Mavi Boncuk |Herman Melville wrote about his visit to Istanbul in 1856. It was a few years after the publication of Moby-Dick. He wrote in his diary: “All day the fog held on. Very thick & damp & raw. Very miserable for the Turks and their harems...about noon the fog slowly cleared before a gentle breeze. At last, among the Prince Islands, we found ourselves lying, as in enchantment, among the Princes Islands...The fog lifted from about the skirts of the city. It was a coy disclosure, a kind of coquetting, leaving room for the imagination and heightening the scene...Up early, went out; saw cemeteries where they dumped garbage. Sawing wood over a tomb. Forests of cemeteries. Intricacy of the streets. Started alone for Constantinople and after a terrible long walk, found myself back where I started.” Herman Melville, who spent six days in Constantinople, found the city labyrinthine and often got lost. “Came home through the vast suburbs of Galata,” he noted in his journal. “Great crowds of all nations…coins of all nations circulate—Placards in four or five languages (Turkish, French, Greek, Armenian)…You feel you are among the nations…Great curse that of Babel; not being able to talk to a fellow being.”
See also: Istanbul PanoramaTurkey’s largest city has a long history of cosmopolitanism, but how does its cosmopolitan past differ from its cosmopolitan present? By Bernd Brunner