Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we won’t really exist if you don

to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction.

They kept that arrangement, faithfully, to the end. It became representative of their emotional boundaries and personal relations.

It became representative of their emotional boundaries and personal relations.

the purpose of the class: to read, discuss and respond to works of fiction. Each would have a private diary, in which she should record her responses to the novels, as well as ways in which these works and their discussions related to her personal and social experiences.

Each would have a private diary, in which she should record her responses to the novels, as well as ways in which these works and their discussions related to her personal and social experiences. I explained that I had chosen them for this class because they seemed dedicated to the study of literature. I mentioned that one of the criteria for the books I had chosen was their authors’ faith in the critical and almost magical power of literature, and reminded them of the nineteen-year-old Nabokov, who, during the Russian Revolution, would not allow himself to be diverted by the sound of bullets. He kept on writing his solitary poems while he heard the guns and saw the bloody fights from his window. Let us see, I said, whether seventy years later our disinterested faith will reward us by transforming the gloomy reality created of this other revolution.

the criteria for the books I had chosen was their authors’ faith in the critical and almost magical power of literature, and reminded them of the nineteen-year-old Nabokov, who, during the Russian Revolution, would not allow himself to be diverted by the sound of bullets. He kept on writing his so...

how these great works of imagination could help

these great works of imagination could help us in our present trapped situation as women.

us in our present trapped situati...

Nabokov’s claim that “readers were born free and ought to remain free.

A Thousand and One Nights were the three kinds of women it

the women in the story are divided into those who betray and then are killed (the queen) and those who are killed before they have a chance to betray (the virgins). The virgins, who, unlike Scheherazade, have no voice in the story, are mostly ignored by the critics. Their silence, however, is significant. They surrender their virginity, and their lives, without resistance or protest. They do not quite exist, because they leave no trace in their anonymous death. The

the women in the story are divided into those who betray and then are killed (the queen) and those who are killed before they have a chance to betray (the virgins). The virgins, who, unlike Scheherazade, have no voice in the story, are mostly ignored by the critics. Their silence, however, is significant. They surrender their virginity, and their lives, without resistance or protest.

queen’s infidelity does not rob the king of his absolute authority; it t...

Scheherazade breaks the cycle of violence by choosing to embrace different terms of engagement. She fashions her universe not through physical force, as does the king, but through imagination and reflection. This gives her the courage to risk her life and sets her apart from the other characters in the tale.

Scheherazade breaks the cycle of violence by choosing to embrace different terms of engagement. She fashions her universe not through physical force, as does the king, but through imagination and reflection. This gives her the courage to risk her life and sets her apart from the other characters in the tale.

classify the tales according to the types of women who played central roles in the stories.

Upsilamba

That word became a symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy, the tingle in the spine Nabokov expected his readers to feel in the act of reading fiction; it was a sensation that separated the good readers, as he called them, from the ordinary ones. It also became the code word that opened the secret cave of remembrance.

In this staged world, Cincinnatus’s only window to another universe is his writing.

Poshlust, Nabokov explains, “is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.

He is a hero because he refuses to become like all the rest.

It was as if the sheer act of recounting these stories gave us some control over them; the deprecating tone we used, our gestures, even our hysterical laughter seemed to reduce their hold over our lives.

Yassi felt that they had survived the jail but could not escape the bonds of traditional marriage.

Nabokov’s “other world.

there was always the shadow of another world, one that was only attainable through fiction. It is this world that prevents his heroes and heroines from utter despair, that becomes their refuge in a life that is consistently brutal.

The desperate truth of Lolita’s story is

the confiscation of one individual’s life by

ano...

Nabokov, through his portrayal of Humbert, had exposed all solipsists who take over other people’s lives.

What mattered was for her to know what she wanted.

if they wanted to write better, they should fall in love.

Although this is not one of the more spectacular scenes in Lolita, it demonstrates Nabokov’s skill, and I believe it is at the heart of the novel. Nabokov called himself a painterly writer, and this scene gives a good indication of what he meant. The description is pregnant with the tension between what has gone on before (Charlotte’s discovery of Humbert’s treachery and their confrontation, leading to Charlotte’s fatal accident) and the knowledge of more terrible things to

come. Through the juxtaposition of insignificant objects (a framed diploma, photographs of girl-children), ordinary transactions (“fair to good; keen on swimming and boating”) with personal feeling and emotions (“my impatient palm,” “my trembling hands,” “my pounding heart”), Nabokov foreshadows Humbert’s terrible deeds and Lolita’s orphaned future.

the butterfly—or is it a moth? Humbert’s inability to differentiate between the two, his indifference, implies a moral carelessness in other matters.

We are also informed of her “real” name, Dolores, the Spanish word for pain.

Lolita’s past comes to her not so much as a loss but as a lack, and like my students, she becomes a figment in someone else’s dream.

When I think of Lolita, I think of that half-alive butterfly pinned to the wall.

Lolita in the same manner that the butterfly is fixed; he wants her, a living breathing human being, to become stationary, to give up her life

What do you think of your mother? Name six personalities you admire most in life and six you dislike most. What two words would you use to describe yourself?

“What is your image of yourself?” she had written, “

am not ready for that question yet.” They were not ready—not yet.

they have no clear image of

themselves; they can only see and shape themselves through other people’s eyes—ironically, the very people they

despise. I have underlined love yourself, s...

the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.

beauty and pathos,” Véra wrote in her diary. “Critics prefer to look for moral symbols, justification, condemnation, or explanation of HH’s predicament. . . . I wish, though, somebody would notice the tender description of the child’s helplessness, her pathetic dependence on monstrous HH,

and her heartrending courage all along culminating in that squalid but essentially pure and healthy marriage, and her letter, and her dog. And that terrible expression on her face when she

Lolita belongs to a category of victims who have no defense and are never given a chance to articulate their own story. As such, she becomes a double victim: not only her life but also her life story is taken from her.