纳博科夫（Nabokov）在斩首{1959}的英文版本中，提醒读者，他的小说没有提供“ tout tout toup tous”。没有那种。他声称，“这是无效的小提琴。” {...}在他的小说和他的生活中，我们本能地与之相关并掌握了某些东西，当所有选择被带走时，都有无限自由的可能性。我认为这就是促使我创建班级的原因。我与外界的主要联系是大学，现在我已经切断了这种联系，在空白的边缘，我可以发明小提琴或被虚空吞噬。
(In his forward to the English edition of Invitation to a Beheading {1959}, Nabokov reminds the reader that his novel does not offer 'tout pour tous.' Nothing of the kind. 'It is,' he claims, 'a violin in the void.' {...}There was something, both in his fiction and in his life, that we instinctively related to and grasped, the possibility of a boundless freedom when all options are taken away. I think that is what drove me to create the class. My main link with the outside world had been the university, and now that I had severed that link, there on the brink of the void, I could invent the violin or be devoured by the void.)
在她的回忆录中，阿扎尔·纳菲西（Azar Nafisi）反思了弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫（Vladimir Nabokov）的断言，即他的作品不容易获得，将其描述为“无效的小提琴”。这个隐喻捕捉了在没有选择的情况下从缺乏选择中出现自由的空间的本质。纳菲西（Nafisi）与这个想法联系起来，认识到限制在于创造力和自我发现的潜力。
纳菲西（Nafisi）远离大学之后，面对无效的空白，这既象征着挑战又是机会。创造的行为，类似于空虚的小提琴，成为她的生存和表达方式。在旅途中，她说明了限制性环境与追求艺术和个人自由之间的深刻关系。