Putting the pastries onto a large tray, I asked Manna if she envisioned the words to her poems in colors. Nabokov writes in his autobiography that he and his mother saw the letters of the alphabet in color, I explained. He says of himself that he is a painterly writer.The Islamic Republic coarsened my taste in colors, Manna said, fingering the discarded leaves of her roses. I want to wear outrageous colors, like shocking pink or tomato red. I feel too greedy for colors to see them in carefully chosen words of poetry.
📖 Azar Nafisi
In this excerpt, the narrator discusses a conversation with Manna about her perception of colors in relation to poetry. The narrator references Nabokov's experience of seeing letters in color, suggesting a connection between art and language. Manna reflects on how her artistic sensibilities have changed under the regime of the Islamic Republic, indicating a desire for vibrant and expressive colors like shocking pink or tomato red.
Manna expresses a sense of longing for a bolder palette in her life, feeling that the constraints of her environment have stifled her aesthetic appreciation. She suggests that rather than carefully selecting words for poetry, she finds herself drawn to a more expansive, almost greedy appreciation for color. This reveals a tension between artistic expression and the realities of living in a repressive society.
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