The Naive and Sentimental Novelist

Nobel laureate Pamuk (The Museum of Innocence) delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard in 2009 (he wrote them in Turkish and then read them in the English translation given here). His chosen title refers to Friedrich von Schiller's essay "On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry," in which Schiller distinguishes between the naive poet, who is "one with nature," writing spontaneously with little attention to artifice, and the sentimental (i.e., reflective) poet, who worries about his technique in adequately capturing the world he wishes to describe. Pamuk's lectures are perhaps best read as a string of brilliant aperçus rather than a systematic text on the art of writing (or reading) the novel. Though respectful of past masters, Pamuk takes exception with many of their conclusions, particularly Aspects of the Novel in which E.M. Forster posits the centrality of character. Instead, argues Pamuk, it is the world in which the protagonist moves that propels the novel: this interaction draws in the reader, who finds the novel emotively true even while knowing it is fiction. Pamuk draws on his own experience as a non-Western reader of Western novels and as a writer.