Last night as the cold Denver rain began to turn to snow, I sat in crazy traffic on my way to one of our last Virginia Woolf classes. While I was not crazy about going to class, I couldn't wait to discuss her work. She is a writer who I can honestly say has changed my life. Not in any kind of definitive way: I don't particularly subscribe to her theories or ideologies or beliefs. But she resonates deep inside me in a way I can't fully articulate. And I will continue to read her books/essays for the rest of my life.
Timothy Keller did a sermon series on friendship years ago and I used to listen to it on my hellish commutes to my hellish jobs in Virginia. There is a verse somewhere in the Old Testament (maybe in Proverbs? Psalms? Maybe in reference to Jonathan and David? I really can't remember the context.) where Keller deconstructs some of the language used. Basically, finding a true friend is having this feeling of, "Oh! You too? I thought it was just me!" It's this serendipitous feeling of finding something sweet and refreshing in the desert. That is what Virginia Woolf has been to me.
Anyhoo, with my low spirits and grumpy attitude, I sloshed my way to class last night and it was the perfect thing. Just perfect.
What is it about books? I've often wondered why dictators, religious kooks, and tyrants of many types ban books as part of their strategy to dominate people. Part of it is to restrict revolutionary ideas, I'm sure. Part of it is to take away entertainment, independent fun for people. But part of it, I think, is to deny people the transcendent and very individual experience of communicating with others over the centuries. Books allow us to share thoughts, ideas, and experiences over time and space in a way that no other medium quite does.
One book I enjoy and have read multiple times is Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafasi.
Nafasi taught literature courses at the University of Tehran until war broke out in Iran and she was fired from the university (being a woman and all). For over two years, male and female students risked their lives to meet at her house every Tuesday and discuss Western literary classics. Like, while bombs were falling and men were dragging women off the streets, these students were talking about The Great Gatsby and Jane Austen.
This. This talking about literary themes and ideas, thoughts and disagreements and controversy and cultural issues, is one of the most revolutionary things one can do, I suppose. I'm so intrigued by this book because these students were willing to die over something that I spend most of my waking hours complaining about: Studying. Reading. Writing. But I live in a free country where I can take these very free ideas for granted.
Like I said, the terrorist attacks in Paris have been clouding things at dawrighthouse. And as I went to class last night and discussed a book by Woolf that was about dictatorship and tyranny and the role of art in human history, I was just so thankful to be able to do it. Woolf drowned herself because she could not face England going to war again (WWII) so quickly after the devastation of WWI. I wonder what she would think of things now? I wonder what she would think of a group of 15 students battling a blizzard to get together and talk about her work for three hours? While a country so close to her native land mourned so many senseless murders and declared war on the perpetrators?
What does Ecclesiastes say? There is nothing new under the sun.
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