Fluidity

Misreading Kundera in Tehran by Naghmeh Zarbafian was told in 4 episodes:

“Our inner selves met in spite of all the discrepancies” (62) → The story of her and harold him loving politics and her loving poetry and leaving pieces of those things with each other.

“Before examining the way this kind of literature is represented in Iran, I will narrate the second episode of my tale, which opens to a novel by Milan Kundera titled Identity” (64).

“The next episode of my story takes place in the realm of the same novel, yet in a different language” (65).

“Kundera’s readers in Tehran make their way into the last episode of my story, which leaves the fictional domain; here comes, allegedly, the real one” (68).

The fluidity of an essay was present in Misreading Kundera in Tehran. The author set it up something similar to a political science essay where you set out with the notion to prove and the 3 different instances that prove or disprove the notion. Because of the format for me it was hard to follow exactly all the author was trying to get to. There were things I did understand but I felt as though I was missing a lot of information that wove the episodes together more thoroughly for me as a reader. In my initial read of the essay it had a flow of a poem because of the format on the page and how some things that were being stated by the author were cryptic of relied heavily on the audience's’ knowledge of the topic at hand.

I do believe how this essay is crafted reflects the initial episode of the essay. The very fact that she brought poetry to Harold and he brought politics. The craft of this essay definitely weaves in and out of possible political essay and moments of prose poetry.

Sex In The Time of Mullahs by Azadeh Moaveni

Narrative wise it was easier to follow. A scene was painted at the beginning to where you could see the party scene and intrigued by the opening statement which initiated the reader to tune into the nightlife and the politics that hold a catalyst role to them.

What held the fluidity of this essay is that it was able to go back and forth between essay and politics of the people and regime and then anchor the narrative is dialogue or description. The camera eye is similar to that of a documentary where the audience is viewing everything the author is sharing from descriptions, dialogue with who appears while the camera follows. We also see the rawness and truth that are soon followed by a fact of politics or analysis.   

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 28, 2017 at 7:46 PM

    Jameka,

    I also had difficulty following parts of "Misreading Kundera in Tehran" without having read the book Identity. I'm curious about the structure of a political science essay. Though I'm not familiar with that type of writing, I agree that the structure of the piece seems to be intended to prove or at least shed more light on the relationship between the narrator and Harold that is presented at the beginning. I was surprised by Zarbafian's decision not to return to Harold near or at the end of the piece, as I felt I needed a bit more information to tie all the pieces of the story together.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ElmazwritesNovember 29, 2017 at 6:19 AM

    There is a little bit of a stream of consciousness thing going on in the beginning of Misreading...it took be by surprise because it moves into the premise-proving part, it helped to read it 2x, also it resembles Persian writing styles more than western, so that's interesting--am i lacking in being able to follow the more circuitous approach? this is interesting--thanks for opening it up

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 29, 2017 at 4:08 PM

    Hello, Jameka

    I like your analysis of "Misreading Kundera in Tehran," how it's format is similar to a political essay or a prose poem. I do see the connections you made between Harold's politics and the protagonist's poetry as a place of structural reference. I think in this same vein of comparison, it might interesting to see the connections that forms and fluidity in music has to this "disjointed" essay? Harold, not only leaves the protagonist with his politics, but a tape with a differing cultural music. In "Sex in the Time of Mullahs" I too noticed the flow between perspectives and appreciated being grounded in the view point of the protagonist as they inhabit the space of the party. The protagonist moves the focus of their eye (camera lens) from specific people, to the outside streets at night, the larger political climate, and even back to their own body.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AryaNovember 30, 2017 at 8:34 AM

    Hi Jameka! I like how you made evident how different the camera eye is in both essays. In "Sex In the Time of Mullahs," we move through the party like a camera, until enough world-building has been established and we can then move to a different party and then to a place of even more political analysis. I thought that the comparison to a documentary was very apt. About "Misreading Kundera in Tehran," I agree with you that the opening scene (which reads like a fairy tale, almost timeless) sets up poetry and politics as the primary tensions to be explored in the piece. The speaker and Harold each has their preferences, but through dialogue, they come to see that one cannot be divorced from the other. Similarly, in her discussion of how students misread Kundera, the reader comes to see how poetry - and its distortion, its censorship -- is a political act with deep psychological implications.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Stuff That Dream Are Made Of" and "Death of a Mannequin"

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of             Before anything else, I just have to say – wow. Azar Nafisi is one hell of an inspirational writer. She starts off talking about her sense of home. That Iran had always been the home that she wanted to go back to when she was studying abroad and that classic novels and poetry became a sort of home for her. Then she tells us that she finally did go home to Iran only to find that it was not the home she remembered. She arrived to witness the stripping of rights and freedom, of creativity and imagination. Lastly, Nafisi challenges her readers to ponder our own humanity.             Her words are eloquent and impactful. They’re the type of words you’d expect to hear from a great leader. She started slow and worked her way up to a profound ending. I didn’t expect the beginning, where Nafisi describes herself as a spoiled brat running...
Read more

"Death of a Mannequin" and "The Stuff that Dreams are Made of" Response

Arya Samuelson Both stories challenge the idea of a “singular historical moment.” Nafisi makes it clear that every action of the regime pointed backwards. Ayatollah Khomeini claimed to be “restoring women’s dignity and rescuing them from the degrading and diabolical ideas that had been thrust upon them by Western imperialists and their agents, who had conspired for decades to destroy Iranian culture and traditions” (3). In other words, Ayatollah Khomeini insisted that he was trying to make Iran great again. As Nafisi counters, “in formulating this claim, the Islamic regime not only robbed the Iranian people of their rights, it robbed them of their history” (3). She goes on to discuss the powerful “process of self-questioning and transformation” that comprised the acquisition of rights for women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century.   By the time of the revolution, “women were active in all areas of life in Iran.” This section prompted me to consider the distin...
Read more

"My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes" Response

By Lila Kalick "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" and "Death of a Mannequin" I thought a lot this week about the role of artists and writers in society and about the notion that the things these individuals make can last beyond their historical moment. With all that is happening these days -- in the news, in the world -- it can be hard to keep perspective beyond the present day. It seems me that there is a hard question that we need to ask ourselves as artists: Can we live in our imaginations exploring the space of what things "can be?" Should we? A lot of what I'm learning is that we don't have to disengage fully with the world in order to make things that last, but it is somewhat helpful. Ultimately, if we disengage enough in the current moment, ignore minutia, and focus on the bigger picture, I think we'll (or at least I'll) be more effective at making art that is transformative and that creates the change we want to see in the ...
Read more