Love, like a newspaper column, has to make us happy now

“Love, like a newspaper column, has to make us happy now” is a maxim spoken by Celâl Salik to Kemal during a dance. By comparing love with a newspaper column, it makes the present emotional effect—not duration or promise—the measure of each one’s beauty and power. Its light, conversational form acquires a sharper significance from the jealous maneuvering unfolding around the speakers.

The Maxim and Its Measure

Celâl Salik completes the comparison by saying, “We judge the beauty and power of each by how deep an impression it makes on the soul.” The sentence treats love and the column as different forms of expression that can nevertheless be judged by a shared result: the depth of their immediate impact. Happiness is not deferred to a future outcome; it has to be produced now. The phrase therefore joins aesthetic judgment to emotional experience, making the strength of an impression the standard for both.

The formulation also answers an earlier, teasing question from Kemal about whether love has anything in common with a newspaper column. The exchange turns his joke into a concise principle, shifting from apparent opposition to analogy: love, like a column, is judged by what it does to its audience in the present.

The Dance-Floor Context

The maxim is spoken during a break between songs, while Kemal is dancing with Sibel and talking with Celâl Salik. Its abstract comparison is immediately surrounded by competing acts of attention. Celâl is listening to his raven-haired dance partner rather than to Kemal, while Füsun stands close to Zaim, whispering near his neck as they dance. Kemal thinks they can see him and Sibel, though they appear to pretend not to notice them.

Kemal responds by steering Sibel and himself toward the pair and deliberately making them collide. He then offers Sibel’s hand to Zaim and pushes the two into a dance, describing the gesture as self-sacrifice. With Sibel and Zaim reluctantly dancing together, Kemal and Füsun look into each other’s eyes; he places a hand on her waist and dances her away. The scene gives the maxim an ironic counterpoint: Kemal has just heard that love should make people happy in the present, yet his own pursuit of that feeling depends on staging an encounter and redirecting other people’s attention.

Narrative Significance

The expression compresses the scene’s tension between a general claim about love and Kemal’s particular, calculated behavior. The columnist offers a standard based on emotional effect, while Kemal acts to bring about a moment of closeness with Füsun. His maneuver may produce the impression he desires, but the surrounding reluctance and pretense prevent the dance from becoming an uncomplicated image of happiness.

The maxim thus works both as an aesthetic analogy and as a lens on the scene’s immediate stakes. A newspaper column and a love affair are treated as powerful insofar as they leave a deep impression; in the dance, that impression is bound up with who notices whom, who is paired with whom, and how briefly Kemal can hold Füsun’s attention.