reviewsnmore

Books: 4
Movies: 1
Short stories: 1
Episodes: 0
Total: 3

 Art is a crucial part of not only paintings, but dominantly in literature. Azar Nafisi believes that art is important for reasons beyond the surface purpose of escaping from reality into a fantasy world. She believes its importance is to find truths about the lives that she and others are leading that may not have been realized otherwise. Nafisi agreed with Nabokov’s claim that “readers were born free and ought to remain free” in that readers’ minds cannot be limited by the oppression of the government. The “meaning” of art is quite subjective although there is such a thing as a “wrong” interpretation of a work of literature or to a painting. Art represents different views for Humbert Humbert, Azar Nafisi, Vladimir Nabokov, Jay Gatsby, and others. Art has much social, political, and cultural value in Reading Lolita in Tehran whereas its value (at least according to Nabokov) seems to be aesthetic in Lolita.

            There are many different values of art that have been seen throughout various works of literature. Although there is personal value in art (for example, Azin’s red nails that “connected her to a different dimension, a place known only to Azin” [p. 267]), it is in no way limited to just that. To Nafisi, art is a separate world that the reader can escape into by literature. However, she also alludes to many other values of art that are not so rudimentary. “What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.” Nafisi believes that there are answers that may be found within the confines of great literature. Through the art of literature, readers may be looking for what is good and ideal in the world, whether this be through stories and characters that behave in an “ideal” fashion or not. In Henry James’s The Real Thing, this same idea of “the ideal thing” is present in the transformation of Miss Churm in paintings. The narrator in the story said that “if she was lost it was only as the dead who go to heaven are lost—in the gain of an angel the more” alluding to his belief that Miss Churm became better in the imitation of life that was created in art. Nafisi also has “life imitating art imitating life” in Reading Lolita in Tehran: “I remember yellow and white daffodils; the whole living room was filled with vases of daffodils. I had put the vases not on the tables but on the floor, beside a painting of yellow flowers in two blue vases, also on the floor”.

            Azar Nafisi agreed with Vladimir Nabokov’s claim that “readers were born free and ought to remain free” in that she believed that despite any exterior rules or oppression, readers have the freedom of literature to escape into to live through vicariously until they are brought back into reality. The sanctuary and freedom of reading is also evident in Lolita: “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita” (p. 309).

            An example of the subjectivity of art is evident in Reading Lolita in Tehran in the word “upsilamba”, a word that was invented by Vladimir Nabokov. It is never said exactly what he intended for it to mean, but Nafisi instructed her students to say what the word meant for them (“let [their] minds wander” [p. 21]) by associating it with whatever they wanted. Azar associated “upsilamba” with the joy of a leap; Yassi thought it was like the name of a dance; Manna imagined a silver fish; Azin thought it was like a melody; Mashid imagined girls jumping rope; to Sanaz, it was a small African boy’s secret magical name and Nassrin imagined the word to be a magic code that opened the door to a secret cave filled with treasures. This word, this work of art, created by Nabokov was up for interpretation to Nafisi’s class to let their minds run free. 

            Nabokov in the afterward of Lolita said “For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm”. In Pride and Prejudice, the ideal occurs when Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth finally are on the same, ardent level with one another openly. This bliss in terms of The Real Thing is the ideal thing for the painter to achieve in his art but he found this lacking in the Monarchs, the so-called “real thing”. The aesthetic value of art in this short story was most obviously found in the plot circulating around a painter, who must focus on aesthetics in order to paint. This is an example of this “ecstasy” that Nabokov refers to, as does James, in the ideal. However, the “aesthetic bliss” in Lolita is centered on the beautiful, manipulative language of Humbert Humbert. The language effectively seduces the reader “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” (p. 9). Nabokov played with language throughout the novel such as how he invented the word “nymphet” as a way of H.H. referring to girls between the ages of nine and fourteen whom he was attracted to. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, there was a distinct lack of aesthetic strength, ironically due to the pressure put on writers by the Islamic revolutionaries. “Like all other ideologues before them, the Islamic revolutionaries seemed to believe that writers were the guardians of morality. This displaced view of writers, ironically, gave them a sacred place, and at the same time it paralyzed them. The price they had to pay for their new pre-eminence was a kind of aesthetic impotence” (p. 136).

            Art can have political, social, and a cultural value, as it is present in Reading Lolita in Tehran. On page 109, Nafisi said that F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted The Great Gatsby to “transcend its own time and place”. This means that the value of art in Fitzgerald’s eyes was literature that could be interpreted by anyone in any time period. People can say different things while really meaning the same thing at the heart of it, for example, Mike Gold and F. Scott Fitzgerald both writing about the American dream. To Fitzgerald, he explains dreams as appealing to our capacity for delight and wonder and Gold wrote about a more political stance that essentially meant the same as Fitzgerald’s belief. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, art is related to politics by the oppression of the regime against the art. Also, art can make you see life through different eyes (“Imagination is meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home” p. 94). This is yet another reiteration of seeing truth in the “lies” of fiction. Nafisi said that “the best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted” which shows her interpretation of literature in that it causes introspection about the reader’s environment and themselves. Nafisi believed that the art of literature could be yearned for at a distance (like the mountains motif throughout her book), but the fantasies brought on by it could never truly be achieved. Perhaps Nafisi learned about how idealized dreams and reality could never meet through The Great Gatsby. “In the end, the best ideals and the most sordid realities all come together.” The meeting of imagined dreams and reality proved disastrous for Jay Gatsby, whose pursuit of these dreams let to his own death. However, anyone reading The Great Gatsby will be able to learn from the mistakes of the characters for themselves without ever having to go through those particular experiences. Nafisi said that Gatsby had “opened a window into [her] own feelings and desires”, which showed her finding great truth in the fiction of the book.

            Art had a cultural value in Reading Lolita in Tehran in the various dances that were in Pride and Prejudice that also shows the subjective nature of this particular art. Nafisi’s belief is that “different dances invite different interpretations” (p. 268) and that this form of art can also be applied to their lives and the lives of fictional characters. She identified the various dances, such as the “backwards-and-forward rhythm dance” that represented Elizabeth and Darcy being brought closer and farther away through parallel events. The “give-and-take dance” required “a constant adapting to the partners’ needs and steps” (p. 269) that Nafisi pointed out that Mr. Collins did not meet (“their inability to dance well is a sign of their inability to adapt themselves to the needs of their partners” [p. 269]). The same way that Mr. Collins was unable to meet the needs of his partner in dancing not only showed how he could not meet the needs of Elizabeth in reality (she told him that he was the last person in the world that could make her happy) but also related to a person that dated one of Nafisi’s girls, Mr. Nahvi. Mr. Nahvi was nicknamed “Mr. Collins” and was described as “placid”, “detached”, and “arrogant”, characteristics that were also parts of the fictional character Mr. Collins. Nafisi and the other women were able to identify Mr. Nahvi for what he was because of the novel Pride and Prejudice (finding truth in fiction). These dances were a part of the art of the book in terms of culture of the time period; such dances were completely regular in the context of Jane Austen’s time period and although the culture of Tehran was different than this, the artistic representation of the dances transcended time, just as it was mentioned earlier about what Fitzgerald hoped for The Great Gatsby. Henry James said that “culture and civilization were everything” and “said that the greatest freedom of man was his “independence of thought”, which enabled the artist to enjoy the “aggression of infinite modes of being”” (p. 216)

            There was a definite social value of art represented in various works of the semester. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, the author and many other women met for the purpose of discussing literature in secret. Once a week, these women would congregate for these discussions, risking their lives for a world of fantasy. This social value of art is also present in The Real Thing in the fact that the purpose of the narrator’s paintings was to sell cover art for books for the public. There were also great social themes in this Henry James short story in the different social classes depicted showing the Monarchs, who appeared to be wealthy individuals of the upper class and people like Miss Churm who were at the bottom rung socially. The value of art in context of this story for the narrator was simply as a means of making money, as was the same reason for the Monarchs to try to be models. Money was also a great part of The Great Gatsby as a means of portraying the social value of art. Just as in The Real Thing, Gatsby had a distinct difference between the social classes of poor and wealthy; there was Wilson and his wife who represented the lower, working class, and Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby would represented the wealthy (although Gatsby wasn’t aristocracy, but of “new money”). Furthermore, the character of Gatsby was a façade in that he had created himself. It seems that his extravagant, gaudy mansion was for the entertainment of others and was a way for him to be putting on a show, just as he was not truly Jay Gatsby, but James Gatz. The impact of the art of Gatsby socially affected many people of Tehran in Nafisi’s class when she overheard them “arguing not over the hostages or the recent demonstrations or Rajavi and Khomeini, but over Gatsby and his alloyed dream.” (p. 136).

            There was also a political value of art, dominantly in Reading Lolita in Tehran that ties in greatly with the social value. Art in literature was looked down upon by the oppressive government in Tehran. “One woman novelist was jailed for her writings and charged with prostitution” (p. 136), which shows how seriously the government took writers and literature—artists and art.  The political value of art was a constant struggle between the common people and of the controlling, destructive government. Art was continuously under scrutiny in Tehran by both the government and the revolutionaries alike. “The officials were forced to impose their simple formulas on fiction as they did on life. Just as they censored the colors and tones of reality to suit the black-and-white world, they censored any form of interiority in fiction; ironically, for them as for their ideological opponents, works of imagination that did not carry a political message were deemed dangerous. Thus…they found a natural adversary” (p. 277).

            In conclusion, both Nafisi and Nabokov agreed that readers ought to be able to read freely what they chose and also that they would find freedom within the confines of the fantasy world offered by fiction. Nafisi’s interpretation of art also was that readers would find the “epiphany of truth” in the falsities of fiction. Freedom could also be found in the interpretation of art (the freedom to interpret) in Nabokov’s imaginary word “upsilamba” for Nafisi’s class. Art also has an aesthetic value, especially in the language of Lolita and themes of painting in The Real Thing. Art’s cultural value lied greatly in the various dances of Pride and Prejudice and Henry James. There was further value of art socially in social classes and facades in The Great Gatsby, as well as The Real Thing. Art also possess political value in the oppressive government of Tehran. Although art has many different interpretations and values, its important role in literature and the lives of readers is undeniable.