The mind works in funny (strange) ways. I usually do the crossword puzzle that keeps appearing in my daily newspaper. Sometimes I even finish it. In any case, a funny "mind trick" happened to me this morning, and it's the reason why I have decided to write this little, hopefully interesting, but otherwise trivial essay.
I came across the clue "Dutch bloom" - and I immediately thought of the word "tulip." And it fit, and so it was the right word. But then my mind suddenly jumped to a scene in a charming Italian movie (and then to you all in Iran - more of this now as this is actually the reason for this little essay). The charming Italian movie is called Bread and Tulips in English (Pane e tulipani - in Italian). The scene involves the heroine in the story (a middle-aged woman who ends up in Venice where she decides to stay for a while); in the scene she is in the floral shop where she has found a job, having tea with her boss. The florist is an eccentric old man who suddenly tells her that although everyone associates tulips with Holland, they actually come from Persia.
So that's why I am writing this little essay now. Because Iran is the seat of ancient Persia - right? In any case, it's funny how one thing (or idea) suddenly leads to another in our minds. In fact, 20th century fiction (in the early parts of the century) began to use this idea, which then came to be called "stream of consciousness" - as if the mind were a river that keeps flowing and flooding, too, on occasion, while it just goes on about its own business.
In the works of fiction I am talking about here, the narrator seems to disappear, and the reader seems to be inside the mind of the hero or heroine. These books are not easy to read. But here are a couple of examples of them from English literature: James Joyce's Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
Just to give you a flavor of this kind of (difficult) writing, here is a quote from the Virginia Woolf novel:
"But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer [strange]. Here was So-and-So in South Kensington; someone up in Bayswater; and someone else, say, in Mayfair [these are places in and around London]. And she felt quite continuously a sense of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? / An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled [mixed up] Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense; and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know."
Well, there you have a moment from this beautiful novel. What you "see" is what Mrs. Dalloway is thinking. She is a middle-aged housewife who likes to throw (give) parties. And both her husband and her friends criticize her for this. So in this passage she is defending herself, to no one in particular. She is just thinking. And what we see as we (the readers) watch her think is why she is the way she is: she is a charming woman growing old who loves to bring people together so that they may enjoy themselves. That's why she is throwing parties. It's her gift to what she calls "life." It's what gives her joy, a purpose in life: to help bring people together that they may enjoy themselves. Quite beautiful and quite a wonderful ambition, don't you agree?
Well, these kinds of books were plentiful in English (and in European) literature more than 50+ years ago. William Faulkner wrote books like that in America. Is there anything in Iranian literature that's like this? Where the reader "sees" what's going on inside the mind of the hero or heroine? I'd be interested in learning about that myself.
