Lila Azam Zanganeh: the connection between love and literature
Iranian-French writer Lila Azam Zanganeh will visit Tilburg to talk to students during the masterclass Love & Literature at the Nexus Institute. Univers called her in New York, where she now lives, and ask her about different aspects of books, Russian writers and love. “I can’t talk about a book while I am writing it, but it is a rewriting of old stories. That is one connection between love and literature. Love is always a rewriting.”
Writer Lila Azam Zanganeh gives a little preview of the masterclass she will give at Nexus Institute on the 10th of April. “Nexus-director Rob Riemen read my first book and heard that my second novel is about love and literature,” Zanganeh says over the phone. Right now, she is still at home in New York. Soon she will travel to Europe, not only to speak in Tilburg, but also to visit her home town, Paris. She was born there from exiled parents from Iran and after school she moved to New York to teach at Harvard. She stayed there ever since and wrote her first book, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness. In the book, she studies the different forms of happiness in Nabokovs work and tells about her experiences as a passionate Nabokov-reader. “I feel very close to Nabokov. It’s a sort of madness, but a lovely madness.”
Russians & literature
For her masterclass, Zanganeh chose another great Russian writer. Ivan Turgenev’s novel First Love will be the center of attention. “It’s really hard to say why I love Russian literature so much. It is like falling in love with someone. You read something and you feel like you are home.”
Zanganeh’s family fled from Iran and, like Nabokov, she lived her life exiled from her home country. “As a migrant, you always look for substitute homes. Russia is an imaginary home for me, just like Iran is.” Her relationship to Nabokov might be an anachronism (Nabokov died around the time Zanganeh was born), it is very important to her. “Nabokov himself believed in mysterious connections, even though he would never put words on it. The mad and folly things are the most charming part of human personality. Life becomes more fun if you create magic that way.”
Paris, New York & literature
“Paris used to be the centre of the literary world in the 19th century. Right now, contemporary literature is not that exciting, because the trend is to talk about yourself. I am not very interested in that.” She did not leave because she was tired with the French capital, though. “I am still very much in love with Paris, but I think one feels more like a foreigner in Paris than in New York. Everybody in New York is from somewhere else and that does not matter.” The multicultural environment does influence her work. She writes in English now, even though it is not here native tongue. “I think if I had stayed in Paris, I would have written for French people. Literature has to tell a story that someone in Nigeria as well as in Oregon could understand.”
Happiness & literature
“The marketing for the search of happiness is something very typical for our time. But the idea of searching for happiness is something very ancient and has been important in literature,” Zanganeh says. “My book The Enchanter asks the question of why we even read. I think, if you read great books, you learn to observe the world better. At the end of the day, that is our only chance of happiness, to be fully awake and aware and to observe every little detail of life.” We need good writers for this, according to her. “If through the pen of a genius you look at a face, a hand, the movement of eyes and you develop your imagination. And if you are able to be grateful for that, I think you have everything.”
Love & literature
“Choosing a book is like falling in love, you can never be quite sure what you are getting into.” This is just one of the many connections Zangareh sees between love and literature. “I think if you read Ada by Nabokov or Hamlet by Shakespeare you do learn about love, desire and the dilemma of our suffering here.” In literature, there is more room for extreme forms of love that will be looked upon as mad in real life. “Tsjechov once wrote: ‘there is nothing to say about love, but that it’s madness.’ A great deal of love is madness and if you are too involved with being tender and infatuated you will be seen as a mad.” Turgenev’s book First Love involves a mad kind of love as well, as visitors of the lecture will see.
But the subject of love in literature also raises questions. “Do we write because we are in love? Extraordinary writers say they write better when they are in love. Or does extreme infatuation stop you from writing? Is writing in and out itself always an act of love? These are all kinds of things that I want to think about during the lecture, together with the students.”
On the 10th of april, you get the chance to talk to Lila during the masterclass, from 20.00 until 22.00, in the auditorium. Free tickets are available on the Nexus Institute-website and if you come, you get First Love by Ivan Turgenev for free.
