Writers 4-3: Orhan Pamuk: To Be or Not To Be Oneself

Be honest! Be true to yourself! Stop lying! I listened to the clamor of words, but as the vibrations of his voice hit my eardrums, I didn't even know what that meant. Any allusion to truth made me feel dizzy, words started to spin around in a bucket, forming a concave shape, trying to escape their meaning, fleeting away from me, while I was trying to get a grip on what he just said, but like a body resists a change in motion, so did the words resist comprehension. The thousand perspectives of me, to which constantly were added new ones, while old views were being discarded, my thoughts to which he just a moment ago still referred to as a measure of truth, flowed like a river into a larger marsh, that flooded what I could closest identify as my self. A hero with a thousand masks, that was I, and under every golden face a dead corpse, whose skull had been stuffed with honey. Who was I that I had to be honest to or about? Lies sounded as sincere to me as truth, a single transmorphism that was constantly appearing and disappearing. I tried to explain this confusion to him, which had never confused me before until I all of a sudden now had to explain myself to him, and I realized that I didn't know who I was. I was a crown prince telling stories to foreigners. I was a collection of Jungian persona, fit or unfit for the occasion, but every perspective changed continuously, and every perspective was mine alone, every moment was a single occasion, already buried in the past, covered by a layer of dust, in which I could honestly say, I am myself.