Shervin Emami is a lecturer in Persian language and literature in the Stanford Language Center and a faculty member of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. Her research is on “Persian Contemporary Magical Realism through the Lens of Allegorical and Mystical Writings in Persian Classical Literature,” and she is completing her dissertation at UCLA. She received her MA in Middle Eastern history from California State University, Fullerton, and her MA in Near Eastern languages and literatures from UCLA. Before Stanford, she was at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley as an adjunct lecturer.

This article examines the themes[1] of quest (takaapu) and search (jostoju) in three of Shahrnush Parsipsur’s narratives through the lens of their female characters. Through a close reading of three of her novels—Tuba and the Meaning of the Night (Tuba va Ma’naye Shab), Women without Men (Zanan-e bedune Mardan), and The Blue Intellect (Aql-e Abi)—I analyze the various recurring demonstrations of the quest theme in Parsipur’s work, and explore the way the heroines of her narratives are each pursuing the journey to enlightenment (Roshangaree). By examining the heroines of each novel throughout their quests, I suggest that the urge to find liberation, agency, and emancipation continuously reemerges as the female characters evolve both emotionally and spiritually during the journey. Additionally, I show that these characters find different resolutions in their journey as they evolve. I attempt to compare these journeys to highlight that the previously unresolved issue of search finds its resolution in The Blue Intellect, specifically through the most refined prototypic character, Zan. The search can be concluded in the corporeal world and through emancipation of the body and soul.

In my study of these three novels, I argue that the author has embedded a common theme in the narratives: the different ways that women strive to reach liberation from societal boundaries and male dominance in addition to emancipation of the soul. This theme addresses the continuous unresolved issue of the urge to emancipate soul and body in its modern form. The issues of quest and search reappear in each of these novels as recurring and perpetual issues; yet these themes evolve from one narrative to the next.

Tuba’s Journey

The novel Tuba and the Meaning of the Night is a third-person omniscient narrative. Despite this, the characters’ words and thoughts are invariably perceived from Tuba’s perspective. Her lifelong search to find peace and emancipation from stagnancy is illustrated through many decades of her life and in the end, unresolved with her death. Engrossed in her spiritual quest and search[2] for the truth and unity with God, Tuba experiences decades of Iranian revolutionary turbulence.^[3] She represents a woman confronting the challenges specific and unique to the era when the nation undergoes various political and social changes: “Tuba lives over eight decades and through her life she experiences different, and at times contradictory, articulations of concepts such as nation (mellat), homeland (vatan) and womanhood (zaniyyat).”^[4]

Tuba, a smart and spiritual fourteen-year-old girl, proposes to a middle-aged man after her father dies, to obtain financial security and to pursue her will in her spiritual journey. However, miserably depressed, she divorces him a few years later and marries a Qajar prince. This relationship is loving, but when the prince takes a second wife, Tuba divorces him as well. After the second divorce, Tuba returns to her original childhood dream, which was a spiritual quest for unity with God and search for love. In this way, Tuba reclaims the dream she lost after her father’s death.

Although she reclaims her quest and search, the outcome of her journey is foreshadowed in the beginning of the narrative when Tuba is scrubbing old scum after seven years of drought: “The earth no longer had to remain a slave to its dream for water.”^[5] Tuba’s notion of imprisonment is what keeps her stagnant in time and place; therefore, the narrative begins with Tuba’s reflecting on how her stagnation carries her back to her state of search in her childhood. This lifelong search is narrated over eight decades and remains unresolved with her death.

Plot and Character Development

Woven throughout the story are five women, three of whom—Munis, Maryam, and Tuba—represent the presence of women through the changes in society and the challenges they face in their desire to search. The other two, Setareh and Leila, who denote alternative voices for Tuba, represent the free voice for these women through their challenges. Leila becomes the eternal manifestation of Tuba’s earthly form.^[6] These two characters are contrasting: Tuba desires lifelong intellectuality, which conflicts with her religious thoughts, and Leila is a non-religious being who is free from such conflict.

Tuba is the first generation of women on a quest, and she plays the leading role in both creating and protecting the home, a safe domain, for the succeeding female generations. Tuba is married twice, once to an old man who does not love her, and then to the king’s son, who is repeatedly unfaithful to her; in both instances, she divorces the man (a highly unusual action for the time period and culture). Tuba’s first marriage, which saves her from financial insecurity, leads her to be housebound. With the second divorce, she is also housebound for a long time because of her divorce scandal, which allows her to gradually create a relationship with her home as the only safe place she recognizes.

This need for safety becomes paramount as two revolutions, with their ensuing chaos and instability, unfold during Tuba’s life. Both the Constitutional Revolution and the oil nationalization catalyze social and political unrest in Iran, escalating a sense of danger and the need to protect the homeland. This escalated sense of danger manifests in Tuba’s character as an increasing urge to protect the home to which she is bound.

Tuba’s daughter, Munis, embodies the succeeding generation and its unique place in the narrative and in history. She has the chance to expand beyond her house and is able to marry for love. In this way, Munis is able to search for love whereas Tuba is not. Regardless of these new freedoms, Munis’s relationship with her husband, Ismail, remains a secret from the public world because he has an active, but clandestine, political role working against Reza Shah. As a consequence of his activities, he is arrested and imprisoned. Realizing that she is pregnant with his child, Munis feels obliged to disclose her marriage to her mother. Tuba regrets her daughter’s love match and freedom and does not accept or agree with Munis; hence, Munis leaves the house to seek truth. Finally, Maryam, the granddaughter, leaves the house to pursue a university education and subsequently joins a leftist political party. After being fatally shot by a police officer, she returns to Tuba’s house—a space defined by its security—and dies before her child can be born,^[7] thus halting the progress of generations.[8]

Finally, Setareh, the teenage daughter of the maid, who is part of Munis’s generation, is raped by strangers and becomes pregnant. This series of events leads to Setareh’s murder by her uncle due to the shame she has brought to the family. This violent act takes place inside the safety and sanctuary of the home. After Setareh’s brutal death, she is buried in the house under a pomegranate tree. Soon thereafter, she reappears as a ghost, and Tuba witnesses Setareh growing in the house as an ethereal holy tree. Her existence as a ghost remains a secret and is revealed to only Tuba. Tuba is the only person who can see Setareh and talk to her. Tuba, who feels haunted by the corpse’s curse, puts aside her dream of searching for God, to adapt and turn the wheel of her fortune until the proper time arrives for her to resume her search. Tuba feels trapped in the house by the fear that if she leaves, the walls and the lives that she protects will be destroyed. She carries this fear until the second death. After Maryam dies in the house, the space becomes unbearable to Tuba. Following Maryam’s burial, Tuba leaves the house because she realizes she cannot protect it anymore.

Leila, another female character in the story, never appears as a real person, only as a voice and a ghost representing the notion of search and movement in Tuba’s life. Leila, too, can be seen by only Tuba. At the end of the story, Tuba dies at the moment of her realization and epiphany. According to her, the moment of her death is when she realizes that she does not need to search anymore. She feels free and liberated. Leila appears in the story only at the end of the narrative when Tuba is ready to leave the house and leave her stagnant phase. On the last page of the story, the narrator who speaks through the mind of Tuba says, “Tuba was now someone else. She no longer had the need to search for truth.”^[9] Through this confession, the gaze and voice switch to Tuba: “You are your own veil Hafiz be gone from our midst” (to khod hejab-e khodʼi Hafiz, az miyan barkhiz).[10] Tuba alludes to Hafiz’s line in order to highlight her realization and mark her death as the end of her search. She pronounces that her search has ended by taking away the symbolic veil, her corporeal body, manifesting that her life in this world is the only obstacle between her and unification with God.^[11]

Leila represents Tuba’s inner voice in the form of a transformed, fragmented figure. She embodies Tuba’s liberated self and manifests next to her only when Tuba is enlightened and free. The voice appears to belong to a different space that Tuba could not comprehend before death. This distorted and distorting reality is actualized for Tuba when Leila chants to her that it is time to depart. Image and perception are both distorted in Tuba’s consciousness. The only reality is the resonating voice of Leila:

“Groups of people drowned in blood,” Leila said, “it is up to them to become liberated.”

Tuba asked, “Am I dead?”

Leila said, “You are dead.”

Tuba asked, “You too?”

The response was “I cannot die.”^[12]

“mardom dasteh dasteh dar khun gharq mishodand.”  

Goft: “digar ba khodeshan ast keh berahand ya narah-and.”

 zan porsid: “aya man mordeh-am?”

Leila gof: “mordeh-i.”

porsid: “to niz?”

goft: “man nemitavanam bemiram.”[13]

The two voices interweave and at one point merge; the space is fragmented, and the voices resonate in the space that sets the novel’s termination. In the last line of the narrative, Tuba realizes that Leila, the autonomous voice who was next to her, is the liberated self that is eternal. The image of people who drown in blood represents the non-liberated ones who are bound in their perishable form.^[14]

Setareh and Leila each represent alternative voices in Tuba’s mind, which reflect her twofold being. One voice is imprisoned in the stillness of an “I” who listens to the alternative voice that projects a chaste image, protecting the house with its stillness. The other voice is liberated in the spirit of a mobile “I” who seeks its home or “place of origin.” Setareh is both the bound and the chaste; Leila is both liberation and dishonor. A paradoxical space underlies the duality of search and stagnancy: chastity brings stagnancy and liberation carries dishonor. If the desire for search is discovered, then the searcher is plundered. Setareh is the redeemed soul whose chastity is devoted to maintaining the chastity of the house. These binary attributes, which on the surface seem to be contrary, explain and illustrate the conflict that Tuba faces in every step of her search on a deeper level. This conflict can extend to religion versus Gnosticism, tradition versus modernity, and the material/corporeal versus the sublime. [15]

The two figures of Setareh and Leila distort the divide between conscious and subconscious, dream and reality, and introduce a new space to Tuba wherein she is bound to marginalize her own search and protect the house and its people. Setareh, the emblem of chastity, signifies the boundaries that keep Tuba from her search, obstructing her liberation. Setareh emblematizes the Indigenous rites and rituals, tradition, and religious boundaries that simultaneously are protected as part of the culture but also prevent Tuba’s flight.

Setareh is the floating consciousness of Tuba’s mind who spreads her roots in the house. On the surface, the house represents the vatan, “homeland,” which needs to be protected and maintained safe from political and cultural turbulence. Yet on a deeper level, it also represents the limitations and boundaries that thwart people from their search. As Tuba says, “I wanted to fly and follow the truth, but I had to protect the house” (“del-am mikhast parvaz mikard-am va miraftam beh donbal-e haqiqat amma bayad az khaneh moraqebat mikaram”).[16] Tuba says that Setareh is the soul of the house, and it needs to be protected.[17]

The plot in Tuba’s narrative alternates between two themes developed in parallel; they both revolve around the notion of search. One is the spiritual quest and search that inwardly captures the characters—a search for love and unity with God, articulated by Tuba from the beginning of the story and embodied by Setareh. The other is the search embedded in the country’s changes—the search that stems from societal and political changes in the country at the time. Leila, who assists Tuba in pursuing her will to search, appears only after Tuba demands to leave the house and embark on her search. Suddenly with Tuba’s realization, Leila appears embodied as a ghost and invites Tuba to leave the house. Leila is an ethereal woman, roaming deserts. She has an adorned face but absolute purity behind that appearance.[18]

For Tuba, the only way to detach from the house is to kill Setareh’s soul since Setareh’s chastity and purity has restrained Tuba from her own search outside the house. Tuba craves distance from it; she is in a state of inbetweenness where one choice mirrors chastity and the other prostitution. To find her mobility and her desire to be free from the house, Tuba likens her choice to prostitution. Her desire for search forces her to embrace the impurity and kill her chastity. Tuba hears the last tanesh (“resonance”) of Setareh while her image is drowning in blood. Setareh, who symbolizes Tuba’s attachment to her house, becomes marginalized, and her voice echoes the monotone resonance from afar, replaced by a new light and a new voice, that of Leila.[19]

Tuba’s countenance is depicted as two states of being: when she is enlightened, and when Leila becomes one with her. During agahi, Tuba completely detaches from Setareh and peacefully unites with Leila, who is free, mobile, and enlightened. The paradoxical feature is that she denotes all this through the body of the prostitute, Leila, ruspi-gari. Leila, as an enlightened, ethereal prostitute, redeems Tuba, whereas Setareh, the emblem of holiness, purity, and chastity, remains imprisoned in the house.

In this way, quest manifests itself in two distinct layers in this novel through the development of various characters. The first layer of search embodies the desire of women to search for love and autonomy, represented by Munis and Maryam, who leave the house only to return defeated in their quest. On this level, the search for mobility and freedom is actual, physical/corporeal, and presented on the ontological level of reality. The second layer of search is for an inward perception that causes the person to be enlightened. Tuba embodies the second layer of search, demonstrated by the ontological feature of the mystical characters who appear to Tuba alone. The worldly quest for these women halts when Maryam has to return home from her search. In the story of Tuba, women seem to be defeated in this search. They expand their perceptions and horizons to achieve the mobility and freedom that they desire, but, ultimately, they cannot achieve it.

The second layer of the search theme, applied in conjunction with the surface theme, creates a narrative that encompasses a twofold purpose. One articulates the complicated relationships of social and political structures of a country and women’s mystical experience: the unresolved issue of search in order to return to the origin. The second illuminates a deeper conflict in the narrative in which the figures of Setareh and Leila are transmuted to abstract beings, personifications of purity and impurity. The dichotomy of these reframed figures stands as the binary of tradition and modernity. At the end, the narrative offers no resolution, and the search terminates in Tuba’s death. The death foreshadows glimmers of hope but leaves the quest and the search unresolved.

Quest and Search from Corporeal to Spiritual

Tuba’s house in the narrative is often referred to as a secure space that should be protected from strangers and enemies. The act of protecting the house evokes a parallel to the notion of homeland, vatan, which marks the space as the point of return for these women after their journeys.[20] Tuba, in her stream of consciousness, overtly compares her house to the country; she maintains the house as the source of her safety, and throughout the narrative, everyone who is defeated or victimized returns to the house. She believes that as long as she remains inside the house, outside forces cannot affect its occupants. In Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, Tuba, Munis, and Maryam each experience an unsuccessful search. Tuba’s spiritual search is completed only at her death, Munis’s search for a romantic marriage causes her dishonor, and Maryam’s search to pursue her political beliefs ends with her death.

To conclude, each character embodies a different notion of search: spiritual, romantic, or political. Even though the narrative maintains the two themes at the same time, the spiritual search for Tuba ends with unification and returning to God through her death, and the physical search remains unresolved. Further, the only solution for the ones who do not die is to stay in the despair of abjection (heghaarat va koochaki) until death and the return to the self’s origin. As we shall see in the next narrative, Women without Men, the same cycle is repeated with a slight difference. In these two works, the notion of quest and the unresolved issue of search ends with unification with oneself.

Women without Men

Parsipur’s second story, a shorter, more abstract and poetic narrative than Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, is inextricably tied to this first story through its narrative techniques, themes, and even characters. Munis, who left “the house” disillusioned at the end of the previous story, appears in this story under the same name but with a different identity. The choice of Munis as the character’s name in these two narratives is not coincidental. There is an affinity between the two characters. The reason that Munis leads the women’s journey in the second narrative is that she found neither serenity nor stability in Tuba’s house or in the larger house, “the country.” Therefore, the search continues, and the narrative assumes a new form in the second novel through the search for autonomy and freedom, which expands into a spiritual search.

Plot and Character Development

The novel begins with Mahdokht, a former teacher who visits her brother’s garden in Karaj, a city just outside Tehran. After witnessing an illicit sexual encounter, Mahdokht decides that the burden of her virginity is too much to bear and, declaring herself to be a tree, plants her feet in the ground. Just as Mahdokht transforms herself, the tree is transformed into a symbol for impossible femininity and Virgin Birth.[21] As through her own seed, Mahdokht is able to reproduce while maintaining her sexual purity. She becomes a fertile tree even though she is a virgin. Though Mahdokht finds peace through her transformative act, its unnaturalness shames her family, forcing her brother to abandon his garden. Mrs. Farrokhlaqa Sadrall-divan Golchehreh, a widow from Tehran, purchases the property cheaply. As women begin to congregate at the site of Mahdokht’s rebellion against conventional sexuality, the garden in Karaj becomes a sort of feminine utopia, a refuge for those fleeing the constraints of patriarchal Tehran.

In contrast, there is Munis and her ill-tempered friend Faʼezeh. After carefully guarding her virginity for thirty-eight years, Munis has discovered that she has been misled about the nature of her own body. When she was eight years old, Munis’s family told her that God would never forgive a girl who lost her virginity. After thirty-eight years, through a conversation with Faʼezeh, she discovers that virginity is a hole, not a curtain. After discovering that her virginity is not an easily torn curtain, but rather a hole, Munis leaves Tehran with her traditionally minded friend Faʼezeh, who has been protecting her own virginity with the hope of marrying Munis’s violently temperamental older brother. Shortly after embarking on the first of their pilgrimages, Faʼezeh and Munis are raped. Upset, they seek refuge in the garden.

At last, Zarrinkolah, a woman of twenty-six who begins to see her clients as headless monsters after years of prostitution, flees to the garden in Karaj, where upon her arrival, reality blends with the magical. When she arrives in Karaj, she adopts a different role, transforming from a prostitute to a holy person. The reality of life resides in a magical space for her. She finds peace in the garden, which has become a utopia for the women searching for their femininity and autonomy. The narrative ends with the female characters leaving the garden (the temporary utopia).

This multivocal narrative incorporates five female protagonists (an old maid, two teachers [Munis and Mahdokht], a widowed housewife, and a prostitute) and one man. Each woman feels constrained by her life, her role, and the spaces she inhabits. In response to this frustration, the women desire their autonomy, freedom, and femininity. They search for a utopian space in which they believe they belong. In their attempt to find their unique path, they all gather in the garden, which, to them, resembles heaven. However, the heavenly quality of the space is temporary for the characters; the women fail in their attempt to create a utopian[22] space, and they return melancholic to the city, scattered and separated.

Theme of Quest in Women without Men

In Women without Men, each woman identifies her quest and search as resisting stagnation. Zarrinkolah, the prostitute, is confined to a brothel and follows her spiritual quest by freeing herself from bondage. By doing so, she is forced to seek refuge in the streets. For Munis, the forty-year-old unmarried woman, committing suicide becomes, however paradoxically, a way to pursue her quest and desire in her transformed body. Mahdokht, the school teacher who lives with her brother, pursues her quest and frees her soul by transforming herself into a tree, thereby becoming one with nature and fluid in soul. While as a tree she is rooted to the ground, her seeds are free and can be cultivated anywhere. Farrokhlaqa kills her husband and leaves the urban town to reside in the garden in Karaj, where she hopes to find her liberation.

In Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, each of the female protagonists (Tuba, Munis, and Maryam) contemplates her attachments and detachments in her own way, meditating on the challenges she faces and charting her own boundaries regardless of the chains of convention. In Women without Men, the female characters desire autonomy and freedom; however, their roots in constricting convention and traditions do not permit them to be completely liberated. In both stories, the journey begins with the characters’ epiphany and enlightenment. Here, the themes of quest and search in the narrative becomes a notion of realization for the characters of their stagnancy and stillness. For the characters, the notion of quest and Desire[23] to search is catalyzed by the realization that their captivity and imprisonment is due to fallacies about life and chastity. The notion of search for each character manifests in a different shape: for Munis, it is the quest for her autonomy; for Farrokhlaqa, the quest to find her freedom; for Zarrinkolah, the quest to find her identity; and for Mahdokht, the quest to immortalize her virginity.[24]

Zarrinkolah, Mahdokht, and Farrokhlaqa represent alternative paths to self-realization. Moreover, each symbolizes the ways in which the earthly or material world imposes restrictions on humans but more specifically on women. For example, Zarrinkolah, the prostitute, redefines virginity and chastity. She is a woman who lost her virginity in her childhood, and after many years of being abused, decides to revive her chastity.

Through Zarrinkolah’s search for reality, she obtains her first sign of enlightenment: she comes face to face with decapitated men. She decides to purify herself, and through this purification, she is transformed into a holy entity and an emblem of purity. She symbolizes chastity. She is entirely transformed and as pure as a newborn.[25] The initial cause of Zarrinkolah’s enlightenment remains unclear; however, the time for this enlightenment occurs after a dream[26] and at dawn.[27] Dawn symbolizes the time between dream and waking; it equates with the time of inbetweenness and transcendence. Zarrinkolah achieves transcendence, is reborn, and becomes pure at dawn. The quest is the cause of the rebirth which characters (seekers) experience.

Emancipation and Reemergence of Tuba

In the first narrative, Tuba begins the journey of the soul and discovers it in her annihilation (fana) as she says: “I don’t need to search anymore” (digar niazi nemidid beh jostojuye haqiqat beravad).[28] She achieves enlightenment by returning to the place of origin, or enlightenment by death. Her living mythical source, Leila, leads her to her Mystical Death (fana). However, Leila, ironically, is the Eternal Feminine who appears as Lakateh in the figure and shape of a mythical ghost, who is known as the unfaithful wife in modern prose.[29] The fact that Leila is the ethereal woman (zan-e asiri), denoting eternal beauty, shows the continuity and correlation between the archetypal characters by juxtaposing the two contradictory notions of Eternal Feminine next to the Mystical Death. On the other hand, Munis, Tuba’s daughter, neither achieves the Mystical Death nor quenches her urge to go on a quest. In the second narrative, Munis appears with the same name and same conflicts, but as a different figure. In this narrative, after becoming enlightened, Munis kills herself. This represents a symbolic annihilation that takes a corporeal, worldly shape in the modern narrative as a suicide. Similarly, Mahdokht attains enlightenment about femininity and, therefore, desires to be united with a tree.[30] Desire brings madness, which is the beginning of love and quest in the mystical world. From one intermediary to another, all three women discover the ultimate resolution to their quest is complete annihilation (fana).

The title of the second chapter in Women without Men, “Munis, First Time Death,” foreshadows Munis’s journey. Munis reappears with a new gaze in the second narrative, and after discovering the truth about her virginity, she decides to seek the truth about life. Her decision to be annihilated grants her the ability to read minds—a direct conduit to truth. She replaces the rational soul through the intellectual and spiritual domains in the physical.

After this death, she returns to life and goes on a journey for forty days. When she returns home, her brother kills her for the second time. With her second death and subsequent reincarnation, Munis achieves complete awareness and enlightenment and reappears as a spectral woman for whom worldly things do not matter.

Munis, through death and reincarnation, tries to reinvent herself and the other women around her. She epitomizes the living myth of Leila and Setareh from the previous narrative and completes those roles in a new Munis. Munis explains to Faʼezeh that she possesses the ability to see things beyond what they are, and through this insight, she encourages the other women to reinvent themselves. Munis carries over the incomplete Munis of the previous narrative but has new abilities—similar to Mahdokht, who is the more developed version of Setareh, even in her weaknesses. In the second story, Munis, who has an unfinished destiny in the first novel, reappears, and this time encompasses both the holy and the unholy side.

Munis acts as the spiritual guide for the other women since she has an almost-perfect soul. She remains calm and peaceful in all earthly circumstances because she has received strength and power that is beyond worldly enforcements. Munis epitomizes the living soul who can guide the other characters to pursue their quests without being affected by worldly forces. The restrictions that derive from the male hegemony and patriarchal society do not affect her. She is a living corpse with a mythical soul who can die and reincarnate and guide the other women. In each encounter where she is abused or even murdered, she remains calm and seeks the next phase of her journey.

With each life, Munis progresses on her spiritual quest. She begins her resistance by rebelling against those sources within herself that were preventing her quest (e.g., her virginity). Her fight continues against her brother, who represents male hegemony in her society, which results in her death at his hands. In her third life, Munis battles against patriarchal hegemony on a wider scale when she is raped on the road by two men who symbolize the control and dominance men have over women in society.[31]

Therefore, in these two narratives, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night and Women without Men, a twofold theme is presented that incorporates two distinct yet related ideas of search and quest in both its physical and spiritual form. On the physical/corporeal level, the search and quest for these women spring from their desire for subjectivity, autonomy, mobility, and freedom from male hegemony. On the spiritual/sublime level, the theme focuses on quest and desire for achieving the ultimate unity with the divine being, which is an anagogical theme addressing the movement or journey of the soul. Both levels are depicted as the main character of each book, Tuba and Munis, progresses on her journey of the rational soul and feminine body. On the one hand, they become the voice calling for their subjectivity and autonomy, yet they also desire a search which springs from a deeper existential issue, a yearning for the original home or place of origin. Both narratives end with the Mystical Death and dissolution of the self for the main character, who achieves awareness and is therefore ready to be annihilated.

The way the characters are placed and used in the two narratives defines their stage in their desire. Clear parallelism exists between the characters and the unique symbolism of the two journeys. The main characters, who represent the journey of the soul and body simultaneously, find peace and tranquility through annihilation and unification with the divine soul. But what does search mean for the other women? How do the quest and search in their worldly manner achieve (or not achieve) conclusion?

When the characters of the two narratives are juxtaposed, the correspondence between them shows a pattern that indicates the imperfection of the earthly search. Munis (from Women without Men) and Tuba represent annihilation, Mystical Death, returning to the origin, and in Munis’s case, returning to life. Setareh and Leila, and Mahdokht and Zarrinkolah, symbolize transformation to a new form; Setareh and Leila represent not voluntary annihilation but murder, while Mahdokht and Zarrinkolah do not stand for death or annihilation in its complete form. Finally, Munis (from Tuba and the Meaning of the Night) and Maryam, and Fa’ezeh and Farrokhlaqa, symbolize disillusionment and hopelessness.

Moreover, the juxtaposition of the characters, Tuba/Munis, Leila and Setareh/Mahdokht and Zarrinkolah, Munis and Maryam/Faʼezeh and Farrokhlaqa, highlights a parallelism between the spiritual search and the corporeal/earthly search. It shows that the search of women for their identity, subjectivity, and autonomy is not always a celebratory one and often dwells on loss, unresolved goals, and melancholia. Therefore, the notion of quest can be achieved in only its spiritual form or after death. However, I believe, at last, the search and the quest find a resolution for these female characters, and the resolution is presented through the embodiment of the one female character, Zan, in the novel The Blue Intellect. The long quest is fulfilled in the material/corporeal world, and this resolution differentiates this novel from the other narratives.

The Blue Intellect

The Blue Intellect is a narrative illustrating the first decade of the Islamic Revolution, which began in 1979. The story of the main character, “the woman” (zan), begins on a cold winter night while Tehran is being bombed. She enters the lieutenant’s office hiding a deer under her veil. She sits in front of “the lieutenant” (sarvan) and begins telling her life story.[32] The lieutenant first thinks the woman is a prostitute (andishid ruspi) and is initially reluctant to listen, but he then realizes that she is an intelligent, wise, and educated woman from a respected middle-class family. The lieutenant is fair and logical (ahl e ensaf bood v mi andishid); therefore, he decides to listen to her complaints. Zan explains how she used to work as a manuscript archivist but lost her job after the Revolution because she disobeyed the hijab enforcement. Her manager, Mr. Menbodi, who ordered her to resign, replaced her with another woman named Mrs. Rahro. After some time, Zan decided to return and reclaim her position. She returned with no prior appointment, and she caught him kissing Mrs. Rahro. She learned later that Mrs. Rahro was forced to submit to Mr. Menbodi’s sexual assault because she needed Mr. Menbodi’s help to get her brother out of the country. Zan tells the lieutenant that both women felt betrayed and decided to murder Mr. Menbodi. Their attempt, however, failed, and Mr. Menbodi managed to throw Mrs. Rahro from a bridge and make it look like an accidental death.

Zan, who feels responsible for this incident, explains to the lieutenant that the seven members of her family began to lose solidarity during this time. She seems to see these incidents as connected, and she thinks of the loss of solidarity as the beginning of her family’s destruction. Her two older brothers migrated, her younger brother and sister were killed in a street riot, and her mother turned into a veiled, fanatically religious woman. Finally, her grandfather, who felt responsible for his family’s ruination (Zan’s father died before the Revolution), suffered from immense guilt and went mad. Zan, who looks at the Revolution and its consequences with skepticism, blames the Revolution and war for her family’s destruction (pashideh shodan nezame khanevadegiash). While she describes all these life events to the lieutenant, he sympathizes with Zan, thinking that her life story applies to him and many other middle-class Iranians during the Revolution (Sarvan fek kard ke in dastane Zan v do kokhtar cehehl roozeash mitavanad bashad).

The second half of the narrative assumes a non-linear format and revolves around a continuous dialogue between the woman/Zan and the lieutenant/Sarvan. Therefore, I have not provided a summary of the events and the characters’ dialogue. Moreover, the second half illustrates a continuous metamorphosis of the characters and depicts a coexistence of spaces of magic and of reality. In the second half, Sarvan no longer listens to Zan’s stories; rather, he undergoes Zan’s experiences with her, like two halves of one existence (do nimeye yek vojood). In the second half, the plot is structured so that the narrative shifts between the memories and anecdotes of ancient history, and the time of the Iran–Iraq war. This time and place juxtaposition happens through the continuous dialogue between Zan and Sarvan until the last part of the narrative. Then, Zan disappears, and the setting returns to the first part of the story and is narrated through the lens of Sarvan but with Zan’s vision and experience. The narration becomes a stream of consciousness, and that is how we understand that it is Zan’s voice and vision expressed through Sarvan’s mind. At the end, Sarvan cleans his house with a broom and recalls the same experiences as Zan at the beginning of the narrative, and that is how we know that at the end, he is the same figure as Zan.

Blue and Its Symbolic Meaning

If blue represents wisdom and peace, The Blue Intellect refers to a peaceful and wise intellect. Also, if blue represents the ability to think, heal, and bring peace, The Blue Intellect represents a mind that is able to heal and bring peace to those searching for tranquility. The Blue Intellect is the story of a woman in search of the truth. Zan, disillusioned by revolution and war, thinks of revolution as the reason for her family’s destruction. She also feels responsible for Mrs. Rahro’s death and, with great perplexity, searches for the truth and her lost dignity. One night, with a black chador, she hesitantly enters Sarvan’s office to share the injustice that she has endured. From then on, Zan appears every night with a new story, and Sarvan calls her aghl-e abai (and sometimes, aghl-e aram [“the peace intellect”]). She symbolizes the blue intellect, she is the prototype of wisdom, and she appears at night, enlightening both herself and Sarvan. She begins her visits wearing the black chador (a veil), but one night, she visits Sarvan wearing a revealing dress instead of a chador. Zan changes her appearance from a veil to a revealing dress to signify the transition in her state of mind. She feels closer to Sarvan, and she invites him to elevate together. She views Sarvan as being as wise and enlightened as herself, and she tells him, “Please forgive me, Lieutenant, I came for a visit with the same dress in which I usually visit the noble men” (mibakhshid Sarvan man ba haman lebasi be didare shoma amadam ke ba an bar mardane bozorg vared mishavam).[33]

In fact, Zan emphasizes that she views Sarvan as a noble man (mard-e bozorg).[34] This moment highlights Sarvan and Zan’s reconciliation and mutual trust (ashti kardan-e zan v mard). Their growing trust signifies the shift in the narrative; it is in fact the turning point wherein the feminine and masculine sides reconcile. This trust marks the woman’s enlightenment, but it also indicates Sarvan’s awareness and concession to the path toward which Zan is directing him. Therefore, their souls elevate simultaneously; Zan shows him her entirety beyond her body and soul, and Sarvan accepts her and sees her beyond her feminine symbols. Additionally, because Zan embodies the emancipation, liberty, peace, and salvation of blue, as she sheds her inhibitions and shows her blue appearance, Sarvan is also drawing nearer to blue. Therefore, metaphorically he is gaining access to the notions that blue symbolizes and, consequently, this enlightenment helps him to learn and overcome his worldly desires. 

From this point on, Zan serves as the voice of wisdom who leads Sarvan on his journey to enlightenment. She tries to guide the lieutenant from darkness to light to reach self-gnosis and helps him move beyond his masculine and physical nature.[35] She wants to bring the man to the same level of transcendence as herself. She relates various tales, and through them, tries to tell the man that he has to reconcile with his feminine side. Sarvan is now yearning for Zan’s nightly visits, eagerly wanting to learn more. Recasting his own life through Zan’s nightly stories, he yearns for the blue state and views Zan’s life as mirroring his own. He reflects on what Zan offers, which is to become the same as her. He sees Zan as a vehicle that can transport him to the blue state: a state of mind that can bring him wisdom, peace, and liberation, free from the boundaries of masculinity and femininity (mardanegi v zananegi va ham mardiyat v zanniyat). In this way, Zan becomes the medium between Sarvan and his inner voice.

As evidenced by one night in particular, Zan personifies the blue intellect and guides Sarvan to reach the blue state and from there, salvation. Zan appears at Sarvan’s house and enters without knocking. She is covered with a blue garment:

He heard the door. He was surprised for two reasons. First because the woman said she opened the door herself. Second because she was wearing blue. However, her blue dress did not seem like any kind of fabric one would have seen before; it was ethereal and flaming.

The lieutenant said: “Did you have a key?” The woman said: “Lieutenant, the hardest locks can still be broken with some skill, but I just turned the doorknob to open the door.”

The lieutenant said: “Maybe the door has been damaged by the bombing,” and she said: “No, it has not been damaged. In fact, it is as tight as the night before.” And lieutenant said: “You have ways of opening doors that I do not know.” The woman said: “Yes, this is true, and of course, you can also learn those ways easily.” Then she continued: “Didn’t I surprise you with my blue?” The lieutenant responded: “You should accept that wearing a blue like this and showing up at a man’s house is not right; it seems like a seduction.” And the woman responded: “I admire you for your honesty, but you have to understand that a woman is a woman and she will have her own ways.” She continued: “I have to tell you, though, I have worn this dress for a specific reason. This dress brings alienation and loneliness to me, and I will not be able to get rid of it; in fact, I have paid a high price for this dress.” [36]

The dialogue illustrates several important points that confirm Sarvan’s shift to the blue state. Zan, without permission, enters Sarvan’s home. The door of the house, which is the barrier between Sarvan and Zan, either has no lock or the lock is removed by Zan’s power. The door also metaphorically stands as a medium between the two states of mind; it represents the last shield between the man and woman. Zan’s entrance to Sarvan’s domain without barriers signifies their unification; the shift which is about to transpire in Sarvan is represented through his home, which no longer has a lock for Zan. The blue state is actualized by removing the boundaries. Hence when Zan purposely removes the door lock, she highlights that their souls are becoming united.

Zan also clarifies the purpose of her visits and why she wears blue. She aims to bring the man to the same level of transcendence and to inspire him to reconcile with his feminine side. The blue dress symbolizes the woman’s journey to transcendence. She emblematizes a spiritual state by embodying it in her blue dress. She sheds light upon the darkness of the night; from darkness, she clamors to reach the light of self-gnosis and self-assertion. Zan, in her nightly visits, aims to liberate Sarvan’s soul and invite him to experience the blue state with her. Further, the dress yields her an awareness that consequently estranges her from society. Zan epitomizes women in her society. She states that the dress alienates her, and she cannot ever be without this dress, showing that the dress is a token of awareness from which she cannot detach. She invites Sarvan to accompany her on the journey, and in the alienation she experiences, she warns him about the melancholy and loneliness that this enlightenment will impose on them.

Blue and Home: The Safe Domain

At first, Sarvan’s home is the realm where women and men lose their inhibitions and speak freely. However, at this time, Zan enters Sarvan’s home autonomously, independent from the man, which signifies one of two resolutions: either that Sarvan accepts and welcomes woman’s presence in his home or that his home is a medium that belongs to them both. Further, Sarvan’s home symbolizes his subconscious mind; hence, Zan’s entrance to the house underscores that she has successfully entered Sarvan’s physical and mental domain and assures him that Zan can guide him to salvation and liberation. The private domain can also represent the transcendental space wherein man reconciles with his feminine side. Zan metaphorically uses the anecdote of the door and states, “The hardest locks can still be broken with some skill”; however, she easily opens the door. At this point, Zan uses the symbolic door to show that she has found the key to Sarvan’s heart. This is illustrated through his openness to hear the inner voice that is hidden in his unconscious mind. The unlocked door implies to Sarvan that his resistance has been finally diminished, even if that has happened subconsciously.

When Zan sees Sarvan, she explains that the blue dress comes with responsibilities, as it brings awareness as well as isolation. Liberation detaches her from society’s boundaries, while isolation and seclusion refer to the search for the truth, making blue true to its archetypal meanings. Zan’s alienation guides her to be an emancipated soul. Zan’s dress is ethereal, unlike her physical body, echoing the form of her liberation and emancipation. In fact, this is a key difference between the female protagonist in The Blue Intellect and the supernatural female characters from Parsipur’s other narratives. The entirety of woman as a corporeal figure is important and unique. In The Blue Intellect, she does not need to be ethereal (or dead) and resurrected in order to be liberated, wise, or capable of guiding Sarvan (Zan goft: “Sarvan sakht-tarin ghofl-ha ra ba andaki maharat mitavan shekast. Amma man baraye baz kardan-e dar-e khaneye shoma faghat dastgireh ra pichandam.”).[37] She refers to the dress as a gift, a prize she received after achieving enlightenment. This connotation highlights and connects the symbolic dress to the archetypal meanings of blue. Blue becomes a motif to show emancipation and alienation. An emancipated soul is personified in the woman with her ethereal blue dress. Hence, the woman’s search has found a resolution. She is not dead, but she has both corporeal and ethereal form simultaneously.

Zan, the Unblemished but Corporeal Figure

Zan appears enlightened about the reality of life. She is liberated and seeks to guide and liberate Sarvan as well. Unlike Tuba, Zan emerges with complete awareness; she flows freely in society, aware of the reality of life. She returns at night to meet with the lieutenant and to guide him to salvation, wherein the resolution to the quest and the unresolved issue of search is embedded. Tuba, who all her life yearned to understand the meaning of the night (as the novel’s title implies), reappears in The Blue Intellect as the emblematic figure (Zan).

In Tuba and the Meaning of the Night and Women without Men, women reclaim their long-lost power by either sequestering themselves from the outside world or separating themselves from men. In the first novel, Tuba epitomizes her home as a safe place and tries to protect other women by keeping them inside; from Tuba’s vantage point, if the home is destroyed, the women and their power are destroyed as well. In the second narrative, women separate themselves from men; they move to a garden and create a manless community to find their power and liberty. However, in this last story, Zan is fluid and flowing, mobile and fruitful; she does not remain in the domain of the home. In fact, Sarvan remains in the domain of the home, and she appears every night to visit him. Zan seeks to reconcile with her masculine side and helps the man/Sarvan to do the same.

Furthermore, in the previous narratives, the main figures obtain a supernatural power only after they die and return to life. Tuba is enlightened after her death, and Munis is enlightened after she returns to life as a ghost. Zan, however, is gifted with the power of andishidan[38] while still in the corporeal realm. Zan is the prototype of intellect, and she symbolizes the blue intellect. She represents the peaceful mind whose aim is to reconcile with the man. Also, she can be immortal and ethereal even in a corporeal form. Zan embodies all that which Tuba, Leila, Setareh, Mahdokht, both Munises, and Zarrinkolah individually present in their ethereal or worldly form. She is the sum of the parts. Zan has reached a wholeness and perfection in the corporeal form that is beyond masculinity and femininity.

As previously discussed, Munis’s primary aim is to liberate herself and other women from male hegemony and to emancipate their souls. She asks other females to ponder andishidan and hopes that through this intellectual task, they can emancipate their body and soul from ritual and cultural boundaries. She neither pursues reconciliation with men, nor wants men to guide her or her women. She pursues an understanding of her virginity and believes that by resolving the issue of virginity, she can overcome her sense of hostility. Therefore, Munis believes a woman should disengage from the body and separate from men to be liberated.[39]

In The Blue Intellect, Zan exceeds the boundaries of chastity and virginity. She invites both women and men to transcend physical boundaries. She embodies an ethereal and immortal figure in a mortal/worldly form. Zan has an absolute understanding of her nature and her value in the universe. She is comfortable with her feminine side, stating, “A woman is a woman. She has her own feelings and moods” (yek Zan Zan ast, hal v ahvale khode ra darad).[40] She understands her body and her psyche. Zan categorizes her gender as the origin of existence, and she views men as her dependent half, not in opposition to her.[41] Zan’s realization is superior to those of all the other women in the other two novels.

Conclusion

The Blue Intellect is in many ways the work of emancipation which leads to resolution. In The Blue Intellect, all the narrative tropes and historical insights of the past novels come together to present an ultimate state of liberation. The novel shows the perfected woman, Zan, whose soul and intellect have achieved the serenity of blue. She epitomizes the transcendental level of being above the boundaries of society and politics, as well as the barriers that limit the dynamics of men and women. Zan encompasses all the female figures and represents every dynamic of their quest and search.

[1]Northrop Frye describes archetypal criticism as tracing the associative clusters of symbols within a body of literature in which the critic is essentially concerned with the literary text’s relationship to the broader body of literature. He argues that if archetypes are communicable symbols, and if there is a center of archetypes, we will find universal symbols. He also categorizes archetypes into two categories: “symbol as archetype” and “meaning/theme as archetype.” According to this categorization, the themes of quest and search can be defined as archetypal themes. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

[2]For my purposes, the internal quest (takapu va puyesh) to find tranquility (arames) within oneself is defined by quest. Search, for my purposes, is the questing journey (jostoju) that is articulated through various narratives by using different literary tropes. The distinct terms of quest (takapu va puyesh) and search (jostoju) highlight different aspects of the journey. In the mystical texts, the notion of the quest refers to the soul’s striving to regain the original homeland, the origin (asl), and is often defined as the internal quest into the self. However, for the purpose of this analysis, I use the term slightly differently and incorporate the two terms of quest and search to highlight the two stages of this journey to tranquility in the modern narratives. See Taqi Purnamdarian, Ramzi va Dastānha-Ye Ramzi Tahlili Az Dastānha-Ye Erfani-Falsāfi Ibn Sina va Sohravardi (Tehran: Elmi Farhangi Publishing, 1988).

[3]The main character, Tuba, is named after the tree of divine light and wisdom in Persian legend and lore. Houra Yavari, in her afterward of the translation, writes: “It is a story of the Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911), the reign of Reza Shah (1925-1941), oil nationalization (August 1953). Tuba, who lives over a hundred years, experiences the three historical phases that the nation undergoes in projecting the notions of modernity. Two revolutions encompass the endless life of Tuba’s life.” Houra Yavari, A Woman for All Seasons, trans. Kamran Talattof (New York: Columbia, 2006), 307.

[4]Yavari, Woman for All Seasons, 335.

[5]Shahrnush Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab (Tuba and the Meaning of the Night) (Tehran: Tohid, AH 1367/AD 1988), 1. Translation mine.

[6]Leila is the ethereal woman who represents the liberated Tuba, liberated homeland, and liberated woman. She expresses the voices of women who in wanting to be liberated are nonetheless suffocated. Leila, being a deathless creature, never submits to any such boundaries. I will discuss this further through my close reading. Leila also reappears as the transcendental woman or perfected soul (nafs-e mot’alie) in the third novel, The Blue Intellect.

[7]In the book, there is never an indication of how Maryam becomes pregnant.

[8]Progress here is defined as the notion of the search for love and venturing beyond boundaries, even if none of the attempts are successful.

[9]Shahrnush Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, trans. Havva Houshmand and Kamran Talattof (Syracuse, NY: Feminist Press, 2006), 511.

[10]Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 511; Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 337.

[11]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 511–12; Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 337.

[12]Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 338.

[13]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 512.

[14]The image of people who are drowning also points to the killing and bloodshed after the Constitutional Law and the oil nationalization revolutions; in both incidents, many people were killed, and as mentioned before in the story of Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, Tuba’s search and the political events develop in parallel.

[15]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 356; Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 232.

[16]Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 276; Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 373.

[17]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 366; Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 239.

[18]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 498; Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 329.

[19]Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye Shab, 603; Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 332.

[20]The motherland embodies the mother’s womb, the place to which all these women seek to return and discover tranquility.

[21]The Virgin Birth here symbolizes a rebirth of the spirit that can be experienced as Joseph Campbell describes. See Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphors (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001).

[22]I define utopia as the space where forced law and patriarchal hegemony cannot be imposed, a space where men’s presence is marginalized or eliminated. This space is a mystical land, which the characters find to be the ideal world.

[23]I use the notion of Desire, capitalized, to distinguish between the common meaning of desire and the notion of Desire as a catalyst of these characters to seek subjectivity and autonomy.

[24]Shahrnush Parsipur, Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan (Women without Men) (Tehran: Tohid, AH 1369/AD 1990), 22; Shahrnush Parsipur, Women without Men, trans. Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 28.

[25]Parsipur, Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 83; Parsipur, Women without Men, 76.

[26]Parsipur, Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 78; Parsipur, Women without Men, 73.

[27]This may allude to Arabic Aristotelianism, which believes that it is especially in dreams that the active intellect communicates with men. This is the time when reality becomes evident, and the dawn may suggest the time that she receives her epiphany even though it is not overtly stated.

[28]Parsipur, Tuba and the Meaning of the Night, 370; Parsipur, Tuba va Ma’naye shab, 511.

[29]Lakateh literally means prostitute, but in modern literary texts, such as The Blind Owl, it generally refers to the unfaithful wife, who has become an archetypal character. See Sadegh Hedayat (1903–51), The Blind Owl, trans D.P. Costello (New York: Grove Press, 1969).

[30]Parsipur, Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 18; Parsipur, Women without Men, 12.

[31]Parsipur, Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 86; Parsipur, Women without Men, 86.

[32]In Persian, neither zan nor sarvan are proper nouns, but since these are the only names the characters are given in the novel, I use them as proper names to harmonize with the other characters’ names. Further, the name Zan as “woman” represents all women.

[33]Shahrnush Parsipur, Aql-e Abi (The Blue Intellect) (San Jose, CA: Zamaneh, AH 1373/AD 1994), 190. All English translations of The Blue Intellect are my own.

[34]Mard-e bozorg or bozorg mard means a noble man in Persian, referring to prophets, philosophers, and people who had an impact on history.

[35]Abbas Milani, Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2004), 154.

[36]Parsipur, Aql-e Abi, 321–23.

[37]Parsipur, Aql-e Abi, 321.

[38]Andishidan literally means the ability to think but metaphorically means having special speculation or enlightenment that Sarvan does not have.

[39]This belief is similar to the Sufi practices that one should separate from the body and material world to be enlightened.

[40]Parsipur, Aql-e Abi, 322.

[41]Parsipur, Aql-e Abi, 322.

Paul Sprachman taught English at the University of Isfahan, worked as a researcher at Columbia University, and taught Middle Eastern studies and Persian at Rutgers University. Sprachman is the translator of numerous works from Persian to English including A Man of Many Worlds: The Memoirs of Dr. Ghasem Ghani (Mage, 2006); Journey to Heading 270° by Ahmad Dehqan (Mazda, 2006); and Chess with the Doomsday Machine (Mazda, 2008) and A City under Siege: Tales of the Iran-Iraq War (Mazda, 2010) by Habib Ahmadzadeh.

It would be difficult to find a more challenging novel to translate into Persian than Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. As the medium of the values, ideas, and beliefs of the various people who use it, Persian does not seem to have much in common with the language of the original. Over the centuries, keepers of the classical Persian literary canon have not been particularly welcome to writing with sexually explicit content, writing that is often termed alfiyeh-shalfiyeh, a debased form of expression unworthy of serious or scholarly study.[1] In addition, erotic literature in general is not often a subject for public discussion or criticism in the language. While the Internet abounds in medical, legal, and theological advice on sexual matters as well as with pornographic content intended for Persian users, it is still not considered good manners to speak bluntly about the aesthetics of eroticism—much less sex—in mixed company.[2] Further complicating rendering Lolita are the complexities of Nabokov’s writing. This is true, of course, for translation of the novel into any language, be it Persian or one more tolerant of explicitly erotic literature like French. Even today, some six-and-a-half decades after Lolita came out in Paris, Nabokov’s unique brand of English poses a challenge to readers and interpreters of the novel. The scrupulous translator has to convey what David Lodge calls the author’s “extraordinary stylistic virtuosity, his metaphorical inventiveness, and complex deployment of an entire thesaurus of other rhetorical devices.”[3]

The purpose of the present article is to shed some light on modern Persian’s capacity to convey a modern work of erotic literature. The focus of this article is a recent translation of Lolita by Dr. Akram Pedramnia,[4] which, given the traditional aversion to and contemporary abhorrence of erotic writing in Persian, could not be published in her native Iran. It was brought out, instead, in 2014 by the Kabul-based publisher Nashr-e Zaryab.[5] This raises the obvious question of why translate Lolita into Persian when most of the intended audience for such a work resides in Iran, where it is criminal to sell or read the book. Dr. Pedramnia’s introduction addresses the question by citing Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd, who says it is high “time that [this work] be translated accurately, explicitly, and faithfully into one of the great literary languages of the world (Persian).”[6] Dr. Pedramnia’s is not the first Persian translation of Lolita. The extraordinarily prolific translator and journalist Dhabih Mansuri (1897–1986) produced a version of the work that is so marred by additions and omissions it cannot be called a translation in any sense of the term.[7]

At first glance, the difficulties involved in translating Lolita into literary Persian seem almost insurmountable. This is especially the case when one considers that preeminent scholars of the target language do not consider erotic written expression—no matter how high its putative redeeming social or artistic value—to be literature at all and classify it as a degenerate type of written expression known as alfiyeh-shalfiyeh. But the challenges the Persian translator faces go beyond the limitations of the language itself. Studies of how Lolita has fared when translated into such languages as French, Hebrew, and Swedish often comment on the challenges the author’s English presents. According to Nitsa Ben-Ari, Hebrew translator Yosef Varhaftig’s inability to “cope with the complex literary mechanisms and artifice of the text” result in an undue emphasis on Lolita’s “pornographic aspect.” Translators of Lolita into more culturally proximate and congenial languages than Persian have also commented on what a minefield Nabokov’s prose can be.[8]

Given the bias against sexually provocative writing in Persian, it would seem Dr. Pedramnia’s efforts would be for naught; but the prospects of producing an accurate, explicit, and faithful translation of Lolita are not as bleak as they may seem. Responding to those who saw his book as pornographic, Nabokov maintained there are no obscenities in Lolita; thus, translators would not have to resort to vulgarity to describe sexual arousal and satisfaction.[9] He himself had to admit, however, that “certain techniques in the beginning of Lolita (Humbert’s journal, for example)” initially attracted many readers to the novel because they assumed it was a “lewd” book.[10] Andrew Brink, a student of obsession in modern literature, goes further: “Readers who looked to Lolita for pornography were partly gratified although ultimately disappointed. The crudity of pornography is refined to a sophistication no living writer could emulate.”[11]

In other words, little in the novel would require the services of a censor in places where erotic writing is publishable. To be sure, Nabokov does write about sex, but, as Robert Roper points out, “[it] is mostly odorless and unlubricated, and indirectly realized.”[12] The relative freedom to produce erotic writing in most Western countries, however, is not the unalloyed blessing it might seem at first blush. In his introduction to Maurice Couturier’s Nabokov’s Eros and the Poetics of Desire, David Lodge identifies the paradox that the lack of censorship, rather than fostering authors’ creativity, has the opposite effect. In his view, censorship can be a boon to imaginative writing, because it “present[s] a stimulating challenge to writers, to which they respond by finding subtle ways to convey their meaning indirectly or more courageously by gradually testing and extending the limits of socially acceptable explicitness.”[13] Too much freedom, according to Lodge, “can cause the writer almost as much anxiety as working under censorship.”[14] This may be one bright light in the gloom caused by the Draconian censorship of writing in Afghanistan and Iran. Dr. Pedramnia probably felt no such anxiety and may have derived a measure of satisfaction in discovering culturally acceptable ways of expressing the openly erotic parts of Nabokov’s novel. But, as will be shown, finding anodyne alternatives to provocative language can rob Lolita of what makes it a supremely original work of art.

The Persian translator of Lolita has another advantage over other translators, dubious though it may be. In both Iran and Afghanistan, a wide age gap between men and their wives, some of whom are children (termed in Persian kudak hamsar or dokhtaran-e zir-e sen), is not exceptional.[15] The story of a thirty-seven-year-old man marrying a girl one-third his age would have been familiar to readers of Persian. At the same time, many readers both before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution would despise any middle-aged man who robbed a thirteen-year-old of her childhood and kept her in sexual enslavement for his own gratification. Whatever the case, Humbert’s crime lies outside of the scope of the analysis in this paper. The present assessment of Dr. Pedramnia’s translation judges it using Boyd’s three-fold criteria of accuracy, explicitness, and faithfulness to the original. It focuses on how much the need to maintain what is termed “modesty of written expression” (^‘effat-e kalam) in Persian limits how the eroticism of Lolita is conveyed.

A culturally acceptable rendering of the original’s eroticism comes in Dr. Pedramnia’s translation of the novel’s iconic first line: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”[16] In back translation, her version reads: “Lolita, lamp of my life, fire of my sexual organ.”[17] Choosing the anodyne “sexual organ” )andam-e jensi( in place of something more suggestive mutes the erotic undertones of Humbert’s combustible loins. This rendering clearly weakens the translation’s claim to being as explicit as possible. Pedramnia could have used keshaleh (“crotch”) or keshaleh-ye ran (“upper thighs and crotch”) instead of “sexual organ.” She was certainly aware of keshaleh’s erotic potential; she uses it to render the phrase “the hot hollow of [Lolita’s] groin,” the destination of  Humbert’s “muscular thumb.”[18] Pedramnia also uses andam-e jensi for “loins” when it appears later in the text, and it has the same deadening effect on Nabokov’s prose that it does in her translation of Lolita’s opening line. In the passage identifying the ideal connoisseur of “nymphets,” those lissome girls between nine and fourteen who excite Humbert “so abominably,” he says, “You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!).”[19] In Persian (through back translation), he says: “You must be an artist or mad or one of limitless melancholy with a scalding bubble of poison in your sexual organ and the permanent and blazing rays of lust in your spine/backbone (oh, how you have to cringe in a corner and hide).”[20] Perhaps to lower the heat of the passage, “super-voluptuous,” a phrase common to Persian pornographic sites as fowq al-‘adeh shahvani  or fowq al-‘adeh hashari, is not translated.[21]

Pedramnia’s translation also mutes the eroticism of the original in her literal rendering of Humbert’s first night alone with Lolita’s precursor, Annabel. Humbert describes how he and Annabel retire to a secluded grove where

a cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.[22]

In back translation, this becomes:

Above us, between the long and thin leaves, a cluster of stars shone; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as Annabel in her thin dress. I saw her face in the sky, strange remote, as if a faint light was shining from it. Her legs, her beautiful and warm legs, were not too close together, and when my hand was situated on what it was searching for a vague and frightful expression, half pleasure and half pain, prevailed over those childish expressions. She sat a little higher than I and in that peerless state of ecstasy whenever she reached the point she wanted to kiss me, she would bend her head down with a slow and gentle motion that seemed woeful and press my wrist between her bare knees and lessen the pressure again, with a whistling sound her breath would hit my face. To escape the pain of love, she would first rub her dry lips hard over mine, then my poor little child with a nervous backward toss of her hair would draw away from me, and again in that darkness would come near and let me suck on her open mouth. With complete generosity I was prepared to offer all I had to her. Heart, throat, stomach, and intestines, I would even place the scepter of my self-regard [ghorur] in her strange fist to hold.[23]

Apart from the omission of “her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion” (omitted, perhaps, because of the challenge in finding a likely Persian equivalent) and the mistranslation of “with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face,” Pedramnia’s version faithfully follows the original. “Scepter of my self-regard (chowgan-e padshahi-ye ghorur-am),” literally “the royal polo mallet of my pride,” however, blunts Humbert’s arch “scepter of my passion.” The more common equivalent Persian expression for “scepter” is ‘asa-ye saltanati (literally “royal staff”),[24] and the metaphorical use of ‘asa for “male member” is well attested in the vulgar works of classical authors. ‘Asa  stands in for “penis” in a line from a collection of bawdy and scurrilous verse called Abominations and Sessions of Vulgarity,[25] attributed to one of the finest writers of the classical period, Sa‘di of Shiraz (1210–91/92). The narrator of the poem, which is addressed to a male lover, says, “This staff which inside your ass / would break were the door [to it] made of iron.”[26] “Sexual organ” would not have been an acceptable equivalent for “scepter,” because Nabokov, in conferring monarchical authority on a randy adolescent Humbert, is clearly having some fun with the banalities of pornographic writing. “Scepter of passion” is not among the stock of baroque images for the male member in the great erotic epics in Persian by Fakhr al-Din As‘ad Gorgani, Nezami Ganjavi, and Nur al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami. Did the translator, therefore, miss an opportunity to expand the range of what can be expressed in Persian here? Perhaps. The sentence might have been the proper setting for the coinage “‘asa-ye sheydayi-am.”[27] Finally, Pedramnia’s choice of “her strange fist” (mosht-e ‘ajib-ash) for “her awkward fist” also seems ill-chosen. Humbert is clearly referring to Annabel’s inexperience or clumsiness when it came to manipulating his penis. Her fist is not “strange,” but inept, in which case mosht-e na-azmudeh-ash (literally “untested fist”) would have been more faithful to the original.

The translation also shows that Lolita’s eroticism can be so explicit it exceeds the capacity of Persian to express it in culturally acceptable terms. The Friday, 13 June, 1947, entry in Humbert’s diary contains a breach of verbal decorum that makes a faithful rendering impossible. Here, preserving the original typography, is what Humbert writes:

Friday. I wonder what my academic publishers would say if I were to quote in my textbook Ronsard’s “la vermeillette fente” or Remy Belleau’s “un petit mont feutré de mousse delicate, tracé sur le milieu d’un fillet escarlatte” and so forth.[28]

Pedramnia’s version, in back translation (with Persian punctuation), is

Friday. I don’t know if in my book I repeat this verse (the bright crimson breach) from Ronsard or these two lines (the small hills covered in fine downy hairs / embellished with a scarlet beef tenderloin in the middle).[29]

Dr. Pedramnia annotates this passage with explanations taken from Alfred Appel’s The Annotated Lolita. In English, Appel provides two notes. In one, he identifies Ronsard as a French poet and locates the line, which he translates as “oh little red slit.” In the next note, Appel translates Belleau’s line as “the hillock velveted with delicate moss, / traced in the middle with a little scarlet thread [labia],” which explains why the publishers of Humbert’s textbook would have found the quotations objectionable.[30] In her annotation of the French verse, Pedramnia writes: “All these are code words and expressions (^cebārāt va kalameh`hā-ye ramzi) girls and women use when referring to their monthly periods so men will not understand what they are talking about—things like [saying euphemistically] ‘auntie has come’ in our culture.”[31] Thus, the Persian translation, perhaps because of the demands of censorship, transforms the original’s French paeans to female genital geography into encrypted speech about menstruation. Readers of the Persian are told to interpret Ronsard’s “bright crimson breach” as menstrual blood and are left to wonder why an expensive cut of meat is lying among hairy hills. “Beef tenderloin” (Persian fileh), of course, owes its existence to Pedramnia’s transliteration of French fillet.[32] One can only wonder why she has avoided using a Persian noun of ancient provenance, namely nakh (“thread”), which would have served quite well.

The lapses in Pedramnia’s translation here seem all the more puzzling when one contrasts her version of Ronsard and Belleau’s references to female anatomy with how she expresses the exacting mental picture of the sleeping Lolita that Humbert paints later in the novel, after locking her in their hotel room. Nabokov writes:

Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spread-eagled on the bed where my philter had felled her—so I foreglimpsed her; a velvet hair ribbon was still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body, with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patterned against her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamplight, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock.[33]

Back translation shows, but for “charm bracelet,”[34] the Persian is quite faithful to the original. As far as the level of explicitness, however, the exquisite “pubic floss” is reduced to the clinical “fine hairs, fuzz (porz`hā) of her privates (sharmgāhi)” in translation. A more likely equivalent might have been zehar (“pubic hair”):

In the realm of imagination, I glanced at her and saw she was naked except for one sock and a bracelet, fallen on the bed [an] eagle with wings spread, exactly that place that love potion had felled her, still with that velvet ribbon in her hand. Part of her honey-colored body was patterned with a negative white image of her swimsuit on places where her skin was not tanned and the white buds of her breasts were apparent to me. In the rosy light of the table lamp a little of the fine hairs of her privates shone on the plump hillock.[35]

Besides being overly explicit, some of the wit in Lolita is too subtle to be conveyed accurately and faithfully in Persian. This is especially the case in one of the depictions of Humbert’s strategically veiled states of sexual arousal. In the passage, the writing becomes what Couturier calls “poerotic,” a refined form of expression that turns the description of a routine act of self-pleasuring into a work of art.[36] Couturier writes that the passage about the “scepter” of Humbert’s passion mentioned above is an example of what he means by poerotic. In a similar diary entry dated Sunday, 8 June, the “sequel” to the “scepter” passage, Humbert, his lap covered by the convenient bulk of a Sunday newspaper, maneuvers himself to derive as much pleasure as possible from a minute examination of Lolita’s physical state. With his eyes trained on the nymphet dressed in a two-piece bathing suit, he says:

There my beauty lay down on her stomach showing me, showing the thousand eyes wide open in my eyed blood, her slightly raised shoulder blades, and the bloom along the incurvation of her spine, and the swellings of her tense narrow nates clothed in black, and the seaside of her school girl thighs. Silently, the seventh-grader enjoyed her green-red-blue comics. She was the loveliest nymphet green-red-blue Priap himself could think up. As I looked on, through prismatic layers of light, dry-lipped, focusing my lust and rocking slightly under my newspaper, I felt that my perception of her, if properly concentrated upon, might be sufficient to have me attain a beggar’s bliss immediately; but, like some predator that prefers a moving prey to a motionless one, I planned to have this pitiful attainment coincide with one of the various girlish movements she made now and then as she read, such as trying to scratch the middle of her back and revealing a stippled armpit.[37]

The translation translated reads:

My beauty stretched out on her stomach and showed me, the thousands of pupils protruding from their sockets sitting in the blood of my eyes, her slightly raised shoulder blade[s], the downy hairs on the bend of her spine, the bulge of her small buttocks under the black bathing suit and the bronzed childlike thighs. The small seventh grader, silent, was enjoying the colorful illustrated funnies. She was the most loveable nymphet, a nymphet who even Priapus, green, red, and blue could not contain in his imagination. When I looked at her through the colorful prism of lights and with dry lips, focused on my lust and under the newspapers, and rocking slightly back and forth, I sensed that if I concentrated properly, I realized it would be enough to immediately attain from her the rapture [khalseh] and delight that a beggar gains from a piece of bread; but, like some hunters who prefer a moving prey to a stationary one, I decided to have this pitiful attainment coincide with her various girlish movements, for example when she tried to scratch the middle of her back, her speckled under arm was revealed.[38]

The translation of Humbert’s description of Lolita’s nates omits “tense narrow,” qualities that, like other paired descriptors of his darling’s body, such as her “tender and tanned”[39] skin and her “bright brown” hair,[40] make the seventh-grader sexually appealing. Pedramnia’s translation of “nates,” kapal`ha-ye kuchek (“small buttocks”), is adequate as far as the lexicon is concerned; however, the prose calls for something more erotically charged, more expressive of an older man’s lust for a young girl’s backside, but, at the same time, reflective of Nabokov’s fondness for obscure medical terminology (e.g., “nates”).

Finding the requisite language is quite a challenge for any translator whose aim is to create an accurate, explicit, and faithful Lolita. For obvious reasons, culturally acceptable but explicit Persian expressions for the seductiveness of a nubile girl’s buttocks are not to be found in contemporary writing publishable in Iran and Afghanistan. A more likely source would be a work from the corpus of Persian erotica published abroad, where there are fewer constraints on what can be said in print. One such work is a “sketch” (tarh) by Bijan Gheiby, a scholar of Zoroastrian culture and literature whose writing is published in Germany. The narrator of Gheiby’s story “The Dutch Girl” (Dokhtar-e Holandi) is strolling among a crush of people lying in the sun on a North Sea beach, when he spots the “round and captivating rump” (lom[n]bar`hā-ye gerd-o faribandeh) of one of the sunbathers.[41] The girl satisfies the narrator’s curiosity about the rest of her body when she gets to her feet and enters the sea. He describes what happens next this way:

Without thinking, I followed her. That graceful walk of hers, that rhythmic movement of her rump, and the ineffable sway of her breasts, produced drumbeats in me that set the tempo of my existence. She entered the sea. Each moment the surface of the water kept climbing up the back of her legs until her bathing suit bottom was now soaked, making what it had been concealing more visible.[42]

Dr. Pedramnia does not have to borrow from expatriate erotica when it comes to translating the rapture Humbert imagines he will experience as he observes Lolita. To convey the covert satisfaction he nearly achieves under the cover of the Sunday paper, she utilizes khalseh, which normally refers to the ecstatic state of consciousness Sufis attain after prolonged bouts of spiritual activity. Coincidentally, Gheiby’s narrator uses the same word when describing the “sense of vertigo and weightlessness [he] had from the waves as they lifted [him] out of the water along with witnessing this indescribable vision [of the Dutch girl].”[43] The translation falls down, however, when it comes to conveying the phrase “beggar’s bliss.” Instead of reading the phrase for what it is—that is, a dysphemism for how people without means or partners achieve sexual satisfaction—Dr. Pedramnia takes the phrase literally and makes it even more familiar to Persian readers by providing the idiomatic beggar with a mouthwatering “piece of bread” not in the original.

Khalseh turns up once again when Humbert, with Lolita’s legs rather than the Sunday paper draped over his lap, finally reaches a world-class state of pre-climax abandon. Nabokov makes no attempt to dress up Humbert’s bliss with metaphors, which might have tested the translator’s alfiyeh-shalfiyeh resources to the limits of permissibility, had it not been for the well-attested presence of khalseh in mystical Persian literature. Humbert’s longed-for relief comes at the end of a bout of verbally exquisite foreplay, a lengthy passage consisting of, among many other things, the biology of sexual arousal, a common orientalist conceit (the “lusty Turk”), exacting descriptions of the nymphet’s anatomy, one of Nabokov’s much-discussed neologisms (“solipsized”), and his passion for archaisms (“asprawl,” “athwart”). The passage, even when trimmed of some of Lolita’s nonsense rhymes, shows Nabokov at his erotic best and, at the same time, shows why his prose is so challenging to translators:

By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden’s attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick. Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath, catching up with it mimicking a sudden toothache to explain the breaks in my patter—and all the while keeping a maniac’s inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion….Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit [a prelapsarian apple], singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Under my glancing finger tips I felt the minute hairs bristle ever so slightly along her shins. I lost myself in the pungent but healthy heat which like summer haze hung about little Haze. Let her stay, let her stay…As she strained to chuck the core of her abolished apple into the fender, her young weight, her shameless innocent shanks and round bottom shifted in my tense, tortured, surreptitiously laboring lap; and all of a sudden a mysterious change came over my senses. I entered a plane of being where nothing mattered, save the infusion of joy brewed within my body. What had begun as a delicious distension of my innermost roots became a glowing tingle which now had reached that state of absolute security, confidence and reliance not found elsewhere in conscious life. With the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized….Everything was now ready. The nerves of pleasure had been laid bare. The corpuscles of Krause were entering the phase of frenzy. The least pressure would suffice to set all paradise loose….I was above the tribulations of ridicule, beyond the possibilities of retribution. In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiant and robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom, postponing the moment of enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves. Suspended on the brink of that voluptuousness abyss (a nicety of physiological equipoise comparable to certain techniques in the arts) I kept repeating chance words after her—barmen, alarmin’, my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen—as one talking and laughing in his sleep while my happy hand crept up her sunny leg as far as the shadow of decency allowed. The day before she had collided with the heavy chest in the hall and—“Look, look!”—I gasped—“look what you’ve done, what you’ve done to yourself, ah, look”; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly enveloped—and because of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin—just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child—just that—and: “Oh it’s nothing at all,” she cried with a sudden shrill note in her voice, and she wiggled, and squirmed, and threw her head back, and her teeth rested on her glistening underlip as she half-turned away, and my moaning mouth, gentlemen of the jury, almost reached her bare neck, while I crushed out against her left buttock the last throb of the longest ecstasy man or monster had ever known.[44]

Pedramnia translates:

The impudent child in perfect simplicity placed her legs on my live legs.

Now I had reached a state of excitement verging on insanity; but at the same time I also had the cunning of the rational. As I sat on the furniture, with several concealed movements, I coordinated my hidden lust with her naïve legs. Throwing off the attention of the little girl while trying to carry out the movements necessary to my trick successfully was not an easy task. I spoke rapidly to justify my irregular fussing and fidgeting. I ran out of breath and then refreshed it, and, to explain the gaps, I pretended I had come down with a sudden tooth ache, while the whole time keeping my inner sight fixed on my next golden goal and carefully increased my magic friction, a friction that in an illusory way, if not actually, freed me from the evil of cloths (pajamas and robe) between her two sunburnt legs and the hidden tumor of my unspeakable feeling, cloths that were physically irremovable, but psychologically destructible…. Her legs on my live legs gave a slight start. I stroked them; at this point she leaned on the right corner, sitting loosely. Lola, my little stockings girl, swallowing the fruit of an ancient age and gulping down its juice through which she sang, and, having removed her sandal, rubbing her naked foot with its collapsed anklet along the mass of magazines to my left, and with everything she did and every wiggling motion and ripple she made, helped me to improve the secret system of contact between the beast and the beauty, between the disgusting explosion of this beast and the beauty of her pure pocked body in its cotton frock.

Under the gentle tap of my fingertips, I felt the small hairs bristling on her shins. I felt myself lost in the pungent but welcome heat, which was like the hazy warmth of summer. Let her stay on my feet, let her stay on my feet… As she stretched to throw the core of her apple toward the fire place, her young body, her shameless innocent shanks and her round hips shifted on my secret, tortured, agonized, and contracted part; and suddenly a mysterious change in my senses happened. I entered a stage of existence in which nothing was important to me, except tasting the delight brewed inside my body. That sweet brew which began in the innermost of my roots changed into a burning frenzy, now had reached a state of complete tranquility, self-confidence, and encouragement that can be found nowhere in life. Submerged in the sweet and deep honey that was established thus and progressing well on its way to its ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow it down to lengthen my frenzy. Lolita was safely in her own world…. Now everything was ready. The nerves of pleasure appeared. The nerve endings were entering the phase of frenzied passion and madness. A little pressure could unleash all heaven. No longer was I that Humbert the rabid. The abject degenerate cur who would cling tightly even to the boot that would kick him out. I was beyond the pain of ridicule, beyond every possibility of punishment. In this seraglio of my own making I was that robust and radiant Turk who in the full consciousness of his freedom would postpone the ultimate moment of enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves. Hanging on the verge of lust’s fault line (with a fine physiological balance like some artistic techniques) I repeated a string of words following Lo: my remaining cupbearer… my effective carmen… like one asleep and speaking and laughing and, in that same state, my happy hand slid up her tanned leg as far as the spirit of decency allowed. That spot where the day before she had bumped into a heavy wardrobe in the hallway. I gasped and said, “Look… look! What have you done, look at what you have done to yourself… Oh, look.” I swear it was on account of that violet-yellowish bruise on her beautiful nymphet thigh that I massaged with my huge hairy hand and slowly covered; and on account of her loose underthings there seemed nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin—just as when you pet and caress a ticklish child, only that. Suddenly in a sharp tone of voice she said, “It’s nothing, really nothing at all” and wiggled and squirmed and tossed her head back, and sunk her teeth on the glistening underlip of her mouth, and, at the same time, she twisted around and turned her back on me, in a way that allowed my moaning mouth, gentlemen of the jury, to almost reach her naked neck and I crushed the last throb of the longest rapture possible for a man or a monster against her left buttock.[45]

The translation of the above passage also reveals other points where Dr. Pedramnia fails to take full advantage of Persian’s stock of erotic expressions or misrepresents what Nabokov intends. The “unspeakable passion” Humbert experiences upon finding his groin separated by a few layers of flimsy cloth from its goal is reduced simply to an “unspeakable feeling” (ehsas-e nagoftani) in her translation. The word “passion” is absent, which, given the context, might have been rendered as hava va havas or sheydayi. The translation also tempers the erotic intensity of Humbert’s realization about dragging out his pre-orgasmic euphoria. He says, “With the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized.” In Persian he says, “Submerged in the sweet and deep honey that was established thus and progressing well on its way to its ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow it down to lengthen my frenzy. Lolita was safely in her own world.” With the exception of the addition of “honey,” the mistranslations of “insane” as “rational” (‘aqel) and of “dimpled” as gowd rafteh (“pocked”) instead of chal-dar, the Persian faithfully conveys the original. The translation is inadequate in rendering the neologism “solipsized.” In translation, Lolita is “safe and sound” (dar amn va aman) “in her own world” (dar ‘alam-e khod), which implies she is in a world of her own making, while “solipsized” means she is held captive in a realm of Humbert’s making and “safe” in the sense that she is immune to change. As a figment of Humbert’s fevered imagination, she becomes a creature at his fanciful beck and call, the plaything of the Humbert who has changed from abject Humbert the Hound into Humbert the Magnificent, the strapping lord of a harem of young girls.

At the same time, the passage about Humbert’s “state of excitement,” shows how Persian, among all the world’s languages, can be more amenable as a medium for Lolita. The translation of “seraglio” is an obvious example of this congeniality. With its impeccable Persian provenance, the term slips effortlessly from English to Persian as saray. The seclusion of women, whether in plush sarays or the more humdrum interior parts (andarun) of ordinary homes, has long been a feature of patriarchal Persian society. To readers of the language, then, the idea of a “harem” is more a matter of practicality than orientalist fancy. Finally, there is the reappearance of khalseh, which Pedramnia uses to translate the prolonged “ecstasy” that Humbert crushes out against Lolita’s left buttock. Bijan Gheiby uses the term, it will be recalled, for the rapture that the narrator of his story “The Dutch Girl” experiences, when bobbing up and down in waves on the Dutch North Sea coast. In Sufism, khalseh is the trance-like state between sleep and wakefulness, during which seekers on the path to enlightenment gain knowledge by nonrational means. Employing khalseh instead of enzal, the alfiyeh-shalfiyeh as well as the clinical term for “ejaculation,” has two unexpected and unintended consequences. First, it confirms in Persian—as if confirmation were needed—Nabokov’s coy claim that there was no vulgarity in Lolita. Second, it shows the similarities in terminology between the language Nabokov uses to write about Humbert’s pre-orgasmic and orgasmic states and the language Sufis use to speak about the exalted states of consciousness (ahval) they traverse in their search for union with God. The two languages become very close in expressing states of intimacy, one physical and the other metaphysical. An example of the former comes when Humbert speaks of a sudden transformation of his senses: “What had begun as a delicious distension of my innermost roots became a glowing tingle which now had reached that state of absolute security, confidence and reliance not found elsewhere in conscious life.” In the language of mystical literature, Sufis might say that Humbert’s soul had reached a state of absolute certainty, a state that they infer from a Koranic verse (89: 27): “O soul in (complete) rest and satisfaction.”[46] The soul privileged with complete certainty (etmenan) is the “soul at peace” (nafs-e motma’enneh).[47] And here is where examining the Persian translation of Lolita yields a kind of semantic convergence. The two languages, which, on the surface, seem so remote from each other, so mutually unintelligible, use similar terms to express the ravings of a middle-aged hebephile and the intuitions of wayfarers on the path to God.

Convergence in the expression of physical and metaphysical passion is also evident in one of the symptoms of Humbert’s erotomania. He endows parts of his anatomy with faculties they normally do not have. Hence, his blood is “eyed,” and his fingertips are able to “glance” at the minute hairs along Lolita’s shins. One finds an analogous synesthesia in mystical Persian poetry. Putting into words the ineffable experience of acquiring spiritual truths by nonrational means, Rumi speaks of the “eye of the heart” (cheshm-e del), the “tongue of the soul” (zaban-e jan), and the “ear of the eye” (gush-e cheshm), among others.[48] The narrator of one of Hafez’s odes likewise tells readers not to listen with the “ear of reason” (gush-e hush).[49] Similar metaphors are also in everyday Persian speech. Paying attention to something (e.g., recitation of the Koran) with all one’s being is to “lend the ear of the soul” (gush-e jan sepordan). Pedramnia’s translation fails to take full advantage of this aspect of Persian in conveying the inventiveness of Nabokov’s prose in describing Humbert’s two frenzied states of nymphet-inspired arousal. Her rendering of Nabokov’s “eyed blood” as “the blood of my eyes” suggests that Humbert suffers from subconjunctival hemorrhaging.

In addition to not taking full advantage of the similarities in the way Persian and Nabokov’s English express rapturous abandon, Dr. Pedramnia’s translation of the sexually explicit—some have said pornographic—parts of Lolita fails to draw on the alfiyeh-shalfiyeh tradition in Persian literature. There are at least three places where the translation falls short in this regard. The first comes after Humbert picks Lolita up from camp and is taking her to the Enchanted Hunter Hotel. Lolita notices a theater playing a movie she wants to see and asks her “dad” if they could see it. Nabokov writes, ““We might,” chanted Humbert—knowing perfectly well, the sly tumescent devil, that by nine, when his show began, she would be dead in his arms.”[50] Dr. Pedramnia translates, “Humbert mumbled, ‘We might.’ But this sly devil knew very well that around nine, when his show began, Lo would be deeply asleep in his arms.”[51] Perhaps to avoid the image of a penis engorged with blood, Persian Humbert is not “tumescent,” but simply a “sly devil” (sheytan-e nabekar). No‘uz (“erect”) might have worked here, but a more inspired choice would have been setabr ( “thick, gross, hulking”), which is used priapically in Ebrahim Golestan’s The Treasure. Golestan’s novel caricatures Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a poor farmer who suddenly becomes wealthy and unknowingly wastes his riches on Western goods incompatible with his rusticity. The arriviste farmer is persuaded to take a wife more in keeping with his newfound status and to have a modern home constructed as a monument to his imperious grandeur. The resulting structure borrows traditional elements from mosque architecture (dome and minaret), but instead of a single dome and several minarets, it has one towering minaret flanked by two geodesic domes. The word setabr is used in the sense of “tumescent” in the praise the farmer’s/shah’s Westernized factotum (nicknamed Leshku’i)[52] heaps on the new structure, with its glorious erection. The factotum’s speech, which, in translation, faintly echoes the sound of the original, makes fun of the rhetorical excesses of sycophantic Persian:

If our tongue falls short, this tumescent structure goes a long way in bespeaking with ever-scintillating, brilliant retelling the vim and vigor, the riches and renown, and even the luminous intentions of its beloved patron—it is a structure upraised from the very belly and core of our ancient customs, one that harmonizes the legacy of the forebearers with the latest developments in technology and aesthetic design of undisputed American masters like Buckminster Fuller.[53]

The Persian Lolita avoids alfiyeh-shalfiyeh explicitness a second time when Humbert, having drugged Lolita, describes how he relishes the prospect of possessing her. Waiting for the sedative he gave her to take effect, he leaves their Enchanted Hunter’s bedroom with the “hermetic vision” of her undressing on the bed they will soon share. The vision is a kind of unintentional striptease that stays with him as he prowls the corridors and guest areas of the hotel. Humbert recalls, “I had left my Lolita still sitting on the edge of the abysmal bed, drowsily raising her foot, fumbling at the shoelaces and showing as she did so the nether side of her thigh up to the crotch of her panties—she had always been singularly absent-minded, or shameless, or both, in matters of legshow.”[54] In back translation, the Persian says: “I left my Lolita who was still seated on the edge of the pit-like bed and drowsily raising her foot and, fumbling with her shoelaces, showed me her under thigh to the center of the branching of her panties [tonokeh]. (She was always careless in showing her legs or, one could say, shameless or both) and I went.”[55] “The center of the branching of her panties” is clearly a circumlocution. The translation avoids kheshtak, a common term for “crotch,” perhaps because of its colloquial associations with “ass” and “genitals.”[56] The term would have been more faithful than the circumlocution in conveying the image of a near-naked Lolita, which Humbert nurtures in his imagination and which makes the prospect of having sex with her even more titillating.

Nabokov’s explicit eroticism is muted in translation a third time in Humbert’s musings after he leaves the room. He fantasizes that if he were to rape Lolita as she slept, it would somehow preserve the girl’s “purity.” At one point in this reverie, he calls again on the “robust Turk” to supply an image of Eastern debauchery. Humbert laments having to live in an age of Spartan modernity when people “do not as dignified Orientals did in still more luxurious times, use tiny entertainers fore and aft between the mutton and the rose sherbet.”[57] The translation is more modest: “I am not like those dignified Middle Easterners who at times of debauchery, between their dishes of lamb and rose sherbet, make use of child entertainers from chest to heel.”[58] To lift the veil of modesty on this scene, the translator might have resorted to alfiyeh-shalfiyeh texts for a prurient alternative to “from chest to heel.” One such text is a story from Vali b. Sohrab Gorjestani’s “Scandalous Essay” (“Resaleh-ye Fojuriyeh”). In it is the tale of Gelin Khanom, the adulterous wife of Prince Sahebqaran Mirza, who, instead of having the author ravish her “from chest to heel,” demands he take her both from behind and in front (pas-o pish).[59]

Much more could be said about Pedramnia’s translation of Lolita. Students of how Western erotica is rendered in Persian, scholars of literary translation like Haddadian-Moghaddam,[60] and others interested in what can and cannot be said in the language will have to wait for the relaxing of the strict censorship regimes in places where Persian is spoken and read. Sixty-five years after its first publication in Paris by Olympia Press, the novel continues to fuel instructive discussions both as an extraordinarily imaginative work of art and as a disconcerting probing of a maniac’s obsessive love of young girls. The criticism of Dr. Pedramnia’s translation here is in no way intended to discredit her laudable industry and courage in tackling a work like Lolita, the uniqueness of which makes it nearly impossible to be capably expressed in any language other than its original English. The considerable effort to render translation of Nabokov’s masterpiece accurately and explicitly is all the more impressive considering most of the potential audience for the Persian translation would be denied the opportunity to read it.[61] Even the most well-intentioned criticism of a translation, however, can be both sobering and humbling to the translator. As Vaezian and Bafta point out in their astute criticism of my own translation of Journey to Heading 270 Degrees by Ahmad Dehqan, an infinitely less complicated text than Lolita, the road from Persian to English is marred by narrative-distorting potholes, detours, digressions, and wrong turns.[62] The least that can be said about Pedramnia’s rendering of Lolita is that it has traveled that road far more skillfully, faithfully, and accurately than its predecessor.

[1]For a detailed description and examples of alfiyeh-shalfiyeh writing, see the author’s Erotic Persian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2020), xii, xxiv, 70–76. The present article grows out of “Erotic Persian in Exile,” the penultimate chapter of that book.

[2]The inhospitable climate for erotica in today’s Iran is comparable to the prudish atmosphere in the United States during much of the last century. Lolita, both as a novel and a film, has often been subject to censorship. The book initially came out in Paris because no American publisher Nabokov consulted would touch it. Stanley Kubrick had to tone down the erotic relationship between Humbert and Lolita in his 1982 film (Paris: Pathé), and, according to Caryn James, Adrian Lyne’s 1997 (Paris: Pathé) remake had trouble finding an American distributor because of the film’s depiction of that relationship. See James, “Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession,” New York Times, 31 July 1998. Even today, nearly seven decades after Nabokov gave birth to her, Lolita lives in popular culture as the archetypal victim of adolescent sexual abuse. The jetliner ferrying underage females to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex lairs has been called the “Lolita Express.”

[3]Maurice Couturier, “A Forty-Year Journey in Nabokovland,” NOJ/НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journal III (2009): i–xviii. Quote on p. ix.

[4]Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Akram Pedramnia (Kabul: Nashr-e Zaryab, 2014).

[5]In her introduction to the translation, Dr. Pedramnia notes that parts of the translation were first posted online (see www.shahrvand.com/archives/41218). Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 10.

[6] «وقت آن بود (این اثر) دقیق، صریح و بی پرده و با حفظ امانت داری به یک از زبان های بزرگ ادبی (فارسی) ترجمه شود.» After back translating Pedramnia’s citation, I was unable to find this quote in Boyd’s works Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), or Stalking Nabokov: Selected Essays (New York: Columbia  University Press, 2011).  Be that as it may, “Persian” is certainly Dr. Pedramnia’s parenthetic addition to the quotation, especially when one considers that Boyd’s comprehensive list of completed or in-the-works Lolita translations includes the following: “Greek, Turkish, Latin American (Mexican, Venezuelan, and Uruguayan), India[n] (Or[i]ya, Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam, and Gujarati), and five Arabian editions” (American Years, 404). These translations joined others in less “exotic” languages like French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish, which Nabokov’s wife, Véra, drawing on her remarkable linguistic range and the help of informants, managed to check against the original. See Stacy Schiff, Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 240–41.

[7]See Mizgerd 21; Gol Mohammadi, “Negahi be zendagi va asar-e valdemir nabakuf,” Shahrvand (30 October 2014). Mansuri’s rendering is rarely found in book form today; however, a facsimile of the translation has appeared recently at fooji.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/دانلود-رمان-لولیتا.pdf. An artist’s portrait of a seductive Sue Lyon on the original book cover suggests Mansuri’s translation came out after Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film.

[8]See Nitsa Ben-Ari, Suppression of the Erotic in Modern Hebrew Literature (Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press, 2006), 257–59, commenting on Yosef Varhaftig’s translation of Lolita (Tel Aviv: Ankor, 1959). In Nabokov’s Eros, Couturier lists some of the misinterpretations of the original in Eric Kahane’s French translation. Maurice Couturier, Nabokov’s Eros and the Poetics of Desire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Kahane compared his efforts to a “debilitating act of lacemaking” (Schiff, Véra, 227).

[9]Boyd calls Nabokov’s demur “coy.” American Years, 256. He assumes the author was well aware his writing was provocative but achieved its effect without indulging in the mind-numbing prose and techniques of pornography, which Nabokov himself said “mate[s] obscenity with banality.” Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1955–1962, ed. Brian Boyd (New York: Literary Classics, 1996), 294. Echoing Boyd, Lennard calls Humbert’s “learned, passing references” to the arcana of erotic fiction “sly.” John Lennard, Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (Tirril, UK: Humanities-Ebooks, 2008), 1194–203. Will Farina’s (2010) essay explores Nabokov’s coyness in studying what he calls “the aesthetics of vulgarity” in Lolita. Will Farina, “Vladimir Nabokov and the Vulgar Aesthetic” (Outstanding Honors Thesis, University of South Florida, 2010).

[10]Nabokov, Novels, 295.

[11]Andrew Brink, Obsession and Culture: A Study of Sexual Obsession in Modern Fiction (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1996), 118.

[12]Robert Roper, Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 141.

[13]Couturier, Nabokov’s Eros, vii.

[14]Couturier, Nabokov’s Eros, vii.

[15]The disparity exists in Iran not just because the marriage age for girls, as Azar Nafisi points out, was lowered to nine after the 1979 Revolution. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House, 2003), 39. Prior to that, men commonly wed girls one-third their age. At the time of this writing, the post-Revolutionary situation seems to be changing—at least on the legislative front. The Iranian parliament has recently passed a bill forbidding marriage for any girl under the age of thirteen and any boy under the age of sixteen (Tasvib). Anecdotal evidence from a BBC report (Ezdevāj-e zir-e sen) indicates that the age gap between grooms and brides in Afghanistan continues to be wide.

[16]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 19: لولیتا، چراغ زندگی من، آتش اندام جنسی من. “Lamp of my life” preserves the original’s alliteration of the l sound to which Nabokov was often drawn. Later in the novel, he speaks of “the leap in my loins” (Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. [New York: Vintage, 1991], 23), which, in Pedramnia’s translation (35), becomes tahriki dar andam-e jensi-am or “an arousal in my sexual organ.” Mansuri’s translation of the first line is more circumspect, avoiding “loins” altogether: “O Lolita, light of my life, O you from whom my legs get their power” (Nabokov [s.d.]: 13 ای لولیتا…ای روشناٰئی حیات من وای کسی که پاهایم از تو قوت میگیرد).

[17]All translations are mine unless otherwise stated.

[18]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 63; Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 87: که از رسیدن شست عضلانی ام به گودی داغ کشاله ی رانش Mansuri’s version (Nabokov [s.d.]: 58) ignores this part of Humbert’s diary.

[19]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 19; Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 29:باید هنرپیشه باشی یا دیوانه یا بی نهایت مالیخولیایی با حبابی از سم داغ در اندام

جنسی ات و پرتوهای دایمی و شعله ور شهوت در کمرت (آه، ببین چطور باید گوشه ای کز کنی و پنهان شوی).

[20]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 26:بالای سرمان، از لابه لای برگ های نازک و بلند،  خوشه ای از ستاره ها می درخشید؛ آن آسمان لرزان به نظر به اندازه ی خود آنابل زیر پیراهن نازکش برهنه بود. صورتش را در آسمان می دیدم، عجیب دور، به گونه ای که گویی از خودش پرتوی کمرنگ می تاباند. پاهایش، پاهای زیبا و گرمش، خیلی به هم نزدیک نبودند، و وقتی دستم روی آنچه در جست و جویش بود قرار گرفت حال مبهم و ترسناکی، نیمی لذت و نیمی درد، بر آن حالت های کودکانه چیره شد. او کمی بالاتر از من نشست، و هر بار که در آن حال سرمستی بی مانندش به نقطه ای می رسید که می خواست مرا ببوسد سرش را با حرکتی آرام و سست که کمی اندوه زده می نمود خم می کرد و مچ دستم را میان زانوهای برهنه اش فشار می داد و دوباره فشاررا کم می کرد، با سوتی از صدای نفسش که به صورتم می خورد. برای رهایی از درد عشق، نخست سفت لب های خشکش را روی لب های من می مالید، سپس طفلکی من با پرتاب عصبی موهایش به عقب از من فاصله گرفت، و دوباره در همان تاریکی به من نزدیک می شد و می گذاشت که دهان بازش را بمکم. با بخشندگی تمام، آماده بودم هر چه داشتم به او پیشکش کنم. قلب، گلو، دل، و روده، حتا چوگان پادشاهی غرورم را در مشت عجیبش گذاشتم تا نگه دارد.

[21]See “Kus kardan do-ta parastar-e fowq al-‘adeh-ye hashari-seks,” (5 June 2015), i. Persian slang for “horny,” hashari, appears in two modern travesties: Sadegh Hedayat, Tup-e Morvāri (The Pearl Cannon) (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1986), 142, and Ahmad Shamlu’s Diary of an Auspicious Journey to Various States of Amrigh [sic] (Tehran: Mazyar, 2005), 46. The term is used to describe people so sexually ravenous they attack every creature, male or female, that comes into view.

[22]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 16–17.

[23]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 26: بالای سرمان، از لابه لای برگ های نازک و بلند،  خوشه ای از ستاره ها می درخشید؛ آن آسمان لرزان به نظر به اندازه ی خود آنابل زیر پیراهن نازکش برهنه بود. صورتش را در آسمان می دیدم، عجیب دور، به گونه ای که گویی از خودش پرتوی کمرنگ می تاباند. پاهایش، پاهای زیبا و گرمش، خیلی به هم نزدیک نبودند، و وقتی دستم روی آنچه در جست و جویش بود قرار گرفت حال مبهم و ترسناکی، نیمی لذت و نیمی درد، بر آن حالت های کودکانه چیره شد. او کمی بالاتر از من نشست، و هر بار که در آن حال سرمستی بی مانندش به نقطه ای می رسید که می خواست مرا ببوسد سرش را با حرکتی آرام و سست که کمی اندوه زده می نمود خم می کرد و مچ دستم را میان زانوهای برهنه اش فشار می داد و دوباره فشاررا کم می کرد، با سوتی از صدای نفسش که به صورتم می خورد. برای رهایی از درد عشق، نخست سفت لب های خشکش را روی لب های من می مالید، سپس طفلکی من با پرتاب عصبی موهایش به عقب از من فاصله گرفت، و دوباره در همان تاریکی به من نزدیک می شد و می گذاشت که دهان بازش را بمکم. با بخشندگی تمام، آماده بودم هر چه داشتم به او پیشکش کنم. قلب، گلو، دل، و روده، حتا چوگان پادشاهی غرورم را در مشت عجیبش گذاشتم تا نگه دارد.

[24]There are many reasons for preferring ‘asa-ye saltanati to chowgan. The entry in Haim, Farhang-e Bozorg-e Engelesi-Farsi (Tehran: Farhang-e Mo’aser, 2011), for “scepter,” under the word ‘asa, gives ‘aṣā-ye salṭanati, but also includes chowgān. Other examples in which ‘asa is used for “scepter” are found in Persian translations and scholarship. In his translation of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakspir, Majmu’eh-ye asar-e nemayeshi vilyam shakspir [Tehran: Sorush, 2013]), ‘Ala al-Din Pazargadi uses ‘asa -ye saltanati to translate “To throw my scepter at the injurious gods” (Act 4, Scene 15). The Qajar ruler Fath ^‘Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834) is pictured seated on the Sun Throne with a jewel-encrusted scepter in his right hand. See Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785–1925, ed. Layla Diba with Maryam Ekhtiar (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998), 177. Commenting in Persian on the aesthetic uses of such trappings of royal authority, Maryam Narini calls “the scepter” ‘aṣā-ye salṭanati. Narini, “Analysis of the Aesthetic Connections between Literary Return (Bazgasht-e Adabi) and Royal Figural Painting during Fath Ali Shah Qajar (1785–1925 A.D.),”فصنامه^ء پژوهش های ادبیات تطبیقی د ۳ ش ۲ پاییز و زمستان ۱۳۹۴ ۱۳۱-۱۵۶.  (Fasl-nameh-ye pazhuheshha-ye adabiyat-tatbiqi) 3 (Fall 2015): 131–56, www.academia.edu/29431502.

[25]These poems have been expurgated from contemporary editions of Sa‘di’s “complete” works. Some scholars assert they are not Sa‘di’s, but the work of skillful imitators. Terms used in the title, khabisat and hazl, are originally Arabic. Be that as it may, the Koran (24: 26) uses khabisat to describe “impure women,” while another Arabic plural of the word khabā’ith (Koran 21: 74) means the “abominations” of Sodom. Hazl in the Koran (86: 14) can be translated as “amusement” or “merriment.” Both borrowings from Arabic, khabisat and hazl, became standard literary terms for off-color types of writing in Persian. See The Meaning of the Holy Qur’ān, trans. ‘Abdullah Yūsuf ‘Ali (Beltsville, MA: Amana, 1989).

[26]Sa‘di, Kolliyat-e sa’di ba estefadeh-ye noskheh-ye tashih shodeh mohammad ‘ali forughi “zaka al-moluk,” (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1961), 15: این عصا کاندر میان{کون} تست / بشکند گرآهنین باشد دری.

[27]Sheydayi (“frenzied passion”) is much closer to the spirit of Lolita than “pride.” The term has a long pedigree in Persian. Sheyda (“love-sick”) derives from Hebrew שד (shed), which itself is an Akkadian loanword for “demon” or “devil”; see Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Haifa, Israel: University of Haifa, 1987). Sheyda, meaning “mad,” with its final long a, was a staple of classical odes in Persian rhyming in a; see Shams Fakhri Esfahani, Vazhehnameh-ye farsi, bakhsh-e chaharom, me’yar-e jamali, varasteh-ye sadeq kia (Tehran: Daneshgah-e Tihran, AH 1337/AD 1958), 10.

[28]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 49.

[29]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 69:  جمعه. نمی دانم اگر در کتابم این بیت شعر (چاک قرمز روشن)۶ از رونسار یا این دو بیت شعر (تپه ی کوچکی پوشیده از کرک های نازک / تزئین شده با فیله ی قرمزی در میان

[30]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 358.

[31] Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 436–37: این ها همه عبارت ها و کلمه های رمزی اند که دختران و زنان برای بیان عادت ماهانه به کار می برند تا مردان متوجه منظورشان نشوند. چیزهایی مثل «خاله اش آمده» در فرهنگ ما.

[32]Persian users would most likely encounter fileh on menus; among “kabobs,” diners can choose kabab-e fileh, a “banquet” (majlesi) type of roasted meat dish composed of filleted strips of calf or lamb bunched on skewers and charred over coals.

[33]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 127.

[34]The translation has only “bracelet,” while the original reads “charm bracelet,” suggesting Lolita’s juvenile taste. A “charm bracelet” on Persian jewelry sites on the web is literally a dastband-e jadhdhabiyat, “bracelet of fascination” (see the website of Yiwu Melone Jewelry Co. Ltd., www.ywmelones.com/).

[35]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 172: در عالم خیال نیم نگاهی به او انداختم و دیدم که به جز لنگه ای جوراب و دستبند، عقال بال گشوده هیچ به تن ندارد و عریان روی تخت افتاده است، درست همان جایی که معجون عشق اورا از پا در آورده؛ هنوز آن گل سر مخملی توی دستش بود. بخش عسلی رنگ و نگاتیو سفید بدنش زیر لباس شنا به دیگر جاهای  برنزه ی پوستش نقش و نگار داده بود و غنچه های سفید پستان هایش را در نظرم نمایان می کرد. زیر نور صورتی چراغ رومیزی کمی پرزهای شرمگاهی اش روی تپه ای  گوشتی می درخشید.

[36]Maurice Couturier, “The Poerotic Mode: Nabokov,” Nabokov Studies 15 (2017), #doi:10.1353/nab.2017.0008.

[37]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 44–45.

[38]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 62–63: زیبای من روی شکمش دراز کشید و استخوان کمی بالازده ی کتف، کرک های روی خمیدگی ستون فقرات، برآمدگی کپل های کوچک زیر مایوی سیاه و ران های برنزه شده ی کودکانه اش را به من، به هزاران مردمک از کاسه بیرون زده ی نشسته در خون چشمانم، نشان می داد. دخترک کلاس هفتمی، آرام، از فکاهی عکس دار رنگی لذت می برد. او دوست داشتنی ترین نیمفت بود، نیمفتی که حتا پریاپوس^۳ سبز، قرمز و آبی نمی توانست در خیالش بگنجاند. وقتی از لابلای منشور رنگارنگ نورها می پاییدمش و با لب های خشک بر میل شهوانی ام تمرکز می کردم و زیر روزنامه ها آرام عقب و جلو می رفتم، احساس کردم اگر درست تمرکز کنم، همه ی در یافتم از او شاید آن قدر باشد که بی درنگ به خلسه و شادمانی ای که گدایی با قطعه نانی به آن می رسد دست یابم؛

[39]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 41.

[40]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 43.

[41]Bizhan Gheiby, “Dokhtar-e Holandi,” in Haft Tarh va do she’r (Bilfelt, DE: Entesharat-e nemudar, AH 1376/AD 1997): 1–25. Quote on p. 17. لنبرهای گرد و فریبنده.

[42]Gheiby, “Dokhtar-e Holandi,” 18: من هم ناخودآگاه به دنبالش افتادم. آن خرامیدنش، آن حرکت موزون لنبرهایش، آن نوسان ناکفتنی پستانهایش حکم ضربانهای را یافته بود که هستی ام بر نظامشان می گردید. وارد آب شد سطح آب بر پشت پاهایش هر دم بالاتر می آمد تا اینکه مایویش دیگر خیس شده بود و آنچه را در خود پنهان داشت بهتر نمایان می ساخت.

[43]Gheiby, “Dokhtar-e Holandi,” 18: آن بی ثباتی و بی وزنی که موجها با برداشتنم از کف دریا درم تولید می کرد باتماشای این چشم انداز وصفناپذیر در هم آمیخت و مرا دچارخلسه کرد.

[44]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 60–63.

[45]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 85–88: پاهایش که روی پای زنده ام بود کم واخورد؛ نوازششان کردم؛ این جا بود که به گوشه ی سمت راست تکیه داد، کمی گل و گشاد نشست.  لولا، دخترک جوراب ساق کوتاه، میوه ی عهد باستان را می بلعید و آبش را هورت می کشید و میانش آواز می خواند و دمپایی اش را می انداخت و پاشنه ی پای برهنه اش را در کنار انبوه مجله های سمت چپ من، به جوراب ساق کوتاه کش در رفته اش می مالید، و با هر کاری که می کرد، وولی که می خورد و موجی که می زد، کمکم می کرد بتوانم به نظم تماس مخفی میان جانور و ماهرو، میان انفجار انزجارآور این جانور و زیبایی بدن پاک گود رفته ی او در فراک نخی، بهبود بخشم. زیر ضربه ی نرم نوک انگشتانم پرزهای ریز روی قلم پای اورا که سیخ شده بودند احساس کردم. خودم را در گرمای گزنده اما خواستنی بدن مه کوچولو، که مثل گرمای مه آلود تابستان بود، گم کردم. بگذار روی پایم بماند، بگذار روی پایم بماند…وقتی خودش را کشید تا هسته ی سیبش را به سمت شومینه پرتاب کند، بدن جوانش، ساق پاهای بی گناه بی شرم و باسن گردشرا روی بخش محرمانه ی منقبض زیر شکنجه و رنجبرم جامه جا به جا کرد؛ و ناگهان تغییری مرموز در احساسم ایجاد شد. وارد مرحله ای از بودن شدم که دیگر هیچ چیز برایم مهم نبود، به جز نیوشاندن لذت دم کرده ی درون بدنم. آن دمش شیرینی که در محرمانه ترین ریشه هایم شروع شد و به سوزش پرتب و تاب بدل گشت اینک به مرحله ای از آرامش کامل، اعتماد به نفس و دلگرمی رسیده بود که در هیچ جای دیگر این زندگی یافت شدنی نبود. غوطه ور در شهد شیرین و عمیق که بدین گونه پا می گرفت و در راهش به سوی تشنج نهایی به خوبی پیش می رفت، احساس کردم می توانم از سرعتش بکاهم تا تب و تابم را طولانی تر کنم. لولیتا در امن و امان در عالم خودش بود….حالا همه چیز آماده بود. عصب های خوشی نمایان بودند. پایانه های حسی وارد مرحله ی شیدایی و جنون می شدند. ذره ای فشار می توانست همه ی بهشت را آزاد کند. دیگر آن هامبرت هار نبودم، سگ هرز فاسد عبوسی که حتا به چکمه ای که با لگد اورا بیرون می اندازد محکم می چسبید. من از رنج ریشخند فراتر بود، فراتر از هر احتمالی برای مجازات. در این حرمسرای خود سازم آن ترک نیرومند و شادی بودم که با اندیشه و در آگاهی کامل از آزادی اش اوج لحظه ی لذت بردن از جوانترین و شکننده ترین برده اش را به تاخیر می اندازد. آویزان بر لبه ی گسل شهوت (با تعادل فیزیولوژیکی دقیق همچون برخی تکنیک های هنری) یکریز واژه هایی را از پی لو تکرار می کردم: ساقی باقی من…کارمن کارساز من، هاهاهار من…مثل کسی که در خواب حرف بزند و بخندد، و در همان حال، آهسته دست خوشم را تا آن جا که روح ادب اجازه می داد روی پای آفتاب خورده اش سراندم و پیش رفتم. آن نقطه ای که روز پیشش به کمد سنگین توی راهرو خورده بود. بریده نفس کشیدم و گفتم: «ببین چه کار کرده ای، ببین با خودت چه کار کرده ای…آه، ببین.» قسم می خورم که به خاطر کبودی بنفش مایل به زرد روی ران زیبای نیمفتی اش بود که آن را با دست گنده ی پشمالویم مالیدم و آرام پوشاندم؛ و به خاطر لباس زیر شل و ولش گویی هیچ چیز نبود که از رسیدن شست عضلانی ام به گودی داغ کشاله ی رانش جلوگیری کند درست مثل وقتی که بچه ی قلقلکی ای را نوازش کنی و قلقلک بدهی، فقط همین. ناگهان با صدایی نیز گفت: «مهم نیست، اصلا مهم نیست» و وول خورد و لولید و سرش را به پشت پرتاب کرد و دندانش را روی لبه ی درونی براق دهانش فرو کرد و همزمان کمی چرخید و پشتش را به من کرد، طوری که دهان نالان من، هیئت منصفه ی دادگاه، تقریبا به گردن برهنه اش رسید و من آخرین ضربه ی طولانی ترین خلسه ی ممکن یک مرد یا یک هیولارا به کپل چپش کوبیدم.

[46]Meaning of the Holy Qur’ān.

[47]Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 25, 112.

[48]Jalal al-Din Rumi, Kolliyat-e Shams ya Divan-e Kabir, ed. Badi’ al-Zaman Foruzanfar (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1976): 2: 163, no. 830: چشم دل بگشا و در جانها نگر / چون بیامد! چون شد و چون می رود!, 4: 99, no. 1792: یا رب بغیر این زبان جانرا ده روان / در قطع و وصل وحدتت تا بسکلد ز نار من, 1: 31, no. 38: آینه ام، اینه ام، مرد مقالات نه ام / دیده شود حال من ار چشم شود گوش شما

[49]Khvajeh Shams al-Din Mohammad, Divan-e Hafez, ed. Parviz Natel Khanlari (Tehran: Khvarazmi, AH 1362/AD 1983): 1: 358 no. 171: به گوش هوش نیوش از من و به عشرت کوش / که این سخن سحر از هاتفم به گوش آمد. Mohammad Reza Shafi’I Kadkan (Suvar-e khiyal dar she’r-e parsi: tahqiq-e enteqadi dar tatavvor-imazhha-ye she’r parsi va sayr-e nazariyeh-ye balaghat dar eslam va iran [Tehran: Nil, AH 1350/AD 1971], 209) sees this type of imagery as a means of broadening the expressiveness of poetic language. For the linking of two nouns to produce a metaphor in Persian, the so-called eḍāfeh-ye majāzi, see Friedrich Rückert, Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser, ed. Neu herausgegeben von W. Pertsch (Wiesbaden, DE: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966), 43.

[50]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita,  118.

[51]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 160: هامبرت زیر لب گفت که «شاید رفتیم.» اما این شیطان نابکار خیلی خوب می دانست که نزدیک ساعت نه، وقتی نمایشش شد، لو توی بغلش در خوابی عمیق خواهد بود.

[52]“Leshku’i” is a transliteration of French lèche-cul (“asslicker”); the Leshku’i caricature plays on elements of the public persona of Amir-Abbas Hoveyda (1919–79), the shah’s prime minister from 1965 to 1977.

[53]Ebrahim Golestan, Asrar-e ganj-e darreh-ye jenni: yek dastan az yek chashm andaz (Tehran: Agah, AH 1353/AD 1974), 140: اگر زبان ما کوتاه است بیان این بنای سطبر بلند است که با تلالؤ مستدام باز گوی درخشان قوت و قدرت، ثروت و شهرت، و نیز نیات نورانی بانی عزیز آن است–بنائی که از بطن و متن سنت های دیرین ما سر بر آورده میراث گذشتگان را تطبیق داده با تازه ترین تحولات تکنیک و طرح های استتیک استادان مسلم امریکا، مانند بک مینستر فوللر.

[54]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 125.

[55]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 169: لولیتایم را که هنوز بر لب آن تخت گودال مانند نشسته بود و خواب آلود پایش را بلند می کرد و با بند کفشش ور می رفت و زیر رانش را تا مرکز دوشاخه شدن تنکه اش نشانم می داد (همیشه در نشان دادن پاهایش بی احتیاط بود یا می شود گفت بی شرم بود و یا هر دو) گذاشتم و رفتم.

[56]Farhang-e Sokhan, vol. 4 (Tehran: Sokhan, AH 1381/AD 2002), 2758. Another term, jofteh, was also a possibility here. The obscenity goes back at least to the time of Sa‘di, whose Abominations and Sessions of Vulgarity contains this line: “face on the ground and crotch upon the heavens / if its head penetrated to the balls, what’s to fear?” روی برخاک و جفته بر افلاک / چون سرش رفت تا بخایه چه باک.

[57]Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 126.

[58]Nabokov, Lolita, trans. Pedramnia, 170: مثل آن خاورزمینی های موقر نیستم که در زمان های هوسرانی، در میان خوراک گوسفند و شربت گلابشان، از سرگرم کننده های خردسال، از سینه تا پاشنه، بهره می برند.

[59]Vali b. Sohrab Gorjestani, “Scandalous Essay” (“Resaleh-ye Fojuriyeh”), in Haft Resaleh (Los Angeles: Entesharat-e Pars, 2017), 161–220. Quote on p. 171. Accusing a woman of bestowing her favors both vaginally and anally is part of a lampoon (hajv) attributed to the poet ‘Ali b. Ahmad Asadi Tusi (999/1000–1072/73). His abuse of the mother of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030), his patron who had challenged court poets to compose such an insult, includes this line: “your mother was a mine of munificence, she gave from aft and fore.” مادرت کان کرم بود بداد از پس و پیش (posted on kashkooleemad.blogfa.com). The insult also appears in the form “your mother was a banquet table of [carnal] munificence…” (i.e., خوان کرم).

[60]Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Literary Translation in Modern Iran (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015).

[61]Nevertheless, some potential readers have had access to the translation by means of the large portion of it posted online (www.shahrvand.com/archives/41218).

[62]Helia Vaezian and Fatemeh Ghaderi Bafti, “Translation Shifts and Narratology: A Case Study of ‘Journey to Heading 270 Degrees,’” Elixir International Journal 133 (2019): 53569–72.