EDNOTE.
Azar Nafisi's READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN has been very widely reviewed. Less
well known is that Dr. Nafisi published a Persian monograph on Nabokov's
work. Suellen Stringer-Hye, a long-time correspodent of NABOKV-L, was,
with the help of Dr. Nafisi, able to get in touch with one of Nafisi's former
students, Nahal Naficy, who very kindly agreed to provide an English review
of the Persian volume. NABOKV-L is most grateful for Nahal's contribution.
----------------------------
This message was originally submitted by
suellen.stringer-hye@VANDERBILT.EDU
to
the NABOKV-L list at LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU.
In 1994 Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran", wrote a
critical analysis of Nabokov's works entitled "Anti-Terra: a Study
of Vladimir Nabokov's Novels". This book was written in Persian and
has not yet been translated into English. Nabokv-l contacted one of
Nafisi's former students to write a synopsis of this work. Nahal
Naficy was an English major at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabai
University, and is now a Ph.D candidate at Rice University's
Department of Anthropology. I'd like to personally thank Nahal for her contribution.
***********************************************
Antiterra: A Critical Reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels
By Azar Nafisi
Tehran, 1994
Table of Contents:
· Introduction: “Transparent Things”
· Life: “Speak, Memory”
· Reality: “The Gift”, “Look at the Harlequins”, “The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight”
· The Victim and the Victimizer: “Invitation to a Beheading”, “Bend Sinister”
· Cruelty: “Pnin”
· Genius and Madness: “Pale Fire”
· Love: “Lolita”
· Hell and Heaven: “Ada”
· Endnotes
· Nabokov’s Bibliography
· Index
The book starts with the question “Why Nabokov?” and more specifically:
“Why Nabokov, a writer none of whose works are (properly) translated into
Persian?” Is this book, then, meant not for the Persian-reading public?
It is, the author explains: “This book addresses the Persian reader who
has heard Nabokov’s name but is not familiar with his novels; the reader
who remains curious even when literature is not his/her profession; most
importantly, the reader who is instinctively drawn to fiction, for love
and passion, not for professional commitments.” (Antiterra; P4) For this
reason, and especially since there is almost no other source of adequate
and accurate information on Nabokov available to the Persian-reading public,
the book inevitably consists of some bibliographical information on Nabokov,
introducing his works, and, within the limitations of each chapter, a sum
of what different literary critics have said about him and his works. “For
the English-reading, Nabokov-acquainted youth who are occupying the last
rows in the classroom, smiling”, however, Nafisi says, there will be something,
too, if they are patient and read beyond these introductory parts.
Nafisi’s own critical reading of Nabokov’s works is inspired by Nabokov’s
statement that literary criticism is the ‘meeting place’ of the author and
the critic: “Therefore, do not judge; only describe your reactions. Never
write solely about the author or his/her works, but write about how you
relate to them. You are only allowed to write about yourself.” (my translation
from Persian, not Nabokov’s words) The book, therefore, is inevitably
about Nafisi, too, at the same time that it is about Nabokov.
But what is it in Nabokov that convinces Nafisi that he will be particularly
of interest to the Iranian reading public? Why not Faulkner or Joyce or
Peter Taylor? Through Nabokov’s “Transparent Things”, Nafisi talks about
Nabokov’s obsession with ‘time’ and with the idea of ‘exile’ in its temporal
as well as spatial, metaphysical as well as physical, senses. Nabokov’s
works are deeply concerned with loss: loss of a past, a person, a place,
a practice. Exile in Nabokov’s works is anything from the heart-wrenching
separation from the mother as we grow up to separation from the motherland
as we are forced to leave it; it’s a separation from our beginnings, a dive,
wanted or not, from our cozy surroundings into a foreign and often terrifying
landscape, a space whose past we do not share and whose present we do not
fully comprehend. Nafisi ties all this to the situation in contemporary
Iran, where facing modernization, the cozy and familiar traditional past
has been getting more and more out of reach and what has come to constitute
the present has remained foreign and hard to comprehend for many. ‘We
all live in exile: We have lost touch with our past and we have not managed
to make sense of our present because we have not been able and/or willing
to try. Therefore, this place is no longer our home. Do we try, like Hugh
in “Transparent things”, to forget/ignore the present to gain back our lost
paradise or we negate the past altogether? Of course, there should be a
middle way, but it is not easy to find.” (Antiterra, Ps 12 & 13) Nafisi
finds Nabokov’s works particularly of interest to Iranians precisely because
of this ‘cultural exile’ they seem to be in. Through creative art and imagination,
Nafisi believes, Nabokov and his surviving characters create spaces and
identities for themselves that are independent of only one or the other
geographical or temporal entity. They ‘synthesize’, this is the key word;
they create something anew out of the Past and the Present, the Self and
the Other, the Here and the There; they create themselves and their spaces
anew. Those who simply cling to a lost past and remain blind to the present
or those who think they can completely forgo their past, lose and cause
loss at the end; so do the ones who are blind towards the others or towards
themselves, for that matter. In that, there are, indeed, questions and
answers that should concern the contemporary Iranian public deeply. “The
past escapes one’s grasp on one hand and has a heavy presence on the other.
With the past, we have to inevitably be creative. We should be able to
create it anew; otherwise, we will be destroyed under its dead weight.”
(Antiterra, P9)
In Nabokov’s own intimate experiences of revolution and exile, in Hugh’s
effort to retrieve the past, in Humbert Humbert’s imposing of his dream
on the life of another, in Fyodor’s art of writing one’s own life, in the
liberating awareness of deception and dependence before the beheading and
the magical power of creativity against destruction, in Pnin’s delightful
relationship with the everyday reality, in Ada’s painful confrontation with
time and loss, in all this, there is something deeply moving and surprisingly
close to home for Iranians if they only get a chance to become familiar
with this treasury. Nafisi’s book is an attempt at that. The seven chapters
of Antiterra are each a series of snapshots: Images from the novels, personal
impressions, literary theory, and Nabokov’s own words and life blend together
in an overflowing, engaging symphony that reminds me of Nafisi’s seminars
back in Tehran where she taught some of the same novels. Her style is
friendly and from the heart; she looks you directly in the eyes while there
is no doubt in her, and none to remain in you, that what she is talking
about is serious business! What is life? What is reality? What is love?
What is cruelty? What is hell? What is heaven? What is madness? What
is genius? What is home? What is time? What is beauty? Nafisi does not
set off for philosophical answers to these questions, but she raises these
questions through her critical reading of Nabokov’s novels in a way that
you cannot really stop wondering once you’ve started. I have a feeling
Nafisi, like the works she discusses, is after precisely that: to make her
readers wonder about the everyday, to look for wonders in the ordinary.
Remember, Alice in Wonderland is one of her favorite books and major points
of reference!
The back cover reads:
“The main question is?do we think and write in the past tense? Do we simply
hand our identity over to the Other and settle for a fake ?and inevitably
second hand?Present? Do we see ourselves as victims of our fate and hide
our own weaknesses under the guise of dissatisfaction with our conditions?
Nabokov’s response to all of these questions is negative. He confronts
the loss of his homeland, his personal and collective past, and his national
culture, armed with imagination and creativity.
Nabokov’s life is contemporary with many of the most important events
of the 20th century, a chaotic and anxiety-ridden time. Nevertheless, in
Nabokov’s inner life there is hardly any change, as if he has always constantly
moved against the destructive forces of the outside. His heroism is not
in some heroic action but in his insistence. His insistence in preserving
his individuality and wholeness against all odds.”
---------------------------------------
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Vanderbilt University
Email:
suellen.stringer-hye@Vanderbilt.Edu