Category Archives: Istanbul

Tulips of Istanbul

February 24, 2024 – 5:40 pm

This post about flowers on the Bosphorus originated in 2015, when I created it as a webpage on my part of my department’s website. A follow-up the next year did become a blog post, “Early Tulips.” Since we moved to Sarıyer in 2022, it turns out we can walk to the Emirgan Korusu in an hour. This is

  • what I have done a couple of times in the last week,
  • why I put this old post here, below the following new photos, from Saturday, February 24, 2024 (made with my old mobile, unlike the old photos!).


I started out in Atatürk City Forest, following the trails down to the lake


On Saturdays, the old road through the stream valley below the lake hosts a bazaar

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Art | Tagged | Comments (1)

Cavafy in Istanbul

September 10, 2023 – 10:03 am

The first part of this post concerns a poem by Constantine Cavafy on accepting one’s fate. There are three parts after that:

The Cavafy poem, “The God Abandons Antony,” is based on a passage in Plutarch’s life of that person. Susan Cain wrote about the poem in a newsletter. Her book Quiet gave me a new appreciation for my parents. It so happens that my parents had me by adoption. Unfortunately other people are not happy to be in that situation.

Some people are also not happy with their sex. Cavafy’s poem could have given courage to Ms Cain during a painful birth. Courage is literally manliness in Greek. Plutarch writes of a man’s imitation of a woman in labor. Roberto Calasso’s Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony led me to the story. I talk about all of that.

I have since learned of another good essay, “Personal Integrity in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy,” in Beshara Magazine, by Andrew Watson. A different Andrew Watson played football for Scotland in 1881, and The Guardian has an article, “‘We looked identical’: one man’s discovery of slavery, family and football” (24 December 2020), by Tusdiq Din, about Malik Al-Nasir, formerly Mark Watson, who discovered, through their physical resemblance, a family relation with Andrew.

When Ayşe and I moved from Fulya to Tarabya last October, we were coming nearer where C. P. Cavafy once lived along the Bosphorus.

Boxes packed for moving. Rolled-up carpets; bubble wrap around bookcases. Light comes from a window on the right and a glowing globe on the upper left. Two more spherical paper shades sit on boxes
Last evening in Fulya
Saturday, October 15, 2022

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Poetry, Sex and Gender | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Seventh Hill, March, 2013

May 19, 2023 – 2:34 pm

As Rome was traditionally founded on seven hills, so seven hills have been identified within the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, New Rome.

The theme of seven hills is found in Turkish culture today, as for example in

  • the clothing company called Sevenhill,
  • the university on the Asian side of Istanbul called Yeditepe (i.e. Seven Hills).

This is about a tour in 2013, roughly following part of the chapter called “The Seventh Hill” in Sumner-Boyd and Freely, Strolling Through Istanbul (revised and updated edition, London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010). There are no really spectacular sites along the tour. This fact itself makes the tour remarkable: it shows how many interesting things lie beyond the main tourist centers of the city.

Here is a Google map I made of the sites visited.

I created this post originally, not long after the tour it describes; however, I posted it on my departmental website, although this blog did exist in those days too. I last edited the post on the departmental site, Monday, July 2, 2018. I return to it now because of friends’ interest in Byzantine sites in Istanbul (also I have completed the posts about the books of the Iliad that began in November).

As I said, the sites visited here are not spectacular, but they may still be remarkable. The Byzantine ones are:

See also a later post, “Samatya Tour, July, 2018,” for more in this area, including

On Sunday, March 24, 2013, my friend Cédric and I took the tram to Aksaray. We passed under an elevated boulevard to reach Valide Sultan Camii, constructed in the late nineteenth century, in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Tagged | Comments (0)

Figs

November 16, 2021 – 2:16 pm

This is about figs, because the opening of “The Sixth Elegy” of the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke is about them, and I turn out to live among them.

Fig trees growing like weeds on Ayşecik Sokağı
Fulya, Şişli
November 15, 2021

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Summer YILDIZ Park Tour

August 1, 2021 – 7:24 pm

This post contains images from one of the walking tours that I have learned to make from our flat on the European side of Istanbul.

When the Covid-19 pandemic got going, and there was nowhere in particular to go, I would wander aimlessly, just for the exercise. Then I figured out that, in about two hours, I could walk down to Ortaköy (“Middle Village,” Μεσαχώριον) by one route, coming back by another. I could also pass through the wall around the garden of one of the Ottoman sultans, then exit by another.

The particular route below takes in as much greenery as possible, including several named parks:

Ihlamur Parkı is different from the nearby Ihlamur Kasırları, “Linden Pavilions.” Though it contains two Ottoman stelae, the park does not seem to have a name posted on the ground; its name on the list above links to the Twitter account of a group formed to resist its being built over.

Ayşe and I walked the route below, Sunday morning, August 2, 2021, during a heat wave.

Down into the valley

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Tourism | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Computer Recovery

November 2, 2019 – 8:13 am

Part of this post is a laboratory notebook. I record how I fixed my computer, because

  • I am pleased to have been able to do it, and

  • I may have to do it again.

Briefly, when Windows on my laptop failed, I installed Ubuntu, but this failed. Somebody else installed Ubuntu again, and this worked for a while before failing. I managed to fix that problem for myself; but later an upgrade failed. Now I have fixed that. Computer on table by window at dawn

I am recording further issues in an addendum.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Pirsig | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Şişli Tour, July 2018

July 19, 2018 – 2:46 pm

When I lived in Ankara, I tried to build up a collection of photographs about life in different cities. I was exercised by the Ankara mayor’s utter disrespect for pedestrians, as shown for example in his narrowing of sidewalks (by widening roads) so that bus shelters would have to block them, and the sidewalks themselves might disappear into the walls surrounding the adjacent embassies. I took photographs of such situations and started putting them on my webpages (I didn’t have this blog then). I looked for similar situations when we visited Europe. Such visits were usually for conferences, and I prepared webpages about Barcelona, Besançon, Berne, and Istanbul.

   

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Tourism | Tagged | Comments (1)

Samatya Tour, July 2018

July 5, 2018 – 7:40 am

This is about a solo walking tour on Sunday, July 1, 2018. I was mostly around the Seventh Hill of the old walled city of Constantinople, ultimately in the quarter called Ψαμάθεια in Greek, and in Turkish Samatya.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in History, Tourism | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Çarşamba Tour, April 2018

July 2, 2018 – 5:12 pm

Ayşe and I toured the northern part of the old walled city of Istanbul—including the religiously conservative district of Çarşamba—with our student Abdullah and his brother Yusuf on Sunday, April 8, 2018. At another site I documented a similar tour in March, 2015. Now I do not try to be so thorough. I did not try to document the whole trip photographically, but here is a selection of pictures that I did take. We saw Byzantine and Ottoman structures. For the former, I have since found a comprehensive reference: The Byzantine Legacy.

Kalendarhane

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Tourism | Tagged | Comments (1)

War and Talk

June 18, 2017 – 7:41 pm

This is a foray into the mystery of how things happen, based the 164th of the 361 chapters of War and Peace. This chapter contains, in a one-sentence paragraph, a summary of Tolstoy’s theory of history:

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Causation, Collingwood, Criteriological Science, Harper’s, History, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (11)