9. F

"I would caution against paying too much attention to the objects and relics of “first love,” for these might distract the viewer from the depth of compassion and gratitude that now arose between us. So it is precisely to illustrate the solicitude in the caresses that my eighteen-year-old lover bestowed upon my thirty-year-old skin as we lay quietly in this room in each other’s arms, that I have chosen to exhibit this floral batiste handkerchief, which she had folded so carefully and put in her bag that day but never removed." (The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk)

"As with most of the displays, the final composition of this box is very different from what I had first intended. I had already explained the significance of the inkwell, of Füsun’s white belt, and of her floral embroidered handkerchief when Füsun and Kemal make love for the first time. But as I began to arrange the boxes, I came to feel that the objects that I’d been collecting for so many years and that were portrayed in the book could take on new meanings when displayed in the museum. As they gradually found their places in the museum, the objects began to talk among themselves, singing a different tune and moving beyond what was described in the novel. None of my ambitious preliminary drawings, my plans for perforated boxes, nor any of the possible arrangements seemed to be true to the spirit and soul of this box; I was trying to make a sort of painting with the objects, but they were trying to tell me something different. One day in the summer of 2010, as I stood on the back balcony of the workshop listening to the sorrowful sound of raindrops and looking dejectedly at the apartment buildings and trees around me, I saw this rusty old bedspring on a neighboring balcony and decided to try it out, and I realized very quickly that the objects were suddenly communicating with one another in this new arrangement, just like the objects stored in the dusty rooms in my grandmother’s house did. While making the museum, we frequently came face-to-face with the serendipitous nature of beauty." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)