Riassunto
Riassunto di Costantinopoli
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love cities, vivid description and nineteenth-century travel writing, and anyone planning a visit to Istanbul. Gautier’s walks, mosque visits, bazaars and boat rides offer a poet’s view of the Ottoman capital.
Che cos’è questo libro
Constantinople is a travel book by the French poet and critic Théophile Gautier. He visited the Ottoman capital in 1852 and wrote up his weeks there for French readers. The city is today called Istanbul. In his day it was the seat of the sultan, a place of mosques, markets, cemeteries and crowded waterfronts that most Europeans knew only from engravings and rumor.
Gautier did not come as a diplomat or a scholar. He came as a poet with a painter's eye, and he wanted to see everything and set it down in color. You get long walks through the streets, visits to great mosques, hours in the bazaars, and boat rides on the Bosphorus. You also get his sharp, funny remarks about dogs, coffee, costumes and crowds. Over the next few minutes you will follow his route, hear what struck him most, and see how his way of looking shaped what he wrote. First, the moment he arrives by sea.
In questo riassunto
- 1The city rises from the seaFree
- 2The streets are a daily show
- 3The mosques are the heart of the city
- 4The bazaars turn trade into theater
- 5Ceremonies and dervishes draw him in
- 6Cemeteries, water and a poet's view
Punto chiave 1 di 6
The city rises from the sea
Gautier reaches Constantinople by water, and the book makes much of that approach. For him the city is first of all a picture. Domes, slender minarets, cypress trees and wooden houses climb the hills above the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. He compares the sight to a theater set, and he is almost afraid it will fall apart when he steps ashore.
He is a writer trained among painters, and he reads a view the way an artist reads a canvas. He notes the color of the water, the haze of morning, the gleam of lead roofs and gilded tips. Light matters more to him than facts. He says again and again that words are poor tools beside a brush, and then he uses them with great skill anyway.
This opening sets the terms for the whole book. Gautier is not pretending to be neutral. He tells you what delights him, what puzzles him and what he finds comic. He arrives with French habits and French expectations, and the city keeps overturning them.
For you as a reader, this first part works as a promise. The book will be a series of sights seen by a very curious man with a gift for images. It will not be a guidebook with dates and distances. It asks you to look along with him, and to forgive a certain boldness in his judgments.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 109,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 7 h 15 min
- Listening time12 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about Costantinopoli
What is Constantinople by Théophile Gautier about?
It is an account of Gautier's visit to the Ottoman capital in 1852. He describes its streets, mosques, bazaars, ceremonies, cemeteries and the Bosphorus, always with a painter's eye for color and light.
Is Gautier's Constantinople a true story?
Yes. It is a travel narrative based on his own trip to the city in 1852. Like many travel books, it is shaped by his personal taste and by the Romantic style.
Is Constantinople the same as Istanbul?
Yes. The city has been called Istanbul in everyday use for a long time, and the name became official in the twentieth century. Gautier used the name Constantinople, as did most Europeans of his day.
Is Gautier's Constantinople hard to read?
No. The structure is simple, since the book follows his walks, mosque visits, bazaar hours and boat rides. You can take it one outing at a time and enjoy the color as you go.
Is Constantinople by Gautier worth reading today?
It is worth reading for its vivid pictures of a great city before modern change, and as an example of how Europeans saw the East.