feather on that blue page because i love the colour contrast. and this isn’t just any notebook, it is an observation notebook, focused on Weather. To be honest, i only bought it because the paper is of excellent quality, the different patterns are just perfect, and the colour palette! this greyish blue speaks to me.
the texture of the cover feels good to the touch. it is simple, yet open to complexity.
(i don’t think i told you Laura lives in Vienna).
i am not sure i want to explain the newspaper clippings now, maybe they should speak for themselves… they make sense in this notebook, how i received them, in the context of reading your books.
(did i tell you i am working on a book about gestures? inspired by Vilem Flusser); another time.
20 May
it is our last day here in Zeeland.
We will go walk in the forest, i want to take some photographs, and: collect more shells from the beach. but morning under the sun is for reading. i have abandoned White Road for now -please don’t judge- to read some poetry. CELINA SU, a collection titled LANDIA. and already one line from the second poem transports me back to you:
“What documents me human.”
i think you’d like this poem, this line/these lines (they are two: ‘me human’ is its own line). Do documents make us human?
i found this image on a bench in Middelburg the other day. It was in a broken frame, a street give-away together with a few other stuff. i took it, threw the broken glass, cut the image— because it is just what i do. THÜRINGEN it says. a German city i have no connection with, but i like playing with found images. and i keep thinking about those lines in Celina Su’s poem,
about documents,
about paper,
about archives,
about traces.
The traces we leave behind. Is it for others to find out, or should they be erased, forgotten, like footsteps on the sand, washed away.
i can hear the waves one last night. tomorrow, i will be back in Amsterdam, the city i call home
for now.
“I am able to create a world and I am capable to pass it on.”
you said at an online event in May.
and you do, dear Edmund, you certainly do. i welcome your world into mine, and so: our common obsessions for objects, broken things, archives, and the written word find a space to exist in my own imagination and work.
Photography by Canan Marasligil. The pages are scans from Canan’s notebook she started in Zeeland in May 2021.
Writer, Literary Translator, Artist based in Amsterdam.
Canan (she/they) publishes The Attention Span Newsletter, taking the time to reflect, to analyse and to imagine our societies through writing, art and culture; and City in Translation, fostering discourse and conversations around the art of translation.