Nafisi: "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
http://avalon.unomaha.edu/itwsjr/Thi...gLolita.15.htm
I was quite impressed by a television interview with Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."
What caught my attention was when Nafisi quoted Nabokov's statement, from his novel "Bend Sinister," that “curiosity...is insubordination in its purest form.”
Nabokov's novel, “Bend Sinister” is a dramatic fantasy of modern man menaced by the rising tyrant State which, under the familiar slogans of Equality and Community, extinguishes the free intelligence and all normal human relations.
Nabokov's Lolita, whose personality is denied and whose life is confiscated by Humbert, felt close to them, whose ambitions and individualities were crushed by the rules dictated by Khomeini and his successors.
In James's Daisy Miller, the students admired the woman who has the courage to be herself despite the strict standards imposed by society.
The Great Gatsby showed them the power of dreams and the danger to make these dreams come true.
Literature can be used in a variety of ways, but according to Nafisi, "do not, under any circumstance, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth" (p. 3).
What is the connection between literature and morality? To begin with, Nafisi’s quote of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno is worth repeating: "the highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home" (p. 94).
The interview with Professor Nafisi inspired me to do an internet search on Nabokov. The most inspiring thing I found is at
http://www.vahidnab.com/kafka.htm
Nabokov's essay on Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
The most inspiring statement in that essay, for me, is:
"Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.) "
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I am still searching for my wings. - Sitaram
Lolita: A Personal Perspective
SELF-CONTROL
In 1962, on the eve of the start of my pioneering life, the controversial movie Lolita was released. Lolita was a listless and rebellious teenager, a character created in a poetic idiom by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov in his 309 page 1955 analysis of the nature of love. A middle-aged man, played by James Mason, falls in love with Lolita, a girl of fifteen. She is a precocious, seductive, pubescent, beautiful "nymphet." The film was Stanley Kubrick's sixth and his first independent effort. This experience is a common one in the human condition: nymphet-pubescent girls and older men. In today’s world the theme, while still controversial, has a greater social acceptance. -Ron Price , Pioneering Over Four Epochs, June 10, 2004.
I'd dried out to the bone
in Australia's semi-desert
and Canada's frozen north
and she was sweet and hot,
and full of an erotic life
that I had lost or never found.
Where her hand reached down,
where my hand reached down
when we laid in the grass,
in the woods, wherever we could
in the spring and summer days
of the sixties which came
a little late downunder when
Nixon and Whitlam were just
beginning on their road out
of a different kind of game.
And I was learning the dangers
of youthful seduction and fatal
attractions to the sweet and hot.
The damage done was not
as great as it was to Mason's
who gave away all that he had
for the passions of the hour,
the dalliance, the fatal attraction.
My dalliance of, perhaps, three
months taught me a lesson
I seemed to learn over again
in different forms: self-control
of the concupiscible appetite
for the progress of my soul.1
1 The Universal House of Justice, Letter dated February 6th 1973 to all NSAs.
Ron Price
June 10 2004
Sexuality: Expression vs. Repression
You have asked me what I think. I shall tell you some of my thoughts, based on my life experiences. The topic is sex, so I shall strive to speak in the most tasteful and tactful manner possible. I hope that my words offend no one.
We are most likely all equally sexual, males and females. The difference for each of us lies in how much of it is expressed and how much is repressed. That difference of expression vs repression is most likely a function of many things; our peer group standards, the era in which we live, our religious upbringing, our parents, our education, so many things.
I used to work in a neighborhood which was regularly patrolled by prostitutes. Many, but not all, were addicted to heroine. I asked one of them one day, a petite, almost child like woman in her late 20's, how she got started. She told me that she grew up near a military base and by the time she was 18, she had been with several hundred men.
My step-daughter went to school with a girl from the neighborhood who by the age of 13 had been with nine lovers (all of whom were older teenaged boys.) Her story was a very sad one. At age 14, she developed lukemia, a cancer of the blood cells. She underwent chemotherapy. All her hair fell out. The doctors explained to her that she could no longer be sexually active because her immune system was now compromised by the chemotherapy. After a year, she suddenly went into remission (something which often happens but rarely lasts.) She began to look healthier. She wore a wig while her hair grew back. She became sexually active again, but this time, she went on a rampage through the neighborhood, finding as many partners as she could. It was as though she knew she did not have long, and she wanted to burn her candle at both ends while she had some time left. After a year in remission, cancer came back with a vengence. She developed a tumor in her face which left a large hole. She died soon thereafter. She used to come home with my step-daugher sometimes. She looked so young and innocent. She acted so quite and shy. To look at her, you would never guess that there was another side to her life. The neighborhood teens would gossip about her adventures. One night, on a dare, she bent over at a street corner intersection and had intercourse. Another time, again, on a dare, she climbed the stairs of a building with some boys and on each landing made love to a different one.
I could tell you so many stories, true stories, about so many young girls. My step-daughter had her own problems, dropped out of highschool, became pregnant, when through a number of different partners/relationship, all before she was 16. She became suicidal at one point, and was in a mental hospital for teenagers. Many of the teenagers in her ward had problems with sex, drugs, alcohol, depression, suicidal thoughts. I visited her every day. There was on absolutly gorgeous blond patient aged 17. The first time I saw her in a crowed room, she made a strange seductive gesture to me with her eyes. During the weeks that I visited my step-daughter, this patient told me some episodes from her life. In high school, she took about ten teenaged boys into the bathroom, and they all lined up to take their turn.
I knew of one Spanish family with a 14 year old girl, and her lover was 26. They liked him. They approved. Technically, he could have gone to prison for statutory, but no one was complaining, no one was pressing charges. They felt he was decent, had a job, and if their daughter were not with him, she might be with a drop-out drug dealer.
I suppose I will close this post by telling you a true story of something which happend around 1910-1916. My wife's mother was widowed, and married a man much her senior. She was in her 50's and he was in his 70's or older. He had been a marine officer prior to World War II and had served as an officer during World War II. He was a very strict military type. Whenever I visited him, he would shout at me, and scold me for little things, like putting my elbow on the table. One day we came to see them. I walked in, looked at him and announced "Ive come to drink your whiskey and smoke your tobacco." He laughed, cussed me out, and gave me a drink and a cigar. The women went out shopping and we were alone. I looked at the gruff old man and thought to myself, wickedly "I know how I can make him REALLY angry." So, I said to him "Tell me, sir, how old were you the first time you had sexual experience?" Well, he didn't get angry. He broke into a broad grin and started laughing. He expained: "I was about twelve years old. It was a GROUP EFFORT. Six of my friends had discovered a Polish maid down the street who was "very friendly." So, the seven of us went down to see her one day. We lined up, and took our turn, one after the other.
I was astounded. I didnt ask him the year, but I am guessing this was around 1910-1916. We think of those years as very conservative and repressed. Had that maid been discovered with those boys today, it would be an international scandal and she would go to prison. Back in those times, people probably would have laughed and hushed it up.
One of Freud's disciples, Wilhelm Reich, went on to become a psychologist/psychiatrist and invented something called the "orgone" machine. I read his autobiography. He tells of being 5 years old, and a teenaged servant girl was caring for him. This was during the late 1800's. He said the girl would lie on the bed, and pretend to be sound asleep, and remain motionless while he "explored" beneath her dress.
I can remember from my own childhood. When I was aged 9 or so, I was very curious about women and sex. At that age of nine, I did approach one adult woman who was my caretaker, with an inappropriate request/proposition. She seemed shocked, understandably, and said no. But had she said yes, and done something inappropriate with me, then it would be the same thing as Lolita, a woman old enough to be my mother being intimate with me. And, since I was the one to suggest the idea, I suppose I would be the one guilty of seduction.
Always remember, the most seductive word anyone can say is "Yes."
Which reminds me of e. e. cummings:
yes is a world.
and in this world of yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
love is a place.
and through this place of love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places.
