Orhan Pamuk and his Museum

I dated a woman recently whose job it was to design museums, which of course struck me as a very cool job. Along with her exquisite taste (helps with the job) she was witty, insightful, and attractive, and my only thought was – how am I not gonna screw this up.

After a few dates though, I was looking for a way out, my romantic notions were deflated – of both her and her vocation. First of all, it turns out that not every museum is like the MET, there is a huge mass of niche museums large and small that are put together for reasons other than the greater good; reasons such as propaganda, politics, and conceit, much of it put together by people in expensive suits with a price in mind throughout.

Then there was her exquisite taste I spoke of earlier, it had quickly become oppressive. She was sending every glass of wine back if it didn’t meet her standards, and she would have major dialogues with the waiter about the particular ingredients of a dish – yet she was pleasant with the server mind you. Food, music, theater, all of it had to pass muster with the curating in her mind’s museum.

I realized this woman was my Gilbert Osmond, from “A Portrait of a Lady,” who is described in the book as “thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship.”

Speaking to Madame Merle about the collection of art in his home: “I don’t object to showing my things – when people are not idiots.” Merle responds: “you do it delightfully. As cicerone [tour guide] of your museum you appear to particular advantage.”

Isabel stayed enchanted with her cicerone longer than I…she married hers. Only later does she realize her error: “Osmonds’ beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her.” “Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in the bank of flowers.”

Yes, novels can be like a museum, but what kind of museum and what is the ultimate ideal that drives it’s content and curation? Are they Osmond museums and novels or are they Isabel?

“He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such different quarters.” ———– “Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude.”