Caption: Stills from "Book Thief"
The Iranian writer Azar Nafisi, known around the world for her book Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicles the story of resistance in a totalitarian state: she herself sows the seeds of freedom as a professor of literature by leading her students to read; students take a breath from the suffocating reality as they read, and self-consciousness creeps into their own. They read forbidden masterpieces at underground reading clubs: Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jane Austen. Literature illuminates reality—Lolita, imprisoned and molded by Humbert, and Cincinnato, who dances with the jailer in The Invitation to Beheading, is like a people in a totalitarian state; on the other hand, it becomes a weapon against reality and breaks through the blockade—and in reading it tries to preserve its own language, feelings, and desires, and retains its own subjectivity, as Nabokov said, "The reader is born free, and should always be free." ”
Today, Nafisi seems more and more opportune. April 23 is World Book Day, and if we were to recommend one of the many writers introduced by Sanhui to read today, then we would like to recommend Nafisi. In this issue, I would like to share with you the interview of reporter Luo Siyu on Nafisi.
Interview/Luo Siyu
Originally published in The Economic Observer on August 30, 2015
New York, 11 September 2001. As the dust fell next to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, an unknown woman came out of the dust, tired, and asked the reporter who was waiting there: "Why?" ”
The Charlie Hebdo incident in 2015 and the rise of the ISIS nation have made this conundrum even heavier.
Why? For more than a decade, many political scientists have tried to explain this, from Huntington's "clash of civilizations" to Mark Leela's islamic modernization, but most of these statements have been from the perspective of Western civilization and looked at Muslim countries from the perspective of others. Although there is no lack of insight, it has left some regrets, and even to some extent, it has made these veiled countries more and more mysterious. As a political scientist, Huntington himself did not believe in the "rational choices" built on numbers, models, and dry and barren jargon in political science today, because culture is emotional and society is human.
So who will give us perceptual awareness? Who's going to answer the woman's sad question in the dust of 9/11? This is perhaps the meaning of iranian writers Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "The Things I Am Silent About."
Source: AP
The Outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 overthrew the monarchy that had lasted for millennia and interrupted the modernization brought about by the Pahlavi "White Revolution" . In Iran after the revolution, Khomeini's idea of establishing an Islamic government - "no West, no East, only Islam" - became the guiding ideology of nation-building.
Since then, Islamization has been fully implemented in Iran, from state politics to private life, living in strict accordance with the teachings of Islam, and launching a cultural revolutionary movement. At this time, Islamic women were required to wear black robes and cover their hair, and violators were punished with whipping or detention, and wearing a veil had become a politically revolutionary act. In 1967, the Pahlavi "White Revolution" family protection law was abolished, polygamy was re-legalized, and the minimum age of marriage for women was lowered from 18 to 9 years.
During the Islamic Revolution, protesters took to the streets by David Burnett
It was during this period that Hazard Nafisi, who received his Doctor of Letters degree from Oklahoma State University in the United States, returned to his native Iran and taught at three universities in Iran, but was eventually forced to resign because of the problem of wearing a veil. Because of the harsh political atmosphere, "universities are once again targeted by cultural puritists." Even at Alamata Batabai University, considered Iran's most liberal college, the third school where the author teaches, classes and activities that do not meet Islamic standards are ridiculed or blocked. At the entrance to the campus, there are guards who check women's clothing and bags, and if they find blush or nail polish, they are scolded, go to prison to accept punishment, and even be arrested and imprisoned just because they are good-looking or have a sexy posture of eating apples.
It was also in this context that Azar Nafisi, who taught Western literature at the university, resigned because he could not bear the harassment, surveillance and restriction of action. Because "what the university bureaucracy values most is not the quality of an individual's work, but whether the person's lips are correct and whether the hair is neat", "When the faculty and staff are preoccupied with how to delete the word 'wine' from Hemingway's novel, when they think that Brontë tolerates adultery and does not teach her work, ask the teacher how to concentrate on his work." ”
Professor Nafisi resigned, but did not give up the teaching job he loved. She opened a small literature class in her living room, and selected 7 former female students to take Western literature classes and secretly read some literary works. At this time, even classic Persian literature such as "One Thousand and One Nights" has been banned in Iran, and the Western literature they want to read is even less likely to be found in Iranian bookstores. In selecting these seven girls, Professor Nafisi did not care about their religious culture and social background, and among the seven girls, there were both girlfriends and each other, but they had one thing in common: bravery and fragility blended, and they loved Western literature.
Hazard Nafisi
When the seven girls walked into the classroom, taking off their airtight black robes, revealing their nail polished hands and their favorite clothes, the secret class took on the color of Professor Nafisi's dream class. In this class, they read Lolita together, they read The Great Gatsby, they read James, they read Austen. It was already 1995, 16 years after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. So, unlike Professor Nafisi, her seven students have almost never experienced freedom, and even one student has been in prison for 7 years, but this does not mean that they are unaware of freedom.
In Nafisi's secret literature class, they seek freedom, discuss freedom, and talk about "deprived kisses, unseen movies, and unblown winds on their skin." Thus, these Western literary works have a Tehran color: Cincinnato, a death row prisoner in Nabokov's novel The Invitation to Beheading, becomes a metaphor for them. In the novel, Cincinnati is forced to dance in circles with the jailers, "the most serious crime of the totalitarians is to force the people, including their victims, to become accomplices in their crimes." Dancing with the jailer and participating in his own execution is undoubtedly the most extreme atrocity." Finally, Cincinnatus was taken to the execution table, where he kept repeating the miraculous incantation: "I am alone." It was this unique language, not the language the jailer forced him to use, that saved Cincinnati. As he held his head, the false world around him, including the execution table and the executioner, collapsed in front of him.
In Professor Nafisi's view, their situation is not much different from that of Cincinnati. "They invade all our secret spaces, try to prescribe every pose, and force us to be part of them, which in itself is another way of execution." "The only way to get out of the circle and stop dancing with the jailer is to try to preserve the subjectivity of the self—the specificity that is difficult to describe but distinguishes from others." It was also in this secret class that Professor Nafisi and her seven students got rid of dancing with the jailers. Their prisons disintegrate in front of them as they dress in different styles and colors, with or without makeup, talking about literature and their dreams.
Unlike "Reading Lolita in Tehran", "The Things I Am Silent" tells the story of my own family, so the time also extends from the eighties and nineties of the last century to the beginning of this century, from the end of the monarchy to the establishment of the Islamic government, from the "White Revolution" of the Pahlavi dynasty to the Islam of Khomeini, which is the beginning of the modernization of the ancient country of Iran in the torrent of the world. The author's parents come from the same family, the Nafisi family, one of the oldest family in Iran known as a scholar, whose father is the only betrayer in a conservative family, one of Iran's two most promising young politicians, the youngest mayor of Tehran, his mother, who was the daughter-in-law of the prime minister and one of eight women who worked in Parliament. Their daughter, Eden Hazard, grew up listening to her father tell ancient national stories and Iranian history, feeling Islamic thought and culture; at the age of thirteen, she went to England to receive education, and then to Switzerland and the United States. Therefore, the turbulent political environment and changes in Iran in the last century have deeply branded the Nafisi family. In fact, at the end of the book, the author is very thoughtfully attached to the "Chronology of The History of Iran in the 20th Century", and to some extent, the history of the Nafisi family is a microcosm of Iranian history.
In this family history, Hazard Nafisi not only tells his family's stories and tragedies frankly, but also publishes his most secret things, including the sexual harassment he encountered as a child and the sexual repression of Iranian society. Nothing reflects a change in society more than the changes in women: from the grandmother of Azar Nafisi who mysteriously committed suicide to the loveless mother who has been struggling to become a doctor, from Azar Nafisi who received a doctorate in literature in the United States to her students who hid under the airtight black robes and her daughter who grew up in the shells of the Iran-Iraq War, who began to enter the illegitimate fate of modern ancient Iran, and the conflict between Islamic civilization and modern Western civilization. Almost all of it is condensed on the black veil of an Iranian woman — not really a matter of cloth, which, in Azar Nafisi's view, is freedom, a freedom of choice: one can wear a veil all one's life, like a devout Muslim grandmother, or teach Western literature in a university classroom without a veil. Compared with "Reading Lolita in Tehran", this veil is not only political, but also cultural, historical, and human, and thus becomes vivid, with a breath of life, making people soft inside.
Three works by Azar Nafisi published by Sanhui Books
At the end of this family history, Azar Nafisi tells her mother that she is going to write a book called Shameless Women for her mother—around the end of the nineteenth century, a Persian scholar was walking on the road, meditating, and suddenly bumped into by a foreigner on horseback, who was so angry that the scholar was absent-minded and smoked him with a horse whip. This caused an uproar. Foreigners were asked to apologize to the scholars. Foreigners come to the door to apologize. In order to receive foreigners, the Persian scholar had to borrow several pieces of Western-style furniture so that foreigners would not sit on the carpet. As soon as foreigners entered the door, they broke a Persian rule that they did not enter the door and took off their shoes, but wore boots to enter the door - which made Persian scholars finally confirm that the earth was round, and the apology seemed to become a cultural invasion. For many days in a row, the Persian scholar pondered his findings, and finally he declared: "Yes, the earth is round; women will begin to think, and once they begin to think, they will become shameless." This is what Hazard Nafisi means for "shameless" women — "educated women who are not afraid to indulge in lust, both real women in their lives and fictional characters in fiction."
This story can almost be seen as a parable of Iranian modernization, where women begin to become "shameless" with some sort of modern identity. As a literature professor, Hazard Nafisi also found that the modernization of Iran and the modernization of literary works began at the same time, and when they told stories in their own unique language, literary works had a cincinnatou color in Tehran.
Apparently, Hazard Nafisi fulfilled her promise to her mother, except that her book dedicated to her mother is not called Shameless Women, but "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "The Things I Silence About.". In a book dedicated to his mother, Azar Nafisi "shamelessly" takes off the black veil of an Iranian woman, speaks in the language of Cincinnati, and expresses in a sensual way the sufferings and pains that ancient Iran experienced in the course of modernization — perhaps an answer to the sad question in the dust of 9/11.
If there is no freedom of imagination
Democracy does not exist
In fact, when I contacted her with a glimmer of hope, I did not expect to interview Professor Azar Nafisi, because after reading her "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "The Things I Am Silent", there was always the illusion that she might not be able to come and go in public. Who knows, the next day I got a reply, about a small café opposite the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on the banks of the Portomark River in Washington, where Professor Nafisi and her family live nearby, near the famous Pratunam complex, not far from the White House.
Professor Nafisi, dressed in a simple and casual black and gray cloth dress, arrived at the small café on time, wearing a pair of fiery red earrings, which became familiar in less than a minute. As she says in the novel, her family is a storyteller, and Nafisi is. In more than an hour of interviews, she talked a lot about Iran and her home, her strong interest in China, and the security and freedom that the United States has brought her. Of course, the most is her favorite literature. In her view, literature is as important as life. To this end, she and Penguin Publishing have done a small online campaign to encourage readers to stand up with her and defend the importance of literature in today's society. In her opinion, in Nabokov's words, "Readers are born free and should always be free." ”
Q: What about the seven female students you mentioned in Reading Lolita in Tehran? Do they know you wrote about them?
Nafisi: I know, I told them, and they know which one they are in the book, but outsiders can't see who they are.
Q: Is this going to cause them trouble?
NAFISI: Some of them have had trouble before. Generally as long as they stop their activities or protest, there will be no more trouble, if they always engage in some activities and do not stop, it will be trouble... You know what?
In fact, these students do not know what a dictatorship is. They just feel that they can't restrict people's lives, whether they live in Iran or other countries, they can't ban people from loving life, prohibiting people from loving reading, enjoying life, and so on. All of this boils down to freedom, the freedom to do what you want.
Tehran 1976 Source: BRUNO BARBEY/Magnum
Q: You mentioned in "What I Am Silent About" that your grandmother witnessed the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1905-1911, and your mother was still working in Congress...
Nafisi: Iran was actually the first constitutional country in the Middle East. From my grandmother's generation, women began to fight for freedom and talk about freedom. That generation of women fought for a more open society, and since then, Iranian women have gone out to work, started meetings, started talking about women's education. In my mother's generation, it was more free; when it came to my generation, I went back at once. So I'm very sad for my daughter, she hasn't seen freedom...
Q: In your book, I not only read the century-old history of contemporary Iran, but also a history of Iranian women and culture.
Nafisi: What I'm trying to do is integrate personal history into cultural history and tell readers what life was like in Iran.
The streets of Tehran in 1986 Source: JEAN GAUMY/Magnum
Q: In the first chapter of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," you recount Nabokov's Invitation to Beheading, especially at the end, when Cincinnato recites a magical incantation on the execution table against the outside world. Is that a metaphor?
NAFISI: Yes, I felt this from Nabokov. His homeland, the Soviet Union, was devoid of individualism and individual autonomy. Therefore, Nabokov is very clear about the meaning of talking about specific individuals, and all his works are talking about personal equality and personal independence. I like him and use him in my books because art and literature can make you an individual because they are talking to you in your own unique language, which is what totalitarian societies fear. Democracy means allowing you to make your voice heard, whereas a totalitarian regime wants only one voice, one way, and the more voices there are, the weaker the totalitarian regime. Only then will a country change be possible.
Q: In the final chapter of The Things I Have Been Silent, you copied a passage you wrote in your notebook on July 23, 1997: "I have repeatedly fantasized about adding one more clause to the Bill of Rights: freedom of imagination. I have come to believe that true democracy does not exist without the freedom of imagination or the unrestricted right to use imaginary works. For a person to have a full life, he must be able to openly shape and express his inner world, dreams, thoughts and desires, and always be able to engage in dialogue between the public and private spheres. Otherwise, how do we know that we have existed, have feelings, have desires, will resent, and will fear? "What is freedom of imagination?
NAFISI: I always thought that imagination and interest were closely linked. Because if you want to imagine, you first have curiosity, there's action, to find out what people are talking about. Imagination connects you to places you've never seen before, and when you're reading America or reading these great works, that America is not the America that the government calls it, but the America that one understands for oneself. At this point, the truth is your own discovery, not someone telling you. Therefore, imagination is often an interest. This is why the United States did not want slaves to learn to read, and if slaves read privately, they would be punished. In the past, there were also many countries where women were not allowed to receive education. Because once you learn to read, once you learn to imagine, you want more, you understand government, you learn a lot from others, it's dangerous.
Q: You tell your mother an Iranian story in the book, and when women learn to think, they become "shameless."
Nafisi: Yes, thinking is dangerous for people, because as soon as women start thinking, they wonder why men are more important than themselves. How are they different from me? I can also make money, I can go out, I am also very smart... In this way, women become very dangerous and they demand their own status. This is not a political system, and many people are very authoritarian. Many families are dictatorships imposed by men over women, such as those of fathers over daughters.
Q: No wonder you love to ask your schoolgirls: you are free to fall in love and choose your husband...
Nafisi: Hahahahaha, I know a lot of girls in Iran who are very cute and very smart, they are not allowed to go out with men of the same age, they marry not because of love but because they have to choose. I've talked about this in books like Austen's novels. Austen lived in 18th-century England, and her novels were so revolutionary that her heroines did not marry for money, but with men of her own choosing. 18th century England was very revolutionary, and I want to emphasize that what I mean by revolutionary is personal, and I am not saying the whole world, but one person.
Q: No wonder you read Austin. So why did you choose Gatsby and James for your students?
Nafisi: You know there's a lot of freedom and a lot of bad stuff in America. Gatsby's novel is about how money corrupts people, makes people selfish and greedy, and sees no one else in sight. James' two novels, Daisy Miller and Washington Square, are about a woman saying no.
Q: What about Lolita?
NAFISI: I mention in the book that Humbert didn't actually see Lolita. If you see me and I see you, we will respect each other and will not think about changing each other or turning you into another you. But Humbert, who could never forget his former dead lover, turned Lolita into his former lover. This is a crime. In a totalitarian society, you are not you, you become the you they want, it's like a kind of death. So when I talk about Lolita, I say it's extremely despicable. Humbert stripped her of her childhood, of her future.
Stills from Lolita (1997).
Q: Is there an internal logic to reading the four parts of Lolita in Tehran?
NAFISI: Yeah, every part is about one aspect of talking about freedom, how to find freedom in your country, not only political freedom power, but also personal freedom and cultural freedom. I don't quite believe that we can be free if we don't self-criticize. We must criticize the world while reflecting on ourselves and changing ourselves. As long as everyone changes, society will change.
Q: You also have a book, Imaginary Republic, which will soon be available in Chinese, can you introduce this book?
NAFISI: A lot of Americans read my books and always ask me a question, in an unequal country, maybe you need literature. In a democratic country, is literature still needed? I want to tell these people that a democratic country cannot survive without an imagination of a republic, an imagination of democracy. In this book, you can see that in the United States, individualism does not mean making money, but means individual independence.
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◎ The "tiny openings" brought about by secret reading lead to great freedom
◎ About family and state, politics and literature, rebellion and revolution, lies and love
◎ A wonderful family memoir, but also the epitome of the period of social transformation in Iran
In an imaginary republic, everything that should be taken for granted could be subverted
This collection contains dozens of life essays, book reviews, and cultural observation notes by journalist and freelance writer Luo Siyu. Living, reading, and the search for goodness that comes with them all together form the source of Freedom for Luo Siyan.
Edited | Ashanshan