Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer 9780755642175, 9780755642137, 9780755642168, 9780755642144

Table of contents :
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
Chapter 1: Hedayat and modern Persian literature
Chapter 2: Early years
Chapter 3: Hedayat in Europe
Chapter 4: Life and labour in the Golden Era
Chapter 5: Iranian culture and romantic nationalism
Chapter 6: Iranian culture and critical realism
Chapter 7: The Blind Owl: A critical exposition
Chapter 8: The origins of The Blind Owl
Chapter 9: Hopes and despairs
Chapter 10: Hajjis and workers
Chapter 11: Satire and depression
Chapter 12: The trial: The message of Hedayat
Chapter 13: The execution: Hedayat’s suicide
Chapter 14: The legend and the man
Notes
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Sadeq Hedayat

ii

Sadeq Hedayat The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer Second Edition Homa Katouzian

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 1992 This edition published 2022 Copyright © Homa Katouzian, 1992, 1999, 2022 Homa Katouzian has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design by Adriana Brioso Cover image: Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) in Tehran, Iran, 1930 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-7556-4217-5 PB: 978-0-7556-4213-7 ePDF: 978-0-7556-4214-4 eBook: 978-0-7556-4215-1 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Preface to the second edition Preface to the first edition 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

vi vii

Hedayat and modern Persian literature 1 Early years 9 Hedayat in Europe 17 Life and labour in the Golden Era 25 Iranian culture and romantic nationalism 37 Iranian culture and critical realism 53 The Blind Owl: A critical exposition 69 The origins of The Blind Owl 87 Hopes and despairs 105 Hajjis and workers 117 Satire and depression 133 The trial: The message of Hedayat 157 The execution: Hedayat’s suicide 167 The legend and the man 177

Notes Select bibliography Index

189 210 216

Preface to the second edition It is more than thirty years now since I first submitted this book’s manuscript to I.B. Tauris. Since then, the book and its following paperback edition have gone through several reprints, until recently when, rather than issuing another reprint, they suggested that I write a revised and enlarged addition. In the meantime, I presented lectures and seminars on Hedayat and his works to large audiences in academic and general meetings, organized a two-day international conference at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, in 2003, on the occasion of the centenary of Hedayat’s birth, the proceeding of which I subsequently edited and published in a volume. Still later, I participated in the production of a professional documentary on Hedayat’s life. The book was translated and published in Persian in 1991 within a few months of the English edition, and went through several reprints, until recently when a second Persian edition was published in Tehran. Meanwhile some new material on Hedayat’s life and works have come into life which I have used in preparing this second English edition. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, and its president Dr Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali for their generous support. I am also grateful to Roy Gormley for encouraging me to take on this task, and to Yasmin Garcha for organizing its production. H.K. March 2021

Preface to the first edition In the academic year 1975–6 when I was Iranian Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, John Gurney asked me for a private review of a recently published book on Sadeq Hedayat. Having heard my strong views on that piece of work, he urged me to launch a full-scale study of Hedayat and his works, especially in view of the absence of any comprehensive studies on the subject. I had read almost all Hedayat’s works at an early age, but it had never occurred to me that I would one day embark upon a systematic study of his life and works. I took up the challenge, and fifteen years have now gone by, during which a few works on Hedayat have appeared in the English language which are significantly better than the book that provoked me into this venture. Meanwhile I have been busy with other works as well, although none has consumed as much time and effort. Seyyed Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh was most generous and extremely helpful, giving me originals or photocopies of Hedayat’s letters, other pertinent papers and documents, and his own first-edition copies of many of Hedayat’s earlier works, in addition to the extensive correspondence and conversations which we had on the subject. The late Dr Taqi Razavi was also very helpful, giving me photocopies of Hedayat’s letters to him and talking to me about the man whom he had known intimately throughout his life. Amir Pichdad, Nasser Pakdaman and the late Gholamhossein Sa’edi also helped by putting rare and inaccessible material at my disposal. In the course of the study I talked to many people, not all of whom can be acknowledged in this brief. But my conversations with Mahmud Hedayat, the late Parviz Khanlari, the late Mojtaba Minovi, and Mohammad Moqaddam were especially useful. And so were my own memories of youthful conversations with Khalil Maleki, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and the late Mas’ud Farzad long before I began this project. John Gurney continued his Socratic obstetrics by reading different drafts of the manuscript and passing characteristically cogent comments for its improvement. Comments and criticisms in several seminars at St Antony’s College, and the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, were also helpful in bringing the product into its present shape. But the blame for all the shortcomings which inevitably remain is mine alone. H.K. Oxford, October 1990

1

Hedayat and modern Persian literature

Early developments Sadeq Hedayat was born in 1903 and died in 1951. In the first half of this century much happened in Persian literature and Sadeq Hedayat played no small part in this development. He was literally a child of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, a time when both prose and poetry were undergoing noticeable change in form as well as content.1 Historically, Persian literature was dominated by poetry, which had served a greater variety of purposes than its European counterpart. Apart from lyrics, sonnets, epics and mythology, it encompassed philosophy, religion, mysticism, moralizing, panegyrics, history, fables and romances, eulogy, elegy, satire, abuse, invective and obscenity. Yet it excluded social and political analysis and criticism; when present, these elements were subtle and indirect. Prose was confined to formal administrative essays, historiography and chronicles, tales and anecdotes and – occasionally – long meditations. There was no prose fiction, satire and drama of the kind which has been developing in Europe since the seventeenth century. When the Constitutional Revolution broke out, the traditional uses of prose and poetry were still predominant, although change had been creeping in for some time. Prose fiction, initially in the form of the historical novel, began to emerge in works such as Mohammad Baqer Mirza’s Shams o Toghra. Other works, such as Abd al-Rahim Talebof ’s Masalik al-Muhsinin (Ways of the Beneficent) and Zein al-Abedin Maragheh’i’s Siyahatnameh-ye Ibrahim Beig (The Travelogue of Ibrahim Beig), were openly concerned with modern ideas and social issues. The revolutionary process led to the transformation of the functions and purpose, and – especially in the case of prose – the form of Persian literature. The proliferation of popular newspapers played a crucial role in determining the style and direction of these literary developments. The newspapers were read by the ordinary literate public, who in turn read them out to the illiterate in public places. The authors had little choice but to be simple in style, use common vocabulary and write on social and political issues. On the other hand, younger writers and poets were themselves in the mood for such popular and progressive developments, responding at once to the growing influence of Europe and the vigour of the revolutionary movement. There was thus a coincidence of purpose on the part of readers and writers. The Constitutional Revolution lacked an ideology in the specific sense in which this term is used in politics, philosophy and sociology. Its aims – and short-lived

Sadeq Hedayat

2

achievements – were to end arbitrary rule and establish democratic government. The two objectives should not be confused. The Iranian state was based on estebdad, which means not just dictatorship but government by fiat. The revolution began with a demand for law (which normally exists even in a dictatorial system) and went on to demand democracy.2 While neither objective constitutes an ideology in the strict sense, in the case of Iran the social and political implications were no less important. The strong anti-Russian sentiments of the Constitutionalists were not the same as romantic nationalist ideas, if only because the Russian troops were physically present in Iran to defend the country’s arbitrary state. Hence, nationalism was not the revolution’s dominant ideology, and much of the revolutionary rhetoric and propaganda was in terms of religion, morality, law, political legitimacy and natural justice. Authentic nationalist concepts and ideas did exist, but they were covert as well as confined to a small élite. Yet it did not take long for them to capture the consciousness of the modern political and literary élite after the revolution.

Romantic nationalism and the literary revolution In 1919, Iraj Mirza, a highly gifted and unusually unromantic poet, wrote in a satirical verse: ‫انقالب ادبی خواهم کرد‬ ‫فارسی را عربی خواهم کرد‬ I shall make a literary revolution: I shall make Arabic of Persian.

This was a direct jibe at the ongoing debate among the younger literati, mainly poets and critics, about the need for a ‘literary revolution’ whose intellectual origins went back several decades. The literary revolution of this period became closely entangled with a romantic nationalist movement which swept across the land in the 1920s and was to continue – in various, sometimes conflicting, guises of both right- and left-wing politics – until the revolution of February 1979. All nationalism is romantic. It glorifies the past and sometimes the present beyond the scope of rational inquiry and appraisal. It proclaims hopes and aspirations well beyond the limits of existing socio-economic resources. It conceives of ‘the nation’ as an organic body, and underrates the importance of ethnic, linguistic and social divisions within it. It is aggressive and offensive towards other peoples and races. It is associated with authoritarian and dictatorial government. However, what justifies the appellation ‘romantic’ here is that the term ‘nationalism’ is often used to mean ideas and aspirations other than those described earlier. Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Mao Tse-tung, Chiang Kai-shek, Reza Shah, Mosaddeq, Gandhi and Nasser cannot all have been nationalists, or the term itself would become redundant. More specifically, mere anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism are not enough proof for nationalism, as every country is sure to defend its independence and territorial integrity.

 Hedayat and Modern Persian Literature 3 The First World War brought Iran unmitigated ruin and chaos. At one stage there were even two governments in the country, one ‘neutral’ and the other pro-German. Hatred for Russia and suspicion of Britain (dating back to the Iranian Thermidor of 1911) had resulted in strong pro-German sentiments. Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh and his literary circle published the famous newspaper Kaveh in Berlin, with the financial support of the German government. Kaveh did not campaign for romantic nationalism, but advocated anti-Entente, patriotic and modernist ideas. In Iran itself, nationalism was being nurtured in both politics and literature. Experienced poets such as Aref, Lahuti and Farrokhi Yazdi were in the forefront, but younger talents (e.g. Mohammad Reza Eshqi) were not too far behind. When the last guns of the First World War were silenced, the guns of Iranian nationalism began to load. Although the 1921 coup which led eventually to the creation of the Pahlavi dynasty had some foreign blessing, the domestic ground had been prepared over many years for a fundamental shake-up in favour of nationalism and modernism.3 That is why the coup was initially hailed by intellectuals and educated middle classes as a great triumph. The declarations issued by Seyyed Zia and Reza Khan were tough and revolutionary in tone, and their nationalist bombastics were without precedent in the history of Iranian government.4 Little wonder that poets such as Aref and Eshqi sang hymns of praise to these men and celebrated their coup. A growing number of such writers later fell out with the new regime, but they were only responding to the rise of dictatorship, a phenomenon quite consistent with the ideology of ‘true’ nationalism. Even after Reza Shah’s rise to arbitrary power there remained a close correspondence between the basic values of official and intellectual nationalism, despite the opposition of many intellectuals (including Hedayat) to the new state for its oppressive nature. Modernism was nationalism’s twin sister. The intellectual roots of both nationalism and modernism in society and literature went back to the second half of the nineteenth century, although such ideas were confined to a small élite on the margins of society for some decades. Fath’ali Akhundzadeh is the best representative of the nationalist modernists of the earlier period. Born in 1812 to an Azerbaijani family, Fath’ali later learned Russian, emigrated to Tiflis, entered the service of the Russian Empire, and died in 1878 in Tiflis.5 Akhundzadeh was a progressive man of his time but one who combined an uncritical attitude towards what he knew of European social and cultural developments with a wholly rejectionist view of post-Islamic Iranian culture and civilization. He is one of the initiators of the view, later shared by many modernist intellectuals and now once again fashionable among many modern Iranians, that Iran’s lack of long-term historical development along European lines has been solely due to the Arab conquest and the influence of Islam. Akhundzadeh’s influence in Iran has been largely due to two critical essays: one on society and politics, and the other on literature. The first consists of three fictitious letters. In the first letter the author wonders whatever happened to Iran’s ancient glory: The people, living under the protection of [the king’s] rule enjoyed celestial blessings, and lived in comfort and dignity. There was neither poverty nor begging. The people were free in their own country and respected in foreign lands.6

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Sadeq Hedayat

There follows a highly romantic and romanticized account of pre-Islamic Iranian government and society. This was a world in which no one was killed without the shah’s permission, and the shah ate at the same table with his subjects: Whither that glory, that power, that happiness. Naked and hungry Arabs have made you wretched for a thousand, two hundred and eighty years. The land is in ruins, the people are ignorant, unaware of world civilisation [sic], and deprived of the blessing of freedom, and the shah is a dispot [sic]. The injustice of the dispot [sic], and the fanaticism of the ulama have resulted in the country’s weakness. . . . Where have the Arabs themselves gone? At the moment, there are no people in the world who are less human and more wretched than the Arabs. Why then Islam did not lead to their happiness?7

Akhundzadeh is aware of the arbitrary nature of government in Iran,8 where despots one day flog their own ministers and the next restore them to high office;9 in the second letter he points out the need for government according to law.10 However, he is so indiscriminate in his zest for rejecting everything Iranian, and accepting everything European, that the strength of these observations is undermined. Akhundzadeh had a few followers and imitators before the Constitutional Revolution, among them Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani who is far more extreme than his master. It was after the revolution, however, that such ideas began to make a major impact. The soberness of Talebof, Maragheh’i and other moderate intellectual leaders of the revolutionary period was overwhelmed by impatient extremist demands for the overnight transformation of Iran and the whole of its culture into a European society.11,12 As part of this process a curious debate broke out on how to bring about a ‘literary revolution’, though one had been in progress for at least a couple of decades. What was really at stake was whether it was necessary to make a clean break with the past and start anew. Here the influence of Akhundzadeh and his followers may be clearly detected.13 It is against this background that the following sentiments – influenced by Zhdanov’s school of socialist realism – expressed decades later by the young Ahmad Shamlu make some historical sense: ‫موضو ع شعر شاعر پیشین‬ ‫از زندگی نبود‬ ‫در آسمان خشک خیالش او‬ ‫جز با شراب و یار نمی کرد گفتگو‬ The classical poet’s poetry, Was not about living. In the arid elevations of his imagination, He spoke to none other than wine and the beloved.14,15

A closer examination shows that the ‘literary revolution’ referred to poetry alone, and that, despite so many changes, this was still based on the classical structure, metres and rhymes. European poetry was not like that: metres were open and numerous, rhymes less perfect and less frequent, metaphors more distant and abstract, formal logic and

 Hedayat and Modern Persian Literature 5 rationality unnecessary. It was only in the 1930s and 1940s that such hopes began to be realized. Meanwhile, another literary revolution had taken place with hardly a shot being fired. It shows the relatively subordinate position of prose that ‘the literary revolution’ was concerned with poetry alone. Yet prose had begun to break new ground a few decades earlier, and by the 1920s it had progressed much further than poetry. The great prize of Persian literature in the 1920s was the emergence of a mature modern fiction. The fact that fiction of this kind had no precedent in classical Persian literature was an important reason for its undiluted success: it did not change or replace any existing tradition; it created a new and socially relevant channel for literary expression; it hurt no artistic prejudice, nor did it threaten any vested interest. Jamalzadeh’s Yeki Bud o Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time) was published in 1921. As a youth he had been steeped in the democratic traditions of the Constitutional Revolution and was not unduly impressed by the romantic nationalism of the later period. His collection of short stories, written in simple, idiomatic (but not folkloric) Persian, combined his peculiar talent for storytelling with social and political criticism, wrapped in a humorous and, occasionally, satirical garb. In the short story ‘Farsi Shekar Ast’ (Persian Is Sweet), he pokes fun both at the artificial Arabicisms of the mullah and the Franco-Persian babblings of the Europeanist. The story brilliantly exposes the contradictions of a society in the process of natural and unplanned transition, where the common man is at a loss to know how to communicate with either the mullah or the pseudo-modernist dandy in ordinary Persian. There is also the narrator, the type who, in the twentieth century, lost the game to Europeanists and traditionalists alike: he is modern, but his grasp of European culture does not restrict a realistic understanding of his own society and genuine sympathy for its people. Jamalzadeh himself was not in the nationalist and modernist mould. But once modern forms had been delivered, nationalist and modernist ideas and arguments began to put them to good use. The nationalist and modernist vision of the period was in line with Akhundzadeh’s earlier glorification of pre-Islamic Persia, harsh criticism of Islam and the Arabs, and zest for wholesale and rapid Europeanization of Iranian society. The only additional element was hostility to Turks and Turkish speakers. Hedayat grew up and became a writer and intellectual in this social and intellectual atmosphere, and his nationalist fiction (which will be discussed in Chapter 5) bears its hallmark. By the time he was thirty, not one of his literary friends and acquaintances had escaped the shaping influences of modernism and nationalism. The 1930s, on the other hand, was a decade when official nationalism of the early Pahlavi era got into full swing. Few had envisaged a situation whereby a crude official nationalism would be combined with an iron dictatorship (later deteriorating into pure arbitrary rule) and the effective loss of all the social and political achievements of the Constitutional Revolution. That is why, although the basic nationalist and modernist sentiments of men like Hedayat remained intact, they turned increasingly hostile towards official nationalism, with its vulgarity in the arts and illiberalism in politics. Given all this, it is not surprising that Hedayat’s last nationalist fiction, the historical play Maziyar, was written in 1933. Instead, he turned his nationalist sentiments towards scholarly studies of ancient Iranian texts (see Chapter 6).

6

Sadeq Hedayat

Social criticism Nationalism has not supplied the only important motif for Iranian literature in the early twentieth century. Social criticism was a parallel dimension, observed in the works of San’atizadeh, Morteza Moshfeq-e Kazemi, Mohammad Hejazi, Mohammad Mas’ud and Jahangir Jalili among others. Despite his popular reputation as a social critic (due to his later communist affiliation), Bozorg Alavi’s earlier works were much more concerned with personal and psychological problems. A writer of greater standing than Hejazi, Mas’ud or Jalili, he displays a strong Europeanism in two respects. One is his well-known application of Freudian psychoanalysis, familiar from some expressionist films of the time. The other, rather neglected strand in his work is the unrealistically European setting of some of his works. In some of his works of the 1940s and 1950s (when he had already converted to communism) there is more explicit social criticism, the outstanding example being the short story ‘Gileh Mard’ (Man from Gilan, 1952). Hedayat was considerably more successful as a realist and social critic than a nationalist and romantic. An outstanding feature of his socio-cultural criticism is its almost complete objectivity as regards the lives of ordinary people which he depicts and describes. Hedayat thus established an approach that was almost unique in the 1930s, where there is no moral overtone or undertone, no romantic glorification of the lower classes. On the contrary, they turn out to be no less amoral and villainous than the more fortunate and are no less pleased with their lives than the middle-class social critics who shed tears for their miseries and misfortunes. They are underprivileged and ignorant, but that does not turn them into saints, nor does it make their lives unworthy of living. This is Hedayat’s greatest single achievement in the realm of literary social criticism, and one which has resulted in a number of excellent, though often undervalued, short stories (see further Chapter 6). Yet Hedayat is much more famous for another group of his works, of which The Blind Owl (1936) is the masterpiece, and which have wrongly been described as works of social criticism by many a reader and critic. Hedayat would have been adjudged a great writer on the basis of his works of critical realism alone. But the much broader dimensions of this other category, and his profound personal involvement in the ontological and psychological issues which they raise, have inevitably identified him with this group of his works. It is here, rather than in his critiques of real life in society, that the writer is personally involved, and does his shouting. For in such works, though the cultural context is unavoidably Iranian, the author is dealing with problems, issues and inner experiences which know no boundaries in time or space.

The 1940s The greater shift of emphasis in the 1940s from romantic nationalism to social criticism in Persian literature, much like its counterpart in politics, was determined by the force of outside intervention. It seems a safe conjecture that, had the country been occupied

 Hedayat and Modern Persian Literature 7 by the Axis in place of the Allies, romantic nationalism, which in the late 1930s had strengthened its hold on both state and society, would have come into its own. Many of those who filled the ranks of the Tudeh party would have packed the local Nazi meeting halls, perhaps with greater enthusiasm, and many of its intellectuals, writers, poets and journalists would have supplied the commensurate literature. Nur al-Din Kiyanuri, who joined the Tudeh party at that time and ended up as its leader in later years, was still a Nazi sympathizer at the beginning of the Allied invasion. This is to pass judgement neither on the men nor on the nation to which they belonged, if only because the pattern is familiar from other times and places. On the contrary, it is to draw attention to the basic domestic issues beneath the radical change in politics and literature after the arrival of the Allies, which could have fitted either of those ideological cloaks with equal ease. These were anti-imperialist sentiments, Aryanist national self-consciousness, the old sense of shame about underdevelopment and the zest for social involvement and participation. Much of this was carried out through literature in its broader sense, that is, essayism, journalism and pamphleteering, rather than prose fiction and poetry. The freedom of expression and publication resulted in an explosion of published material, largely attacking the sins of the defunct dictatorship, of which literature in its specific sense had but a small share. Bozorg Alavi’s uncritical account of the fifty-three Marxists in Reza Shah’s jail is one of the better and, considering the political atmosphere, moderate representatives of that broader political literature. In the collection of short stories, he published in the same year, Prison Notes, more political protest than Marxist ideology may be observed. Hedayat’s Hajji Aqa (1945), on the other hand, is an attempt by a politically plain and uncalculating writer, who has been swept by the tides of hopeful political currents. Consequently, and despite his use of a few well-known ideological terms and allusions, the work lacks ideological depth and authenticity. In fact, the only absolutely genuine political aspect of this novel, and one which is close to Hedayat’s own heart, is the scathing attack on Reza Shah and his regime (see Chapter 10). This finds expression once again in his The Morvari Cannon (1947), as also in a few fables. Ideological literature, therefore, was to develop gradually and largely to the exclusion of the old guard. It was the new generation who began to write prose, poetry and criticism which increasingly began to resemble the ideological aspirations of the New Man. But even that had to take time. For, putting aside the Tudeh intellectual Ehsan Tabari’s direct borrowings from Soviet guidebooks to literary criticism, there was still little in the new literature which was authentically Marxist-Leninist. Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s From Our Suffering, despite the author’s description of it as a socialist realist work is more indicative of the vagueness of his own ideas regarding the rules and requirements of that school. It was when the Tudeh party split in 1948, and was banned in the following year, that theoretical Soviet Marxism began to dominate its politics and literature. The young modernist poets – Shamlu, Akhavan, Kasra’i, Ebtehaj and others – took to the field to sing hopeful hymns about the imminent recovery of the Promised Land, at least in part in the language and paradigm which they had been taught by the modernist poet Nima. That is also when Bahar died, Alavi left the country, while Jamalzadeh carried

8

Sadeq Hedayat

on in Europe in his own timeless fashion, Sadeq Chubak went to the Oil Company and did not write fiction for a long time, Parviz Khanlari gave up poetry altogether, and Al-e Ahmad was still a promising writer of hazy prospects. This is also when Hedayat became disillusioned with the Tudeh party, vehemently attacked Ehsan Tabari in a fit of suicidal fury, turned almost every power centre against himself and took his own life early in 1951 (see Chapters 12 and 13). Hedayat’s life and works have been subjected to description and appraisal in various languages, although nowhere has this been done comprehensively. This study reviews the whole of his life and works, their interconnections, their relations to literary, cultural and social developments of the period, and their impact on the Iranian intellectual community for decades after his death. The book also classifies Hedayat’s fictional works into four groups which, respectively, reflect his existential, ontological and psychological beliefs and experiences; display his critical realism in portraying the lives of common Iranians; reveal his romantic nationalism; and show his ability in writing satire. There is no denying, however, that elements of all these four categories exist in some of his works. Furthermore, and unlike many previous studies, this study does not view Hedayat either as an Eastern or as a Western writer, but as one who wrote both on parochial and universal subjects and was himself subject to both Eastern and Western influences in his upbringing and intellectual development. It is precisely these qualities which have provided Hedayat with the unique position that he enjoys among modern Iranian writers.

2

Early years

Sadeq Hedayat was born in February 1903, seven years after the assassination of Naser al-Din Shah, and two years before the onset of the Constitutional Revolution. He was six when the revolutionaries captured Tehran, fifteen when the First World War ended, eighteen when the 1921 coup took place, and twenty-three when Reza Khan founded the Pahlavi state and dynasty. Rapid changes in politics, literature and society occurred in these two decades, and left their mark on Hedayat and his works. He was born into an influential and well-to-do Divani family – Divani being somewhat comparable to the Mandarin class in Chinese society, although considerably less formalized than the latter. The founder of the Hedayat clan was Rezaqoli Khan, a poet and historian of letters, who flourished in the first seven decades of the nineteenth century and adopted the penname Hedayat (Guidance) in his poetry, which has Sufi connotations. He was a descendant of Kamal Khojandi, a poet of note, and a contemporary of Hafiz.1 Rezaqoli Khan’s descendants became important men of politics, government and letters in Qajar and Pahlavi Iran. He had two sons. One of these, Mokhber al-Dowleh, was minister of education, the other, Naiyer al-Molk, minister of science. Of the former’s four sons, Sani’al-Dowleh and Hajj Mokhber al-Saltaneh (Mehdiqoli Hedayat) are the most famous Hedayats in the history of Iranian politics and government. Both became important public officials under Naser al-Din Shah and, later, leaders of the moderate tendency in the Constitutional Revolution.2 Sani’al-Dowleh became speaker of the first Majlis but was assassinated shortly afterwards. However, his brother, Mokhber al-Saltaneh, survived the revolution and – several times – became minister and provincial governor in the Constitutional regime.3 He became prime minister in the early Reza Shah period, and had to quit when the shah’s power became both absolute and arbitrary. Both his career and his memoirs show that he was a somewhat opinionated individual of fairly conservative but Constitutionalist views, who was not too fond of social reform and modernization. He was prime minister when Hedayat was a student in Europe, and indirectly helped him in the frequent disagreements which the former had with the embassy and educational authorities (see Chapter 3). Hedayat was the grandson of Naiyer al-Molk, Rezaqoli Khan’s other son. His father, E’tezad al-Molk, was a state official, but he never made it to the first rank, and retired fairly early from public service. He married his own first cousin from whom he had three sons and two daughters. The Hedayat ‘clan’ held extensive estates, a fact which

10

Sadeq Hedayat

is reflected in a couple of Hedayat’s works. Sadeq’s eldest brother, Mahmud, became a lawyer and later a judge of the Supreme Court. He was made assistant prime minister when their brother-in-law, the famous General Ali Razmara, formed a cabinet in 1950–1.4 Sadeq’s other brother, Isa, joined the army and was trained as an artillery officer in France at the same time as Hedayat was a student there. He later became a general and a commander of the Military Academy in Tehran. There is not much information on Hedayat’s childhood and youth, mainly because members of his immediate family have not been too keen to speak or write extensively on the subject. At the age of six Hedayat was sent to Elmiyeh School, and he later graduated to Dar al-Fonun, the politechnique founded in the middle of the nineteenth century which now functioned as a privileged secondary school. At the age of fifteen, the boy suffered from ‘a severe eye-ache’. The doctors told him to stop reading and writing for six months, and this ‘made him fall behind his classmates for an academic year’.5 The cause and cure of the ‘eye-ache’ are unknown. It could have been anything, but in view of our knowledge of Hedayat’s psychological make-up, its cause may well have been psychosomatic rather than physical. In the following year (1919) he was sent to the prestigious École St Louis, a missionary school where all the lessons were taught both in French and in Persian, and from which he graduated in 1925 (see Chapter 3). On the other hand, he was already reading widely and avidly in Persian and French literature and had developed a special interest in ‘the occult sciences’. He was to retain this interest in later life, though he did not subscribe to a formal religion. The interest itself shows the origins of a morbid curiosity about the meaning and purpose of life which marked some of his fictions, other writings, letters and conversations with friends. The late Taqi Razavi, a fellow student at St Louis who was to become a life-long friend, remembered young Sadeq as a shy, withdrawn, very sensitive and rather melancholic boy.6 The two students became close friends for the rest of Hedayat’s relatively short life. Razavi was to die in Tehran in 1984 and maintained a correspondence with me right up to 1982. He graduated from school a year earlier than Hedayat, went on a state grant to Paris to study medicine and became a doctor. Hedayat himself was to go to Belgium in 1926, and in 1927 he joined Razavi in Paris (see Chapter 3). Meanwhile, they kept up a regular correspondence, but only one of Hedayat’s letters (from Tehran to Paris, dated 6 October 1925) has survived. In view, especially, of the general dearth of information on the earlier parts of Hedayat’s life, this letter is an extremely interesting source which affords acute insights into his thoughts and psychology shortly before he left Iran for further studies in Europe. He opens the letter by thanking Razavi for sending him a book from Paris, and goes on to remark: It looks as if the reason you sent me this book was that its title was magique [sic]. But in fact, it is a literary book about Chinese myths and legends and has nothing to do with magic and sorcery.

He then goes on to thank his friend for having enclosed a picture postcard of a pretty woman, but goes on to comment:

 Early Years 11 However, it is of no use to me, because the darkness of life and wretchedness of times have made me age prematurely. If you wish to send me postcards, I would prefer them to be dark, sad and frightening. . . . Anyway, you seem to have forgotten Iran and the life here very quickly. And you are absolutely right. Try to forget this terrifying dream and painful nightmare for as long as you can.7

The interest in the occult sciences was to continue throughout later life, although it has left no important results behind. The writer and critic Parviz Khanlari told me that, even in the 1940s, this was a general topic for which Hedayat searched among the new acquisitions and journals in bookshops.8

Youthful essays Hedayat began writing while he was still at school and in this period published two booklets, Khayyam’s Quatrains and Man and Animal, which provide an indispensable insight into his views and psychology at the time, and an invaluable source for understanding his later life and work. Anyone who has read these works would be unlikely to hold on to the notion that he had become Kafkaesque upon reading Kafka, as one popular view has it, or that his attitude and beliefs had been moulded by later studies of Buddhism, let alone that he had become a Buddhist convert and practitioner to a most occult and mystical degree.9 He published his edition of Khayyam’s Quatrains in 1921, at the age of eighteen. The introduction indicates the development of his thought and psychology and reveals a wide knowledge of Persian and Arabic sources, as well as demonstrating familiarity with European sources and ideas. And notwithstanding errors of syntax (which are symptomatic of the period’s formal prose) it is an impressive piece in all its aspects, for an established Iranian scholar of the time would not have produced a much better work on the subject. It is not difficult to guess that what is true in it is not new, and that what is new is mainly not true. Yet what is new and largely untrue is extremely illuminating in relation to the development of Hedayat’s vision of life and death. The essay opens with a short biography of Khayyam which includes many of the facts and legends that have been attributed to the great poet and scientist in classical sources. His main source of the quatrains is a copy of the Oxford Bodleian Library’s manuscript of 865 (lunar hijra) which contains 158 quatrains. He mentions Edward Fitzgerald, E. G. Browne and others among the European translators and commentators on Khayyam’s poetry. He also compares Khayyam’s thought with that of Lucretius, Baudelaire (in Paradis Artificiels), Voltaire, Goethe, Heinrich Heine and (even) Schopenhauer. Hedayat dismisses both the mystic and the materialist interpretations of Khayyam’s thought. He attributes the mystic interpretation to superficial impressions given by his ‘use of Sufi words and topics’.10 According to him (though he would later change his mind on this point),11 Khayyam was no more a materialist (dahri) than he was a Sufi:

12

Sadeq Hedayat [Khayyam] bases himself on Greek philosophy, but this cannot be taken to mean that he was a materialist. Because, in some of his quatrains, he confesses to the limitations of science, and the inability of man in arriving at certain knowledge of the truth of the objects and sources of wonder which surround us.12

The point about the limitations of science is acute, and one which many a scientist and philosopher of science is yet to come to grips with, as Popper did not tire of emphasizing.13 But Hedayat goes on to reach his own conclusion on Khayyam’s view: In the end, he must admit the existence of a metaphysical power which the human mind is unable to understand. Or, in other words, man is incapable of a full understanding of the First Cause or the Supreme Being (Wajib al-Wujud). At any rate, we cannot even regard Khayyam as a sage (zahed). He was a philosopher who tried to seek joy and comfort from apparent (as opposed to real) objects.14

Hedayat then proceeds to the crux of what is important to his own thought, and much that is central to Khayyam’s pronouncements in the quatrains: What have occupied Khayyam’s mind most are the important questions of life, death, fate, necessity and freedom. Yet, all his efforts in using science, philosophy and religion to solve the riddle of these questions still render him dissatisfied and unconvinced. Hence, he is overtaken by pessimism and disillusionment, which leads him to scepticism.15

It is at this very point that the argument begins to push Khayyam into the background, and bring forward Hedayat’s own thoughts and psychology in the guise of an interpretation of Khayyam: The doubts in Khayyam’s spirit, his painful scepticism vis-à-vis fate as well as scientific determinism, and his poetical vision lead him into a state of sadness and melancholy which he has constantly tried to compensate with small and artificial joys. . . . That is, he prefers a state of inebriate tranquility to the base and worthless joys [of this life] which he much prefers to forget. But this attempt to seek comfort [in wine, etc.] does not relieve him from depression.16

And further on, the young Hedayat begins to replace Khayyam with full force: Khayyam’s dark thoughts, his reflections on the tenuousness of life and the instability of the world, his awareness of the limitations of knowledge, and especially his observation of the injustices of man, and the hypocrisy of those around himself, lead him from scepticism to pessimism. That is, he loses zest for life, and his artistic gift tends towards depressing thoughts which constantly create an agonizing nightmare for him.17

And he goes on to elaborate further on the theme of Khayyam’s alleged ‘bitter experiences’, his ‘careless attitude towards life’ and ‘the fear and hope with which he viewed the world’. Khayyam’s whole philosophy may be summed up by saying: ‘There

 Early Years 13 is nothing better than the present moment. Let us therefore drink and protect our souls from the pains of living.’18 However: This temporary tranquility has not stopped him from observing the injustices of his contemporaries, for much of his cynicism is directed towards hypocrites, and those sages who argue about subjects which they themselves are ignorant about. [His attacks] are so fearless.19

Therefore, Khayyam was neither a Sufi nor a materialist, but a Deist of sorts who was rather torn between determinism and indeterminism in his philosophy, though Hedayat later changes his mind in his new edition of the quatrains, and describes Khayyam as an out-and-out anti-religious atheist, humanist and materialist. Yet, it is the unfamiliar points about Khayyam’s alleged dark mood and his depressive tendencies that tell us much more about the formation of the thought and psychology of the young Hedayat than about those of Khayyam. And it is these early, but clear, indications about Hedayat’s whole personality which leave little room for speculation about the basic causes of his thoughts and moods later in life. Man and Animal is a much longer essay and anticipates a longer piece of work on vegetarianism.20 The European references are much wider, and Pascal, Descartes, Montaigne and so on are among thinkers he cites and quotes in presenting facts and arguments. The essay is in four separate parts, from A to D, but without separate subtitles. Part A poses the question of the basic differences between man and animal. Man’s physical structure is like those of the higher mammals. There are arguments among scientists on whether the differences between the human ‘soul’ (by which the author means mind) and intelligence, on the one hand, and those of the animals, on the other hand, are of degree or in kind. Whereas the philosophers, metaphysicians and theologians hold man in special regard, the biologists view man as no more than an animal who is more developed than the others. Modern natural science has shown that both men and animals have originally developed from a single cell. Descartes believed that animals were no more than mobile machines, but this is an inexcusable mistake, and a cause of man’s mistreatment of animals both then and now.21 What is the soul except will and intelligence which happens to be rational in man, and instinctive in animals? ‘It would be impossible to deny that animals have will’, for example, the tiger who so carefully prepares to pounce on its prey.22 The conclusion is that not even man’s possession of an exceptionally developed mind is sufficient to distinguish him from animals as an entirely different category of being. Part Β opens by wondering about the extent to which man has had regard for the rights of animals: Man is cruel to the weak. He has presented himself to animals as the worst arbitrary ruler and the basest agent of injustice. He captures animals, puts them in jail, and treats them in such a way that they would rather die than be alive.23

Animals are in fact superior to human beings because, even in captivity, they are useful, and earn their meagre subsistence, whereas man ‘steals them from nature’, puts them to hard work and still shows unkindness to them:

14

Sadeq Hedayat Due to his natural selfishness, man is of the opinion that all creatures have come into existence for his sake, and they have all been created for him to kill, and to eat. This masterpiece of Creation . . . is not even satisfied with that and needs to be entertained at the expense of the lives of animals. He must indulge in hunting, because he needs some blood in order to pacify his insatiable appetite. . . .24 Man must stop his lofty claim to be the lord of all creatures. He is no more than a criminal, an agent of injustice, a looter, a highway robber, and an executioner, in the case of animals . . . The [Persian] expression ‘The wisdom of everything is better than man’s’ is meant to be a joke, but it contains an undeniable truth. Goethe says in Faust ‘What they call reason is often none other than selfishness and stupidity. . .’25 Man is not only the most stupid animal, but also the most ferocious of them all. Indeed, he is the only animal which is [truly] harmful and destructive. . . I have read and heard many times that man is the most developed of all animals. This is a great mistake. On the contrary, it is man who has never reached the stage of [real] development.26

Part C concentrates on the point that it is unnecessary for man to eat meat, and on the uses of vegetarianism. Here, not only the Buddha but Pythagoras, Plato, Leibniz, Spinoza, Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelley, Lamartine, Tolstoy, Livingstone and even Clemenceau have been added to Ibn Sina and Naser Khosrow to prove the point, though the argument also appeals directly to biology and natural history. An even greater emphasis is placed here on the mistreatment of animals, including those which man eats, which the author says has been condemned by Islam, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism alike. The instinct for survival may dictate the law of the jungle among animals. But, at least, ‘the lion’s prey does not suffer a period of captivity, is not beaten with whips and sticks before it is eventually put to death for the services which it has long rendered’.27 Here, the condemnation of man’s treatment of animals is universal, bound neither by time nor by place. But in the concluding part of the essay the young author has reserved some especially harsh words for the behaviour of his own compatriots towards animals: In Iran, the donkey is born for toil and torture alone. . . . The dog is killed for God’s sake. The cat is thrown down deep wells alive, and the mouse is burned alive in public thoroughfares. . . . Till when do we have to turn a blind eye to this veil of barbarism?28

The author goes on to set himself a programme, an ideal from which he was never to depart in thought and attitude. It is reminiscent, though in a naked and unsubtle way, of his last great essay, ‘The Message of Kafka’ which was written at the end of the rope, when all hopes and ideals had vanished from his tortured mind: To speak for the speechless, to defend the helpless, to demand justice for the subjects of injustice, to restore the rights of the down-trodden, and to stop the injustice and obscenity which bring down man’s status into shame and ill-repute.29

 Early Years 15 In these two essays we have evidence of Hedayat’s early psychological and philosophical formation. Evidence that he was extremely sensitive and thoughtful. Evidence that he was puzzled about large philosophical issues such as the causes and purpose of life and death, and the origins and end of all existence. Evidence, too, that he was satisfied by no philosophical, religious or scientific argument which has been advanced to supply solutions to these external problems; that this dissatisfaction is a source of genuine anxiety and unhappiness for him; and that he was already ‘disillusioned’ and ‘pessimistic’ despite (or perhaps because of) the lofty ideals which he had set himself at a young age. Four years later, Hedayat departed for Europe to pursue a course of higher studies. He took the thoughts as well as the psychology displayed in the essays discussed in this chapter along with him, and they did much for art but little for his happiness.

16

3

Hedayat in Europe

Europe and back The state policy of sending students to Europe to be instructed in modern arts and sciences went back to the early nineteenth century.1 The number of students sent on public grants remained insignificant, however, and many of them ended up with posts which were unrelated to their costly studies in Western Europe.2 Meanwhile, the Dar al-Fonun managed to provide some modern civil and military training in Tehran, though its functions tended to be narrowed down to teaching languages, military techniques and a number of academic subjects. As Europe rapidly became fashionable towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, private students from a few very rich families began to be sent to France and Russia as well, but few of them did well academically. It was when the Pahlavi state was established that the matter was put on a regular, if relatively modest, basis. After learning the language and completing some preparatory work, they found their way to European universities, usually to study medicine, engineering or teacher training in arts and sciences. They were sent almost exclusively to France, Belgium and Germany. Russia had become communist, Britain was excluded on account of political expediency and America was too little known and too far away. A state Office of Guardianship for Iranian Students in Europe was set up and, for many years, led by Ismail Mer’at, later to become a minister of education. The Guardianship Office was itself a replica of the bureaucratic apparatus in Tehran and governed the lives and education of the state students with a strong hand.3 On the lighter and more grotesque side, special uniforms were provided for Iranian state students which they were embarrassingly obliged to wear in public, thus reflecting the growing militarization and regimentation of civil society in Tehran itself.4 Hedayat was sent to Brussels early in 1926, then Ghent. But he did not stay there for long. The essay ‘Death’ which he published in the Berlin journal Iranshahr is signed ‘Ghent, 1926’, and there is a postcard from Paris to his brother Mahmud in Tehran dated August 1927. Hedayat desperately wanted to go to Paris, and his parents’ cousin, Mokhber al-Saltaneh, had in the meantime become prime minister. There is an air of mystery about what Hedayat read in Europe. According to Kamshad, he first studied dentistry, then engineering, before giving up his studies and returning home.5 On the other hand, Komisarof says that he first went to Belgium for ‘higher studies in engineering’, then to France ‘to continue his studies in the School of Architecture’.6

18

Sadeq Hedayat

However, recent documentary evidence shows that he had been sent to Europe to study ‘architectural engineering’, although it looks as if the ‘engineering’ aspect of the course in question was as important as the ‘architectural’ side: he was expected to work for the ministry of roads after he finished his study, and his preparation for the course included learning advanced mathematics. The evidence from his own letters indicates that he never got to the stage of studying his designated course, because he failed to cope with the advanced mathematics. The subject was clearly unsuited to his talents and inclinations, and he tried a couple of times to withdraw from the state scholarship and return home. In the end, the efforts and influence of his family in Tehran succeeded in persuading the authorities to allow him to switch to the study of French literature in the context of a teacher training course.7 The authorization letter was issued in Tehran late in April 1929; yet we find Hedayat back in Tehran in June 1930, not having got far with the new course and unwilling (as he wrote to Taqi Razavi) to return to France and pursue any course of study of his own choice. At any rate, his later correspondence reveals that his relationship with Ismail Mer’at, the Chief Guardian, and Hossein Ala, the Iranian minister in Paris, were far from ideal, for reasons which went beyond the conflict over the subject of his study. It looks as if Hedayat spent about a year and a half – from July 1927 to December 1928 – in Paris, before going to Reims: his letters from Reims to Razavi (in Paris) begin in January 1929 and show that he had arrived there for the second academic term. This was a year and a half short of the original five-year grant contract, though he is certain to have been able to extend the period, if he had so wished, because of his family’s influence in Tehran. The moves from Belgium to Paris, and from Paris to Reims and Besancon, were made after consultations with the Iranian authorities in Europe as well as his parents and relatives at home. The evidence suggests that, after the failure of his first move to Paris, Hedayat had begun to think of giving up and returning to Iran. But moral persuasion (if not pressure) in Europe as well as Tehran made him agree to go to Reims, then Besancon. In the letter of January 1929 to Razavi, written only a couple of weeks after starting his work in Reims, we find him already unhappy about life and work in the new environment. But he goes on to add that ‘I’d feel ashamed to start complaining to Tehran again’.8 Yet, in a following letter written in February, he says, ‘I think it would be best for me to pack my things up and go home; and they [i.e. the Iranian authorities in Europe] can go to hell.’9 And in May 1929: ‘Anyway, I don’t give a damn anymore. What am I supposed to do? There is nothing else I can do, and frankly I’m fed up.’10 The earliest evidence of a formal ‘resignation’ (his word) by Hedayat is in his letter of 18 October 1929 (after he had obtained permission to read French literature) from Besancon to Razavi in Paris. This comes at the beginning of his term at the College in Besancon: What do you mean?. . . I can’t possibly withdraw my resignation. Yesterday I had a letter from home [i.e. from his family] saying that it would be a mistake for me to resign. But it’s all over now.11

 Hedayat in Europe 19 It was not to be. Not yet, at any rate. He was once again persuaded to stay on, until he finally gave up in June 1930, and went back to Tehran for good. But his family still tried to persuade him to return to his studies, especially as they had the prime minister’s own influence to depend on. He wrote to Razavi from Tehran, on 13 September 1930: Regarding life and work, however, the family thought that I should try to come back to Europe, and the Department of Education too were sympathetic to the idea. They even suggested that I could study arts, Décor [sic] or any other subject of my own choosing. But I said no.12

The first suicide attempt What lay behind Hedayat’s apparently permanent unhappiness while in Europe? To say that he missed home is a reasonable but bland explanation. He cannot have been very happy before leaving Tehran for Europe, if we consider only the evidence of his earlier essay on vegetarianism, or the essay ‘Death’ which he wrote almost on arrival in Belgium. On the other hand, Europe then could offer a great deal to someone like Hedayat. There were the cinemas and theatres which he regularly frequented, and about which he was later to write almost with nostalgia from Tehran to Razavi. There was plenty to read and see, the city lights were much brighter than Tehran’s, and the cafés offered him a marvellous meeting point with friends. Yet he went on being unhappy, despite superficial attempts at improving his mood by moving from one place to the next. Decades later, an unsympathetic Iranian fellow student reminisced about Hedayat in Besancon, lonely and disorganized, keeping mainly to himself, and drinking a good Muslim’s share of the wine at the dinner table.13 A realistic explanation is that he was not suited to his role as a full-time student working towards academic degrees in the normal manner, within the commitment and discipline demanded by the formal requirements of course work and examinations. The ‘laziness’ about which he speaks in many of his stories – but especially in ‘Buried Alive’, one of his earliest works, written in France in 1930 – must refer to this problem. Hedayat did not suffer from laziness – he was to become a prolific writer and conversationalist until the late 1940s, when he began to sink into a mood of despair for the last time – but from a debilitating mood. He wrote to Razavi in Paris on 26 February 1929, from Reims: Regarding the academic work I’m not worse than any other student. . . . But taking and passing the exams is out of the question. . . . Anyway, things don’t look good at all.14

And on 20 May 1929: About the exams, forget it. Naturally, I’m regularly taking them, sitting in the exam hall together with a no-good bunch all around me, and a bespectacled and offputting surveillant [sic] constantly watching over us. But there’s no hope of passing

20

Sadeq Hedayat them. . . . And given the general atmosphere in the college, it is impossible or at least very difficult for me to work. It makes you feel sick.15

Already in 1928, barely a few months after going to Paris from Belgium, he had made an attempt on his own life. Taqi Razavi remembered the circumstances vividly: Early that day I met Hedayat in a café in the centre of Paris. He looked extremely unhappy, did not say much, and drank more than usual. At the time, Hedayat’s lodgings were in Cachan which was then still a suburban district of Paris. When we were parting, he gave me a few letters for his friends and relatives in Tehran to post. This added to my anxiety, and I tried to follow him, but lost him in the Metro crowd. In the end I went to see Nasrollah Entezam [then a diplomat in the Paris Embassy] and told him about my unease. The two of us then went straight to Cachan to see him. He was not at home, but his bags were packed. Next day we heard about the unsuccessful suicide attempt.16

Razavi saw Hedayat later, and got the full story from him: When I left you in Paris, I went straight to a café in Cachan, had a few more drinks, paid the bill, and gave the rest of my cash to the waiter. I then went to an isolated spot on the River Marne and jumped into it from the top of an old bridge. Unknown to me, a young couple were making love in a boat right under the bridge. The fellow immediately jumped into the river and took me out (Hedayat could not swim). But he wouldn’t let go of me unless I gave him the name and address of someone who knew me well. In the end I mentioned my [elder] brother Isa [later, General Isa Hedayat] at the School of Artillery.17

The incident must have occurred late in April 1928, for he wrote in a postcard (dated 3 May 1928) to his eldest brother Mahmud in Tehran: ‘Recently I committed a madness, but it ended well.’18 While in Reims, he was obliged to live in the college hall of residence, and this created an additional problem for him because of his vegetarian diet. He had apparently taken up the matter with the embassy authorities first, but later managed to solve the difficulty by talking directly to the principal. It looks as if the embassy authorities were weary of having to deal with his various complaints.19 More than three years later we find him writing from Tehran to Razavi in Paris: I think I’ve already written that I have resigned from Bank Melli. . . . To be honest, I was afraid that if [Hossein] Ala becomes governor of the Bank, he would order me to eat meat.20

Ala was the Iranian minister in Paris when Hedayat was a student in France, and he was due to become governor of Bank Melli Iran when Hedayat resigned his junior post in the bank in August 1932. If Hedayat did not do much academic work in those years, or at least did not do well at academic work, he more than compensated for it by reading, writing, seeing films

 Hedayat in Europe 21 and plays and visiting art galleries. Not surprisingly, he was much interested in the avant-garde forms of surrealism in painting and sculpture, and in expressionist films which were greatly in vogue in Europe in the 1920s. This made a lasting contribution to his art when it came to express his inner feelings and describing visual scenes. The Blind Owl is the supreme example of the surrealist impact on Hedayat, though its traces are to be found in some of his other works as well.

Essays and stories The short essay ‘Death’ was written in Ghent soon after Hedayat’s arrival in Belgium in 1926. It was published in Berlin in the periodical Iranshahr in February 1927. It is difficult to know why it has been described by two critics as Hedayat’s ‘first work’, and ‘an unfinished short story’.21 In reality, it is an incredible éloge on death itself. And it combines romantically colourful phraseology with prophetically descriptive pronouncements: The heavens smile, the earth grows, and death harvests the fruits of life with its old sickle. . . . It is only in the graveyard that blood-suckers and evil-doers rest from their unjust deeds, that the innocent are at last free from pain, and that there exist neither the aggressors nor the aggrieved.22

But it is the cult of worship of death itself – especially in view of later developments in his art and life – which is the most impressive and engaging aspect of this short essay: When the hard and harsh tests of time have extinguished the deceitful and misleading lights of youth . . . it is death that will provide the remedy. O death, you are the antidote to disillusionment and depression. . . . You are light itself, but they think of you as darkness. . . . You leave a ray of hope for the hopeless. . . . Yours is life eternal.23

On the other hand, Iraj Bashiri’s claim that the essay shows ‘the beginning of Hedayat’s acquaintance with the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, whose influence in France was pronounced in the twenties’24 is bogus. It was not written in Paris; there is no evidence that Hedayat had read any Rilke at the time; and it clearly bears the stamp of the author of Man and Animal and the introduction to Khayyam’s Quatrains, written earlier in Tehran.25 ‘La Magie en Perse’ offers a foretaste both of Hedayat’s studies of pre-Islamic Iranian cultures, and of his occasional reflections on the occult and the supernatural.26 It begins with a controversial reference to the ‘cult d’un Dieu unique’ of ‘the’ primitive Aryan religion. This allegedly monotheistic cult then degenerated into ‘polythéisme’ among the early Aryan settlers in India, and was later reformed by Zoroaster, whose role is thus compared with that of Confucius in China. However, the main part of the essay consists of a general discussion of the Magi (the order of priesthood in Zoroastrianism), their alleged deviations from pure faith, and their legacy of magic, sorcery and alchemy in the Middle Ages.

22

Sadeq Hedayat

Hedayat’s next undertaking is a sequel to his Man and Animal. This was first published in Iranshahr (Berlin, 1927) and, later, as a book entitled The Benefits of Vegetarianism (Tehran, 1930).27 It is in twelve short chapters or sections, and the argument is more mature and sophisticated than in the earlier work. He writes: The slaughterers push their hands as far as the elbow down the animals’ bloody intestines. They skin them, and later hang their trembling carcasses – with cutoff throats, purple temples, torn-off bellies, and reddened livers – from hooks in a cart, or pile them up on a packhorse, and send them to butcher shops. In their turn, the butchers cut them into pieces with blood-stained hands and aprons and sell them as joints of meat.28

Towards the end of 1928 Hedayat wrote the historical play Parvin the Sasanian Girl in France which was to be published as his first work of fiction (Tehran, 1930). The short stories ‘Madeleine’ (December 1929), ‘Buried Alive’ (April 1930) and ‘The French P.O.W.’ (April 1930) were also written in France. They were to appear with four other short stories in his volume Buried Alive, published late in 1930 in Tehran. It was also in 1930 that he wrote ‘The Myth of Creation’, a satirical script for a puppet show, which was to appear in a limited edition in France years later in 1946. It is a light-hearted mockery of the story of Adam and Eve, and his first attempt at writing satire.29 ‘Madeleine’ is a short piece about an Iranian student meeting a French girl of that name. They get to know each other on a beach, and she later invites him to her home. The young man is obviously boyish and inexperienced in dealing with the opposite sex.30 ‘Buried Alive’ is ‘from the notes of a madman’, the self-pity and nostalgic reminiscences of a depressed Iranian student in Paris.31 As noted, just after his unsuccessful suicide attempt Hedayat had written to his brother mentioning a recent madness. In September 1930 we find him writing to Razavi from Tehran: ‘I’m also thinking of publishing “Buried Alive” which is the story of the madness.’32 ‘The French P.O.W.’ is an account of the narrator’s conversation in Besancon with a former prisoner of war. The man (who is now a concierge) reminisces about his life and times in a German prisoner of war camp with touching nostalgia.33 When his company surrendered to the Germans in 1916, their captors told them: ‘You’re lucky that for you the war is over. We wish we were in your shoes.’34 After talking about his time in captivity, he heaved a long sigh and said the days of his captivity in Germany were the best period of his life. He then took his broom and left the room.35 ‘Hajji Morad’ is Hedayat’s first short story with a purely fictional content. The Hajji has never in fact been to Mecca. As a child, his family had emigrated to Karbala; there they lost everything and became destitute, until he returned to his native Hamadan where his uncle – a genuine Hajji – had owned a shop in the bazaar. Shortly afterwards the uncle had died, and Morad had inherited his ‘shop and title at one and the same time’.36 The Hajji is married, but his relationship with his wife is not quite happy. She has not borne him a child, and she frequently taunts him for his former poverty as well as his imposture as a Hajji. In turn, he beats her up from time to time, though he would rather live with her than without her. One day, he is on the way home from work when

 Hedayat in Europe 23 he thinks he recognizes his wife by the unusual white margin around her chador. He keeps calling her and is frustrated by her lack of response: she’s left home without his knowledge, and now she ignores him as well. He rushes forward and makes a scene, but it quickly becomes clear that the woman is not his wife. He is arrested and receives fifty lashes for molesting a chaste woman. ‘Two days later the Hajji divorced his wife.’37

Letters Hedayat was a great wit. He was good at satire, and almost perfect at ridicule. But he also had a subtle wit, a talent for verbal entertainment which frequently showed itself in the company of close friends, and in some of his letters to them. Besides, his letters display, more freely than his fictions, his command over the language, and the ease with which he used it in correspondence and conversation. It would take too long to discuss his letters of this period from the point of view of their literary and linguistic merits. There is, however, a passage in his letter of 26 February 1929 to Razavi which is worth quoting here in its own right, and by way of introducing the literary wit, which we shall encounter again in his later letters and satires: Right now, it’s 10 o’clock here in the dormitory. A couple of reading lights are on, but all the others are asleep. Worse than any possible torture is this incredible Turk who is sleeping next to me. That he says his prayers five times a day is his own funeral. That he fasts during Ramazan is also his own bloody business. Good God he goes to bed at 9 o’clock, and gets up early in the morning, and all the while he snores as if they’ve been shitting right inside his dirty mouth.38

Despite the frequent darkness of his moods, Hedayat maintained his sense of humour, his wit, his satirical bite and (sometimes) venomous cynicism all through his life. Indeed, the older and unhappier he got, the sharper and more cutting did his wit become in conversation and correspondence. It looks almost as if he was dependent on it for consoling a sensitive soul (see Chapter 11).

The theory of Hedayat’s life cycle Hedayat’s moodiness and hypersensitivity were already evident in his youthful essays of the early 1920s, discussed in Chapter 2, and in the letter of October 1925 to Razavi, shortly before his departure for Europe. In the same letter, he also tells Razavi that the latter is right to ‘have forgotten Iran and the life here very quickly’, away from ‘this terrifying dream and painful nightmare’. This shows that he attributed his unhappiness to external factors and must surely have rejoiced when he received the grant to go to Europe. Yet, we have found him unhappy in Europe as well. Between 1930 and 1941 he produced most of his works, and almost all of his masterpieces, but he was drifting from one junior post to another, was usually unhappy, and spent a year in India to get away from Iran (see Chapter 4). After Reza Shah’s

24

Sadeq Hedayat

abdication in 1941, he was, like most Iranians and especially the intellectuals, happy at the prospect of a freer and more open society. Many of his friends were members or sympathizers of the Tudeh party in its early years, and he associated with them without becoming a political activist. However, with the growing trend of Stalinism in that party, and the social and political stalemate in the country, the underlying mood of depression once again overtook him. This summary of Hedayat’s broad mood variations is intended as a background to a discussion of the theory of Hedayat’s life cycle, invented by Tudeh writers and through their propaganda handed down to many other critics and commentators for too long. The Tudeh-inspired theory recognizes three distinct cycles in Hedayat’s life and works: the period of pessimism (1930–41); the period of optimism (1941–6); the period of pessimism (1946–51). Accordingly, Hedayat’s first period of pessimism was almost solely due to the political atmosphere created by Reza Shah’s regime. Indeed, The Blind Owl and similar works are little more than the author’s critical portrayals of the political situation in that period. The period of optimism starts in 1941 with the shah’s departure, but especially as a result of the formation of the Tudeh party, even hinting that he had been a party member which he never was. However, the period of optimism ends, and the second and final period of pessimism begins in 1946, when the separatist movement in Azerbaijan fails, and so does the Tudeh party on account of its unconditional support for it. This is further exacerbated by the official banning of the Tudeh party early in 1949, when Hedayat loses all hope and, not having the stamina to stick it out in ‘the barracks of the struggle’, takes his own life two years later (see Chapter 13). This theory overlooks the fact that Hedayat had displayed depressive tendencies long before the 1930s as well as in his time in Europe. It also ignores the zest and energy with which he worked in the first half of that decade when he produced most (and the best) of his works. It is true that Hedayat was elated with the news of the collapse of Reza Shah’s regime and felt less unhappy in the first few years that followed it, in part because the Tudeh party was a standard-bearer of democracy and a centre for intellectual activity. But there is not much proof of any real optimism on Hedayat’s part, even in that period, unless the fact that he wrote a couple of political satires (in particular, Hajji Aqa ) in which he castigated various establishments, is taken, as invariably it is, as the sole evidence for it. We hope to show (in Chapters 10 and 11) that such claims about the works of the early 1940s have no real foundation. Meanwhile, it is wrong to claim that Hedayat fell back into a state of despair and depression (or ‘pessimism’) because of the failure and banning of the Tudeh party. On the contrary, there is hard evidence that he was angry with the separatists and with the Tudeh party for following the Soviet line giving them enthusiastic backing, and that his rift with that party had become irreparable especially after the split in the party early in 1948 as a direct consequence of the Azerbaijan fiasco, and because of the growing Stalinist trends in it. This was manifested in every aspect of the party’s life, including its Zhdanovist socialist realist attitude towards the arts shown in its attacks on Kafka and, indirectly, Hedayat (see Chapters 10 and 12).

4

Life and labour in the Golden Era

When Hedayat returned home from France in 1930 Reza Shah’s star was still rising fast. It fell in 1941, when the Allies invaded the land, and the shah took to the sea.1 During those eleven years, Hedayat lived the life of a social and intellectual gypsy. Yet contrary to long-held popular myths, neither his rootlessness nor his despair was wholly or mainly a product of the repressive social and intellectual atmosphere of the Golden Era. He disliked the growing authoritarianism of those years, tried to be away from Iran as much as possible, and felt elated the moment Reza Shah left Iran and a breeze of freedom began to blow in that troubled land. But the political atmosphere was not the prime cause of his troubles, although inevitably it intensified them.2 He began work in Bank Melli, resigned in 1932; joined the Office of Trade, resigned in 1934; went to the ministry of foreign affairs, left in 1935, first to go on a wild goose chase, then to get a job at the State Construction Company, from which he resigned in 1936 to go to Bombay. He went back to Tehran a year later, rejoined the Construction Company but only for two months; joined Bank Melli again, resigned in 1938; and went to the State Office of Music until 1941 when the office was closed. Meanwhile he wrote and/or published: the historical plays Parvin the Sasanian Girl (1930) and Maziyar (with Mojtaba Minovi, 1933); Owsaneh (folk tales and popular proverbs, 1933); Neirangestan (also popular beliefs, rites and superstitious practices, 1933); Vagh-vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow), a collection of short satirical pieces resembling free verse (with Mas’ud Farzad, 1934); The Melodies of Khayyam (1934); Isfahan Nesf-e Jahan (Isfahan, Half-of-the-World, travelogue, 1932), and Gojasteh Abalish (translated from Pahlavi, 1939). At the same time, he wrote and/ or published most of his novels and short stories, including Zendeh beh Gur (Buried Alive, 1930); Aniran (Non-Iranian, with Bozorg Alavi and Sheen Partow, 1931), Seh Qatreh Khun (Three Drops of Blood, 1933), ‘Alaviyeh Khanom’ (1933), Sayeh Roshan (Chiaroscuro, 1933), Buf-e Kur (The Blind Owl, 1936) and Sag-e Velgard (Stray Dog), which, together with the translation from Pahlavi of Karnameh-ye Ardeshir-e Babakan (The Record of Andeshir Babakan) he was to publish after 1941. He also wrote several reviews and review articles, most of which were published in Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine) of which he was a founding editor. It was by far the most productive period of his life.3

26

Sadeq Hedayat

A guide to failure? Hedayat’s lack of social success has sometimes been put down to his being an academic failure. There may be some truth in this, but it still tends to stand the matter on its head. Was he an academic failure, or did he in fact not care for becoming a worldly success? The question can be put in a different way. How was it that a man who, by common consent, has been recognized as the greatest of modern Persian fiction writers since his death had not been generally acknowledged as a leading writer during his lifetime? The answer is that in fact his ‘failure’ in life accounts for much of his success later in death, just as the ‘failures’ of Khalil Maleki, Ahmad Kasravi and Taqi Arani assured them lasting places in the annals of Iranian social and intellectual history. Such men fail because they succeed; or succeed because they fail. In a word, the secret of their worldly failure and posthumous success is that they do not conform to any established or popular framework: they are ‘too original’ and they act with such an extraordinary degree of courage and openness that they are bound to make many powerful enemies in almost all the existing power centres, both in government and in opposition.4 Yet a sense of failure bedeviled Hedayat throughout his life. He once wrote to Jamalzadeh that he was being treated worse than the head porter in the Construction Company.5 He wrote from Bombay to Jan Rypka that he was less successful than an expert in drawing the (Perso-Arabic letter) nun.6 The thinly disguised autobiographical passages in Vagh-vagh Sahab tell much about the treatment he was receiving at home and at the office. So does the ‘case’ of how to succeed as a writer.7 His movements from one junior executive post to another must be an aspect of a life which was, as it were, spent on the run. Having just returned from France in 1931, he wrote to his friend Taqi Razavi in Paris about his appointment in Bank Melli, with a measure of contentment if not joy.8 Only eight months later, however, he wrote again: As far as my own work is concerned, I’d better say nothing; every day, all the year round, I’m being suffocated in the God-forsaken Bank. It’s a filthy and mechanistic kind of existence. Right now, I’m thinking up some plans. Even if I don’t manage to better my lot, I could surely make it worse.9

Regarding the nature of those plans, we get a clue from his letter of 5 October 1931 to Razavi, where he says he is on leave of absence from the bank, ‘almost in a state of semi-resignation’: I’m thinking of opening a bookshop. I’ve even found two partners. I’m sure it’ll get going soon. . . It doesn’t take much capital, and we intend to lancé [sic] ourselves by means of publicité [sic].10

That this daydream did not turn into reality is hardly surprising; in October 1932, we find him writing to Razavi once again:

 Life and Labour in the Golden Era 27 I’ve probably written already that I’ve resigned from the Bank, and that – for the time being – I’ve been working at the Office of Trade for a couple of months.11

It is not clear precisely when or for what reason he left that office, but he had been unemployed for some time when, in December 1934, he was given a job at Agence Pars. At the time this was a relatively small official press agency attached to the ministry of foreign affairs. Both Jamalzadeh and Mohammad Moqaddam helped him get the job: Jamalzadeh was a close friend of the agency’s director, Abdollah Entezam, who was to end his public career as chairman of the National Iranian Oil Company; Moqaddam, on the other hand, was one of the Agency’s employees at the time.12 The work involved monitoring and translating from the foreign press, and he lasted in it only for a few months. Sometime after Hedayat’s resignation from Agence Pars, when Jamalzadeh saw Entezam in Geneva, he asked him how and why Hedayat had left the agency. Entezam explained that, after a while, he had noticed that all the verbs in Hedayat’s translations were put in the subjunctive mood. He asked him why, and the latter explained that he could not think of any other mood in the mornings. ‘In that case’, said Entezam, ‘you might as well translate in the afternoons.’ ‘That is impossible,’ answered Hedayat, ‘because in the afternoons I’m not in a translating mood at all.’13 It was then that Moqaddam suggested to Hedayat that they should both go to a village and live a hermit-like life close to nature. He agreed, and they got as far as Arak (formerly Soltan-Abad), where Moqaddam’s family had a large and empty house. Then there was a violent disagreement between them, and the partnership broke up. At any rate, Hedayat went back to Tehran, and sometime later Moqaddam returned to Tehran and went straight to Princeton. They got together again as good friends in the 1940s.14 A year before this, Jamalzadeh had gone to Tehran on a mission for the International Labour Office. One day, Hedayat had told him that his cousin wished to throw a luncheon party for Jamalzadeh. ‘But I suggest that you turn down her invitation’, he added, ‘because she’s a pretentious little slut.’ Jamalzadeh managed to persuade Hedayat that they accept her hospitality, and they all got together there with Minovi, Farzad, Sa’id Nafisi and one or two others. Before they left, the hostess brought a notebook round for Jamalzadeh and the others to write a few words in. Hedayat was the last to jot down a few words in the book, and he looked (to Jamalzadeh) visibly mischievous as he returned the book to the hostess. Jamalzadeh managed to get the book back and glance at Hedayat’s words. ‘I was astounded to read the following verse’: ‫یک وطن داریم مانند خال‬ ‫ما در آن همچون حسین در کربال‬ We have a homeland just like a loo, In it we are just like Hossein in Karbala.15

In 1934 official propaganda for the great Aryan motherland was approaching its peak, and words like these could have earned their writer a few years in jail. Jamalzadeh later criticized Hedayat for taking such risks, and his friend replied: ‘I just wanted to teach a lesson to that ass of a woman so she doesn’t bring that book round again.’16

28

Sadeq Hedayat

Meanwhile, Reza Shah first abrogated the D’Arcy Oil Concession, and then quickly entered the ill-fated 1933 Oil Agreement. Even before the latter was concluded, Hedayat sarcastically referred to the abrogation, and the official celebrations which followed it, in a letter to Razavi:17 ‘If you have any interest in recent news, it is the news of the abrogation of the British Oil Agreement [sic] for which they had lighted additional lights in the city tonight, and the people were busy living it up.’18

Rab’eh and the literary establishment Rab’eh was yet another means of mockery, directed this time at the literary establishment. It is a mock Arabic word intended to mean The Four, just as seven of the leading established literary figures were known as Sab’eh, or The Seven, at the time.19 It was made up of Hedayat himself, Bozorg Alavi, Mojtaba Minovi and Mas’ud Farzad, and they were in close contact with Sheen Partow, Abdolhossein Nushin, Mohammad Moqaddam and others. They were all modern minded, and critical of the literary establishment both for its intellectual traditionalism and academic classicism. They were also resentful of the literary establishment’s contemptuous attitude towards themselves, and its exclusive hold over academic posts and publications. Alavi’s considerable ability would make him the most famous Iranian communist writer of the twentieth century. Minovi appealed to Hedayat because of his interest in Iranian history and Persian classics. Farzad’s poetry and satire accorded with similar (latent and blatant) tendencies in Hedayat himself. The group was centred around Hedayat, and that is why the other three always maintained good relations with him despite quarrels among themselves. Hedayat formed many friendships in his lifetime and was a central figure in a few of them. It is therefore surprising that, of all these friendships and associations, it was only the Rab’eh which became a legend even during the lifetime of its four members, especially as the group did not last for long. In 1935 Minovi left for London, and in August 1936 Hedayat went to Bombay. When he returned to Iran in September of the following year, Alavi was in jail, and Farzad was soon to join Minovi in London. After 1941, Alavi was free, but no longer in Hedayat’s regular company. Meanwhile, Minovi and Farzad had fallen out with each other in London. Twenty-nine years after the formation of the Rab’eh, Farzad wrote the following epitaph for its members: ‫هدایت مرد و فرزاد مردار شد‬ ‫علوی زد به کوچه چپ و گرفتار شد‬ ‫مینوی رفت به راه راست و پولدار شد‬ Hedayat died and Farzad was wasted, Alavi went leftward and was arrested, Minovi took the right path and was richly rewarded.20

The reason for the Rab’eh’s great success despite these later developments is the intensity of relationship and collaboration among its members. They met almost daily at the Café Rose Noir, later known as Zhaleh, in the then fashionable Lalehzar-Naw Street.

 Life and Labour in the Golden Era 29 There they spent hours talking about both Persian and European literature, cinema and so on. There was also some collaboration among them in writing and publication, one of the co-authors invariably being Hedayat. Hedayat and Farzad collaborated in the writing of those satirical ‘cases’ which they subsequently published as Vagh-vagh Sahab.21 Hedayat and Minovi published the historical play Maziyar, Minovi being responsible for its lengthy historical introduction.22 As noted, Hedayat and Alavi (together with Sheen Partow) jointly published the three short stories in Aniran.23 Hedayat and his friends were all young intellectuals from relatively open and well-to-do families. Except for Alavi, who slipped into political activity, they were not interested in politics in the narrow sense of this term. But they were social and intellectual rebels, shocking, chic and à la mode, rather contemptuous of their elders as well as ordinary Iranians, and opinionated both about themselves, and about the past achievements and future potential of their country. Although, their greatest grievance was that they were ignored by the established literary and intellectual society, they did little to bridge the gap. Indeed, this is the origin of Farzad’s famous list of wellknown scholars and classicists whom he believed ought to be hanged – although no doubt symbolically. When, at the age of eighteen, I met Farzad in London (in 1961), he pointed out that several people on his ‘execution list’ were already dead and buried. ‘All the same,’ he replied vehemently, ‘their corpses ought to be dragged out and hanged in the Tupkhaneh Square.’ This was Farzad in later life. But it gives us a taste of the deep resentment that all of them must have felt in earlier times.24 They looked upon their powerful adversaries as ignorant and moth-eaten ‘grave diggers’. They even viewed their newly acquired and highly prized orientalist methods of classical scholarship with contempt, although this carried no political undertone. Take, for example, the technique of comparing various sources and manuscripts in editing classical volumes, which Mohammad Qazvini brought to classical Persian scholarship. Hedayat would mock their coding methods by speaking of the copies shaq, raq, taq, jaq (‘erect’, ‘firm’, ‘bang’, ‘wanking’) with that biting oral (even more than written) wit. Here is an example of his talent for ridicule from a personal letter written to a friend in 1931: All I can tell you is that whenever I leave this loo [Bank Melli] my head is turning around . . . while, at the same time, you’d be roaming around in the Paris égouts [sic] with that short and dirty stick of yours which you must have nicked from a rawzeh-khani at Hajj Aqa Jama’s house [in Tehran].25

Hajj Aqa Jamal Isfahani was at the time one of the leading ulama of Tehran. ‘Jama’, on the other hand, means copulation. The antagonism between the established and aspiring literary groups inevitably led to polarization of the views, and caricaturization of the personages involved. The prototype whom the young intellectuals ridiculed did exist, but it was far from true of every single one of those whom they castigated as a bunch. Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh was a brilliant scholar-cum-politician. Steeped in classical knowledge, he was also a nationalist and modernist who, however, began to revise his views on sober reflection at about that time, although he provided evidence of this only gradually

30

Sadeq Hedayat

and deliberately in the 1940s and 1950s.26 Qazvini, neither a literary potentate nor a self-seeking bureaucrat and politician, lived much of his active life in Paris in relative modesty and anonymity, almost like a medieval scholar.27 He was not a traditionalist, but a classicist who, more than anyone else, introduced Western methods of editing and annotating important classical texts.28 He was far from opposed to modern literary ideas and innovations, or he would not have written that extremely encouraging letter to Jamalzadeh after the latter’s masterpiece, Yeki Bud o Yeki Nabud, had been denounced from the pulpit in Tehran.29 Forughi was somewhat different, especially with regard to his role in politics. But he was still a learned and decent, if less democratic and more worldly, man.30 And so on. It must be mentioned, however, that the established literati also grouped the young modernizers in a similar way, reducing all of them to a single caricature, and regarding all of them as ignorant, illiterate, iconoclastic and insolent. But they happened to be in power, and so had no need to feel bitter and resentful towards their powerless and excluded rivals. Only in one case have I come across a short and passing remark about Hedayat by a respectable literary figure: Dr Qasem Ghani’s dismissive remark about ‘that boy Sadeq Hedayat’ in an entry in his diaries of 1948.31 The sufferings and resentments of men like Hedayat were, however, very real, and their sense of despair quite understandable. ‘Others just memorise a few verses . . . or become pimps’, he wrote from Bombay to Minovi in London in 1937, ‘and live their whole lives with respect and dignity. Whereas, if one day I have to apply for a waiter’s job in a café, I’d be thrown out.’32 In another letter written a few days later, he talks about his plans for ‘transcribing’ (transliterating) some Pahlavi texts, and preparing glossaries for them, and he then goes on to say: ‘Why not? It would have the additional benefit of burning the arses of the odaba’ (making the established literati envious)’. But he quickly turns against himself, and declares all his efforts as being worthless and futile: It’s just like the story of the bloke whose money they robbed, and whose wife they fucked, and he was happy that he was putting a foot out of the circle which they had drawn around him [and out of which they had forbidden him to put a single step while they were busy raping his wife]. I’ve also thought up some other plans, just like the hopes which [in another anecdote] the blind guy was pinning on his prick.33

And, as if to bring to perfection this synthesis of the deadly serious and the killingly funny, he adds: ‘I’ve bought a lottery ticket. Pray for me to become a millionaire, and I’ll give some to you too. Besides, I am thinking of going into business, and getting married. Don’t you think that if you were here, we might do better in trying to keep our heads above the water?’34 A few weeks earlier he had written to the Czech scholar of Persian literature, Jan Rypka: I’ve been learning Pahlavi for some time . . . though I don’t think it would do me much good in this or the other world. Everyone tries to make a living by some

 Life and Labour in the Golden Era 31 sort of trade. For example, somebody draws the arc of the [Perso-Arabic letter] nun well, another memorises classical verse, and somebody else writes flattering articles, and till the end of their days they enjoy a living from what they do. I can now see that whatever I have so far been doing has been useless.35

And a year later he wrote from Tehran to Minovi: I’ve now been [back] in the Bank for about a month . . . and even that only as a trainee. It’s not amusant [sic], is it? The idea is to kill time and become stupid. And it’s serving these purposes well.36

India and back In 1936, Hedayat went to India where he wrote The Blind Owl, publishing it in a mimeograph written in his own hand.37 Having resigned from his latest post in the State Construction Company, he took the boat from Bushehr to Bombay, an experience which is reflected in his fictional satire, ‘The Patriot’.38 Jamalzadeh had just arrived in Tehran and remembered the circumstances of Hedayat’s departure for Bombay: He’d sold everything he owned and was trying hard to get a passport. . . . I remember Eggie [Jamalzadeh’s German wife] was gravely ill with typhoid in a Tehran hospital. Hedayat brought her a very expensive bunch of flowers despite his own desperate need for money at the time.39

The generosity which Hedayat combined with relative poverty is well known. But Jamalzadeh seems to be confused in thinking that he was desperately short of money at that time. About a year before, Jamalzadeh had invited him to go to Geneva as his guest. Jumping at the opportunity, Hedayat had sold all his valuables and personal effects – mainly books, including old manuscripts – to pay for his own passage and personal expenses while he was Jamalzadeh’s guest in Switzerland. But the state policy of strictly controlling visits abroad, for both economic and political reasons, had frustrated his efforts to get a passport. However, the sale of his possessions had brought him 400 tomans in liquid cash, which was then by no means a derisory sum. But since he did not manage to get a passport he spent much of the money quickly on books and friends.40 Then he got a job at the Construction Company and, having no living expenses at his parents’ home (where he lived the whole of his life), he had managed to save up some money by the time the opportunity for going to Bombay arrived. This time he was luckier and was able to get a passport ‘Yet he was not allowed to buy a single dime in foreign exchange’, and he ‘squandered’ the money which he had saved before leaving for India without a rupee in his pocket.41 The opportunity came up in the shape of an offer from Shirazpur (‘Sheen’) Partow, a co-author of Aniran, who was on home leave from his post at the Iranian consulate in Bombay. He was literally to be Partow’s guest, as he himself emphasizes with bitterness – living ‘a parasitic life’, and so on – in his letters from Bombay to Minovi and Rypka.

32

Sadeq Hedayat

Hedayat had had an interest in Indian culture, and vague sympathy for Buddhism, but (despite Bashiri’s bold claim) his visit to India was purely an accident, and no part of a design to pursue Buddhist studies and experiments, assuming anyone going to Bombay for the study of Buddhism! He was not happy in Tehran, and wished to escape from that ‘rotten and suffocating graveyard which brings one bad omen’.42 At any rate, as we saw earlier, he had already jumped at Jamalzadeh’s suggestion to go to Geneva with predictably greater enthusiasm. And he was to display a similar enthusiasm for going to Paris in 1950, which ended in tragedy. As it happens, Partow himself has extensively reminisced about how Hedayat’s visit to India was arranged. When he returned from Bombay to Tehran for a visit, he tried to see Hedayat, but discovered that he had had a row at his parents’ home, and temporarily moved elsewhere: In the end I found Sadeq and talked to him. He wished to be out of Tehran. I told him to come to Bombay with me, and he agreed. I managed to get a passport for him with difficulty. Although his family were influential none of them gave any help.43

He wrote The Blind Owl shortly after arriving in Bombay, had it duplicated in fifty copies, and sent thirty of them to Jamalzadeh for circulation among friends in Europe.44 It was also in Bombay that Hedayat wrote some of the short stories which he later published in the collection Sag-e Velgard (Stray Dog) in 1942, as well as the two short stories written in French which were also to be published in the early 1940s. Meanwhile, he met the Indian Parsee scholar Bahram-gur Ankelsariya and began to learn Pahlavi from him. The results were his translation of the Pahlavi texts, Karnameh-ye Ardeshir-e Babakan (The Record of Ardeshir Babakan), Gojasteh Abalish (Abalish the Damned) and Gozaresh-e Gamanshekan (The Repentance Letter of the Apostate) into modern Persian. At any rate he was busy and, at least for a time, felt a little less unhappy – though, as we have seen, some of his letters from Bombay are far from jovial. In his letter of 29 January 1937 to Rypka, he complains about ‘the financial situation’, says he has no desire to go back home, and talks about the possibility of opening a little shop in partnership with somebody else.45 In 1937, Sir Mirza Ismail Shirazi, the minister of Persian origin in the court of Mysore, invited Jamalzadeh to visit the Indian principality as his personal guest. Sir Mirza Ismail’s forebears had emigrated to India many centuries before, and yet culturally he still felt Iranian, just as Persian was still the court language at Mysore. Jamalzadeh wrote him a warm reply, excusing himself but suggesting that the minister might wish to extend his generosity to Hedayat who was already in India.46 A couple of months later we find Hedayat writing to Minovi (in London): The reason for the delay in replying [to your letter] was a visit to Bangalore and Mysore . . . Jamalzadeh had introduced me to Sir Mirza Ismail. . . . I spent about a fortnight in a life of luxury. . . . I even saw, and talked with, the Maharajah himself. But my natural stupidity prevented me from making the slightest profit,

 Life and Labour in the Golden Era 33 and in fact led to heavy losses as well . . . I even turned down the offer of the rail fare.47

He also wrote to Jamalzadeh saying that the minister had told him he could stay there as his guest for as long as he wished. ‘But I thought to myself “the lid is off the saucepan, but what about the cat’s sense of shame and propriety”.’48 He was enjoying his intellectual contact with Ankelsariya, and the Parsee community were showing him kindness and generosity. Besides, he was now free from regular office hours which he always hated. ‘In a corner of the Construction Company’, he wrote to Minovi, ‘I was busy massacring time.’49 But ‘the financial situation’ was getting even worse despite Partow’s readiness to help. He wrote to Jamalzadeh about it, and the latter sent him a gift of £20, which was worth something in India at the time.50 Hedayat desperately wanted to go on living in Bombay for as long as possible, especially after he had heard the news of Alavi’s arrest in Tehran (in April 1937) as one of the Fifty-Three. Thus, as early as February he had written to Minovi: The thought of returning to the country of Mashdi Taqi and Mashdi Naqi [typical lower middle class names at the time] gives me the creeps, and brings a kind of stale dégout [sic] up to my throat.51

Four months later, the news of Alavi’s arrest (which he had heard from Minovi) together with the prospects of an early return to Iran, had made him extremely unhappy. ‘At the top of Dante’s inferno they have written’, he wrote to his friend in London’ ‘O passant, laissez ici tout espoir’.52 And he goes on to quote a friend saying how jubilant the French people were when they had first sighted their country’s coastline as the liner from Bombay approached Marseilles. Whereas, ‘seeing their country’s coastline’, he adds, ‘the Iranians would begin to shake with fear.’ He was obviously afraid that he might be interrogated by the state police because of his past associations with Alavi: I’m sure that bumpers, clubs and sticks are waiting for me, and now the case of Alavi must have made things worse. I’ve got no time for this kind of filthy business. All in all, it’s a shitty stupid kind of situation. The kind of little stupid sons-ofwhores one’s got to put up with.53

He was back in Tehran in September 1937 and was lucky to be left alone. He got a job once more with the Construction Company ‘on a lower salary than before’, but left in November to join Bank Melli again, this time as a trainee clerk. ‘From dawn to dusk’, he wrote to Minovi, ‘I am busy adding, subtracting and doing some other dirty jobs in order to take an exam in a month’s time, and if they’re not satisfied, get the sack.’54 He must have passed the test, for a year later we find him resigning from his post to join the newly founded State Office of Music. There he became a founding editor of Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine) to which he himself contributed several witty, satirical and sarcastic reviews and commentaries. He and his close actor and playwright friend Abdolhossein Nushin even managed to pull the shah’s leg in a

34

Sadeq Hedayat

dangerous little joke which they played on him (and several state dignitaries) when he was paying a visit to the Office of Music. They were truly lucky to get away with their skins intact.55 He was to last in this job only for about two years, because in September 1941 the Allies came to Iran and Reza Shah abdicated and left the country. Soon afterwards, the Office of Music together with its official publication was closed. But like many other people, Hedayat was jubilant at the shah’s departure from Iran. For he thought the dawn of freedom had at last broken on his unhappy country’s horizon.

A classification of Hedayat’s works Apart from his scholarship in Persian folklore and the Pahlavi language, Hedayat has displayed in his fictional writing as many dimensions as he himself had in real life. Therefore, and despite the occasional overlapping, his works may be neatly classified into four distinct categories. Hedayat’s claim to fame rests, or ought to rest, on more than The Blind Owl, although he is better known for this masterpiece than for all his other works put together. However, as will be argued in this book, The Blind Owl itself is only the climax of a whole group of writings in which the author’s own personality is most authentically projected. The group of Hedayat’s works of which The Blind Owl is the masterpiece may be designated as his psycho-fiction. This term is merely intended as a shorthand notation for the purpose of identifying this category of his fictional works, and it is so constructed in order to emphasize not just the psychological but all the subjective and psychic elements, including the philosophical and the ontological, which are intricately combined to present a distinct attitude towards human existence. In an article published in the late 1970s in the journal Iranian Studies, I coined the term ‘psycho-fiction’; it caught on later and – together with its literal translation, ravandastan – has been used by other critics.56 I coined this term because these stories would be ill-described as psychological novels and fictions, since the latter used to be attributed to fictional works which were usually based on well-known Freudian and other psychological concepts, categories and models. Karl Gustav Jung has an article entitled ‘The Psychological Novel’ which I read in the late 1990s and found generally consistent with my argument, though Jung does not propose a separate category such as psycho-fiction. In it he puts forward a critique of the psychological novel and concludes that it is not much inspiring, since it consciously applies psychological theories to fiction. Jung believes that psychological fiction is worth-while only when it comes naturally and is not intended to be such. Curiously enough, Hedayat himself wrote in a 1937 letter from Bombay to Mojtaba Minovi in London, and for a totally different reason: This is not a historical novel, but a kind of historical fantasie [sic] which the narrator has imagined as a result of simulation [sic].

 Life and Labour in the Golden Era 35 Thus, one of the characteristics of these works is their essential concern with abstract and universal, as opposed to concrete and parochial, issues. Any body of abstract and universal ideas communicated through fiction is inevitably dressed up in the cultural and linguistic garb in which it is expressed. But, apart from that, The Blind Owl is no more an Iranian novel in the parochial sense of this term than Kafka’s The Trial is a specifically Czech story or Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment just an exposure of the legal system and criminal proceedings in nineteenth-century Russia. Another striking feature of the group of Hedayat’s psycho-fiction is that, more than any other category of his works, it reflects matters with which he is passionately concerned. As regards the style of writing, surrealism (or something approaching it) tends to be a hallmark of some of Hedayat’s psycho-fictions and is most evident in The Blind Owl and the short story ‘The Three Drops of Blood’. Various combinations of realism and surrealism, and sometimes pure realism, may be observed in other psycho-fictional works such as the short stories ‘Buried Alive’, ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’, ‘Dark Room’ and ‘Stray Dog’. Whether realistic or surrealistic in style, Hedayat’s psycho-fictional stories are macabre – sometimes, as in The Blind Owl, reflecting the primeval chaos – and, when the story ends, at least a man or a woman, or even a cat or a dog dies, commits suicide, is killed or otherwise disappears from existence. But there is much more to them than a simple plot of abject failure. There is crushing, insufferable, fear without clear reason; there is determinism of the hardest, least tractable and most fatal variety; there is fall with no hope of redemption; there is punishment without crime; there is vehement condemnation of the mighty of the earth and the heavens. Most human beings are no better than rajjaleh (rabble), and the very few who are better fail miserably to rise to reach perfection or redemption. Even the man who tries to ‘kill’ his nafs, to mortify his flesh, or destroy his ego, in the short story ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’ ends up by killing himself; that is, not by liberating but by annihilating his soul. Women are either lakkateh (harlot) or they are Fereshteh, that is, angelic apparitions who or which wilt and disintegrate upon appearance, as in the case of ‘the ethereal woman’ in The Blind Owl, and ‘the puppet’ in ‘Puppet behind the Curtain’, though this is only true of women in the psycho-fictions, women of similar cultural background to the author, not those of lower classes in his critical realist stories. There is the alienation of the man from women, whom he does not know at all and has never loved in any successful contact of the flesh; ‘The rabble’, both man and woman, are filthy – treacherous, hypocritical, disloyal, superficial, profit-seeking, money-grabbing, slavish, undignified and ignorant – because they are far from perfect57 (see further, Chapters 7 and 8). The second most important category of Hedayat’s works may be dubbed as his critical realist fiction. Here, more than in any other group of his works, Hedayat appears in his role and function as a storyteller, a fiction writer par excellence. What he writes is still quality fiction, not stories that are intended for entertaining a wide readership. But the stories describe concrete personal and social events and occurrences and are void of any deep philosophical commitments. The short stories ‘Seeking Absolution’, ‘The Legaliser’, ‘Mistress Alaviyeh’ and ‘The Ghouls’ are good examples of these works.

36

Sadeq Hedayat

This does not make him an empiricist, but a realist, the critical quality of whose works is precisely shown in his methods of selection – the subjects which he chooses to describe, and also the relative weight he decides to attach to their various aspects. He writes about the lives of the common people, but not for them. If anything, there are frequent hints of disapproval, a lot of which falls on their religious views and superstitious practices. The third category of Hedayat’s fictional writings is his satirical works. Hedayat was by nature good at satire in the broad sense of this term which includes mockery, ridicule, abuse and invective, whether in speech or in writing. He used it mainly to give vent to his pent-up frustrations against individuals or social categories whom he held in deep anger and contempt. Vagh-vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow), Hajji Aqa, ‘The Patriot’, ‘The Case of the Antichrist’s Donkey’ and The Morvari Cannon are all examples of his various anti-establishment satires, using the two distinct genres of fiction and fictionalized commentary. Some of these works and especially Hajji Aqa have been described as the clearest examples of Hedayat’s engagé literature. But this is not strictly correct. Clearly, in so far as there are direct attacks on social types and institutions there is some evidence of a kind of engagement, because the author is evidently not detached and indifferent towards his subject. On the other hand, engagé literature properly so called refers to works behind which there is a strong social and political, indeed ideological, purpose and commitment. None of these features is true of Hedayat’s satire, although in some of the works concrete politics shows itself as well. On the contrary, the most common characteristic of his satirical attacks on rulers, hajjis or established literati is the depth of his anger, frustration and disdain towards them. Finally, there is the small group of Hedayat’s works in which his romantic nationalist sentiments manifest themselves. These are best represented in such dramas and short stories as Parvin the Sasanian Girl, Maziyar and ‘The Last Smile’, although evidence of his romantic nationalism is also to be found in such non-fictional works as The Melodies of Khayyam and ‘Isfahan Half-of-the-World’. Once again, there is a display of personal passion and frustration in these works, but little that may be put down to a well-defined ideological framework. Such nationalist sentiments were much in vogue among modern intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, and they formed the ideology of the Pahlavi state. However, along with many independent intellectuals, Hedayat did not like the Pahlavi regime and opposed the dictatorial consequences of official nationalism. The above classification merely groups together various works which display distinctly common themes, literary purposes, and styles of writing. Naturally, it does not follow that each group should be viewed entirely apart from the others, or that there is no occasional overlapping among them.

5

Iranian culture and romantic nationalism

The rise of romantic nationalism In Chapter 1 mention was made of the rise and influence of Iranian nationalism in politics and literature after the Constitutional Revolution. The first two decades of the last century were a curious age in many senses, not least because of the manifest conflict between modern cultural forms on the one hand, and traditional beliefs and modes of behaviour on the other hand. Aref Qazvini, the nationalist poet and musician, had once entered a mosque in Qazvin, and been excommunicated (takfir) immediately because he was wearing a pair of Russian boots.1 Ali Akbar Davar, the future minister of justice and finance, had returned from Switzerland planning to hold a carnival in Tehran.2 Divan-Beigi, a future senator, had decided to change his name to Divan de Beigi, a decision which prompted a barrage of abuse against him, not from traditionalists who were probably unaware of it, or would not readily grasp its significance, but from fellow modernists like Aref and Eshqi, who thought it was an insult to the Iranian sense of national selfrespect.3 Jamalzadeh was denounced from the pulpit for his satirical critique, in his excellent short story, ‘Persian is Sweet’, of the pseudo-Arabist speech of the minor ulama (although he was equally critical of the Francophonics of modernist snobs as well). Meanwhile, the young army officers began to wear white gloves, and occasionally challenged each other to a duel (though it never went beyond the words) in defence of their military honour. Taqizadeh, Jamalzadeh, Qazvini and a few others who, at the time, represented some of the most rational and sophisticated modern Iranians were contributing to the new sense of national consciousness through the pages of the influential Berlin newspaper Kaveh. Kaveh was the legendary blacksmith who led the people’s revolt against the tyrant Zahhak in ancient Persian mythology. His standard is supposed to later have become the ancient imperial Persian flag, Darafsh-e Kaviyani. The basic conflict between the two symbolisms – the one representing the people’s rights, the other demonstrating the state’s might – was somehow lost to a growing number of modern Iranians, and for a long time the latter meaning tended to dominate their appreciation of it. The zest for progress, modernization and change was not exclusive to modernists with strong nationalist sentiments, whether of the Right or of the Left. Iraj Mirza – the Qajar

38

Sadeq Hedayat

nobleman and major poet, a Muslim of sorts and a patriotic Iranian – was free both from religious and from nationalist fanaticism: ‘Every conflict is on religion or motherland / It is these two principles which are the source of all conflict.’ Yet he was strongly in favour of social and cultural progress, and vehemently opposed to religious obscurantism and traditionalism. His poignant, usually hilarious and sometimes obscene attacks on reactionary ‘religious’ practices, especially the veiling of women, are better known than the rest of his poetry. To quote from a more serious example: ‫در سر در کاروانسرائی‬ ‫تصویر زنی به گچ کشیدند‬ ‫ارباب عمائم این خبر را‬ ‫از مخبر صادقی شنیدند‬ ‫ خلق‬, ‫گفتند که واشریعتا‬ . . .‫روی زن بی نقاب دیدند‬ ‫ایمان و امان به سرعت برق‬ ‫ که مومنین رسیدند‬, ‫می رفت‬ ‫ آن دگر خاک‬, ‫این آب آورد‬ ‫یک پیچه ز گل بر او بریدند‬ ‫ایمن ز دست رفته ای را‬ . . . ‫با یک دو سه مشت گل خریدند‬ ‫بی پیچه زن گشاده رو را‬ . . . ‫پاچین عفاف می دریدند‬ Above the gates of a caravanserai, they sketched the picture of a dame, The Turban-masters [ulama] heard the news from a reporter, honest in fame, ‘Lord be praised’, said they, ‘the people saw the face of a woman without veil’. . ., Faith and Propriety were about to leave as the faithful came, One of them got earth, another water, And from mud, they made it a veil. A faith that had been lost, they restored by a handful of mud, without shame . . . At home they were busy fornicating with chaste women, and there was no veil.4

Even poet laureate Bahar, a sober and moderate believer in progress, with a solid traditional background and education, was writing poems in which he would say: ‘Death, or reform and modernisation / There is no choice but either of these two.’5 Furthermore, he wrote of some mourners of Imam Hossein’s martyrdom, not too unfairly: Rising in the morning, copulated and unwashed [jonob], They weep and wail till noon comes, From noon till night they sing hymns, And at night in sodomy they indulge!6

Yet when the romantic nationalist movement began to gather momentum, it was still a nationalism not of rulers but of the ruled, a novel and dynamic wave with a firm popular base among the discontented modern intellectuals. It was motivated by a sense of anger and shame because of cultural decline, economic backwardness and political

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 39 impotence, and propelled by the real and imagined achievements of ancient Persia. It was opposed to European imperialism, but also captivated and mesmerized by modern European culture and power. It was contemptuous, sometimes even ashamed, of all the existing norms and traditions – including many a great Iranian heritage, even classical Persian poetry – but was proud, instead, of the romanticized glories of ancient Persia. It was embarrassed by ordinary people and their ways, and self-conscious of what Europeans might think of ‘us’ because of ‘them’, but it blew its trumpets about Cyrus, Darius, Anushiravan and ‘the Aryan race’. Aref Qazvini, a personification of the selfless nationalism of the ruled, wrote in a poem: ‫مشکل کار من آسان نکند کس جز مرگ‬ ‫چه کنم آنکه کند مشکلم آسان نرسید‬ ‫من در این غم که سکندر ز چه ایران آمد‬ ‫تو به فکری ز چه بر چشمه حیوان نرسید‬ ‫من به فکرم شه خائن به سر دار رسد‬ ‫تو در این غم ز چه عرض تو به سلطان نرسید‬ ‫تا که شد پای عرب باز به ایران زان روز‬ . . . ‫خبر خرمی از کشور ساسان نرسید‬ ‫عارف از بهر همین آمده پرسد از چیست‬ ‫خبر کن فیکون کردن تهران نرسید‬ Naught but death would solve my predicament, Alas, that which would solve my predicament did not arrive. I sit in mourning for Alexander’s venture into Persia, You wonder why at the Spring of Immortality he did not arrive. I am thinking when the traitor [Ahmad] Shah will mount the gallows, You are sorry that to the Sultan your petition did not arrive. When the Arabs found their way into Iran, and since, A word of happiness from the land of Sasan did not arrive . . . That is why Aref has arrived, wondering, Why the news of the destruction of Tehran did not arrive.7

Watching the overthrow of Russian Tsarism – an absolutist state, and an imperialist enemy – by the Bolsheviks (about whom he knew little more) he wrote: ‫ ای فرشته رحمت‬, ‫ای لنین‬ ‫کن قدم رنجه زود و بی زحمت‬ ‫تخم چشم من آشیانه تست‬ ‫حین بفرما که خانه خانه تست‬ O Lenin, O angel of mercy, Come hither, quickly and painlessly, The pupil of my eye will be your nest, The Home is yours, pray come and rest!8

When civil conflict broke out in the province of Azerbaijan, he addressed a song – ‘This Cradle of Zoroaster’ – to the people of Tabriz, telling them to ‘avoid the Turks and the Turkish language’:

Sadeq Hedayat

40

Do not forget the [Persian] Language! Zoroaster said: Do not extinguish fire by water!9

In their various ways, Farrokhi, Lahuti, Eshqi and others represented the same nationalism of the ruled, with a similar selflessness in motive, romanticism in approach and apparent contradictions in ideas: Eshqi became a victim of official assassination, Farrokhi died in suspicious circumstances in jail later in the 1930s, Aref died of depression and destitution, and Lahuti had to quit the stage even before the curtains were fully raised. He escaped to Russia and ended his days in Tajikistan. This was the social and cultural background against which Hedayat had left for Europe. When he returned, Europeanism was spreading fast, and modern nationalism had become the official creed. Talented and ambitious young men of his generation were coming back from their studies in Europe and, in the main, finding privileged positions in the state apparatus. Some of them began as nationalists of sorts, but they lived at a time when official nationalism was identified with illiberal government and crude modernist ideas. The more politically minded among them tended to abandon (at least the appearances of) romantic nationalism and adopt (at least the jargon of) Marxism. It is interesting that even Taqi Arani, the leader of the Marxist intellectuals known as the Fifty-Three, had written a passionately romantic poem about the motherland before his conversion to Marxism. Others like Hedayat and most of his friends or Zabih Behruz and the other scholars in his circle stuck to their cultural commitment to nationalism but shunned and repudiated the bureaucratic framework. In fact, Hedayat is typical of this group of mature and self-respecting nationalist intellectuals. For he did not engage in political activity, he rejected the benefits and privileges of official nationalism, and he became increasingly hostile towards the political regime in the 1930s.

Historical plays and short stories Aniran (1931) Aniran (Non-Iranian or Un-Iranian) is a small volume composed of three short stories on historical subjects. They relate to the three most important events in the whole of Iranian history: namely, Alexander’s conquest, the Arab conquest and the Mongol invasion. They were written by Sheen Partow, Bozorg Alavi and Hedayat in that order. The general theme is clearly not accidental. On the first page, a few verses by Ibrahim Purdavud, whose scholarly interest in ancient Persia was complemented by his rumoured conversion to Zoroastrianism, have been quoted which speak about ‘the injustice and vengefulness of Alexander’, ‘the plains drowned in a pool of blood by the Arabs’, and ‘the unimaginable cruelty of Genghis’.10 Partow’s story is entitled ‘Shab-e Badmasti’ (The Night of Drunkenness). It opens with two quotations as epigraphs. The first is in the Pahlavi language, a postIslamic Zoroastrian text from Dinkart which mentions ‘Alexander the Cursed, and his burning of the royal compound’. The second is from Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani:

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 41 ‘Several centuries after Alexander, the Greeks spread many legends about him, so that the world still regards this little, base and accursed individual as a great man.’11 The historical sources of Partow’s story are almost exclusively Greek and Roman, and it is a romantic faction about the burning of the Persepolis. Here we have an elaborate, almost pornographic, tale of whores and orgies, which ends with the torching of the great structure. ‘The intemperance of one night’, concludes the author, ‘destroyed the Aryan city, and arrested the march of world civilization for centuries.’12 Alavi’s ‘Div, Div’ (Demon, Demon) about the Arab conquest also opens with two suitable quotations as the epigraph. The first is from Bondheshn, another postIslamic Zoroastrian Pahlavi text: ‘There is another demon with poisoned eyes known as Zingav. He had come from Arabia to rule Iran.’ The other is a quotation from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, scolding the Arabs for aspiring to the Persian throne.13 The story describes the life of Iranians in Kufa and Hamadan after the Arab conquest. The main characters are all modern Iranian nationalists. The simple and undeveloped plot seems to have been imposed on the narrative, which is one horrific account of massacres, sadistic murders, kidnapping of women and so on by ‘camel grazers’ and ‘lizard eaters’. Hedayat’s ‘Sayeh-ye Mongol’ (The Mongol’s Shadow) also begins with two prophetic quotations from Pahlavi texts, this time on the destruction of Iran by invaders from the East. It has more of a fictional quality than the other two stories but contains similar romantic sentiments and anachronisms. For example, it is very unlikely that the people of a vast territory which had been politically divided for many centuries and the majority of whom were then under the rule of Khwarazmian Turks would have a modern, almost Aryan conception of ‘the motherland’. A young man watches his fiancée being raped and murdered by two Mongol soldiers, and vows to take revenge. He gathers a band of followers and eventually kills the culprits along with a few other Mongols. But he is injured in the fight, gets lost in a forest and tries to rest by hiding in the cavity of an old tree. When, a few hours later, he decides to leave, he finds that he is stuck in the cavity and cannot free himself from the wood. In the following year, two men find a skeleton with the skull sticking out of the branches of a tree. One of them pulls the other by the hand and says, ‘Let’s go brother, let’s go. This is the shadow of a Mongol.’14

Parvin the Sasanian Girl (1929)15 This is Hedayat’s first known fiction, written in Paris. It is a historical play in three scenes. The cast consists of a girl, her father, her fiancé and their male servant, as well as ‘a few Arabs’ and their interpreter. The Arab army is at the gates of the city of Ray; her fiancé is an officer in the city garrison. The first scene provides the background information and sets the atmosphere. The Arab conquest of Persia is almost complete. There is much talk of the previous battles, and the terrifying fate of the conquered areas. It ends melodramatically, showing the two lovers together, when the girl’s fiancé says goodbye to her and leaves for his post in the city defences. In the second scene, the father is mortally ill and dies after four soldiers enter the house, kill the servant and take Parvin with them. The last scene opens in the presence of the Arab army chief who

Sadeq Hedayat

42

gives her the news of her fiancé’s death in action. He then begins to make advances to the girl. She pulls out his dagger and kills herself.

Maziyar (1933) Written and published in Tehran four years after Parvin, this historical play is based on the rebellion of Maziyar (son of Qaran) supposedly against the caliphate in the ninth century, which ended with his defeat, capture and execution in Baghdad. The book is in two parts. The first, written by Mojtaba Minovi, gives a historical account of the event. The second part is Hedayat’s rather lengthy play. In the preface, the authors emphasize the significance of Maziyar’s uprising, which they describe as a prime example of nationalist Iranian resistance to Arab rule:16 Among the Iranian heroes and rulers . . . it was the House of Qaran who resisted most against the Arabs. Their Iranian education and their native gallantry would not allow them to be daunted by a bunch of snake-eating devilish race. They were reluctant to learn the language and customs of the Arabs even when they encountered them.17

The preface ends with the claim that the lives of men like Abu Moslem, Maziyar and others show that Iranians were still intent upon regaining their independence, because ‘they had not forgotten the glories of the Sasanian period, and their racial and intellectual superiority’ to the Arabs. Yet it is pointed out that, by the time of Maziyar’s rebellion, intermarriage with Arabs had ‘polluted’ the blood of some Iranians, and social intercourse with them had contaminated Iranian purity with ‘Semitic filth’ resulting in ‘cheating, treachery, theft, bribery’ and so on.18 These and similar lines are apparently intended to explain the historical details of the event, which in fact puts much of the blame for Maziyar’s failure and defeat on the treachery of the Iranians themselves. Hedayat had sent a copy of the first edition to Jamalzadeh. Struck by its romantic ideas as well as the intemperate tone used in expressing them, the latter wrote a general commentary on the flyleaf, pointed out many of the contradictions in the margins and sent the copy back to the authors for their reaction. Since the comments are mostly on Minovi’s essay, most of the replies, written beneath the comments, are also by Minovi. The whole thing amounts to a debate between nationalist romanticism and historical realism. At one point Minovi adds the comment to his own text: ‘Damn the bastardly and cruel Arab son of a dog!’ Jamalzadeh has added to it, after the copy has been returned to him: ‘Damn the Arab, the Iranian and everybody else; or bless them!’19 Minovi’s long essay is a biased historical narrative on the rule of the House of Qaran in Tabarestan (today’s Mazandaran) since the Sasanian times. But for the best part it is an account of Maziyar’s insurrection allegedly against the caliphate, within the interpretative framework of the preface. Yet it does not present him in as heroic a light as might have been suspected.20 The fact, however, is that Maziyar had rebelled against Abdullah son of Taher the Persian ruler of Khorasan whose vassal he had been. He was defeated by his master and sent off to Baghdad for punishment.

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 43 Hedayat’s play is in three scenes with a cast of ten Iranians and ‘a few Arabs’. Maziyar, his half-brother Kuhyar and his secretary Ali are historical characters, while many others, including Shahrnaz, the heroine, are fictional. Of the ten Iranians, two are prison keepers for the Arabs, and four (including the hero’s brother and his secretary) are traitors, opportunists or enemy agents. This is a serious technical weakness in view of the play’s interpretative and ideological overtones. In fact, the very first scene opens with two of the Persian enemy agents looking for an important document, when they are surprised by the girl, Shahrnaz. When she reports the incident to Maziyar’s loyal chief accountant, the latter tells her that the two ‘are not genuine Iranians, but Jews in Arab pay’.21 The remaining parts of this scene show Maziyar in conversation with the chief accountant and another loyal servant, discussing the news of the treachery of Maziyar’s half-brother, whose mother, it is later alleged, was an Arab concubine. At the end of the scene, the noise of the approaching Arab solders is heard, and the three Iranians escape through the back door. Scene II opens in a country tavern, with the girl explaining to Maziyar how she had managed to escape and reach him there. They are joined by the chief accountant, and, later, by one of the two double agents who informs them that the secret passage to their hide-out has been discovered by the enemy. Next come the Iranian commander of the local Arab army and the hero’s treacherous half-brother. In the ensuing conversations, Maziyar expresses familiar sentiments about Arabs and Muslims, then surrenders without a fight. This, too, is a technical weakness. Given the strong historical background, and the melodramatic trend of the play, why not make him fight heroically, and be captured half-dead with a broken sword in his hand? In the last scene, the girl who (in the ninth century) has somehow managed to cover several hundred miles to reach Baghdad also manages to smuggle herself into the hero’s prison cell. She poisons herself in the arms of her beloved master, while at the same time the loyal chief accountant makes a rescue attempt and goes mad in the process. The door opens, and an Iranian traitor together with three Arab sentries enter the cell. ‘The Arabs seize Maziyar. The curtain falls.’ Maziyar is a better play than Parvin, but neither of them is representative of Hedayat’s literary, fictional or contemplative powers. Clearly, the main purpose has been not to write historical plays but to use them as a means of expressing Pan-Iranian nationalist sentiments. Apart from that, the art of writing modern European-style plays was still very young in Iran, and Hedayat was evidently not particularly good at it. That is probably the reason why he abandoned the genre.

‘The Last Smile’ (1933)22 This is the only short story other than ‘The Mongol’s Shadow’ which displays overt romantic nationalism. It is based on the downfall of the Bermecide (Barmaki) family, but does not concentrate on the great western Bermecides, Yahya, J’afar and Fazl. On the contrary, the whole story begins and ends among the less well-known eastern Bermecides of Khorasan, with Ruzbehan as the central figure. The author accepts the charge brought against the Bermecides by the caliphate that their conversion to

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Islam had been a mere expediency, and that they still subscribed to Buddhism, their ancestral faith.23 Ruzbehan had a peculiar conception of asceticism, for he had provided every means of worldly pleasure in his palace, trying to tempt himself while not succumbing to the temptation, except in the case of drinking wine: What attracted him most to the Buddhist cult, was the statue of the Buddha, and his tight-lipped smile, his introspective, sardonic and mysterious smile, like the waves of a string instrument, the waves of water. . . . His philosophy (of life) had been almost entirely inspired by the waves of water, and the smile of the Buddha, since in all existence, forms and ideas, he saw nothing but a passing and momentary wave. And the whole of the creation was, in his view, like a pool of still water . . . which had been disturbed by an untimely gust of wind. . . . And when the wind stopped, all existence would, once again, return to its original state, and submerge into Nirvana, the never-ending nothingness.24

It is not clear whether, in the end, Ruzbehan kills himself because of the fear of an imminent Arab onslaught on the family, or because of his sudden passion of the flesh for the girl who serves him the last cup of wine, or both. The story is much less eventful than might be expected, given such a complex and colourful historical episode. There is a long conversation between Ruzbehan and other eastern Bermecides about their plot, assisted by their great relatives in Baghdad, to overthrow the caliphate, or at least free Khorasan from its rule. But the narrative alleges that, before the plan is put into action, the Caliph’s representative arrives with an order for the massacre of all the Bermecides. Next day when ‘a few Arabs’ break into Ruzbehan’s Palace of Silence, they find him holding a letter for his cousin Fazl in Baghdad with instructions for the massacre of all the Arabs, followed by the declaration of Khorasan’s independence. But he is dead, with the sardonic, philosophical smile of the Buddha on his lips, as if he meant to say that even all this is no more than a wave . . . and that death, too, was the highest level of grotesqueness, and the last wave’.25

Satire ‘The Islamic Mission to European Cities’ is a satire, written in Paris in 1930, in the form of three newspaper reports.26 It appeared in print for the first time in 1970, in a book that was quickly banned by the official censors.27 However, Hedayat himself had once circulated a few typed copies of it among his friends, and the original handwritten copy has now been reproduced in a limited edition by an Iranian opposition group in Paris.28 It is the earliest example of Hedayat’s satirical fiction, although its overriding purpose is to set a framework for critical comment, biting ridicule and venomous denunciation.

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 45 The ‘reports’ are said to have been translated from an Arabic newspaper. This is an Islamic journal called al-Manjlab al-Sudan (The Sewage of Sudan), but the reporter is evidently Christian, for his name is Ibn Is-haq al-Yasu’i, or ‘son of Isaac the Jesuit’. In his first article, the reporter describes the proceedings of a conference of Islamic religious dignitaries in Samarra, ‘a blessed city of Arabia’. The conference is attended by representatives from various Islamic countries, and charged with the selection of a group of missionaries for spreading Islam among the people of Europe, ‘whose heart’, says the conference chairman, ‘is darker than the Black Stone [of Mecca]’. In the end, the conference resolves to send four of its members, together with the reporter as their interpreter, on a great Islamic mission to Europe. They are Taj al-Mutikallimin (Crown of the Preachers), Andalib al-Islam (Nightingale of Islam), Sukkan al-Sharia (Wheel of Islamic Law) and Sunna al-Aqtab (Source of Spiritual Masters). One of them is the author of Zubda al-Nijasat – or ‘Best Filths’ – which by common agreement is an important book on the sharia. The ‘caravan of Islam’ finally reaches Berlin, its first destination, and leaves the train after paying fines for damage caused by cooking, burning the seat and so on. However, they have hardly arrived at the city when one of them disappears with the mission’s funds. The missionaries seem to be attracting much public attention. They are watched and photographed by the public and invited by a film producer to play in three films, one of which is called ‘The Ways of the Baboon’. They are also approached by a representative of the Berlin circus. Meanwhile Crown of the Preachers is arrested for smoking opium, and the remaining two missionaries are invited to visit the Berlin Zoo by its director. Two and a half years later, the reporter, who has now been transferred to Paris, comes across the three men in a bar in Montmartre. They are now called Jean, Jimmy and Job, living on bar-keeping, card dealing and procuring. It turns out that the missionary who had stolen the funds is also in Paris, having squandered the money, he is now employed as a doorman at the Folies Bergères. When the reporter asks one of them how they had managed to get to Paris, he tells him that for some time they had lived as the guests of the Berlin Zoo, whose director had also managed to obtain the release of their opium-smoking colleague from jail: Pity you weren’t there, it was great fun. Girls as pretty as the sun used to come and watch us. I picked up two of them myself. . . . The people used to laugh at our [simulation of religious performances], they used to clap for us, and newspapers used to print our pictures. People in the Islamic world were thinking that we are seriously spreading the faith . . . and we began to receive donations from Muslims in every corner of the globe.

And to the reporter’s moral reproaches, he replies: What religion, what nonsense? Is Islam anything but looting and killing? . . . You either have to be a Muslim and live according to the book of Best Filths, or you’ll be killed. This is the whole logic of Islam, i.e., the sharp sword, and the begging bowl.

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The reporter asks, What about all the good things that European scholars and philosophers have said about Islam? That, too, is for political reasons, he is told. ‘These are contrived books, written by Europeans in order to dupe them [i.e. the Muslim people], and take advantage of their stupidity.’ As for Islamic culture and civilization: What civilisation? You mean Arab civilisation? Read the book of Sheikh Crocodile son of Ape . . . which is full of camel milk, camel dung . . . and lizard. All the rest belong to the conquered Muslim people who, through their own sense of lack of self-respect, gave the credit for them to the Arabs [i.e., wrote them in Arabic].

He then orders the band to play and offers a glass of wine to the reporter. They drink ‘to the health of the caravan of Islam’.

‘Travelogue’ The long essay on his visit to Isfahan (1932)29 is one of Hedayat’s finest pieces of descriptive prose, and a witness to his remarkable powers of observation, as well as appreciation of all life and culture: of men, animals, arts, crafts, architecture, tales and folklore. After the ‘running around’ to get an official pass to leave the city, which was a state regulation under Reza Shah, he sets out in a hired car, in the company of a few other passengers. When they stop in a village for refreshments, a gypsy woman tries to tell his fortune, but gives up when he asks her the address of the green-eyed woman who she says is busy casting evil spells on him. He watches a miserable she-ass (‘as if it was longing for death as a bliss’) and wishes that its beautiful foal would die quickly rather than grow up and suffer the fate of its mother. They have supper in Qom, ‘the city of the dead, scorpions, beggars and pilgrims’. Back on the road they have a breakdown before reaching their final destination. He gets out of the car, observing and all but communicating with the lizards and insects on the road, whose colourful movements he describes in detail, and with obvious delight.30 But the episode would have been incomplete without a familiar remark: ‘It occurred to me that the Arab onslaught on Iran might have been for the sake of these lizards.’31 In the couple of days that he spends in Isfahan, he goes everywhere, sees everything: the beautiful mosques and colleges, the old Armenian church, the old and the new bazaars, the ancient fire temple, bookshops, carpet weavers and silversmiths at work and so on. The long, wide and tree lined Chahar Bagh Boulevard gives him the idea that it may have provided the original inspiration for similar streets in Paris and Berlin. Most of the existing monuments of Isfahan belong to the Islamic (and especially the Safavid) period, and Hedayat could not possibly have displayed his great appreciation of their artistic beauty without saying something about this. For example: All this grandeur, all this beauty! . . . Evidently, the Iranian sense of artistic originality which had been stifled under Arab rule got a good chance in the Safavid period, and suddenly began to flower. . . . The arts and crafts which are known in

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 47 Europe as Indian, Moghul and Arab, are all Iranian inventions and innovations. And whatever is attributed to them belongs to the other [Muslim] nations. Even today, Arab architecture is a grotesque imitation of the Iranian.32

Outside the city, on a visit to the ruins of an ancient Zoroastrian fire temple, Hedayat and his guide meet a peasant who complains about the price of sugar (on which there was a heavy state duty) and of the newly created Office of Land Registration. He also tells them a couple of folk tales, leaving Hedayat to wonder ‘how great, old and mysterious Iran is’: Such thoughts which are full of old and inherited memories can only be discovered in an Iranian peasant. A French or American peasant [sic] could not have so many old memories and legendary tales and beliefs.33

Visiting the fire temple itself, he thinks that, unlike mosques and churches, this temple was open and simple, just like fire itself. He makes a small fire in the old ruins, and he reflects: Glorious days when the Magi in their long white robes would be praying in front of the fire with dazzling eyes; their youthful assistants would be singing hymns; and cups of wine would pass from hand to hand. At that time, the people were free and strong in body and soul, because they had not yet been going on their knees towards a fistful of dust in Arabia [i.e. Mecca?].34

On the eve of his departure from Isfahan he is unhappy, feeling as if he has lost something of himself in that city: ‘perhaps a part of my existence has been left there in the fire temple’. Hedayat made a similar journey to Gilan and Mazandaran which is mentioned in a letter to Minovi of the period. The result (according to Parviz Khanlari’s conversation with me) was another travelogue entitled ‘On the Damp Road’. Judging by the prose and the acute observations of the travelogue to Isfahan, it must have been another fine piece of work. Sadly, it has been completely lost.

Literary studies Another strand of Hedayat’s work is his scholarship in Iran’s folk and common culture as well as ancient Pahlavi texts. The latter studies were made possible when, as we have seen, his long visit to Bombay brought him in contact with the Parsee community in that city. This was a new field in which several young scholars with strong nationalist sentiments, including Purdavud, Behruz and Moqaddam, were actively working. Unlike them, Hedayat was neither a linguist nor a historian, and his later studies of the Pahlavi language (and translation of a couple of its texts) did not take him very far in this respect. He was, in fact, much more interested in Persian folklore and popular culture, and produced works of considerable interest in this field before he left the

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country for India. He also continued his interest in Khayyam whose quatrains he had edited as a youth (see Chapter 2).

Melodies of Khayyam (1934)35 The introduction to a new edition is both longer and completely new. It shows the author’s maturity in several respects, including the prose. The material is no longer packed with tales and traditions about Khayyam’s life, nor the views of European commentators, poets and philosophers. Part 1 discusses some historical and technical points, while Parts 2 and 3, respectively, concentrate on Khayyam’s philosophy and poetry. Whereas previously Hedayat had presented Khayyam as a Deist who probably did not subscribe to any religion, he now believes that he was definitely an atheist. He also wonders whether this alleged atheism does not represent the revolt of ‘the Aryan soul’ against Semitic beliefs! It follows that Hedayat’s interpretation of Khayyam’s life and ideas are this time more heavily coloured by his own views and convictions, and this affords the reader considerable insight into Hedayat’s rather than Khayyam’s, inner thoughts: Beyond this earth . . . there is no reward or punishment. Bygones and future events make up two states of nothingness, and we should enjoy the moment of Being which falls between these two states. . . . In Khayyam’s view, the sight of green and pleasant meadows . . . the cup of wine, the sweet melody of the harp, the beautiful wine girl, budding flowers – these are the only realities in life, which otherwise passes like a terrifying nightmare.36

‘A terrifying nightmare’. Indeed, the author goes on to add that Khayyam’s ideas are full of sadness, depression and death wish, and that, in spite of overt evidence to the contrary, ‘thousands of asides and allusions’ in his poetry present us with a picture of ‘death, burial shrouds, graveyards and nothingness’. He then makes a passing remark about an affinity between Khayyam’s (alleged) ‘death wish’ and the Buddha’s Nirvana. Returning to a familiar theme, however, Hedayat detects in Khayyam a strong ‘sense of nostalgic sympathy for the [ancient] Iranian past’, and adds the following diatribe: In no Islamic poet and writer as in Khayyam is there such a clear rejection of the [concept of] God and attempt to rock the foundations of the myths of Semitic religions. Perhaps we should regard Khayyam as an anti-Arab Iranian. . . . Evidently, he hates the Arab highway robbers and their base ideas from the bottom of his heart. And he feels for an Iran which was then feverishly struggling within the jaws of this seventy-headed dragon.37

The evidence offered for many of these interpretations is a couple of quatrains in which the poet is making metaphorical use of ancient ruins in order to emphasize the tenuousness of life, power and glory.38 Here is Fitzgerald’s rendering of one of them:

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 49 They say that Lion and Lizard keep, The Court when Jamshid gloried and drank deep: And Bahram, that great Hunter – the Wild Ass Stamps o’er his head and lies fast asleep.

It is a familiar line in classical Persian literature, and many a great poet, including Sa’di, has used similar metaphors to remind the mighty that they should beware of a similar fate. The third and last part of the introductory essay is on Khayyam’s poetry. Here Hedayat is treading on unfamiliar ground, and he sometimes falls into purely technical errors. For example, having claimed that Khayyam’s poetry is very refreshing and free from ‘silly and superficial figures of speech’, he mentions the use in a quatrain of the word ‘gur’ in its two different meanings, ‘grave’ and ‘wild ass’. But this, too, is a figure of speech, namely the pun (or Iham). Or, when he thinks that the poet has intentionally violated the classical rules of rhyming, it turns out that he is confusing the radif (the word that is repeated at the end of each line, in some poems) with the rhyme that comes before it. There remains Hedayat’s discussion of Khayyam’s frequent metaphorical use of the jar of wine and the anthropomorphic significance which it is given in several of the quatrains. This finds an echo in The Blind Owl, and it would be best to discuss it along with the other sources and resources of Hedayat’s masterpiece (see Chapter 8).

Owsaneh (1931)39 Owsaneh is a small booklet which contains a rather haphazard collection of folk songs and traditional children’s tales. The title is a Pahlavi variation of the Persian afsaneh, meaning legend, myth as well as tale. The introduction reflects the dual attitude of intellectuals like Hedayat towards the modernist social and political trends of the early Reza Shah period, accepting their apparently progressive features, but drawing attention to the costs in cultural terms: Iran is moving towards progress, and this is evident among all classes of the people. Ideas are gradually changing, and old habits and attitudes are being transformed. . . . The only unfortunate aspect of these developments is the neglect and [consequent] disappearance of a body of popular legends, beliefs and songs. . . . For until now such popular culture has been thought to be unimportant.40

This is a preliminary and unprofessional effort, but it is not without value, and the young author and scholar has clearly gone to considerable trouble to collect his material directly from oral contacts. It is in quality and quantity a much less important work, for example, than Dehkhoda’s Amsal o Hekam, but it does not duplicate the latter, and Hedayat’s artistic touch is a compensation for Dehkhoda’s painstaking scholarship.

Sadeq Hedayat

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Neirangestan (1933)41 This is a much more substantial book, both in length and quality, though it is still short on rigour. Its publication was delayed by the censors because some of the words, phrases and anecdotes were found to be ‘offensive to public morality’. There were many words and entries in the book to which the censors might have objected, but according to Minovi the following entry caught their eyes most readily: The Brass-top Minaret. Isfahani girls who are looking for a husband climb up the minaret, which is in the Jubareh district, put a walnut on the step, and read these verses: ‫منار سر برنجی‬ ‫یه چیزی بگم نرنجی‬ ‫میانمان دسته می خواد‬ ‫مرد کمر بسته می خواد‬ O brass-top minaret, Don’t be upset by what I say, Our middle needs a handle, It needs a man ready for action. And when they want to return, they break the walnut. This is supposed to bring happiness and success.42

The title of the book has been taken from the old Pahlavi text on superstitious rites and beliefs, and it contains similar material which was still more or less circulating among the ordinary people. In his introduction the author points to the significance of superstition, rites and common beliefs in all civilizations, and he quotes a (European?) writer as saying that ‘man is a superstitious animal’. Here, too, there is a dualism of attitude, for while he generally regards such beliefs and practices with intellectual disdain; he also makes some acute observations on their social significance: After all, it is ideas like these which have given rise to all religions and contribute to their survival. It is these superstitions which, in different periods of time, guide the flock of humanity, and result in dogmatic commitments, selfless deeds, and hopes and fears, and are the oldest and most important source of psychological security for human beings.43

Yet he goes on to claim that those superstitious rites and beliefs mentioned in the book which modern society regards as ugly and unacceptable are not Iranian in origin: ‘They have been imposed [on our society] as a result of mixing with foreign races, and in consequence of religious and external pressures.’44 And thus his nationalist sentiments reveal themselves yet again. Hedayat was to continue his interest in folklore and culture both before and after the fall of Reza Shah (1941). Those of his works which were written before this date were invariably published in Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine) of which he was a founder and editor. ‘Folk Songs’45 is a studious and mature piece of research, with an

 Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism 51 introduction on the subject, both in general and in the specific case of the development of Persian folk songs. Using both Persian and European sources he discusses some of the oldest and most traditional of such Persian songs and poetical tales, and compares them with surprisingly similar folk songs and tales in European – including French, English and German – cultures.46 In four other pieces published in the same magazine, he reproduces four ancient children’s tales, ‘The Little Red-Scarf ’ (Little Red RidingHood), ‘Aqa Musheh’ (Little Master Mouse), ‘Shangul o Mangul’ (a story of a wolf and three little goats left alone by their mother) and ‘Sang-e Sabur’ (The Patient Stone), two of which also exist in English.47 Apart from the 1940–1 articles in Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine), Hedayat ceased to publish any of his works after 1934. This included The Blind Owl, several short stories which were later published in the collection Sag-e Velgard, and his translations of the Pahlavi texts. The reason was his clash with the censors, not so much over Neirangestan (which, in any case, was published), but over his scathing sketch of the prophet of Islam published on the cover of a book by ‘a friend’. According to his brother Mahmud, the episode eventually led to the intervention of Ali Asghar Hekmat, the minister of education himself, and Hedayat had to give a written guarantee not to publish anything else until further notice. Hence his satirical attacks on Hekmat in the short story ‘The Patriot’ (see Chapter 6). Late in 1937 he wrote to Minovi from Bombay: Have you heard what charlatan behaviour that son-of-a-whore Hekmat put up last year over that booklet by [Mohammad] Moqaddam, and what rabble-rousing he launched over the sketch on its front cover?48

This was the real reason why Hedayat produced a limited edition of The Blind Owl in Bombay, duplicated from his own handwritten manuscript, which carries the notice ‘Publication and sale in Iran is forbidden’.

A word on the context Men make mistakes, and intellectuals usually make more, and more important, mistakes than others. The first half of the twentieth century was the age of nationalism and racism in Europe, and this had an inevitable impact on the minds of many modern Iranian intellectuals. Furthermore, it was in this period that the contrast between European progress and power and Iranian backwardness and weakness was, at least in the minds of modern educated Iranians, at its peak: the veil, religious superstition, reactionary ideas and preaching. The glory that had once been Iran’s had ended in disaster, and someone or something had to take the blame for it. The thoughts of many modern intellectuals turned to the Arab conquest: it was all the fault of Islam and the Arabs. At the same time, Europe was busy producing racist theories and ideologies. Theories about the superiority of the Aryan race were already widespread when the Nazis began their rise to power in Germany, in the same years when Hedayat visited Europe and wrote his romantic nationalist works. Indeed, in 1931 we find Hedayat asking Razavi

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(in a letter from Tehran to Paris) to send him ‘a good documenté [sic] book on Pan Germanisme [sic]’.49 And while the Nazis were blowing their trumpets over the alleged superiorities of the Aryan race, the Italian fascists were busy inflating themselves with memories of Pax Romana’s power and glory, it looked as if the Iranians could match both trends with equal verbiage: like the Nazis they belonged to the master race, and like the fascists they had once had a glorious imperial civilization. These are the main factors which explain, at least at the intellectual level, both the form and the content of romantic nationalist literature of that period in Iran. No apologies are intended, but it would be misleading if the nationalist prejudices of Hedayat and other writers are seen and judged outside this historical Iranian and European context. For in their case, even the apparent chauvinism and racism is the product of a defensive sense of national shame, inferiority and weakness, rather than an offensive play for the subjugation and humiliation of other peoples and races. Furthermore, these were genuinely decent men who were not even prepared to be drawn into the crude framework of official nationalism, let alone being in favour of that or any other despotic and dictatorial regime. As early as 1937, Hedayat was to write to Minovi (from Bombay to London): You’re talking just like everyone else, that just because Goebbels describes Hitler as the genius of all times, everybody should believe it, and praise Hitler. But I say, they should spit on the face of Goebbels and Hitler both.50

Therefore, to compare them with European Nazis and fascists and their Iranian counterparts would be an exaggeration. True, their words were harsh, and their ideas simplistic and twisted. But their motives were pure and their political behaviour beyond reproach. They were better than most men of their own time, place and social position.

6

Iranian culture and critical realism

Critical realism Hedayat’s fame among readers and critics alike has been dominated by his psychofictions in general, and The Blind Owl in particular. While the appreciation of this group of his works cannot be a cause for concern, the insufficient attention given to his other works, and especially those which make up the subject of this chapter, is regrettable. As already noted, whereas Hedayat’s psycho-fictions deal with abstract and universal problems and combine, to various degrees, elements of surrealism, symbolism and realism, another important group of his short stories contain concrete descriptions of aspects of life among the common townsfolk. Here Hedayat approaches his subjects with a critical realism almost unique in the literature of the period. If the extent to which the author maintains his detachment once he has made his choice of the subject is remarkable, the choices themselves are highly significant, and show the acuteness of the social observation on which the short stories are based.1 Both in sociology and in literature, cultural critiques may be of two entirely different types. The first type, which has been dominant in Iran and some other countries, contains a more or less explicit moral, political or social purpose. The writer sets himself up, not just as an observer of life in society but also as a critic who finds the subject of his study at odds with what he believes to be right, fair or just. Bad engagé literature is usually indistinguishable from moral preaching, social indignation or even political blueprints; good examples are effective both as works of art and as instruments of arousing public awareness. The second type of cultural criticism takes the form of detached but still interested observation. In fact, there is no such thing as ‘purely’ detached or objective observation in art, science or society. For even the simplest and ‘purest’ observation is selective; and even after the choice of subject has been made, the resulting observations are a synthetic product of the relationship between the observer and the observed. Two individuals may observe the same tree, but even their barest descriptions of what they see are bound to be somewhat different. It is not impossible to be detached in observation and description. The point, however, is the possible meaning, significance and extent of detachment itself, even when it is honestly intended by the observer. Objects do not observe themselves, nor do they observe other objects. They are all observed by subjects. And subjects observe to some extent subjectively, even when they wish to be objective.2

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Sadeq Hedayat

By comparison with his psycho-fiction, Hedayat’s critical realism is objective, but only so far as such objectivity is permitted by the intellect and psychology which are inevitably involved in the process. Jamalzadeh and, to a lesser extent, Bozorg Alavi, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Sadeq Chubak (in their earlier works) have taken this path in writing on life in Iranian society.3 But Hedayat’s critical realism is more developed, and it is more widely observed among this group of his works.

‘Seeking Absolution’ (1933)4 A caravan of pilgrims is nearing the end of their journey to Karbala, the shrine of Imam Hossein. Aziz Agha, her son Hossein Aqa, Khanom Galin and Ramezan’ali have all joined the caravan in Qazvin. Khanom Galin’s companion has died on the way. ‘God bless her soul . . . what was the cause of her paralysis?’ asks Aziz Agha. ‘She had a lot of trouble with her husband,’ Khanom Galin explains, ‘there was also the hassle of divorce. One day she had pickled onions, and next morning when she woke up, she felt numb from the waist down. Doctors and drugs didn’t help at all. So, I brought her along with me to get her cure from the Imam.’5 But the minute they reach Karbala, Aziz Agha goes missing. The other three first find a ‘dirty room’ in a guest house, and then go looking for her everywhere in the small town that it then was. In the end, they find her in a corner of the Imam’s mausoleum with a crowd of onlookers gathered around her. She is hysterical, weeping, wailing and crying for the Imam’s help in getting absolution for her sins: O my dear dear Imam Hossein save me. Save me on the day when they put me in the grave. Save me on the Day [of judgement] which is fifty thousand years long. The Day that the eyes jump on top of the heads. What could I do, what could I do? Repentance, repentance, I’m truly sorry. Please forgive me.6

People keep asking her what happened, and she simply goes on saying that she has done something terrible, and she is afraid that the Imam would not grant her absolution. In the end, her companions manage to take her home with them, and she agrees to tell them her story on the condition that her son, Hossein Aqa, leaves the room. She had been happily married for three years when it became clear that she could not have a child. When all the treatments, prayers and vows failed, her husband begged her to let him take a temporary wife, promising that he would divorce the woman as soon as he had a child by her, and let Aziz Agha bring up the child. She decided to take the matter in her own hands and found her husband ‘a dark and ugly girl, with traces of smallpox on her face’. Everything went according to plan, and she was still the boss when the girl got pregnant, and ‘her star began to rise’. She got absolutely miserable and ‘only then realized what a fool I’d been’.7 She started a relentless campaign against the new wife but it did not work. In due course, Khadijeh had her baby, ‘and a baby boy as well’, and her star rose even higher than before. Aziz Agha exploded, and asked for a divorce, but her husband promised to get rid of his sigheh Khadijeh, as soon as the baby began to toddle:

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 55 But I was in such an agony that I couldn’t eat or sleep. In the end – God forgive me – just for the sake of making Khadijeh miserable, a day that she had gone to the public bath, and there was no one else around, I went to the baby’s cot, took the pin out of my scarf, and pushed it into his fontanel. He died in the evening.8

In no time Khadijeh ‘shat another boy’, and Aziz Agha killed him too. But this time she was so upset and mourned the baby so much, that Khadijeh herself had to console her. Anyway, Khadijeh got pregnant once again. This time her husband did everything he could to try and protect the baby’s life. He vowed to call him Hossein, and take him on pilgrimage to Karbala, if it was a boy; and marry her off to a seyyed if it turned out to be a girl. It was a boy, but when Aziz Agha went to give him the old treatment, he began to smile at her. ‘I couldn’t go through with it. After all, my heart wasn’t really made of stone.’ Why not go for the source of all the trouble, for Khadijeh herself? She tried to cast a spell on her, but it did not work.9 In the end, she got poison from a traditional pharmacist, and put it in Khadijeh’s food: No one suspected me, but deep inside I was devastated. . . . I used to go to rowzehkhani, mourn [the martyrs], give money to beggars, but I simply couldn’t calm down.10

She persuaded her husband that they should all go and live in Karbala, near to the Imam’s shrine, but he ‘dilly-dallied’ until he died. She then sold everything they had, and has now come with Khadijeh’s son (the same Hossein Aqa who thinks she is his mother) to live permanently here: Now I’m not sure if God will forgive my sins, and if the Imam will speak out for me on the Day of Judgement. It’s been so long I’ve wanted to open my heart to somebody, and now that I’ve told you everything, I feel as if I’ve poured some water on the fire inside me. But, still, on the Day of Judgement.11

Ramezan’ali cuts her short at this point: ‘God have mercy on your father’s soul’, he says, shaking off the ashes of his chopoq, ‘What do you think we’ve all come here for then?’ I was a coach driver between Tehran and Mashhad. Three years ago, I had two rich passengers. One of them died on the way. I killed the other one with my own hands and took 1500 tomans out of his pocket. I’ve now come here to purify (halal) the money. This very day I gave it to a mullah. He gave 1000 of it back to me. . . . Now the money is even more halal to me than my own mother’s milk.12

There is a moment’s pause. Then, Khanom Galin takes the shisha from Aziz Agha, takes a big puff and explains that it was she herself who had killed Shahbaji Khanom, her half-sister, on the way to Karbala in order to become the sole inheritor of their father’s estate.13 Aziz Agha wants to jump for joy, saying ‘so you too . . . you too’. Khanom Galin gives her the final reassurance:

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Haven’t you heard from the pulpit? The minute the pilgrim so much as thinks of going on pilgrimage, and takes the first steps, her sin will be washed off even if it is as big as the leaf of a tree.14

The use of colloquial idioms is at its natural best. The story is rich in many aspects of traditional life, ranging from problems of barrenness and bigamy, to medical and superstitious methods of treating ills and illnesses. The author is as detached from the characters, their behaviour and their beliefs as an honest reporter, leaving any explicit judgement to the reader himself. In Aziz Agha’s saga, the issue of bigamy and its possible social and psychological problems are probably less important than the more universal predicament of a barren woman whose husband has a child by another woman. Who is to blame: Aziz Agha, Khadijeh or their husband? And the story has another, perhaps no less important side, to it. It is the question of absolution, and the whole ritual of seeking it by visiting an important Shia shrine. But there is a contrast between the attitude of Aziz Agha and the other two individuals. She is truly repentant whereas the other two are almost proud of their crimes, and sound as if absolution of their sins is owing to them. There is more realism in this, perhaps, than the fact that three out of four of the pilgrims have been portrayed as hardened criminals.

‘The Legaliser’ (1933)15 In Islamic law a man can divorce his wife and return to her without ceremony. But if he divorces her for the third time, he cannot marry her again unless and until she has married and divorced another man in the meantime. Since men have a unilateral right of divorcing their wives, the law might have been intended to protect the marriage on the first two occasions. On the other hand, the rule governing re-marriage after the third divorce might have been designed to act as a deterrent against any rash decision by the husband. Alternatively, or in addition to that, it may be interpreted to mean that divorcing for the third time would indicate the irretrievable breakdown of marriage. In practice, things could and did turn out differently, especially in Shia law where all the three divorces could be realized by repeating the divorce formula three times. Having rushed into an almost irreversible decision, the husband would then be left with no choice but to arrange for the short-term marriage, and divorce, of his wife to another man (assuming that she agrees to go along with it) so that he could legally marry her again. The man who (normally against the payment of a fee) agrees to act in that role is described as a mohallel, a ‘solution provider’, or legalizer. It might take no more than a day, although faith would still demand the consummation of this concocted marriage. For this reason, the original husband and his wife would still have to wait for the full period of grace which is invariably required of a divorced woman before she can marry again. It is not difficult to see how the technique of using a legalizer could result in mental agony as well as cheating and corruption. In Hedayat’s story, two common men meet in a traditional café in a suburb of old Tehran. They begin to talk about old times with touching romanticism and nostalgia.

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 57 ‘There are no more values left these days,’ says Mirza Yadollah. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ answers Mashdi Shahbaz. ‘It’s almost as if the End is at hand’: God grant me the privilege again, twenty-five years ago I used to live in the holy city of Mashhad. Cooking oil was worth tuppence per man [about three kilos]. They’d give you ten eggs for a fraction of a penny. A loaf of sangak bread was as big as a man. Who cared about money? I used to have a grocery in Tehran. It was paying for all my needs, and I was saving up six pence a day on top of it.16

Shahbaz had been doing well before ‘a fish wife’ entered his life, made life hell for him and forced him in the end to send her to Karbala for pilgrimage. He never heard from her again. ‘This woman was a bit funny in the head anyway. But I don’t know what happened that she suddenly got restless. There were times when she would sit and weep quietly when I wasn’t looking. Perhaps she did it for the first husband.’ ‘So, you were her second husband?’ Yadollah interrupts him, and then explains that he had been a preacher in the past. Once, when he was asked to go and bless a sick man, he fell desperately in love with his eight-year-old daughter.17 He’d had two temporary wives before, but this time he entered a permanent relationship. At first, even he himself felt ashamed of having a child for a bride. The little girl, too, was frightened at the beginning, and he had to spend some time telling her stories and trying to win her confidence. Afterwards, she became a perfect wife for him, he says, wiping off his tears. But trouble started when he met another woman, ‘with fair looks and a bit of money’ and thought of taking her as his second wife. His wife began to make life hell for him after she heard about it, and he gave up the idea. But she would not give up harassing him. One day, he lost his cool, took her to a lawyer and divorced her three times. Within a day, he was filled with remorse and regret, but there was nothing he could do. In the end he looked for a mohallel, a legalizer: There was a shit of a grocer down the road whose face was as dirty as a dustbin. One of those who would cut your throat for the sake of a single onion. I got him to marry Robabeh for five tomans plus expenses. . . . You can’t imagine how I felt. . . . Anyhow, next morning I went to the grocer’s home . . . and tried to hold him to his promise telling him to divorce Robabeh and get his money. I can still see his satanic face right at this moment. He laughed saying: ‘She’s my own wife. I wouldn’t exchange so much as one single fluff of her hair for a thousand tomans’. I nearly had a fit.18

At this point Shahbaz begins to mutter: ‘No. This is impossible. Tell me the truth.’ Yadollah, however, goes on describing how he sold his religious attire, put ordinary clothes on, and became a wandering soul, going from town to town, giving private lessons, writing letters for the illiterate, telling stories in traditional cafés.19 Shahbaz raises his head with a deep sigh: ‘There’s no two which doesn’t end up in three’ – as they say – ‘She’ll ruin another man’s life as well.’ Yadollah is puzzled: ‘Who?’ ‘That Hellish Robabeh, of course.’ A few more questions and answers, then Shahbaz laughs aloud: ‘Aren’t you the Aqa Sheikh Yadollah . . . who used to live in

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Marble Bath Alley?’ Yadollah comes closer: ‘Are you the one who put me through this misery for twelve years?’ and then, talking to himself: ‘Bravo Robabeh. You took my revenge. He too has become a wandering soul just like me.’ The two men then begin to eye up each other while trying to avoid each other’s eyes. There is a moment’s silence. Then Shahbaz calls the waiter: ‘Dash Akbar, get us a couple of teas with lumps of sugar.’20 The cultural atmosphere of all the subjects and objects, even the village and the café, has been vividly and authentically captured. There is the same air of detachment as in the previous story, except that here there is an underlying tone of sympathy rather than disdain and disapproval. The narrative and conversations could hardly have been better and more authentic. Yet some aspects of the story could easily have been improved. How would an experienced man like Yadollah fall so desperately in love, at first sight, with a child who has traces of smallpox on her face? And how can Robabeh have become such a law unto herself at the age of eleven, when Yadollah divorced her, and at fourteen, when she forced Shahbaz to send her to Karbala? Still, in a very subtle and implicit way, she is the one who seems to be taking much of the blame. The author might even have remembered Sa’di’s tale in Bustan about two men running away from their wives who meet in a strange land: ‫یکی گفت کس را زن بد مباد‬ ‫دگر گفت زن در جهان خود مباد‬ May no one have a bad wife, said the one, May women disappear from the world, said the other.

‘Mistress Alaviyeh’ (1933)21 The story begins at a stage post in a caravan bound for Mashhad, the shrine of Imam Reza. The central character is Alaviyeh herself, a divorced woman with her three children going on pilgrimage with a young man in his twenties. Alaviyeh’s name itself implies claim of descent from Iman Ali, as does the young man’s little green turban, and the green shawl around his waist. The two are partners in trade, but there is a (probably deliberate) confusion about their true relationship: he is now her son, now her fiancé, now her son-in-law and now her daughter’s suitor. They run a tazia trade and specialize in telling tales about the tragedy of Karbala in great detail, while pointing at each episode on large traditional canvas prints which depict the saints and the villains in battle. ‘This is what they did to the House of the Prophet,’ the young man shouts to the onlookers while beating his forehead as a sign of grief: Now what happens after this is that Mokhtar will rise and give the unjust what they deserve. Would those good Shias gathered here who want to see the rest of the story throw our subsistence into the kitty? It’s really not for me. I’ve got four mouths to feed. What I like to see is that four nice guys light up four candles [i.e. throw money] from the four corners of this gathering here. We can then look at the rest of the story and see how Mokhtar’s gonna give hell to the so-and-so’s.22

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 59 After the caravan begins to move again, Alaviyeh starts chatting with two other women. She tells them about themselves, and about her eldest daughter’s divorce from her husband. I said to my son-in-law: ‘All you ever wanted was to empty your sockets into my daughter’s belly’. A horse slips on the snow, and there follows a vivid description of the scene: They cut off the girth and whipped the horse so hard that it got up. Poor animal. He was shaking in agony. They had dyed the horses’ manes and tails with henna and put blue talismans round their necks to protect them from evil eyes. The thin and consumptive horses’ necks were bent under the weight of the collar, and a mixture of sweat and snow dripped down their bodies. The strong black whip cracked up in the air and came down on their buttocks, each time making their flesh jump up. . . . A bloody foam came off their mouths every time they coughed.23

They spend the night in a caravanserai. Next morning, when Alaviyeh and the young man are setting up their show, a woman turns up, shouting abuse at Alaviyeh, saying that she has slept with her temporary husband the night before. The torrents of mutual curse and abuse are authentic, idiomatic and proverbial, as well as coarse, vile and obscene: You better hold your tongue, or I’d tear the knickers off anyone who says I’ve done something I haven’t done. I’d burn up dog shit and set fire to anybody’s father who slings mud at me. Look at this nigger of a slave woman now! She’s spent her youth getting fucked upside down in rich people’s kitchens, and now she’s become a pimp of a woman, trying to defend Alaviyeh. What were you doing in our room in the middle of the night? You were obviously itching for it, weren’t you? I’d bugger anyone with my tits, I’d tear up anyone’s mouth who’d slander me. Weren’t you the one who kept saying: ‫نه صیغه می شم نه عقدی‬ ‫جنده می شم به نقدی‬ Neither a temporary nor a permanent wife, I’d just be a whore for the cash they cough?24

The scene makes up a third of the story’s length and contains some of the funniest passages that Hedayat ever wrote in a story. The episode ends with Alaviyeh giving the boot to her partner – ‘the whore with two balls’ – and the tough coach driver, who has been sleeping with her, giving her the same treatment. All you wanted, she tells the latter, was ‘to empty your sockets into the bellies of the Imam’s pilgrims’; that is, herself as well as her daughter. The final episode is at the shrine in Mashhad where the woman is parading the scenes of the martyrdom with the help of a new partner. The coach driver shows up, and the past is quickly forgotten. Alaviyeh agrees to return to Tehran in his coach.

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The portrayal of most of the pilgrims as a bunch of cynical and amoral people cannot escape the reader’s notice.

‘The Ghouls’ (1933)25 This is a story of hypocrisy and deception. The theme is, once again, familiar, the scenes authentic and the linguistic and cultural forms and framework difficult to improve. It looks more like a play in one act and several scenes. A man has just died, and a family friend has come to console his two wives. The elder wife is leading the customary ritual mourning with the expected histrionics. She pulls her hair, beats her chest and describes her husband as ‘a jewel’.26 The chador slips off her head, and she faints. As they are trying to bring her round, the younger wife whispers to their visitor: ‘Don’t be fooled by these fits and faints. The minute the Mashdi kicked the bucket, she took his watch out of his pocket.’ The woman comes around and continues with the show. She tells the visitor about the Mashdi’s constant praise and prayers for her, his vow to give her their house, his explanation that he had taken a second wife so she would have an obedient servant in the house. The younger wife loses patience: As long as that blessed soul was alive you hated his guts. How come all of a sudden, he’s become such a goody now he’s dead. . . . Cross my heart and hope to die young if I’m telling a lie. I was the one who nursed the Mashdi all the time. She did nothing but eat and put her feet up.27

She storms out of the room, and the elder wife carries on with the story. She had been sitting by the howz (the fishpond in the middle of the cloister) when the younger wife ran out to call her. She rushed in to find her husband dying.28 She sent for Sheikh Ali and gave him 20 tomans to arrange the burial. ‘I had the body lifted off the ground within two hours. He must have been buried by now.’ At this point, the younger wife comes back and says that Sheikh Ali is at the door asking for 5 more tomans for burial expenses. She gets upset: ‘The lid may be off the saucepan, but what about the cat’s sense of shame? I can see now. The ghouls are sniffing. . . . It’s going good for the Sheikh, trying to rip off a poor unfortunate woman.’29 Sheikh Ali comes in and says that they are 5 tomans short for paying the gravedigger who is still waiting in the cemetery to finish off the job. The elder wife weeps and wails again about her poverty but pays him off in the end. Then comes the younger wife’s mother to talk about the nitty-gritty. One thing leads to another, and the three women let their tongues loose. The younger wife accuses the elder one of stealing the Mashdi’s money while he was still on his deathbed. She also asks her why she is wearing the two gold bracelets which are not hers. In turn, the elder wife begins to change her tune and curse her husband for the things he had done to her. Suddenly, the younger wife’s mother cries out. ‘There, look at the dead man’, and faints. The visitor screams: ‘Look, look through the window, it’s the Mashdi, the Mashdi’s come back’, and becomes speechless. Then the door opens, and the Mashdi enters in dusty shrouds. The elder wife quickly takes the money bag off her neck and

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 61 throws it to him together with the bracelets and the bunch of keys. The younger wife throws ‘your false teeth, plus the five tomans I got from Sheikh Ali’. The Mashdi laughs: ‘It’s all right. Don’t be frightened. I wasn’t really dead. I’d just had a brain seizure. I came around in the cemetery.’30

‘Dash Akol’31 A small masterpiece in its own right, ‘Dash Akol’ on the whole falls into Hedayat’s group of socially critical stories but does include some noticeable psycho-fictional qualities. For this reason, the author is not as completely detached from his work as we have found in the case of the previous stories. Dash Akol is Shiraz’s leading luti, and Kaka Rostam is trying to rub shoulders with him. Between them they represent the two main prototypes in this social category. The Dash is a chivalrous luti – a ‘real luti’ – a physically strong but psychologically fragile community leader, with a strong sense of shame, and of protection towards the weak, needy and downtrodden. In fact, he is an unlikely type: the only son of a rich landowner who becomes a one-man charity and spends much of his inherited estate on others. Kaka Rostam, by contrast, is more representative of the common type who pretends to luti values while in fact behaving more like thugs and bullies. He envies the Dash for the respect and popularity which he enjoys, and fears him on account of his greater physical strength: Dash Akol was as famous in the city as is a black sheep in a herd. There wasn’t a single luti who’d not had the taste of his strength. Every night when he sent down a bottle of hard stuff . . . and stood at the Sardozak Junction, even the toughest nut would know his place, let alone Kaka Rostam.32

One night the two men meet by chance in a traditional café. They begin to taunt each other indirectly, as if they are talking to the waiter. The Dash makes a laughingstock of Kaka, and the latter leaves the café in a huff. At that moment, Hajji Samad’s manager comes in, gives the news of his employer’s death and tells him that the Hajji has made him ‘the guardian of his family, and trustee of his estate,’33 Dash Akol is annoyed, thinking of the trouble and responsibility this will involve; yet, as he later tells the Hajji’s wife, he now feels obliged to accept the responsibility, rather than go ‘into a dead man’s debt’. He goes to the Hajji’s house to arrange the funeral, and it is there that he first sets eyes on Marjan, the Hajji’s fifteen-year-old daughter. He has never been in love, and has never had a personal, perhaps even physical, relationship with a woman. A man in his mid-thirties whose basically attractive looks have been spoilt by a deep dagger scar on his face, the Dash is a shy, simple and lonely man. The task of managing the Hajji’s family and property and the undeclared love for Marjan begin to change Dash Akol’s life radically. Regular work takes up his time, and the secret love eats him from within. He begins to lose his contacts and change his routine. He loses his friends, and his unique position among the city’s toughs and lutis. He is no longer feared and respected by them as much as before, and they

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begin to talk behind his back. For example, one evening one could hear Kaka Rostam stammer: Lo-lovesickness in old age! The-the bloke’s fallen in love with Hajji Samad’s daughter, and ha-has buried his kitchen knife. He foo-fooled the people, telling phony tales [about his chivalry] until he be-became the Hajji’s trustee, and stole his property.34

Dash Akol knows what is going on, but he does not care, and will not be drawn. A few years pass. The Dash keeps his secret and suffers in silent depression. He has known all the time that he stands a good chance with Marjan, but he likes his freedom, believes it is morally wrong for him to marry his own ward, and he is not too happy about the difference in their ages and his dagger-scarred face: Maybe she doesn’t love me at all. Perhaps she’ll find a young and good-looking husband. But what could I do? This love is destroying me . . . Marjan . . . You’re killing me . . . Who can I tell? Marjan . . . Your love is destroying me.35

Night after night he sits alone with a bottle of araq, talking aloud to himself while his only companion, his parrot, looks on silently. Then a suitor shows up for the girl, and the marriage goes through: ‘And what a suitor at that. He was older and less good-looking than the Dash.’36 The Dash gives no sign of his feelings, and pretends that nothing has happened. He fulfils his customary duty, making all the arrangements for the wedding. He even holds the wedding reception in his own house because, after the Hajji’s death, the family had moved into a smaller home. Towards the end of the reception, he enters the room where all the male guests are gathered, and puts a few books and pads in front of the Imam Jom’eh, the city’s semi-official religious dignitary: Sir. God bless the Hajji’s soul. He made a will and put us in trouble for seven years. Here are all the accounts of his property. . . . Up to now, all the expenses, including those of tonight’s reception, have been paid out of our own pocket. From now on, let us look after our own, and they, theirs.37

He leaves the house, feeling deeply hurt, but having a sense of liberation as well. Walking almost aimlessly, he comes across Mullah Es-haq the Jew’s home, and goes in after years of absence. He downs a bottle of araq, pays the man and walks out. He feels lonely and depressed and walks aimlessly until he reaches the Sardozak Junction where he has not been for a long time. It is dark, and he has a headache. He sits on the doorstep of a house and lights up his long pipe.38 Suddenly, a shadow shows up in the dark. ‘Lu-luti would be recognized in the dark as well,’ stutters Kaka Rostam. Dash Akol jumps up and spits on the ground: ‘By your loose mother, you think you’re a big luti, don’t you? But, on your life, you’ve not yet pissed on firm ground.’39 Kaka Rostam walks up towards the Dash: ‘Lo-long time no-no see up here. To-tonight, there’s a wedding at the Ha-Hajji’s house. Didn’t they se-send

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 63 you an invitation?’ Dash Akol cuts him short: ‘God knew you well enough to give you only half a tongue. Well I’m gonna cut off that half as well tonight.’40 He pulls out his dagger and – throwing the gauntlet luti style – pushes it hard into the dirt between the street cobbles: ‘Let there be a luti who would dare pull this out,’ he challenges in the customary way. Kaka Rostam draws his own dagger and jumps at him. But the Dash turns his wrist so hard that he has to let go of the dagger. A group of onlookers gather, and the two begin a fist fight. When they are both well exhausted, the Dash’s head suddenly hits the cobbles, and he passes out for a second. Kaka Rostam looks up and finds Dash Akol’s dagger nearby: ‘He pulled it with all his strength, and pushed it into the Dash’s guts so hard that the hands of neither of them could move any longer.’41 Dash Akol dies the next day and is mourned by the whole of Shiraz. The Hajji’s eldest son visits him on his deathbed, and the Dash asks him to look after his parrot for him. In the evening, Marjan is eyeing the bird up with curiosity when it cries out in a deep luti voice: ‘Marjan . . . Marjan . . . You’re killing me . . . Who can I tell? . . . Marjan . . . Your love is destroying me.’ ‘Tears rolled down Marjan’s cheeks.’42 Who killed the Dash after all: the Kaka or Marjan?

Satire ‘The Patriot’43 This is a fictional satire aimed at the literary establishment whom the author hated both for stealing the show from modern progressive intellectuals such as himself and for collaborating with Reza Shah’s regime. Seyyed Nasrollah Vali is the story’s central figure, and Hakimbashi-pur, the minister of education, is in the background. In fact, the former is a caricature of a leading establishment scholar, and the latter, one of the ministers of education with whom Hedayat had had a personal clash over the sketch he had drawn for the front cover of a friend’s book:44 It was rumoured that he was a Jew who had converted to Christianity just to get a diploma from the American College [run by Christian missionaries], but was now rubbing the balls [i.e. licking the boots] of akhund-ha. . . . The man who, on the one hand, was busy uncovering anti-Islamic literature, while, on the other hand, he was beating the drums of modernism and atheism.45

One day the Seyyed is summoned by the minister who is sending him on a cultural mission to India. The idea, he is told, is for him to spread the good news of ‘the miraculous cultural progress in the ancient country [i.e. Iran] which has already become a wonder for the whole world’: ‘It would be a pity for a country like India which is a centre of the Aryan race, and has millions of Muslim and Persian-speaking peoples, not to be properly in touch with our brilliant cultural developments, and especially our newly-coined words.’46 These new words, ‘made in the Academy’ as the author sardonically puts it, had just been issued in a new Persian dictionary put out by the Farhangestan, the official academy. They were meant to replace many (mainly

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established Arabic, but also a few European) loan words by their formally concocted Persian equivalents. The Farhangestan was a relatively respectable official body. Much less palatable was the official Institute for the Education of Minds (Sazeman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) whose task was to conduct propaganda for the state and the Aryan race after the fashion of similar official bodies at work in Nazi Germany at the time: You can only make money by this kind of demagogy, and grotesque aping. A bunch of upstarts who throw dust into the people’s eyes, deceive them, and line up their own pockets in the deal. Besides, weren’t they the very ones who made himself [the Seyyed] praise the Brilliant Era through the Institute for the Education of Minds?47

Here we are exposed to the innermost feelings of the Seyyed who, like many an intellectual caught in such circumstances, has strong doubts about the legitimacy and rationality of the regime he serves, and is cynical about the views which he apparently cherishes in public. The inner conflict surfaces on the boat to India, when the Seyyed is writing up the notes for his mission. He is seasick as well as homesick, and ponders the insincerity of his colleagues and superiors, like the minister, and the hollowness of official propaganda about the great social and cultural achievements: Motherland means me [cf. L’état c’est moi]. The whole idea is simply to conduct propaganda for that August Saviour, who pushed the scalpel into the people, and bled them white.48

As for the cultural and educational policies, the real intention is to destroy the local dialects, ‘something that not even Arabs and Mongols managed to achieve’, and impose makeshift words which are neither here nor there: ‘He [Reza Shah] is trying to present his own sacred interests as those of the motherland.’49 He tries to prepare the speech which he is due to make in Bombay but cannot get beyond the first few words. Tired and sick, he does not make it. He goes to bed and has a nightmare in which the boat is on fire. Next morning, they find him dead with the life jacket wrapped tightly around his neck. Two months later, a statue in his memory is unveiled by the minister of education. He presents a eulogy for ‘that patriotic genius who showed unparalleled courage and selflessness in the service of the motherland and earned the place of martyrdom in the end’. He will propose to the official academy that the Seyyed’s name be changed to Piruz Yazdan, its pure Persian equivalent, and that he be given the posthumous title, ‘The Patriot’.50

‘Vagh-vagh Sahab’ (1934)51 This is a volume of thirty-four anecdotes or ‘cases’, more like ridicule than satire. A product of the Rab’eh period, it was written jointly by Hedayat and Farzad under the pennames of Gog and Magog Company Limited. It is not clear from the text itself

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 65 which ‘cases’ each of the authors is responsible for. According to Parviz Dariyush, who quotes Farzad himself, ‘cases’ 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 15, 19, 21–25, 27, 28 and 31–34 were written by Hedayat; ‘cases’ 12 and 30 were written by both authors; ‘cases’ 2 and 14 were written by ‘another friend’; and the remainder are by Farzad.52 Yet all the anecdotes are very similar in form and content, and it is clear that most, if not all, of them had been jointly discussed before the two authors divided their labour in writing up the final drafts. These anecdotes or ‘cases’ ridicule the social and intellectual upper crust, at once for their clumsy modernism and their persistence in traditional ways. The bitterness which flows from being ignored and downgraded is often felt. For example, in ‘The Case of the Elegy for the Poet’: Were he still alive, he would have surpassed us all / he would have halted the social climbing of us all. So, it’s better that he is dead and gone / gone to his grave with chants and pomp. We will appreciate him now / write elegies for him now. . . . Had he been still alive we would have abused him / from our own circles we would have excluded him. But since we pursue our own self-promotion, we commemorate his death with devotion.53

This may now look like a prophecy in the case of, at least, one of the two authors. But ‘The Case of the Disbelieving Chap and His End’ contains parts which are almost autobiographical: All his manners and morals were loose and bent / only his lack of manners was absolutely correct. Every day in the office, every night in the café / he’d say: ‘I’m fed up with this life.’ He wouldn’t think of starting a family/so that his generation would go on in his memory. He’d spent in Europe a few days / Instead of hotchpotch, eating lobsters and frog-legs. One night he’d go home late drunk, and look like an idiot. Another night, he’d look like a born dummy / Saying not a word to sibling, mum and daddy. No matter how much advice his old man gave / that ‘Boy, drop the ways of the knave’. He’d react with bad words and ridicule / saying: ‘We youngees are wise, you oldees, fools.’ So, the oldees, in order to correct him, / decided to be cross, and ignored him. They’d no longer treat him like a human / they wouldn’t even care tuppence for the man. But since he’d perfected the art of foolishness / he went on cursing, and drinking, none the less. Behind the office desk he’d hardly do a thing / much social damage was caused by this being. One night he blew like a gun and died / with this the hope of reforming him was passed. The oldees said: ‘what a pity, but serves him right / Only to the grave does a black sheep belong.’54

The long ‘Case of the Conversation’ between the two authors (Gog and Magog) is in the form of classical prose. At one point, Magog talks about an old man’s advice to his son on how to make a successful scholar. This is an unmistakable take-off of Keikavus ibn Iskander’s Qabusnameh, though it is not intended to ridicule the great classic itself.55 First, you should find an important academic patron, agree with all his views, lick his boots and become his crony. It would then become easy to write and publish

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on any subject. Take history, for example. All you need is an elementary knowledge of a foreign language to plagiarize other people’s works and use your imagination to add a few notes of your own. As for philosophy and ethics, there is no need for any effort at all. Just memorize some mystifying jargon and throw it about here and there.56 The ‘cases’ cover a wide range of subjects, the mockery of the established literati being a notable one. Nearly all are written in the form of free verse with frequent rhyming of sorts. Hedayat was to write a few more of these ‘cases’ in the 1940s – none of them, except the last one, as successful as those in this volume. The exception is The Case of the Morvari Cannon, which is the longest and best he ever wrote (see Chapter 11).

Literary criticism Most, though not all, of Hedayat’s reviews and comments on current publications are also in the form of ridicule. A notable exception is his scholarly review of Asadi’s classic Persian Dictionary.57 By contrast, his review article of the abovementioned ‘Dictionary of the Academy’ consists of a series of jibes and mockeries. The official academy’s main task was to coin ‘pure Persian’ words to replace the existing loan words in the Persian language. Their efforts were not entirely fruitless, and some of the less artificial terms which they invented eventually caught on. On the other hand, the official nationalist attitude which lay behind the enterprise, and the mechanistic approach of the academy to their task and the fact that the new words had to be approved by the shah first before becoming official offended the cultural and literary sensibilities of independent intellectuals, even including Taqizadeh, who earned the wrath of Reza Shah on this account.58 Many of the proposed words were simply ridiculous. For example, they had literally translated the French ascenseur into balaro (‘upward-mover’). ‘Evidently when this word was being invented’, jibes Hedayat, ‘lifts could not yet move downwards’, although the French original also render’s the same meaning.59 In another review he takes the famous editor of a new edition of Nezami Ganjavi’s collected works to task.60 For example, in the book’s glossary, afranjeh had been described as a city on the Nile built by a famous Sasanian emperor. As Hedayat mocks: ‘it looks as if the people of that city later emigrated to Europe, and that is why Europe has become known as farang.’61 His article ‘New Trends in Persian Poetry’62 is more of a joke with a few contemporary poets, some of whom (including Nima Yushij and Parviz Khanlari) were his personal friends. None of the poets has been mentioned by name, but the mock pieces produced in their respective styles make it possible to discover their identities. The ‘New Trends’ do not necessarily refer to modernist poetry: there is a piece relating to a poem by Bahar who had already become a classic in his own lifetime. The lesser poets have inevitably supplied the best targets for mockery. On the other hand, his mockery of Nima’s poetry (which, in its modernist forms, had hardly appeared in print) shows how well he had understood the logic, structure and content of Nima’s unique innovations.

 Iranian Culture and Critical Realism 67 It took another couple of decades for most writers and readers of modernist poetry to master subtleties which Hedayat had grasped perfectly. In his devastating review of the popular novel Naz (the title being an unlikely name for a woman) Hedayat has perfected his own already cutting and merciless art of ridicule.63 This is a longish story in a series by an author who was to become a popular and prolific professional producer of novels and stories for mass consumption. There is very little in these and similar works which can be recognized as the art of writing. Typically, they are pseudo-romantic contemporary or historical stories, full of anachronisms and impossibilities, and aimed at common entertainment. What is surprising is not that Hedayat has been offended by the coarseness of this piece but that he has bothered to take notice of it – except, of course, that he must have felt slighted by the fame and popularity of such writers while he was still publishing his own works in limited numbers, and out of his own pocket. However, the author of Naz was to avenge himself against Hedayat posthumously.64 All Hedayat’s works which have been mentioned in this chapter were written in the 1930s before the Second World War came to Iran. In the same period, he also wrote The Blind Owl and other psycho-fictional works which will be discussed in the following two chapters.

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7

The Blind Owl A critical exposition

The Blind Owl is Hedayat’s masterpiece and marks the climax of his psycho-fictions. We saw in Chapter 4 that this group of Hedayat’s fictional works consists of stories which pose universal as opposed to parochial questions, and probe as well as reflect metaphysical and psychological problems. However, The Blind Owl has seldom been fully discussed within this context, and the development of a basic model for this crowning work in Hedayat’s earlier psycho-fictions has not yet been explored. Problems of interpretation have tended to accumulate over time, mainly for two reasons: first, a popular tendency to describe The Blind Owl as little more than a symbolic critique of life under Reza Shah; secondly, a misunderstanding by some influential critics of the structure, and hence the substance, of the story itself.1 These problems have in their turn led to considerable controversy about the sources of the story and its parts. In this chapter, we shall present a critical exposition and analysis of the story itself. This will be followed – in Chapter 8 – by a discussion of its possible sources and precedents, both in Hedayat’s own work and elsewhere. The Blind Owl is the culmination of Hedayat’s psycho-fictions and its development can be traced in Hedayat’s previous works.2 None the less, it gives the impression that it has been written in some haste, both because it contains many errors of grammar and syntax, and because its formal structure is not as clear as it would have been had it been further revised and polished. Grammatical and similar errors are not unfamiliar from Hedayat’s other works, and especially his other psycho-fictions. But there is no structural obscurity in the latter, not even ‘The Three Drops of Blood’, which is most comparable to The Blind Owl in style and formal structure. Besides, there are noticeably more grammatical and other linguistic mistakes in The Blind Owl than in the other works. Some of these errors still survive in the published editions which have appeared since Hedayat’s death, but they are more frequent in the original manuscript. This is in Hedayat’s own handwriting and was duplicated in fifty copies. It bears the place and date of publication (Bombay, 1315/1936) together with a note saying, ‘publication and sale in Iran is forbidden’. This has supplied more evidence for those critics who have interpreted the story as a symbolic critique of life under Reza Shah. In fact, it was intended to avoid both official and unofficial legal and religious disapproval, especially as Hedayat had already run into trouble with the censors over such issues.3 No other

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draft manuscript has been discovered, but the late Parviz Khanlari seemed to believe that a draft might have existed before Hedayat left for India, though this is unlikely.4

An outline of the story The novel is in two parts which are formally connected by a few passages at the end of Part I (which we may call Link 1), and at the end of Part II (Link 2). In Part I, the narrator has a strange, almost psychic, experience with the ‘ethereal woman’ and the old hunchback. In Part II, he experiences a previous incarnation several centuries before.

Part I: Life in the present Part I begins when the narrator, a pen-box illustrator, is visited by an uncle from India he has never seen. He reaches for the jug of wine on the recess and through an air cavity sees the scene of the single and compulsive subject of all his illustrations: a woman in black, indescribably beautiful, exotic, serene and sublime, ‘with an unconscious smile on her face, as if she was thinking of an absent person’,5 offering a bunch of flowers to an old man in an Indian outfit who is squatting on the other side of a stream under a cypress tree. It looks as if the woman tries, but fails, to jump across the stream ‘which separated her from the old man’.6 And he bursts into laughter, ‘a dry, chilling laughter which stood one’s hair on end.’7 He falls deeply and desperately in love with ‘the ethereal woman’, ‘this girl, no, this angel’.8 And he searches every corner of the city for weeks, trying to find her. He becomes convinced that she was not of this world, and that she would ‘wilt [at] the look of a stranger, an ordinary person’.9 But when he returns home, tired and hopeless, he finds her at his own doorstep. Silent, serene and remote – just as in his vision – the mysterious woman walks into his room and lies on the bed. He is at once ecstatic and melancholic. Joyful, bewildered and awe-stricken, he feels a spiritual gap, an imponderable distance – ‘as if a wall of glass had been erected’10 – between them. But when he gently pours a glass of wine into her mouth, he suddenly feels calm after she closes her gripping, electrifying eyes: I could now feel the warmth of her body, and the dampness of her thick black hair. I don’t know why I raised my trembling hand – for it was not in my control – and stroked her hair . . . and then pushed my fingers through it. Her hair was cold as well as damp, very cold, as if she had been dead for days. No, I wasn’t wrong, she was dead.11

Determined not to let any ‘stranger’ set his eyes on her, he cuts up the body with a knife, puts the pieces in a suitcase, and – with the help of an old, hunchbacked hearse driver – buries it in a cemetery in a nearby small town on the site of the ancient city of Ray. The old hunchback gives him a vase or jug ‘from the old city of Ray’, and he returns home feeling the weight of a dead body on his chest. When he gets home, he discovers

 The Blind Owl 71 that the painting on the antique jug is exactly the same as his own illustrations on the pen-boxes, and wonders about the possible existence in the past of another ‘wretched painter, just like me’: Perhaps whenever I am painting, the ghost of the jug’s painter enters my body and moves my hand. . . . Strangely enough, the thought that a long long time ago, somebody else might have been suffering as much as me brought me joy and comfort. . . . Until that moment I used to think that I was the most unfortunate man in the world, but I now have discovered that . . . there must have been a wretched painter, an accursed painter, perhaps a joyless pen-box illustrator like myself, just like myself.12

Link 1: Movement back in time He begins to smoke opium and falls into a ‘coma’ which takes him several centuries back to a previous existence: Then I felt as if my entire being was moving backwards [in time]. . . . It looked as if the whole of my existence was hanging from a thin hook, dangling in a deep dark well. . . . Then I fell off the hook and slipped downwards without meeting any obstacle: it was an endless abyss in never-ending darkness. When I came round I found myself in a small room, and was puzzled because I felt that my new situation was at once strange and familiar to me.13

Part II: Life in the past In ‘the new world’ in which he ‘wakes up’,14 he has been born of an Indian lingam dancer whom he has never seen, and is married to a woman – his mother’s mirror image – whom he simply calls ‘the harlot’. His wife looks exactly like his mother as she has been described to him by others, and they both bear a striking physical resemblance to the ethereal woman of Part I of the novel. Both his father and his uncle (neither of whom he has ever seen) had fallen in love with the lingam dancer, and the contest had been settled by a ‘trial by serpent’: the two men had entered a naga snake’s pit, one of whom (he does not know which) had emerged from it – crushed, old and senile – to marry his mother. These two men also look exactly alike, and they are mirror images of his uncle and the old hearse driver in Part I. He has been brought up by his aunt (his father’s sister) and has married her daughter, the harlot, as a face-saving measure, just because she had once kissed him in public.15 From the moment they marry, the harlot refuses to sleep with him, and carries on with other men. He hates her intensely but still longs to go to bed with her. At one stage he even acts as her pimp, procuring men for her in the hope that she would accept him as well. But she refuses because she enjoys torturing him. Instead, she fornicates with the meanest and most unworthy men, with ‘the rabble’, the money-grabbers, the whoremongers, the kind of people who are ‘made up of a mouth and genitals which are connected to each other by a [digestive] pipe’.16 Yet, all but one of his wife’s endless

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lovers remain faceless, and simply belong to the collective abstraction described earlier. The exception is the old, hunchbacked, odds-and-ends seller across the street, a mirror image of his father/uncle, who joins the army of her nameless bedmates only towards the end of Part II, at the end of the narrator’s experience of his previous life. There is also a butcher opposite who, both for the narrator and for the author, is a symbol of physical filth and moral dejection, though he is apparently not one of the harlot’s lovers. Yet, close examination will show that neither the old hunchback nor the butcher is a true representative of the abstract ‘rabble’ who are repeatedly cursed and condemned by the narrator. He gets sick – ‘physically’, he emphasizes – and is looked after by his foster mother, the only one who cares for him. She, too, is a mirror image of his aunt – the harlot’s mother – and remains entirely faceless just like the others. He keeps walking around in the apparently empty city and its outskirts, obsessed with the thought that his existence is entirely worthless. One day, he takes a knife, disguises himself as the odds-and-ends hunchback, and returns home to kill the harlot, but gives up the idea for no apparent reason. Yet, sometime later, he masquerades as the old odds-and-ends man, and, this time, he tries to sleep with her. There are a few moments of ‘agony and ecstasy’.17 Then she bites his lower lip so hard that – just like the old hunchback’s – it splits open. In pain, he is struggling to free himself from his wife’s entanglement when the knife ‘accidentally’ hits ‘a part of her body’ and kills her instantly. It is not clear why he is still carrying the knife with him, or why she dies immediately. He runs out into his own room, looks at himself in the mirror, and discovers that he has become the odds-and-ends seller.

Link 2: Return from ‘the journey through time’ The force of terror brings him back from his previous existence to the present: I rubbed my eyes as if I had woken up from a long and deep sleep by the sheer force of anguish. . . . In the firepot in front of me [which he had lighted to smoke opium before the journey in time] the red pieces of charcoal had all turned into cold ash. . . . The first thing I looked for was the Ray jug which the old hearse driver had given to me in the cemetery. But it was not there.18

He looks up and sees the hunchbacked old man running out of the room with the jug. He gives chase but the old man disappears ‘in the fog’. He comes back and, once again, feels the weight of a dead body pressing on his chest.

An analysis The wood and the forest The book begins with a moving statement about unmitigated agony: ‘There are wounds in life which – like leprosy – gradually eat into the soul and erode it in solitude.’19 This

 The Blind Owl 73 sums up the problem with great lucidity and simplicity, although with an abruptness and economy that recalls Kafka’s opening sentences, serves to conceal a wider scope and greater intensity. Because, unlike Kafka’s, it is not just a statement of fact – the news of Joseph K’s arrest in The Trial, or Mr Gregory’s discovery that he has become a beetle in ‘Metamorphosis’ – which sets the framework for what is to come. The Blind Owl’s opening sentence goes further, and summarizes the solitary reflections, hallucinations, obsessions and hatreds of a wounded soul who, though declaring that he writes only ‘for my own shadow’, is crying out for attention. There are no other characters in the story except for the narrator himself. The rest are shadowy, nameless or abstract figures, just like those on a jug or a pen-box. They are mentioned but not portrayed. The father/uncle/odds-and-ends seller/hearse driver, the mother/wife/ethereal woman, the aunt/foster mother, and one or two ‘others’ like them, seldom speak, and the narrator seldom speaks for them. They are just like puppets in a nursery to which the child assigns appropriate roles in order to keep the show going. Everything points to this state of isolation and abstraction, because everything seems to be a part or an extension of the narrator himself. In Part I of the story we find the narrator living in a desolate corner of Tehran at some time in the first quarter of the twentieth century. And after he has travelled back through time (in Part II) to the heyday of the City of Ray, he is still in a God-forsaken place at the edge of a ghost town, with the two carefully selected ‘characters’ bearing witness to his macabre isolation. The houses look crooked, deformed, inhuman, appearing in odd geometric shapes ‘as if nothing that moved could ever live in any of them’.20 The alleyways are empty of people, and have shining white walls which reflect his giant shadow, without a head. Not even the rabble (rajjalehha) – ‘the happy and stupid’, the money-grabbers and whoremongers – seem to have a physical existence, a reality outside his imagination, a truth beyond the narrator’s essentialist view of life. He describes the physical deformity of the houses from a distance without ever entering or approaching any of them, except once when he passes through a few empty rooms and finds the harlot in the last one. He decries the moral depravation of ‘the rabble’ without even once mentioning, let alone coming face to face with one of them, for ‘the rabble’ are none other than many ordinary people: those who, unlike the narrator, miss the essence of life, but are ‘happy and stupid’, and succeed in their business and love affairs. The similarities between some of the descriptions here and those of Camus’s L’Etranger (which they, in any case, predate) are superficial. Here, the reduction of the people and their homes to abstractions is due not to the cultural alienation of the observer, but to the moral dejection and physical irrelevance of the subjects themselves. It is this combination of deformity, sickness and moral preaching amid an amoral environment which creates, both in the observer and in the observed, an atmosphere of silent conspiracy, camouflage, subterfuge and deception. The architecture is innerdirected, uninviting, sinister, alienating and fascistic. And the ordinary (as opposed to extraordinary) people, ‘the rabble’, are hollow and empty, in a sense far beyond C. S. Lewis’s ‘men without chests’, because they are described as nothing but a ‘pipe’ (an intestine) connecting their mouths to their genitals. This dark and sinister void sums up the situation, alike in the decaying early-twentieth-century Tehran and in

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the thriving Ray of a golden past, thus disposing of life and the living at one and the same time. There is no sense of time as history. There is just this wretched man, both now and then, both here and there, indulging in self-pity and self-glorification, while floating in a time-space vacuum, marked only by his own ‘shadow’. He says he does not know why he always paints the woman, the old man and the stream of water between them. Yet, this, too, is an extension of himself and his predicament. It describes a gap which cannot be closed, an alienation which will not be brought to an end, for even when the ethereal woman tries to jump over the stream, she fails; and when she turns up at his doorstep she wilts, dies and is cut into pieces; and when he tries to make love to her mirror image – her other self – she gets killed, and he turns into his other self, that is, the old hunchback. The whole thing is doomed from the start. The ‘appearance’ or ‘ego’ is ugly and sinful; the ‘reality’ or ‘consciousness’ cannot be realized even when it is grasped. Or is it the other way around? Is reality in fact revealed through the journey into the past, and appearance shown through selfdeception – the vision through the air cavity – in the present life? The narrator says he is writing all about himself for his shadow. Yet this Cassandra for whom life is nothing but constant personal catastrophe does not write much even about himself. Apart from the bare story of the ethereal woman (in Part I) and the harlot (in Part II), there is little except the shout, the cry and the curse: the cataract of noise and abuse mingling with a torrent of self-pity which covers, but does not ultimately hide, his sense of self-righteousness. This factual secrecy about himself is as deliberate as are his camouflaging techniques and diversionary tactics about everything else. He tries to hide behind different masks while keeping his skeletons in the cupboard, or his ‘puppet’ ‘behind the curtain’.21 He is just like a researcher who does not reveal his data for fear of being caught, and therefore presents his own conclusions – that is, the results of his private analysis of them – as the data itself. Parables, metaphors, symbolisms and allegories abound, but many of these too are diversionary, deliberately intended for distraction: the superficial and somewhat incorrect use of the Indian culture, the travel through time, the incestuous desire, the phallic symbol, the transmutation, the jug of wine with its anthropomorphic Khayyamian implications and so on. While he seems to have pulled almost all his intellectual resources together, he fails to expose the wound which has been eating away at his soul in solitude. Because he will not give everything away, he has managed to leave many a reader and critic puzzled, confused or disenchanted. Yet the narrator has not completely succeeded in his diversionary tactics, and this too must have been intentional. He has made it much easier for the reader to miss the simple, though devastating, point, and fall prey to interpretations such as opiate hallucinations, the oedipal complex, homosexual desires and even ‘an Aryan nihilistic view of the cosmos’!22 The more incredible the interpretation, the easier it may be to construct, precisely because of the large and tempting maze built up by the narrator, and the agony which has given birth to it. A logical, analytical, philosophical or psychological statement of his predicament would have fallen flat on its face, and instead of making good literature (or good science) it would have looked like a potted Plato, Rumi, Pascal, Spinoza, Freud or whoever. The one thing that none of his readers will have doubts about is the reality and intensity of his agony. Through the pages of

 The Blind Owl 75 The Blind Owl the narrator erupts like a volcano, hurling his emotions – fears, phobias, frustrations, anger and despair – out into the bleak atmosphere, marring the reader’s vision and making it difficult for him to see the motive forces at work beneath the volcanic explosions. In Part II, the return to a previous existence, his father and uncle have been identical twins with ‘such a spiritual bond between them that the minute one of them was sick, the other one would likewise go down with the same illness’.23 One of them emerges from the pit, old and senile, leaving the sound of a hair-raising laughter behind him. Having briefly related this legend – brevity being one of the essential elements of the camouflage – he goes on to wonder whether his own life has not been somehow influenced by that chilling laughter. Here is a subtle hint about the structure as well as the meaning of the story. And from this point onwards the crooked back, the white hair, the fearsome laughter become symbolic of the different mirror images of his father/uncle to whom he gives various roles, and who is meant to represent his own wretched and mortal self. The father, the uncle, the father-in-law and the odds-andends seller (in Part II) are all but the narrator’s ‘other’ – materialistic, egotistic and erotic – ‘self ’, as opposed to his pure and perfect soul which it finally destroys and replaces: he succumbs to the needs of his ‘other self ’, impersonates it, imitates it and becomes it. This is neither a Hegelian ‘becoming’, nor a Freudian (more likely, Jungian) return to natural consciousness, nor a Buddhist Nirvana. For this is not a progression but a retrogression, not a liberation but a return to bondage, not a reunion but a fall, in whose process a woman and a snake conveniently play the leading parts.

The mirror images The father/uncle enters the serpent’s pit for the sake of a ‘temptress’ and leaves it crushed and deranged. And whenever the narrator comes across his different mirror images, he feels so shy that he wishes ‘to go through the floor’.24 This happens once when the harlot forces a kiss on him just as her father, an old hunchback, enters the room, even though he does not see them. It happens once again when he is passionately kissing his brother-in-law – another mirror image of the harlot – and the boy’s father emerges from his shop, even though he does not see them.25 Clearly, the kisses are a tactic for diverting attention from the fact that he ‘wishes to go through the floor’ each time he comes close to the old man, even though the latter is unaware of the embarrassing circumstances. This is reaffirmed by the narrator’s similarly acute embarrassment when he comes close to another mirror image of his father/uncle (and symbol of his own fallen self). When he buys a jug from the old man, the latter bursts into hair-rising laughter and the narrator once again wishes that he would ‘go through the floor’. In the story of the ethereal woman (Part I) the old and hunchbacked hearse driver gives him an antique Ray jug and says that he knows him well. In the return to a past existence (Part II) the old and hunchbacked odds-and-ends man sells it to him.26 The odds-and-ends seller is ugly, crushed and spent, but is not one of the rabble – the abstract collectivity whom the narrator viciously and mercilessly condemns – for he is of the narrator’s own flesh, and even though he is the wrong self, he is not an ordinary man. Describing the dead and decrepit objects in front of him while buying

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the jug, he says that those worthless objects had a power over him of which no living person was capable.27 And when – towards the end of Part II – he learns that his wife is now sleeping with the old hunchback, he not only shows sympathy for him (in contrast to the rabble) but goes so far as to describe him as a symbol of the creation: But this time I did not altogether disagree with my wife’s taste, because the old odds-and-ends man was not a spoilt, common, worthless individual – one of those shitty men who are attractive to dumb and sex-hungry women. All those layers of pain and suffering which had settled on his face, and the wretchedness which marked his existence . . . made him look like a demi-god . . . a symbolic representative of the creation.28

The old and spent hunchback and his various mirror images are none other than his own other self. They both fascinate and repel him until the end of Part II when he becomes ‘the odds-and-ends man himself ’. This anti-climax involves a discoverable, but subtle and crooked process which is somewhat confused and covered up by his deliberately misleading diversions. Once, when he is looking into the mirror aimlessly, making ‘grotesque’ or ‘frightening’ faces, he sees the faces of the hunchback, the butcher and even his wife ‘changing one into another at the snap of a finger’. At first it occurs to him that these faces ‘were in myself, part of myself ’, but – perhaps for the readers’ benefit – he quickly dismisses the idea.29 This process becomes more and more rapid as Part II draws to a conclusion. When he disguises himself as the old hunchback, and goes into his wife’s room ‘to cut up [her] flesh’, and give it to the butcher to put on sale, he feels that ‘the spirit of the butcher and the odds-and-ends man’ at one and the same time enter his body.30 But he gives up the idea and runs away, apparently because he hears the old man’s laughter from behind the door. Likewise, when, sometime later, he is talking to his wife’s youthful brother, the narrator – suddenly and uncontrollably – bursts out into a ‘dry and chilling laughter’ such that he ‘could not even recognise his own voice’.31 Both the hunchback and the butcher are trading in the same commodity: the one in sin, the other in the sale of flesh. Together with the narrator, they make up an ordinary human being, one like most of the others, like most of us. On the other hand, it is precisely such a synthesis that the narrator does not wish to recognize. The good and the evil must be kept apart. And, as it happens, in the end, it is not evil that is transmitted into good. On the contrary, it is the spirit which is annihilated (fana) by the flesh; freedom which surrenders to necessity; true consciousness which is destroyed by false consciousness; the ego which replaces natural awareness; reality which is conquered by appearance; the narrator who becomes the hunchback. These symbolic references to religion, mysticism, sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy are intended to bring out the simplicity, familiarity, breadth and depth of the narrator’s predicament, and the author’s concern, in the novel.

The blind owl The process continues. Once he sees a phantom ‘with a familiar face’, ‘like the face of this butcher opposite my window’:

 The Blind Owl 77 Perhaps this shadow was my ‘other self [hamzad-e man]’. . . . When I got up to light the candle, the phantom faded away. I looked at my face carefully in the mirror. My image looked stronger than myself . . . I felt that I could not stay alone with my image in the same room. At the same time, I was afraid that if I tried to run away it would run after me.32

Watching his own face in the mirror is the narrator’s most frequent obsession in Part  II,  and the images which he sees and relates say much about his own mirror images in the story. When, on one occasion, he is watching the street through his window, he sees the butcher cutting up the meat with a knife which has a bone holder. Next, he observes a similar knife among the objects sold by the old hunchback. Later, he sees in his dream that ‘someone like the odds-and-ends man [is standing] in front of the butcher shop [and] holding a kitchen knife in his hand.’33 Having woken up, he watches the butcher at work from the upper window of his home and wonders whether he was in fact a professional butcher, rather than one who was just pretending. He then gives us a clue as to what and whom he might really be: Perhaps every night when he rubs his hand on his wife’s body he thinks of the meat at the shop and wonders how much money he could make from killing his wife [and selling her flesh].34

And further: After they had cleaned my room, I went back to it and decided to do something terrible: I went into the anteroom and took my kitchen knife which had a bone holder out of the box. . . . This decision originated from a long time ago.35

And, without spelling it out, he goes on to say that he ‘did not know what there was in the butcher’s behaviour which instinctively impelled me to imitate it, [as if] I was destined to enjoy doing what he does’.36 Still, he does not explicitly say that he had decided to kill his wife and cut up her body. But he does allude to it sometime later when he dresses himself up as the old hunchback and, feeling ‘as if the spirit of the butcher and the odds-and-ends man had at once entered [his] body’,37 goes to kill his wife. However, as noted earlier, he changes his mind, apparently because he hears a chilling laughter from behind the door. He then throws the knife away thinking that ‘it was that kitchen knife which had put those ideas into my mind’.38 But the knife is determined not to leave him. It turns up the next day on the breakfast tray which his foster mother brings up to him. She explains that she had bought it from the hunchback across the road. He examines it and is satisfied that it is his own knife. The process is well under way. Just before the final, and fatal, act is played, he is talking to his boy brother-in-law when, inexplicably, he bursts into a chilling laughter. And then, suddenly in a flash of consciousness that has very little connection with the circumstances:

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Sadeq Hedayat It was then that I understood why the butcher wipes off the knife – which has a bone holder – on the meat joints with such joy. . . . At long last I discovered that I was a demigod.39

Thus, he becomes a demi-god ‘free from the base and contemptible needs of the people’: the appellation is one which (as noted earlier) he had once before used for the wretched odds-and-ends man despite his dejected appearance. And it is at this very point that he directly and explicitly reveals the identity of the blind owl: My shadow looked more real than myself – as if the odds-and-ends man, the butcher, my nanny and my whorish wife had all been my shadows, shadows within which I was imprisoned . . . I looked like an owl . . . my shadow on the wall looked like an owl.40

This is the odds-and-ends man on the wall shortly before the narrator turns into the old man himself. For it perfectly fits the narrator’s own physical description of him, with eyes which lack eyelashes, and a hunch in his back, wrapped up in rags:41 the blind owl. He disguises himself once more as the old man, this time not intending to kill his wife, but hoping to sleep with her. But the kitchen knife which for an apparently unknown reason is still in his hand hits and kills her instantly. The first time that he disguises himself as the hunchback, the butcher in him has the upper hand. He goes to kill and cut up his wife into pieces when the old man frightens him away by his familiar laughter. The second time, when he has effectively become the old hunchback, the butcher takes over and kills his wife. Thus, at the end of Part II, he becomes the hunchback and the butcher combined. In a life several centuries earlier – which is relived, experienced again, or vividly remembered in an unconscious state – the narrator had been longing for selfrealization, for peace and happiness, in the shape of loving and being loved by his wife, the harlot. But, when the opportunity arrives, he falls into the degradation of the butcher and the hunchback combined. In his present life, on the other hand, he has a similar obsession with the apparently abstract theme of his paintings. But, when the opportunity arrives – that is, when the harlot reappears as her pure self in the shape of the ethereal woman – she ‘wilts’ and dies. He cuts up her body, and the old hunchback helps him bury the pieces; that is, he becomes the butcher and hunchback combined, once again. His mother/wife/ethereal woman also represents the pure and the imperfect in the same ‘person’. The mother was a lingam dancer who had been expelled from the temple for losing her virginity and was instrumental in the death/derangement/disappearance of the father/uncle. His wife, with whom he never sleeps, is not a virgin when they get married, becomes a whore and enjoys torturing him. And the ethereal woman whom he never really meets is the mother-wife’s idealized counterpart, abstract antithesis or ‘pure self ’. The functional analogy between his mother/wife and the naga snake (apart from its thin Indo-Buddhist allusions which are meant to add a little colour to the form and help confuse the substance) is familiar from its biblical and Koranic sources, and has been greatly used in Persian literature and folklore alike for centuries. For example

 The Blind Owl 79 we read in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh: ‘Women and the dragons best be buried alive / And the world be rid of both these filthy lives.’42 What the narrator most desperately wants, and fails to achieve, emerges in two different forms – at two different levels – which are closely connected with each other, such that triumph in one would mean victory in the other as well. In its concrete form, he is longing for a ‘pure’ and ‘perfect’ love affair in which he is wanted totally and exclusively for what he is, in the same way as he is prepared (or so he believes) to want his wife/ethereal woman. And, whether he knows it or not, he regards the slightest imperfection in such a relationship as a sign of being rejected, a sign that his wife is not a good woman but a whore. In its wider and more abstract form, the narrator is looking for a complete liberation or self-realization. But the feeling of rejection and alienation is real and has roots in reality: he is alienated because by his own behaviour he has alienated everyone among ‘the rabble’. This being the aim and objective, he himself believes his wish is impossible to achieve, for him as for everyone else. Therefore, death suggests itself as the solution: I remembered (no, I suddenly got the inspiration) that I had a bottle of wine in my anteroom which contained naga-snake poison, and a sip from it would annihilate the whole nightmare of living. . . . What better thought was there than that of giving [the harlot] a chalice of that wine, and taking one myself, and let us both die after a spasm.43

This passage, as it is developed later, is as good as any other to expose the two layers or levels of the narrator’s desiderata: perfect love, and perfection itself. What’s love? For the rabble it is nothing but a temporary debauchery. . . . But my love for her was something very different. . . . Her strangely slanted eyes, her small, halfopen, mouth, her husky but quiet voice – all of these reminded me of many painful and distant memories, and within them I could see the thing which I was deprived of, the thing that concerned me and was a part of me, but had been taken from me.44

The story’s conclusion – nay, its moral, its arguments, everything that is in it – is that perfection, liberation, natural awareness, perfect love and all of their equivalents are man’s impossible goal, and that man (as opposed to the rabble) is doomed to failure. And, although energy, vitality and beauty are desirable, there will be no escape from death and destruction. This ontological viewpoint is familiar from Hedayat’s other psycho-fictions, and especially the short story, ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’ (see Chapter 8).

The narrator and the author In Chapter 8 we shall discuss the striking similarity of structure, substance and conclusion between The Blind Owl and some of Hedayat’s other psycho-fictional

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stories. Here we shall simply offer a brief comparison between the narrator’s thoughts, beliefs and worries, and those of the author himself. A recurring theme in The Blind Owl is the narrator’s complaints about the burden of his heritage. He mentions, several times, that he has inherited a jug of poisoned wine. And, on one occasion, he says that, upon leaving him forever, his mother had left him a jug of wine filled with naga poison ‘as a going away present’.45 Somewhere else in the story he wonders whether the very ‘texture and make-up’ of his face is not a product of centuries of ‘obsession, copulation and failure’, thinking that he is ‘the guardian of this hereditary burden’.46 Similar sentiments are encountered in a later short story, ‘The Dark Room’, sometimes expressed in exactly the same words.47 And in an earlier short story, ‘Davood the Hunchback’, the wretched man’s physical deformity has been described as a genetic and thus inescapable part of his life.48 Whether these remarks have been affected by the author’s psychological moods, they are certainly consistent with the author’s rather original, if obscure, sense of destiny. The death wish is woven into the book, but in one instance the narrator issues an éloge for death which closely resembles Hedayat’s own short essay of 1927 on the same subject: Only death does not lie. With death there remains no illusion. We are born of death, and it is death which saves us from the deception of living.49

And, a few pages later, the narrator goes on to reproach himself for not taking his own life50 in words which are almost identical with a similar self-reproach in his early short story, ‘Buried Alive’ (see Chapter 3). In 1948, Hedayat was to write to Jamalzadeh: ‘I can neither indulge in self-pity nor deceive myself, nor have I got the guts to commit suicide.’51 Another recurring theme of the story is the narrator’s acute nostalgia for his childhood, when he was ‘carefree’: I wish I could sleep well as I used to when I was an innocent child – comfortably, and free from my anxiety . . .52 Suddenly, the landscape looked familiar. I remembered that, as a child, I had once come here on the Thirteenth Day of Nowruz (sizdah beh dar). My mother-in-law and that harlot were also with us. All day, she and I were chasing each other behind these very cypress trees. Another group of children joined us later, but I don’t remember who they were. . . . Once when I was running after this harlot herself, she slipped and fell into the River Suran.53

This childhood nostalgia is familiar from some of Hedayat’s other psycho-fictional stories, both before and after The Blind Owl. For example, in ‘Buried Alive’, ‘The Dark Room’ and ‘Stray Dog’, childhood, infancy and even, in one case, mere foetal existence are longed for because of the ‘freedom from care’, ‘protection’ and ‘warmth’ of which they remind the unfortunate anti-hero, man and dog alike.54 In The Blind Owl itself, the sight of a rocky mountain reminds the narrator of his foster mother. Rajjaleh-ha, the rabble, are perhaps the most familiar category both in Hedayat’s fiction and in his letters and conversations. Yet, as we have seen, they are not what is

 The Blind Owl 81 normally understood by the term. By ‘the rabble’ he means many an ordinary person, perhaps including those who, especially in the more technological societies, are admired for being ‘sharp’, ‘clever’, ‘enterprising’ and ‘successful’: I felt as if this world was not made for the likes of me. It was made for a bunch of beggarly, shameless, brazen, pedantic, thuggish and insatiable people [that is] for the insiders who were made to fit in this world, and who flattered and begged the mighty of the earth and the heavens just like a hungry dog which wags its tail for a piece of bone in front of the butcher shop . . .55 I was aimlessly walking in the alleyways amid the rabble, all of whom had a greedy look on their faces and were running after money and sex. I had no need for looking at them, for seeing one was as good as seeing all. They were all made up of a mouth which was connected to their genitals by a fistful of intestines . . .56 Why should I have cared to think of the ignorant and rabble. They were well, they ate well, they slept well, and they fucked well. They had never felt the slightest of my pains, and death had not rubbed its wings on their faces every minute of the time.57

Similar sentiments may be found in Hedayat’s other works, although the view that they refer to ‘the bourgeoisie’ or any other social class is unfounded. In fact, the previous passages allude to anyone with such personality traits. Another familiar theme is unusual attitudes towards, or strange encounters with, women. And while the more substantial examples will be discussed in more detail in the chapter that follows, a relatively unknown example may be briefly mentioned here. In ‘Katiya’, the Austrian engineer tells the narrator about a Russian woman of that name whom he had met in a P.O.W. camp in Siberia. She was the only woman who had ever got close to him (how close, it is difficult to know), and had ‘left an unforgettable impression on [him]’: You see, I’d always have to be approached by women, and would never take the initiative myself. For if I did, I’d feel as if the woman has accepted me, not for my own sake but for the sake of money or flattery or something else apart from me as such. But if a woman [and, apparently, any woman] takes the first steps towards me then I’d worship her.58

Similar, but usually less direct, rationalizations are echoed in some of Hedayat’s other works. They are implicit in The Blind Owl everywhere, and almost explicit when the odds-and-ends man is contrasted with ‘one of those shitty men who attract dumb and sex hungry women to themselves’.59 Regarding the author himself, it is virtually certain that Hedayat had never had a long and intimate relationship with a woman (or man, for that matter), and Qa’emiyan’s ‘explanation’ – that such a woman would have had to be an altogether exceptional person – looks more like a diagnosis.60 The question is occasionally posed on whether or not he was a homosexual. This is rather curious, because the obsession with women in many of his psycho-fictions shows a great deal of evidence for doubting it. If this

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preoccupation had been with men, the question might have made some sense – but with women? And, as a matter of fact, no male partner has been known in Hedayat’s life. The apparent alienation from women does not necessarily mean that Hedayat had never had sex with women. Indeed, in two of his letters to Minovi (one written in 1933, the second in 1936) he implies that he has occasional contacts with prostitutes.61 On the other hand, none of the leading figures in his psycho-fictions have happy or normal relationships with women, and whenever they find themselves alone with a woman they shy away on one pretext or another. In ‘Buried Alive’, the narrator inexplicably does not keep his date with his girlfriend when she is coming to visit him at home for the first time. In ‘The Broken Mirror’, the Iranian student breaks up his friendship with a Parisian girl on a shallow pretext. In ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’, the recluse has never had an intimate relationship with a woman until the night he takes a prostitute home and kills himself afterwards. In ‘The Masks’, the man and the woman die in a car crash before reaching the town in which they had planned to sleep together. In ‘Dead End’, the man had married his cousin, but divorced her before the marriage was consummated for a flimsy reason. In ‘S.G.L.L.’, the man declines the woman’s invitation to love-making and explains that he is in love with loving itself. In general, women in the psycho-fictions resemble either angles or whores, though this is not true of them in Hedayat’s stories about the life of common people: the women in ‘Alaviyeh Khanom’, ‘The Ghouls’, ‘Seeking Absolution’ and others are ordinary people with all the vices and virtues which may be attributed to any woman. It is the women in his narrators’ own class and cultural milieu who, for various reasons, are difficult to have normal relations with.62 A psychoanalytical interpretation of The Blind Owl and its author might suggest itself from much of the earlier evidence. In the case of The Blind Owl this has been attempted by Meqdadi, although he limits the argument to the contents of this novel alone, while assuming that it ends at the point when the narrator ‘becomes’ the oddsand-ends seller (at the end of Part II).63 There are, however, many interpretative pitfalls in applying a specific psychoanalytic model such as the Freudian notion of the oedipal complex. As is well known, the oedipal complex theory is, within its own context, an unfalsifiable (and therefore strictly unscientific) hypothesis. Furthermore, symptoms of affective depression may appear in Hedayat’s life and works, but affective depression is not necessarily explained by the concept of the oedipal complex. Perhaps the most important consideration is to avoid the damage of psychological reductionism, whereby a piece of creative work and/or its creator are reduced to their psychological dimensions and characteristics alone. In any strictly psychological interpretation of Hedayat’s works it is also pertinent to bear in mind the author’s own conscious and deliberate use of psychological knowledge – for example, the fact that in Vagh-vagh Sahab he makes explicit use of Freudian psychology – although this would not necessarily exclude an analysis of the unconscious psychological traits of the author, his plots and his characters. Nor would the Jungian concepts of animus and anima, or even ‘the shadow’, analytically explain The Blind Owl as the first two simply represent male and female characteristics, and the shadow in Jung broadly corresponds to evil, whereas in some other of Hedayat’s short stories, notably ‘Afaringan’, it represents the soul. In a word,

 The Blind Owl 83 psychological interpretations are useful and relevant only when they are neither too narrow nor too exclusive (see Chapter 14). What then is the relationship between the author and the narrator? Clearly, The Blind Owl is not a description of real events in the author’s own life. But it does reflect the author’s own psychological moods, and some of his other, more concrete, values and habits as well. For example, painting was one of Hedayat’s hobbies, and he has left a few interesting sketches behind, including a sketch of the antique Ray jug, with a portrait of the ethereal woman, which illustrates the opening page of the duplicated Bombay manuscript. This interest in painting and painters is also reflected in the short story ‘Buried Alive’, and in the play Parvin. On the other hand, even assuming that one of the abovementioned theories – the oedipal complex, affective depression and so on. – were correct, it would not explain the novel as such, for the simple reason that not many of those who display similar personality traits produce great works of art. Genius may sometimes point to madness, but madness does not point to genius. Those with unusual sensibilities may, and sometimes do, display characteristics which would otherwise correspond to known personality disorders. In other words, what is responsible for their unusual achievements may be also the root of their fits and frailties. Both Cassandra and John the Baptist suffered the contempt and persecution of lesser people precisely because they had been gifted with greater visions but were declared mad, alike by the legendary Trojans of ancient times, and by the historiclegendary Jews of the early Christian era. ‘He is mad who did not go mad,’ said Rumi in a verse which affects medieval mysticism and modern psychology with equal profundity. Saints and martyrs have suffered their fates because of their exceptional moral commitments, whatever their psychology, and however it may have been influenced. Philosophers, scientists, writers, composers, revolutionary heroes and military geniuses have been known to suffer public or private, social or psychological torment, alienation, deprivation and self-denial in consequence of their beliefs, visions, commitments or courage. Hedayat’s anti-heroes are underrated, belittled and ignored. They are misplaced, angry and estranged. They have unusual insights because they are outsiders. They fail because they are too good to succeed. They lose because they refuse to pay the cost of winning. They condemn ‘this world of baseness, poverty and destitution’,64 whence they feel they have been ‘dishonourably’65 discharged, and which they attack despite its crushing immensity. They seek friendship, warmth, truth, love and protection from the evil intent of the rabble and the mob. They cannot and will not lie, cheat, beg or flatter for money or love. They wish to run away, hide, disappear and die, because they feel they do not fit in the existing framework. They see the world as a whirlpool of falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice, cruelty, deception and self-preservation – a world of circular science, decorative art and bottomless philosophy – in which there is no place for them. They are lost.

Hedayat and Roland Barthes: A digression Bathes’s theory of ‘death of the author’ was the ultimate point of distinguishing the author from the text and emphasising the role of the reader in determining its meaning.

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According to Barthes, before the renaissance it was the oral or written tradition itself that mattered, not their creator. To him, as soon as an event was described, it was separated from its author. However, after the renaissance this tradition was lost and the text was thought to show the life and ideas of the author, as if the author was the same as the narrator, until the twentieth century when, in the ultimate analysis, it is the reader who writes the text, and in that sense the author is dead. This means that the reader’s take of the work is all that there is to it, that ‘authorial intention’ is totally irrelevant, and the author’s life, habits, ideas and experiences are equally immaterial to the meaning of his work.66 Barthes theory may be explained by the argument that the wider and more popular the work, the reader’s or listener’s view is more important in making its meaning than its creator. In ancient times the arts were popular and were not normally identified with the artists, but in classical times, when they became more exclusive and confined to the production and consumption of the elite, they tended to be identified with the person of the artists. But in modern democratic times, when the arts have once again become widespread and, in that sense, popular, their receivers and the public once again determine their meaning. However, in another work, Barthes divides literary works into two groups: ‘lisible’ or ‘readerly’ and ‘scriptible’ or ‘writerly’. Readers do not play a large role in giving meaning to readerly works; whereas they have the dominant role in determining the sense and meaning in writerly works. Relating this theory to the death of the author, it would mean that post-renaissance texts, from Shakespeare to Hugo, tend to be readerly, while modern works, from Kafka to Becket, are generally writerly.67 Now applying these ideas to Hedayat’s works, it would readily look as if his stories about the life of the common folk are readerly, whereas his psycho-fictions are writerly. The paradox, however, is that death of the author looks more appropriate to the first group, since he is detached from them, whereas, by the earlier evidence, his personality traits are reflected in the latter group. Hedayat is to a considerable extent detached from his critical realist stories which, however, are more readily read and absorbed. But his own personality seems to be more involved with his subjects in his psycho-fictions, which – to varying degrees – require the reader to pause and wonder about their ‘real’ meaning.

Appendix: The formal structure of The Blind Owl A misunderstanding about the formal structure of The Blind Owl has led to some serious mistakes in the interpretation of its substance. In particular, Kamshad seems to have overlooked the existence of Link 1, therefore thinking that Part II of the story is also meant to be a contemporary experience. This is why he ventures the suggestion that perhaps Part II should have come before Part I.68 On the other hand, ignoring both Link 1 and Link 2, Bashiri has, in his gratuitous analysis, claimed that the two parts of the story are in fact entirely separate. According to Bashiri, Part I is an occult expression of the author’s decision, with ‘the help of the old man’, to ‘bury Rilke’s Notebooks’,

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Figure 7.1  A sketch of the formal structure of the Blind Owl.

which, on returning to Tehran from Paris, he is said to have ‘secretly’ carried with him ‘in his pocket’! Part II is an equally occult and mysterious representation by the author of a story from Indian serpent lore, the myth of the Buddha-Carita.69 We have already alluded to some of these ideas in the text earlier, and shall discuss them more extensively in Chapter 8. However, some of these views, and those of Bashiri in particular, could not possibly stand once the novel’s formal structure is correctly understood. As is clear from our brief summary given earlier, Part I refers to a contemporary experience which turns out to be the counterpart of a similar experience in a bygone age, Part II. And the Links relate them to each other back and forth, as in Figure 7.1.

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8

The origins of The Blind Owl

The question of ‘sources’ and ‘influences’ has been subject to a good deal of discussion ever since The Blind Owl came to light in the 1940s. The Tudeh party inspired the dominant view at the time and for quite some time to come, which until recently still persisted though with much less force and credibility: that it reflected the political situation under Reza Shah. Ehsan Tabari inaugurated this interpretation in a 1947 article. While alluding to The Blind Owl as having ‘emanated from the darkness and bitterness of [Hedayat’s] spirit’ – something that he regards as unworthy of a progressive writer – he nevertheless regards the work as ‘the damning evidence for the worthless social situation at the time when it was written, which demonstrates the greatness of the writer’s soul who has been suffering in that suffocating atmosphere.’1 However, within a few years, and especially after Hedayat’s death, other Tudeh critics were to go much further than the master himself. For example: With the intensification of [Reza Shah’s] dictatorship, Hedayat slips further into the darkness of disappointment and pessimism. The pressure of the dictatorship is continuously growing in order to strengthen the shaky base of its rule, and the apparatus of inquisition barbarically tries to investigate the people’s consciences. . . . It is in the midst of this whole situation that Hedayat talks through the mouth of the blind owl.2

Enough has been said in the foregoing chapters, however, to show that, essentially, The Blind Owl was not a product of Reza Shah’s dictatorship, although Hedayat’s unhappiness with the absence of freedom in that period is beyond dispute. Another line of inquiry which has been more successful in recent decades is the attempt to discover the sources of The Blind Owl in the works of other writers, and even (though less seriously) in some Buddhist myths and legends. Kafka, Sartre, Khayyam, Rilke, Gerard de Nerval, Poe and others have been cited as influences in the making of the novel. As a recent critic has pointed out, to find the influence of previous writers in an author’s work does not necessarily diminish the authenticity and originality of his own product.3 Indeed, she speaks about ‘affinities’ rather than sources or influences, but one can go even further and pose the possibility of impacts made on a writer’s works by those of others. In a platitudinous sense, any writer is bound to have been ‘influenced’ by the culture and literature in which he has steeped himself, if we are not to assume that he has been thinking and writing in a void.

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In the final stages of preparing the first edition of this book for publication, Michael Beard’s close study of The Blind Owl as a Western Novel was published. Making use of  a  variety of Western literary sources as well as Hedayat’s other works, Beard focusses attention on the Western background to the novel in two distinct processes: ‘the process of influence and the process of communication between cultures’.4 Time and space make it impossible to respond at some length to Beard in this chapter. In any case, my own aim here is rather different: to try and show the vision of life and conception of the world which runs through Hedayat’s psycho-fictions, aside from the literary means with which he has chosen to express them, and to argue that The Blind Owl’s basic story has been told before by the author. The novel is thus seen as tackling a universal problem which transcends cultural boundaries, whatever Western or Eastern influences there may be in its literary make-up.

External sources It will be the contention of this chapter that the sources of The Blind Owl are best discovered among those of the author’s previous works which have been described in this book as his psycho-fictional group, although this does not negate the possible impact of Western and other sources on these earlier works themselves. This means two things. First, that the novel’s ideas and conception, and the attitude and psychology behind them, have developed over a long period. Second, that the process has led to the partial use of content, form and structure in earlier works. However, before proceeding with this argument, it will be necessary to examine the possible sources in the works of other writers which one may detect more or less clearly: this is the sense in which the term ‘external’ is used in the previous heading.

Khayyam The first possible influence from Khayyam which suggests itself is in the title of the novel. For in a famous quatrain Khayyam speaks of how an owl was sitting on the ruins of a once great castle, asking where it all went. Except that Khayyam uses the word ‘fakhteh’, rather than ‘buf ’ for ‘owl’, whereas in fact ‘joghd’ and ‘bum’ are the most common Persian words for the bird. At any rate, little significance can be attached to this coincidence, especially as the owl has always represented a bad omen in Persian culture and literature – contrary to the status of the owl as a symbol of wisdom in the Western culture – and somewhat in line with that of the magpie (ghurab) in Arabia. The phrase ‘blind owl’ occurs only once before in Hedayat’s works. Curiously enough, this is one of his (and Farzad’s) ‘cases’ in their satirical collection Vagh-vagh Sahab, where an ailing old man is said to be ‘lonely and depressed like a blind owl’.5 In the novel, the physical significance of the blindness is in the old odds-and-ends seller’s lashless, ‘half-burnt’ eyes, while its moral and psychological implications are in the wanderings of the narrator’s soul which finally occupies the old man’s body. In the passing reference of the satire, on the other hand, its significance is not clear, though the ‘loneliness and depression’ of the old man may be of some relevance here as well. Obviously, the phrase –

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 89 an invention of Hedayat’s – had been in his mind long before he wrote the novel, and it is possible that he already had it in mind as the title of such a project.6 In Chapters 2 and 5, we discussed Hedayat’s comments on Khayyam’s thoughts and ideas, pointing out that his analysis seems to bear the stamp of his own views rather than putting forward a detached discussion of Khayyam. This being the case in his own direct analysis of Khayyam, it is unlikely that any genuinely Khayyamian vision of human life may have influenced his novel. On the other hand, the symbolism of the jug of wine is very likely to have come out of Khayyam’s book, for it frequently occurs in his poetry with anthropomorphic overtones: ‫در کارگه کوزه گری رفتم دوش‬ ‫دیدم دو هزار کوزه گویا و خموش‬ ‫ناگاه یکی کوزه بر آورد خروش‬ ‫کو کوزه گر و کوزه خر وکوزه فروش ؟‬ To the Potter’s workshop I went last night, Many a jug, silently eloquent, was in sight, One jug suddenly came alive and cried: Whither the Potter, the sellers, and those who buy?7 Ashes to ashes, dust to jugs.

In fact, Hedayat’s own introductory essay to his second edition of the quatrains (see Chapter 5) contains a few basic tools and concepts which he has later used in The Blind Owl. For example, he says that, while Khayyam believes in the ‘transmutation and transformation’ of the human body, he does not believe in a ‘separate soul’: ‘If we are lucky, our bodily particles would be used in the making of a jug of wine.’8 But he goes further than that, and presents an even more personal interpretation of Khayyam on metaphysical questions. Wine has a profound and mysterious meaning in Khayyam’s poetry, he says, though Khayyam’s meaning is different from the Sufis’ symbolic usage of wine as the agent of atonement or reunion. Wine in the jug, he continues, ‘is like the soul in the body’, and it represents the pains and sufferings of the person whose dust has been used in the making of the jug itself.9 In its several manifestations as a jug of wine, scattered across The Blind Owl, the Ray jug has its origin here. Both the jug and the poisoned wine which it contains symbolize the body and soul of a wretched and tortured human being, in the past as well as the present. The tools have thus been borrowed from Khayyam, but the interpretation and the application are Hedayat’s, and have little to do with Khayyam, his philosophy or even his (much simpler) meaning of wine and the jug.10

Rilke and Buddhism Khayyam is the only major Iranian figure as a possible source of The Blind Owl. Others, including Rilke and Buddhism, are all non-Iranian. In what follows, the reason why we have brought these two seemingly unrelated examples of the non-Iranian possible sources under the same heading will become clear.

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In a seminal review article on Hedayat and The Blind Owl (written in 1951), Jalal Al-e Ahmad pointed out that one of the novel’s passages had been inspired by Rilke’s Notebooks. In the same article, he noted some use of the Indo-Buddhist culture in The Blind Owl (the lingam dancer, for example), and speculated about the possible role of Buddhist concepts and categories, including the Nirvana.11 Al-e Ahmad’s reference to Rilke’s Notebooks is very specific, since he gives a footnote reference to a French edition of the Notebooks together with the page number where the corresponding passage occurs.12 Many years later, Manuchehr Mohandessi noted the Rilke connection independently, for he wrote that ‘a review of the considerable criticism of Hedayat’s work fails to discover that either he or his critics have mentioned the influence of Rilke, or his familiarity with the Notebooks’.13 The similarity between the corresponding passages in the Notebooks and The Blind Owl is striking. And the fact that it was documented by Al-e Ahmad only a few months after Hedayat’s death strongly suggests that the matter had been mentioned to him by Hedayat himself. At most, Hedayat may have deliberately copied and incorporated the passage in question from the Notebooks. Yet Mohandessi’s reference to Rilke’s influence and, perhaps even more dramatically, his belief that Hedayat had ‘not mentioned it’14 to others was used by Bashiri to suggest that Part I of The Blind Owl is nothing but a symbolic account of Hedayat’s actual burial of Rilke’s Notebooks ‘with the help of the old man’. Bashiri’s gratuitous analysis of The Blind Owl is briefly as follows. Parts I and II of the novel are entirely unrelated, except to the extent that the whole book represents ‘the Aryan nihilistic view of the cosmos’!15 Part I is an account of the author’s burial of his own copy of Rilke’s Notebooks after he returned home from France, although Bashiri offers no evidence that this in fact took place, nor any reason or argument why he should have wanted to bury his own copy of the book in this strange way. According to Bashiri, Part I’s ethereal woman is none other than Rilke’s book which the author desperately wanted to hide from the eyes of other readers. But why? And why the Notebooks, rather than so many other books which made an impression on Hedayat far beyond the use of a single passage out of its own context? If the burial was ritualistic, what were the (primitive or civilized) rites that lay behind it? If it was not, the burial of a single copy of the book (in the French version) would hardly stop others from having access to it. As it happens, the passage in The Blind Owl which looks like a copy of the one in the Notebooks occurs not in Part I but in Part II of Hedayat’s novel.16 Why, then, should Part I be said to describe the act of burying a copy of Rilke’s book? So much for Bashiri’s analysis of Part I of The Blind Owl, which he claims is totally unrelated to Part II. This, according to Bashiri, is an occult representation of a story from Indian serpent lore by Asvaghosa which describes the life of the Buddha. This claim has been critically discussed, in some detail, by two other critics.17 Here, we shall dwell on those aspects which have not been discussed by them. In the foregoing chapter it was explained how a fleeting remark by Kamshad may have led Bashiri into the belief that the two parts of the novel are entirely unrelated to each other. Thus, our analysis in the previous chapter of the novel’s formal structure leaves little room for any theory which is firmly based on the view that the two parts of the novel are wholly separate.18 As noted, Part I is contemporary, while Part II is a past

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 91 ‘remembered’ as present in a state beyond normal consciousness. In Part I, the narrator explicitly mentions Shah Abdol’azim, the small holy town with a shrine of the same name in the south of Tehran, which stands on parts of the ancient city of Ray.19 On the other hand, there is much evidence in Part II that its story unfolds in the Middle Ages, the heyday of that ancient city. The matter is clear enough from the text itself. Fortunately, however, there is direct evidence for it, as well as confirmation from an exchange of letters between Hedayat and Minovi. As noted in Chapter 7, in a letter of 17 June 1937 from London to Bombay Minovi notes that Part II of the novel occurs during medieval times and criticizes the apparently anachronistic use of such things as opium, tobacco and spectacles. In reply Hedayat writes: This is not a historical novel, but a kind of historical fantasie [sic] which the narrator has imagined as a result of simulation [sic] or instinct dissimulation [sic] and has romancée [sic] in his own [contemporary] life. It is not a historical narrative, but something like an inconscient [sic] fiction.20

If in the author’s own words the novel is a ‘historical fantasy’ (Part II) which the narrator has ‘romanticized’ in his contemporary life (Part I), then Bashiri’s argument that Part I is an account of the burial of Rilke’s Notebooks and Part II a retelling of the myth of Buddha-Carita is void of any substance. This is not to deny Hedayat’s familiarity with, and even sympathy for, Buddhism, some traces of which are observed in aspects of his life and works. But there is no evidence that he had any extensive or profound knowledge of the subject, or that he had made any systematic study of it. Hedayat translated a couple of Pahlavi texts as soon as he learned to read that ancient language in Bombay. Also, he translated some of Kafka’s works, and wrote ‘The Message of Kafka’, when he took to the Czech author in the 1940s. He would have done the same with Buddhism had he moved from a vague sympathy to a degree of commitment and learned more about it. Indeed, Hedayat’s relative lack of familiarity with Indian culture is even more evident from those aspects of it which he has colourfully used in The Blind Owl. As a scholar of Indian culture has pointed out (in a foreword to Bashiri’s own book), lingam temples belong to the Shivaiyst, not Buddhist, tradition; and (contrary to Hedayat’s belief) lingam dancers are meant to be prostitutes, not virgins.

Kafka, Sartre and existentialism Yet, the strongest and most persistent view prevailing among Iranian readers and critics is that The Blind Owl is an almost direct product of contemporary European literature, and an imitation of the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Franz Kafka in particular. There even exist colourful legends about Hedayat’s personal friendship with Sartre, although the two men never met, and it is unlikely that Sartre had read anything by Hedayat before the latter’s death. Apart from that, Sartre’s Nausée was published in 1938, two years after The Blind Owl’s first (limited) edition, and Hedayat read it in the early 1940s when Jamalzadeh sent him a copy from Switzerland.21 It was in 1945 that Hedayat translated Sartre’s short story ‘The Wall’ in Sokhan, the new literary periodical edited

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by Parviz Khanlari.22 There is no evidence of Hedayat’s further involvement with Sartre and his works. The fact that Hedayat’s suicide has been frequently cited, by Iranian literary experts and laymen alike, as evidence of his existentialist beliefs is itself a measure of the confusion both about him and about existentialism. As late as 1971, some well-known Iranian critics agreed, in a lively exchange in the newspaper Keyhan, that Hedayat was an existentialist, but disagreed on the desirability or otherwise of existentialism itself. It would be enough to point to Hedayat’s utter and intractable determinism in thought as well as literature as proof that he could not have had any agreement with basic existentialist ideas if he had known anything about them at all. The same is true of his suicide, which is repeatedly invoked to show his existentialist credentials: some existentialists may find life ‘boring’ or ‘absurd’, but they neither preach nor practice suicide. Kafka is another matter, and the view that he has profoundly influenced Hedayat’s work has its origin in two undeniable facts. One is Hedayat’s explicit interest in, even exaltation of, Kafka; the other is the darkness of mood and environment in his psychofictional works. On the other hand, Hedayat’s translations of Kafka, and his long essay on Kafka and his works, belong to the last years of his life, long after The Blind Owl and similar works had been written. Kafka did not publish much of his work in his lifetime: his texts were published posthumously by Max Brod (contrary to Kafka’s express will), and remained obscure, even in Europe, until the 1940s. There exists no written or oral evidence that Hedayat had known about Kafka and his works before this period. Besides, there is nothing specific in the structure and substance of Kafka’s works – The Trial, The Castle, America, ‘The Penal Colony’, ‘Judgement’, ‘Metamorphosis’ and so on – which finds its way into Hedayat’s psychofictions. On the other hand, the mood and atmosphere which link The Blind Owl and Kafka’s works go much further back: to Hedayat’s earlier psycho-fictions and his 1927 essay on Death, and even his youthful essays, when he is certain that he had not heard of Kafka.

Origins in earlier works Up to this point we have been examining arguments and beliefs which seem to explain The Blind Owl in terms of the author’s familiarity with outside sources. A careful study of Hedayat and his works would reveal, however, first that his basic emotional and intellectual traits remained unchanged after his early twenties; and secondly that The Blind Owl is the most developed as well as abstract version of a literary and psychological model which the author produced in his earlier psychofictions. This is especially true of three short stories – ‘The Three Drops of Blood’, ‘Puppet Behind the Curtain’ and ‘The Man who Killed His Ego’ – which, taken together, seem to anticipate most of what is substantive in The Blind Owl. In what follows we shall first analyse these short stories, and then proceed to a briefer discussion of the others.

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 93

‘Three Drops of Blood’ (1932) This is probably the most mature of Hedayat’s psycho-fictional works after The Blind Owl. It, too, has a surrealistic atmosphere, extensively uses the technique of mirror imagery, and concerns a deliberately vague and elusive problem. Like The Blind Owl, it consists of two parts, ‘life at present’ and ‘life in the past’, except that ‘the past’ here is concrete and contemporary, whereas in The Blind Owl it is abstract and ancient. Part I begins with the narrator, Ahmad, talking about himself and his environment in a lunatic asylum where he has been for more than a year. He has not had a peaceful night for a long time because of a cat’s mourning – not mewing – all night, every night. One of the inmates had once torn up his own belly with a broken marble, pulled out his guts and begun to play with them. He had been a butcher before going mad and was therefore ‘used to tearing up bellies’. The warden, in part a mirror image of the narrator, is believed by Ahmad to be mad himself, for he keeps pacing up and down at the end of the garden and looking at the foot of the pine tree. ‘I happen to know,’ the narrator goes on to add, ‘that three drops of blood have dripped down at the foot of the pine tree’: It was only yesterday when [the warden] was chasing a cat, and as soon as it climbed up the pine-tree opposite his window, he ordered the guard to shoot it down. Those three drops of blood belong to the cat.23

Abbas is another inmate, and another mirror image of Ahmad. He is a philosopher (or philosophiser), plays the tar and has been put in the asylum ‘apparently’ just because he wrote the following verses: ‫دریغا که بار دگر شام شد‬ ‫سراپای گیتی سیه فام شد‬ ‫همه خلق را گاه آرام شد‬ ‫به جز من که درد و غمم شد فزون‬ ‫جهان را نباشد خوشی در مزاج‬ ‫به جز مرگ نبود به دردم عالج‬ ‫ولیکن در آن گوشه در پای کاج‬ ‫چکیده ست بر خاک سه قطره خون‬ Alas, night has fallen once more, Darkness has covered the whole world, Time has come for all to be at peace, Except me, whose pain and sorrow have grown. Happiness is not in the nature’s mould, Save for death there is no cure for my tortured soul, Yet in that corner at the foot of the pine, Have dripped down three drops of blood.24

At the end of Part I of the story Ahmad recounts the following episode:

94

Sadeq Hedayat Yesterday we were walking in the garden. Abbas was reciting the same verses when a man, a woman and a girl came together to visit him. . . . I had seen them before; in fact, I knew them. The girl was smiling at me. It was obvious that she loved me. . . . But when the woman was talking to the doctor, I saw Abbas taking the girl aside and kissing her.25

In Part II, Ahmad talks about the time before he was put in the asylum. He and his best friend Siyavosh were engaged to two sisters who were Siyavosh’s cousins. Siyavosh is a mirror image of Ahmad; and the two sisters are also mirror images: one of them is not even mentioned by name and does not appear anywhere in the story. Siyavosh lives next door. One day, Ahmad hears a gunshot in the vicinity, and talks to Siyavosh who has lately been suffering from an unnamed illness. Siyavosh quietly takes him to the pine in the garden and shows him the ‘three drops of fresh blood’ which had dripped at its foot. He explains that he had been very intimate with his shecat, Naazi. She was both loving and devious and was the type who ‘would not reveal the secrets of her life’. ‘The look in her eyes was meaningful . . . sometimes even showing human emotions . . . those enigmatic green eyes.’26 In the last mating season the cat had chosen herself a mate, one which ‘was stronger and had a louder voice than the others’: it is those ‘thievish, lean and hungry stray cats’ which are particularly attractive to she-cats.27 Siyavosh was both jealous and angry, though he camouflages his true feelings by pretending that the noise which they made while mating robbed him of sleep. Finally, he lost control and shot her mate. Naazi took the corpse of her mate away, but he has been hearing the dead cat’s cry of anguish ever since. Each time he hears the cat’s cry, he shoots in its direction, and each time three drops of fresh blood drip down to the foot of the pine tree. At this point, Rokhsareh – Siyavosh’s cousin, who is engaged to Ahmad – comes into the room together with her mother. Siyavosh asks Ahmad to tell them that he himself had seen the blood at the foot of the pine. This he does, and then takes the tar and sings: Alas, night has fallen once more / Darkness has covered the whole world. . . . Yet, in that corner at the foot of the pine / Have dripped down three drops of blood.

Rokhsareh calls him mad, and they all go out, leaving him behind in the room. Through the window, he watches Siyavosh and Rokhsareh ‘embrace and kiss each other’.28 Like The Blind Owl, Part I happens in the present, and is an abstract counterpart to Part II which has happened in the past. Unlike The Blind Owl, the past here is normal history, and not a return to a former existence. Ahmad/Abbas in the asylum corresponds to Ahmad/Siyavosh at home, and the cat and the cousin/fiancée are in both parts of the story. The she-cat combines few of the qualities which are attributed to the ethereal woman and the harlot in The Blind Owl; her mate compares with ‘the rabble’. There is also a mysterious death, disappearance and haunting. The story’s fictional content is limited, and the main personages can be reduced to the narrator and a woman. There is less drama; and the atmosphere of darkness and depression is relatively more subtle and less pronounced.

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 95

‘Puppet behind the Curtain’ (1933) Once again, the story is in two parts, except that this time both parts are in the past. Still, the first part is a summary background for the second. The whole story is about the strange contest between a soulless but ‘perfect’ manikin, and a human, but imperfect counterpart to it, for the love of a melancholic young man. Mehrdad is an Iranian student in a French provincial city. Before he went to France he was well known among his family and relatives as an extremely shy and innocent boy. ‘He would blush the moment he heard the word “woman” being mentioned.’ Now, in France, his character is just the same, except that he must put up with a totally alien environment as well: The French boys at school mocked him . . . because he had been brought up dependent, gutless, sad and melancholic, and – up to that moment – he had not exchanged a word with a strange woman. His mind was full of his parents’ outmoded ideas who . . . had arranged his engagement to his cousin Derakhshandeh.29

One day during his vacation, he dresses up and puts all his savings in his pocket to go to cafés, dance halls and the casino for the first time in his life. On the way down to the town centre he sees a manikin or model, a ‘puppet’, in a shop window: This was not a manikin. It was a woman, no, even better, an angel. Those deep dark blue eyes, that noble and winning smile . . . were all beyond his ideals of beauty and love. Besides, this girl [sic] would not talk to him, and he would not have to pretend to love her . . . or become jealous. She would always be silent, always beautifully represent the utmost of his ideals.

And further: The most important thing was that she would not talk, she would not put forward her views, and there would be no fear of conflict of opinion . . . he wouldn’t feel shy with this woman [sic], for she could never give him away. He wouldn’t have any inhibitions with her and [yet] he would always remain the same chaste and modest Mehrdad as before.

And still further: No; none of the women that he had seen in the whole of his life could match the manikin. In a very strange way, her eyes and smile gave her a supernatural spirit. He [Mehrdad] was even more surprised that the manikin’s looks were quite like those of [his own cousin-fiancée] Derakhshandeh . . . except that the latter was always sad and depressed, while the manikin’s smile brought happiness to Mehrdad, and awakened a lot of feelings in him.30

The resemblance between the description of the manikin here and that of the ethereal woman in The Blind Owl is striking. The difference is that here we have a manikin with a supernatural spirit, whereas in The Blind Owl there is a woman who is silent

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and speechless, just as in ‘The Three Drops of Blood’ there is a she-cat which seems to possess human emotions. At any rate, Mehrdad buys the manikin (and the green dress which is on it) for a princely sum and keeps it in his study room for five years until he finishes his studies in France. He returns home ‘with three suitcases, one of which was unusually large, and looked like a coffin’,31 He breaks his long engagement to his cousin, declares that he will never marry, and hides the ‘puppet’ in his room, in an alcove, behind the curtain. Every night he would have a few drinks, then pull the curtain and gaze at the manikin for a long time. Sometimes when he felt high, he would walk up to the manikin, touch it, fondle its breasts and even kiss it. ‘This is all that his love life was made of. For him, the puppet was a symbol of love and passion.’32 In time, the cousin-fiancée discovers his secret, and begins to change her dress and appearance to look like the puppet. Mehrdad notices this, and both loves and hates her for it. In the end, he makes up his mind to get rid of the puppet but – in what anticipates The Blind Owl – worries that this would expose it to ‘the strangers’ eyes’. He therefore decides to ‘kill it with his own hands, just like they kill a living person’.33 In The Blind Owl, the narrator buys a knife, but abandons the thought of using it. Yet, the harlot is ‘accidentally’ killed by the same knife. Here, Mehrdad buys a gun, but hesitates to use it to ‘kill’ the manikin. One night, when he walks up to the puppet to touch and kiss it, he is absolutely astounded by the living human warmth which he feels in her body. He steps back in fear and confusion, and throws himself back into his chair, while the manikin begins to walk slowly towards him. He ‘unconsciously’ pulls the gun and shoots it down in a panic: ‘But it was not the puppet; it was Derakhshandeh who was rolling in a pool of blood!’

‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’34 (1932) The two short stories discussed previously resemble The Blind Owl in terms of the basic story and structure, as well as the use of such techniques as mirror imagery, symbolism and diversion. On the other hand, the ontology which they all represent is the theme of ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’. A schoolmaster continues to develop his early interest in Sufism into a commitment to be an ascetic model of living. He strives at mystic liberation (or cosmic consciousness), but is disillusioned in the end, and takes his own life. Mirza Hossein’ali is in his early thirties and teaches Persian at a famous state school in Tehran. He took an early interest in philosophy and mysticism as a child and was much encouraged in this by his private tutor. But it is at the school where he teaches that he finds a morshed (or ‘guru’) in the person of Sheikh Abolfazl, the Arabic master, to help him in the long and essentially lonely process of self-purification. Like any other practicing Sufi, Hossein’ali is set on a path of killing his nafs, in the hope of liberating his real self. Nafs in classical Arabic simply means person or soul. According to a verse in the Koran, for example, ‘He who kills a nafs on purpose shall be punished by Hell.’35 In its Sufi usage, on the other hand, nafs stands for all that is base and lowly – in fact, this-worldly, as opposed to other-worldly – in the desires of man. Moreover, it refers to the person’s entire worldly existence, his life of the flesh, parallel to his pure self which it subjugates. As Sa’di puts it in Bustan:

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 97 ‫تو با دشمن نفس همخانه ای‬ ‫چه دربند پیکار بیگانه ای‬ You co-habit with nafs, the enemy within, Why then do you care to fight strangers?

Nafs is a produce of estrangement, of alienation, of the Fall. And as long as it remains alive, that is, as long as it sets and directs man’s goals and aspirations, it keeps him in a state of exile from his celestial, pure, self. Rumi calls it ‘the eternal prison’ and seeks to ‘smash it down’ to realize Reunion. Nafs, man’s False Identity, his confusion of appearance with reality, and of apparent love with real love, his constant pursuit of the needs of the flesh, and of all that is worthless, perishable or passing – it is this that blinds him to the vast horizons of verity, love and eternal life, and keeps him separate from his real self. Therefore, the apparent self must be destroyed in order to liberate the true or real self. It is not just the destruction of individual passions, but the annihilation (fana) of a whole identity, the person’s worldly existence, his whole selfish, carnal and carnivorous self. In Christian tradition, it corresponds to the idea of the mortification of the flesh. The subject is familiar from every system and order of mystic theory and practice, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and others alike. In philosophy, sociology and phenomenology, it corresponds to concepts such as appearance versus reality, false consciousness versus true consciousness, and ‘in itself ’ as opposed to ‘for itself ’. Furthermore, the concept of nafs comes close to the modern psychological category of ego, except that psychoanalysis is supposed to lead to ‘natural awareness’, whereas the nafs-destroying process may go beyond that and end up in cosmic consciousness. Hossein’ali becomes almost a recluse. He lives alone in a simple little house, talks only to the Arabic master, and subjects himself to hardship. The details are not spelled out, but it is clear that he has no meat, alcohol, sex or companions. Yet, our Seeker is not absolutely convinced of the rightness of his course, he is tempted by ‘devils and demons’ in his sleep, and Khayyam’s poetry fans the fires of his scepticism, though doubts and temptations are known to be the dialectical forces which accompany saints and martyrs even at the cross. In fear of losing his faith through a ‘slip’, he rushes to the sheikh’s house to seek guidance and reassurance. When he gets there, he finds a crowd gathered outside, and the father of the sheikh’s maid servant is shouting abuse that the sheikh has made his daughter pregnant. He enters in disbelief and watches the sheikh have his meal of bread and onions. Suddenly, the cat runs in with a roast partridge in its mouth, and the cook appears after it with a chopping knife in his hand, at which point the sheikh throws off all pretence and joins the chase, explaining that (according to the Sharia) ‘If a cat causes more than [a few pence] worth of damage, its execution is mandatory.’36 Hossein’ali is shattered. He leaves the sheikh’s home, aimlessly walks in the streets, enters a café for the first time in his life, drinks, eats pork, takes a prostitute home in a hired carriage and sleeps with her in a proper bed. ‘Two days later, the Tehran press reported that Mirza Hossei’ali, a young and conscientious schoolmaster, had committed suicide for an unknown reason.’37 Here, the anti-hero’s search for ‘paradise lost’ is explicit, conscious and deliberate. He embarks on the difficult course of ‘killing’ his nafs in the hope of realizing peace and

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98

happiness but ends up with disillusionment and depression. What is implicit in The Blind Owl is made absolutely explicit in this story. There is no noble reality beyond the ugly appearance, no true consciousness beyond false consciousness, no natural awareness beyond the ego, no heaven beyond this hell, no real self is realized by destroying the false self. The appearance is all that there is, and there is no salvation before or beyond death. Hossei’ali destroyed his nafs (or ego) only by destroying himself. It is a conclusion which runs counter to the predictions of religious preachers, mystics, optimistic philosophers and sociologists, and post-Freudian psychoanalysts alike.

‘Buried Alive’38 (1930) ‘Buried Alive’ is ‘from the notes of a madman’. The notes are found by the bedside of an Iranian student in Paris who himself is ‘lying in bed, not knowing how to breathe’. He describes how he has several times tried to kill himself, and recounts some of his memories while lying in bed. He knew a French girl whom he had taken out a couple of times. He had even kissed her once in an underground train. But the day he was supposed to bring her home to his own room, he deliberately missed the date, and wandered around a cemetery instead. He also remembers the time when he had bought some opium from an attar – a traditional chemist – in Tehran, and feels nostalgic about his childhood: I wish I was a little child, and the same old Galin Baji [his nanny] who used to tell me stories was . . . sitting here next to my bed.39

And further: I felt as if I had been dishonourably expelled from human society . . . I was sorry that I’d not become an artist, the only thing which I really like to be.40

He also talks about a dream in which he saw an ‘old man with a bloody face tied up to a column’, who was laughing at him. Yet he is not sure if it was a dream, as if it could possibly represent some kind of reality (perhaps a re-living of an obliterated existence?): ‘they were both very close and very far away at one and the same time. I couldn’t have been dreaming, because I was not yet asleep.’41 He keeps looking at himself in the mirror, almost obsessively. He talks constantly about his death wish, but does not say what is wrong, only repeating that some people have been born to commit suicide. His complaining about the noise of his neighbour’s clock is almost the only concrete source of his troubles which he mentions. He ends the narrative by saying: They will all laugh at me, little knowing that it is I who laugh at them even more. I am disgusted with myself and the readers of this nonsense.42

‘The Dark Room’43 (1940) This is almost a monologue, like the previous story, except that here there is a narrator through whom the recluse’s views on life and death are communicated to the reader. He

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 99 meets the recluse in a coach and accepts his invitation to spend the night with him at his home in a provincial town, before carrying on with his journey the next day. Predictably, the recluse lives all alone, and he talks about his life almost as if the narrator of The Blind Owl is summarizing his views on the subject in the course of this short story: I’ve never shared in the joys of other people. A sense of doom has always denied such joys to me. . . . But the biggest problem is to be with others. . . . There was a time when I used to join them and tried to imitate them. But I realised that I was only mocking myself . . . I always felt as if I was an outsider everywhere . . . and kept saying to myself that, one day, I would run away from society, and would become a recluse in a village, or some distant place.44

And further: The fact is that I’ve been born lazy. Effort and enterprise belong to empty people who try to fill their own vacuum in this way. They belong to the miserable little lots who don’t know where they come from. But my ancestors, who themselves were empty people, worked hard, thought hard and saw much, until they filled in their own vacuum, and became lazy. And I have now inherited their laziness.45

He goes on to describe the sort of people who alone, in his view, can enjoy life: In this environment only a bunch of thieving, ignorant, and shameless people have a right to live. And if someone is not thievish, pride-less and bootlicking, they’d call him worthless.46

He explains that he decided to shun the world and live in a dark room (which is both shaped and coloured as a womb) in this provincial town, because darkness and silence bring out the essential subtleties of man, though this does not mean that ‘like Sufis, I am seeking the “Manifestation of Truth” within myself. On the contrary, I am awaiting the descent of the devil’.47 The narrator rarely speaks, but his views seem to be quite similar to the recluse’s, almost as if the latter is in fact talking to himself. He tells his host: What you’re looking for is just like the condition of the foetus in its mother’s womb who, without having to try hard or flatter others, curls up in its soft and warm bed, and its needs are automatically seen to. It is that same nostalgia for the lost paradise which, deep down, you can find in every human being.48

Next morning, when he goes to say goodbye to his host, he finds him dead, ‘curled up in bed just like a foetus in its mother’s womb’.49

‘Dead End’50 (1940) Sharif is from an upper middle-class provincial family, has studied and worked in Tehran and is head of the Inland Revenue in his hometown. He does not care much

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about his career, and ‘has fallen behind his cunning, brazen and thievish’ colleagues. But the real reason for his failure is his ‘good nature’, ‘not alcohol and opium’ which he evidently uses regularly.51 When he returns from his years in Tehran, he finds that his old friends ‘had more or less realised their own limited ambitions’, and rather like the rabble in The Blind Owl, ‘they either had fat bellies, or their sensuality had leaked from their genitals into their jaws’.52 One day, a young recruit arrives at his office from Tehran. He looks like his dead friend Mohsen and brings back memories of his friendship with him. He and Mohsen had been close friends in Tehran, but he had been unhappy about Mohsen’s marriage, thinking that this would weaken their friendship. Yet, he himself marries his cousin shortly afterwards, though the unconsummated marriage lasts only for one night. For on the wedding night: As soon as Sharif and his bride were left alone in the bedroom, Effat [the bride] burst out laughing, a long and mocking laughter which got terribly on his nerves. . . . He was convinced – no, he felt it – that the woman was a strange species of mammal who had been created just in order to make life miserable for him. He pretended to be sick, spent the night having bad dreams under a [separate] sheet . . . and, in the morning, left for Tehran without saying goodbye. After that, his cousin [and wife] created a scandal, and his father had to pay the heavy costs of this escapade.53

The ‘cost’ must refer to the bride’s dowry which his father paid for him when he divorced his wife. But there is no explanation of Effat’s laughter, nor about the nature of the scandal which she created after he left town. Yet, all this is supposed to be a sidetrack, because the central theme of the story is Sharif ’s deep sense of guilt about Mohsen’s drowning in the sea, though in fact he was in no way responsible for it. Predictably, the young recruit, who is ‘ethereal’ and ‘melancholic’, turns out to be Mohsen’s son. And, one day, he, too, drowns, this time in Sharif ’s swimming pool. Once again, Sharif blames himself for no apparent reason, and he leaves home, apparently never to return. Mohsen and his son are evidently Sharif ’s own mirror images.

Other short stories ‘The Masks’ (1932) is about a man in love with a woman whom he suspects of having a relationship with another man, though the grounds for his suspicion are not very clear. He first thinks of killing both of them, then, of poisoning himself and the woman, so they both ‘die in each other’s arms’.54 But he apparently changes his mind and goes to meet her at a fancy-dress party. There, they have a lovers’ quarrel, and he tells her that ‘true love’ is not in the woman we love, but ‘in our ideal of love and loving’,55 or in other words in our own subjective perfectionism. The woman suggests that they immediately leave for his family estate, where (it is implicit) they would sleep together for the first time. He agrees but thinks to himself that this would help him take his

 The Origins of The Blind Owl 101 ‘revenge’. They drive out still wearing their fancy-dress masks. But a little further out of Tehran, the car jerks off the road and falls into a ditch. Next day, its wreckage is found, ‘with the two masks side by side . . . making faces at each other’.56 ‘The Claws’ (1932)57 is about incestual desires, epileptic fits and other hereditary defects, including homicidal tendencies. A young man is very close to his sister, though there are apparently no sexual overtones to the relationship. He ends up by strangling her with his own hands because, despite her emphatic denial, he thinks she is about to get married. He himself is an epileptic and drowns in the pool after killing his sister. There are clear, though subtle, hints that their mother and father had had a similar fate. ‘The Elder Sister’ (1930)58 is about the social alienation and mental agonies of an elder daughter whom her mother ignores because, in contrast to her younger sister, she is not pretty. The climax comes when a suitor is found for the younger girl before the elder sister is married – an almost catastrophic failure, at the time, for a traditional middle-class girl. She shuns the celebrations on the wedding night and drowns herself in the small hours of the next morning. ‘Davood the Hunchback’ (1930)59 is a story about a man by the same name who is another victim of hereditary defects. He too is lonely and feels rejected. One day, walking – or crawling – down the road in despair, he comes across the woman he had secretly worshipped in his youth but discovers that she has a date with another man. Bitterly disappointed, he tries to hug a stray dog that is lying in an open sewer at the side of the road. ‘But that dog was dead.’60 ‘Stray Dog’ (1940)61 is a moving story about a pedigree dog who has lost its master. The theme is familiar, though this time it is an animal whose hopes and fears are under focus as it endures relentless pitilessness and cruelty. The dog has an incredibly human look in its eyes. It too is driven by hereditary forces, and feels nostalgic about the warmth, peace and security of its childhood, when it would ‘suck that warm and nourishing liquid from its mother’s nipples’.62 It begs for something – anything – to eat; for someone – anyone – to show kindness, even pity, to him. Instead, it is kicked, beaten, tortured, and chased off. It gives up, in the end, lying down in death agony, while three vultures wait to ‘pull out its hazel eyes’.63 ‘The Woman Who Lost Her Man’64 is an impressive psychological study, showing how a miserable life can be lived with resignation, if not masochism. She is regularly beaten up by her husband, but though she is not obviously a masochist, she accepts it as a way of life and a ‘necessary’ part of a marital relationship which involves some joy as well. One day he disappears, leaving her and their child. Eventually she finds him living with another woman, denying any knowledge of his life with her. She hitches a ride back on a young man’s donkey, thinking to herself that, just like her husband, he too may smell of cow dung and beat his woman. ‘Lunatique’ and ‘Sampingé’ were both written in French soon after The Blind Owl.65 In ‘Lunatique’, the narrator and an English woman are staying in a hotel in Bombay, and there is an old cobbler outside the hotel. The narrator falls in love with the woman, and the cobbler dies inexplicably. The day after he dies, the woman goes to the narrator’s room and, during the conversation, wonders about the possibility of the old man’s rebirth into a ‘higher form’. She also talks about the dream she had had the night before in which the old man had appeared to be alive, and in love with

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her. She then makes a pass at the narrator, but as he is ‘about to embrace her’, a bat (significantly, a blind animal) flies in through the window. ‘You see, this is the [old man’s] ghost’, she says, ‘come to punish me.’ She checks out of the hotel and vanishes without trace. The narrator and the old man are mirror images, and the bat is an abstraction of their ego. ‘Sampingé’ is almost pure poetry. The teenage Indian girl has lost her parents as an infant and been brought up by her elder sister, now also dead. She is melancholic, and vividly remembers the stories she had been told as a child about the ‘ethereal’ people who lived in a desert valley – a kind of Shangri-La – ‘free from care’. She is sad about the loss of her sister, is facing a ‘dead end’ and thinks of suicide in the hope of being reborn into a higher form. Approaching the desert of the legendary ‘ethereal’ people, she feels as if she is re-living a previous existence which she has spent among them. She walks down the valley and disappears from sight. ‘Laleh’ (1932)66 is not as dramatic as some of the other short stories. But it is moving in a quiet way. An old peasant finds a girl in her early teens lost in the forest. He adopts her and looks after her with parental devotion, though he resents her calling him father, and disapproves of her marriage to a shepherd boy. In fact, he is constantly struggling against his latent sexual desire for the girl as she grows up, and his heart breaks when she disappears for good. In the end, he finds her with her mother, and a young man; and cries ‘for both joy and sorrow’. He then goes back to his hut and shuts the door. And no one ever sees him again. In ‘Revelation’ (1940)67 a violinist has confidence in his playing, but in almost nothing else, including sex. ‘Maybe it was the violin itself which brought him his misery’, because the artist in him created disabilities in other matters. One day the girl who admires him (and of whom he is very fond) turns up in his modest room. But he keeps drinking vodka and playing the violin in order to cover up his shyness, until he looks up and the girl is gone. The short stories ‘Madeleine’,68 ‘Katiya’69 and ‘S.G.L.L’70 have been mentioned before. ‘Varamin Nights’ (‘Shab-ha-ye Varamin’) is the only other psycho-fiction of the period, and its basic features are the same as many of those discussed earlier. The six remaining short stories which were written before the upheaval caused by the Second World War in Iran do not easily fit into either of the two main categories of Hedayat’s fiction, though they contain elements of one or both. ‘Whirlpool’ (‘Gerdab’, 1932), and the ‘Don Juan of Karaj’ (‘Don Juan-e Karaj’) are, respectively, a tragedy and a farce about life among the modern middle class. ‘The Cursed Fortress’ (‘Gojasteh Dezh’, 1932), ‘Fire-worshipper’ (‘Atesh-parast’, 1940), ‘Prayers for the Dead’ (‘Afaringan’, 1933) and ‘Abunasr Rock’ (‘Takht-e Abunasr’, 1940) reflect the author’s interest both in ancient Iranian cults and culture, and in occult and spiritual phenomena. Some of the short stories discussed in this chapter belong to the collection, Stray Dog (Sag-e Velgard) which had been written before 1941 but was published afterwards in the wake of the Allied invasion of Iran and the abdication of Reza Shah. There was a breathing space and a great deal of optimism, especially among modern intellectuals. It was not to last long.

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A concluding note All writers are inevitably influenced by their environment, including their literary upbringing and much of what they have read and absorbed in its process. But whatever the impact of outside techniques and ideas, clearly The Blind Owl is a synthetic culmination of Hedayat’s psycho-fictional works dating back to the short story ‘Buried Alive’, written in 1930 in Paris. It is no more autobiographical than are ‘Puppet behind The Curtain’, ‘Three Drops of Blood’ and ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’, but – like all of Hedayat’s other psycho-fictional works – it does reflect a personality and an outlook on life which had already begun to form by the time he wrote his youthful essays ‘Man and Animal’ and ‘Khayyam’s Quatrains’ (see Chapter 2). That is what makes it both unique and universal: unique, because it is an authentic reflection of Hedayat’s own innermost thoughts and psychology; universal, because it addresses issues which are by no means exclusively Iranian in nature. Whether the narrator of The Blind Owl is insane, suffers from the oedipal complex, or is simply too good to fit in this world, there are two interrelated aspects to The Blind Owl which have been partially developed in the earlier psycho-fictional stories. First, there is the narrator’s total estrangement from human existence which he finds superficial, deceitful and unbearable, fit only for the ‘rabble’, ‘the happy and stupid’, the ordinary people. This involves a craving for perfection, security and bliss – in short, for complete liberation – which, however, is doomed to failure because life cannot be any different from the macabre reality perceived by the narrator, and, hence, death is the only solution to his alienation – a belief which is advocated in ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’, in its most concrete and explicit form. Secondly, and as a corollary, there is the longing for the perfect love of an equally perfect woman. Here, too, the search is in vain, for the reality is ‘the harlot’, and the ideal is a speechless apparition in the shape of ‘the ethereal woman’: in ‘Puppet behind the Curtain’, these two figures are represented by Derakhshandeh and the puppet. And, as we have seen, elements of these sentiments and aspirations are also to be found in Hedayat’s other psycho-fictional stories. In a word, imperfect life is not worth living, and there is no road to attaining perfection.

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9

Hopes and despairs

The fall of Reza Shah The invasion of Iran by the Allies, in 1941, was a major turning point in modern Iranian history. When the Second World War broke out, Iran declared neutrality, but the initial display of pro-German sentiments by the state as well as the people began to intensify with the growing success of the German war machine. Reza Shah had not forgotten the wound inflicted on him by Britain in the 1933 oil dispute; and had been otherwise a nationalist and Aryanist of the modern European breed long before he had heard of Hitler and the Nazi party. On the other hand, the rise of the Third Reich had reinforced his Aryanist convictions and propaganda, and had provided an obvious countervailing power to Britain and Russia as the traditional imperialist powers in the region.1 And if there was one emotion at the time which united the bulk of the people with the state, it was a heart-felt desire for a quick German victory in the war. Yet the most dramatic effect of the Allies’ invasion in its early weeks was the abdication and departure of Reza Shah from Iran. A characteristic feature of arbitrary systems (even when compared with ordinary dictatorial regimes) is that they lack any social base within the community so that their demise is welcomed by all the social groups and classes, or the entire society. During the three weeks between the foreign invasion and the shah’s abdication, there was growing tension in Tehran; sensing the decline of the shah’s fortunes, the people, who had long been frightened into total silence, went as far as attacking the regime in public conversations.2 Nevertheless, the day the newspaper boys began to shout the headlines of the newspaper extras about the shah’s abdication, there was a moment of hesitation and disbelief, for the fear of the shah had been so strong, and the belief in the permanence of his regime so entrenched, that the people did not dare to react to the news of their liberation even when it was being cried out in the streets. In Café Ferdows, located in the then fashionable centre of the city and regularly frequented by Hedayat and his friends, everyone held their breath and gazed into each other’s eyes. It was only when a young schoolmaster jumped on a table and shouted slogans against Reza Shah that the whole café rose up in jubilation, dancing and demonstrating.3 Reza Shah was extremely unpopular when he left the country. There were spontaneous demonstrations in the streets shouting abuse and invectives against him and his regime. Countless articles poured out of newly emerged newspapers charging him with dictatorship as well as the abuse of public and private property.4

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Poems were written about the injustices of his regime as well as his sudden flight from the country in the face of danger.5 Political prisoners were released, and the police chief and other officers were brought to trial on charges of torturing and murdering political prisoners in jail. Civil suits were brought against the shah for his forcible appropriation of private property, and many of them were successful in returning the properties in question to their original owners. Even members of the Thirteenth Majlis whose elections had been fixed under the old regime joined the chorus of condemnation. Ali Dashti – journalist, politician and romantic writer of sorts – went so far as accusing the old shah, in public meetings of the Majlis, of having stolen the crown jewels.6 Clearly, swimming with the tide had something to do with this unmitigated demonstration of hostility against one man alone. Yet there was a social and political logic behind it all. The shah had been left with no real friend even before his downfall, because he was no mere dictator but an arbitrary ruler who had thus alienated all the social groups and classes, including those individuals who, prior to his fall, went on describing him daily as His Fate-Making Majesty (A’lahazrat-e Qadar-Qodrat).

Hopes in the Tudeh party The Tudeh party was formed shortly after Reza Shah’s abdication, with the tacit approval of the occupying powers. But the claim, made by some, including Mohammad Reza Shah, that it was the joint product of an Anglo-Russian conspiracy, is untrue, though it has now been proven that Russia had hand in its formation.7 Clearly, no major political party could survive in the first one or two years of the occupation against the express wishes of either of the two powers. But the political forces which made up the Tudeh party had been there before the invasion, and if anything, the Anglo-Soviet alliance ensured that they did not overstep the mark one way or the other. Furthermore, the Soviet officials told the leading Marxist elements in the party that a Communist, even Marxist, organization would not have their blessing. This was part of Stalin’s extremely cautious attitude towards the new alliance, which even led to the dismantling of the Comintern, and to Soviet directives to such established Communist parties as those of France, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia to cooperate loyally with all the democratic and/ or anti-Nazi forces wherever they operated. Thus, at the time of its formation, the Tudeh party was a popular or democratic front. Its symbolic founder and titular head, Soleiman Mirza (Eskandari) – an old democrat turned socialist – could hardly be described as a Communist of the new breed. Its leadership, until 1944, was mixed, although the Marxists still had more than their fair share of it because of the heroism with which members of the Fifty-Three were associated.8 Its original membership consisted of a large number of educated and intellectual men (and a few women) almost all of whom were below the age of forty, only a small minority of whom remained in the party by 1949. Its political programme supplied a broad democratic framework, confirming the party’s loyalty to the constitution and constitutional monarchy, emphasizing that it was a representative

 Hopes and Despairs 107 coalition of various social classes, and calling for administrative, political and social reform.9 The party began to attract the young and progressive, the educated, and intellectuals, because of its modern democratic and popular ideals, the existence of a large number of reputable Marxist and non-Marxist individuals in its leadership and among its cadres, the growing popularity of the Soviet Union towards which it was clearly (but not yet slavishly) inclined, and – perhaps most important of all – the fact that it provided channels for airing and publishing modern European ideas, and a home for those who talked, wrote and read about them. It was no coincidence that Alavi, Al-e Ahmad, Nushin, Maleki, Tabari, Khameh’i, Malek, Chubak, Hedayat, Khanlari and others all sooner or later became either members or sympathizers. In the first party congress (August 1944) the party leadership fell entirely into the hands of the Marxist elements, but even this owed much to their active presence and participation in various party organs. At any rate the party’s main demand was still ‘the establishment of a democratic [melli] government’.10 The party’s response to the Soviet demand for the North Iranian oil concession led to the first serious conflict and crisis of conscience, both within and without the party, over its attitude towards the Soviet Union. The support of the Soviet occupying forces of the Tudeh demonstration in its favour was condemned by some members of the party and the ordinary public. Yet, this episode passed without either resulting in a rift or blotting the party’s name.11 But the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–6 resulted in both. By then the winds of change had begun to blow between the West and the Soviet Union (see later). By his very nature and temperament, Hedayat was not a political activist, nor even a political intellectual. His literary interests lay in creative and critical work, and his mind was preoccupied with universal philosophical and ontological problems, rather than parochial ideological arguments. Besides, he was not the type of individual who would happily submit to party rules and disciplines or cast his social and political views within a closed ideological framework. Hence, he did not join the Tudeh party, although his initial sympathies for it were all but inevitable. Yet, it was not so much the formation of the Tudeh party – as has so often been claimed – but the collapse of the old order which provided Hedayat with new hope and energy for life and work, although it is true that the party acted as a catalyst for him and a large number of modern intellectuals. The positive psychological impact of suddenly being able to talk, write and publish freely after a prolonged period of enforced silence is something that can be fully appreciated only by those who have gone through the experience. At any rate, Hedayat was as usual hoping to go abroad even in the early 1940s, a fact among others which gives the lie to the popular belief that he decided to go to Paris in December 1950 with the intention of committing suicide in that city (see Chapter 13). Thus, he wrote to Mojtaba Minovi, in December 1944, that he had been trying hard to arrange for a trip (possibly to London where Minovi and Farzad were at the time) ‘even though the basic means – even the capital – were naturally unavailable. And now [I am] sitting happily in a corner and chewing my gum.’12 As luck would have it, however, a few months later he was invited to Tashkent (capital of the Soviet Republic

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of Uzbekistan) to attend the silver jubilee celebrations of the foundation of Tashkent University.13 Meanwhile, in 1942 he published the collection of short stories Stray Dog, which had been written before the war (see Chapters 5 and 8). Likewise, he serialized The Blind Owl in the Iran magazine, and published some of his translations from Pahlavi texts which also dated back to earlier years. Both Hajji Aqa and ‘Mucking About’ (Velengari) were written and published in these years, and were hailed, in contrast to the ‘pessimistic’ Blind Owl, as evidence of his new ‘optimism’ and of the alleged fact that he had entered the realm of political struggle (see Chapters 10 and 11). He also made some contributions to the new literary journal Sokhan, and the more established one, Mehr. Hence, in the five-year period 1941–6 he produced less work than in the previous five years, and much less than in the five-year period before that. The year 1946 was when the Azerbaijan Democrats, encouraged by Soviet authorities, and protected by the Soviet occupying forces, seized power in that province, ostensibly demanding autonomy, but in fact intending (as recent documents have now proved) to separate the province from Iran and make it a part of Soviet Azerbaijan. The Tudeh leaders had lent full support to the Democrats despite their own misgivings, and because of the pressure brought on them by the Soviet embassy in Tehran. The issue had divided the party between its cadres (who were opposed to the policy) and the leadership who, willy-nilly, went along with it.14 Public opinion was at first more or less sympathetic to the Democrats’ cause, mainly because of the injustices to which Azerbaijan had been subjected under Reza Shah. But, as the year wore on, disagreements with some of the policies implemented by the Democrats, and growing suspicions that the movement had separatist aims, tended to turn public opinion against them. At the height of the Democrats’ success in Azerbaijan, the first congress of Iranian writers was held in Tehran: in effect, under the auspices of the Tudeh party.

The writers’ congress ‘The first congress of Iranian writers’, as it came to be known, was held in Tehran between 25 June and 2 July 1946, on the initiative of the Iran-Soviet Cultural Society. Qavam al-Saltaneh had just been made prime minister with Soviet backing and was to form a short-lived coalition government with the Tudeh party. The congress was opened in the presence of the new prime minister and the Soviet ambassador, and was chaired by poet laureate Bahar, the new minister of education. Attendance was by invitation, and seventy-eight men and women of all age groups had been invited by the organizers. It was a gathering more of the literati in general than of writers as such. Care had been taken to include representatives of different political and literary backgrounds and persuasions, including the literary and political establishment. Thus, the congress was addressed at length by Ali Asghar Hekmat, the minister of education (‘Hakimbashipur’) in Hedayat’s satirical short story, ‘The Patriot’ (see Chapter 5).15

 Hopes and Despairs 109 The published proceedings of the congress do not contain a list of participants, but there is a full list of those invited, together with a note that some of them did not attend the congress. On the other hand, others such as Bahar and Hekmat (mentioned earlier), and Homa’i, Suratgar and Yaghma’i took an active part in the proceedings; and Dehkhoda, Foruzanfar, Shaigan and Hedayat were included in the list of the largely ceremonial steering committee of the congress. Yet, the congress was clearly dominated by Tudeh intellectuals and their sympathizers, if only because it included many an unknown Tudeh poet or writer who were not to make a public name for themselves even in later years. Hedayat attended the congress meetings but made no contribution to the proceedings: unlike Bozorg Alavi, among others, he was either not asked or did not agree to read out one of his works to the meeting. Finally, the one notable absentee from the list of those invited was Mohammad Mas’ud, the daring and unscrupulous writer and journalist who was disliked both by the Tudeh party and by the political establishment. He was to be assassinated not long afterwards by some leading Tudeh figures, although, for years to come, the establishment was blamed for his death. A quick look at the congress proceedings will reveal the striking extent to which poetry still dominated Iran’s literary scene. For, apart from critical reviews and discussions, most of the congress time was taken up by poetry recitals from the works of both known and unknown participating poets. Another striking feature was that, despite critical remarks made at the congress about the need to modernize Persian literature, most of the poems were in the traditional mould, a few (such as those read by Tavalloli) were in a modern style, and only those read by Nima were radically modernist poems. By far the most interesting contributions were the comments, reviews and critical observations – made by Khanlari, Tabari, Hekmat, Fatemeh Sayyah and others – on the more recent developments in Persian literature. Of the two broad reviews presented by Hekmat and Khanlari, the latter’s talk on ‘Persian Prose in Recent Times’ was particularly learned and comprehensive, covering a wide range of works from travelogues and translations to plays, novels and short stories. In it, he gave full treatment to Hedayat’s contributions in a comprehensive coverage of his works which remains a highly intelligent summary evaluation of the subject: The extent and variety of Hedayat’s works know no equal in our recent literature. This author has, up to now, produced twenty-six volumes which include four collections of short stories. Another five volumes contain a separate story each. There are two volumes of satire, two plays, one travelogue . . . two books on Persian folklore, and five translations from Pahlavi texts.16

Suggesting that Hedayat’s best works are to be found among his short stories, he adds: In these stories, Hedayat has described and represented different types from the midst of the ordinary people. The kindness of his heart, and his sympathy for the lower social classes have turned his attention towards those deprived classes whom others have not regarded as worth talking about.17

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Here, although the critic refers to Hedayat’s sympathy for the lower classes (which he may have felt to be mandatory in the circumstances), he is realistic enough to explain his point by saying that Hedayat had found it worthwhile to write stories about their lives. He is also careful not to mention The Blind Owl (the work that was least approved of by both the Tudeh and the established critics), but goes on to allude to it and to the large category of Hedayat’s psycho-fictions in the following lines: However, we should not overlook his extraordinary sensitivity. The fine and delicate nature of the artist always takes him to the perfect and beautiful world which is a product of his own powerful imagination. There is the artist’s real home, and the pains and sufferings of separation and alienation from it are reflected in his works. Thus, in comparison with that paradise of ideals and heaven of perfection, he sees the world around him as no more than a ruin. . . . We should not regard this as a sign of the artist’s wretchedness. [On the contrary,] it is a cry to the trail of humanity, encouraging it to be faster and more courageous in its journey towards perfection. Perhaps many of the great mystics have had the same aim and objective.18

Finally, Khanlari’s brief comment on Hedayat’s prose is balanced, realistic and to the point: In his prose Hedayat is a follower of the style of which Jamalzadeh is regarded as the standard-bearer. He has used this style in his extensive works. . . . Although Hedayat is not the inventor and originator of this prose style, he has developed it so well that it has now found large numbers of followers, and has now become fashionable in modern Persian literature.19

The figure who made the longest-lasting impression was not Khanlari but Ehsan Tabari, the young, talented and ambitious intellectual who was to influence much of Tudeh and Tudeh-inspired – hence, much of modern Iranian – literary criticism for decades to come. He made two contributions to the proceedings, one as a discussant of Hekmat’s talk on contemporary poetry (to which Khanlari also made a contribution as the second discussant), and the other as an independent contribution to the modern art of literary criticism. It was the latter talk, ‘On Criticism and the Nature of Art and Artistic Beauty’, which offered the basic paradigm for the standard Tudeh approach to literary criticism. This was a typical Tabari paper, the basic message being the same as had already been established by Zhdanov in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Communist world: Art is a function of historical and social evolution and represents the spirit of the age. Artistic decadence always runs parallel to the decadence of society. The art of a declining society is always based on pessimism. It represents nature as a graveyard, and life as a shadow of death, and it finds nothing that is worth belonging to in this world which is in fact full of wonders. Whereas, at the time of social revolutions, there also occurs a revolution in the arts. In the world today, there is both decadent and pessimistic, and living and optimistic art.20

 Hopes and Despairs 111 Tabari overlooks the fact, as did many like him everywhere, that the same general view could be taken, as indeed it was, by the upholders of fascist revolutions. However, first comes the turn of the pessimists and decadents: Heidegger’s philosophy of existentialism which has led to the emergence of new literary schools in France is an example of a decadent and defeatist way of thinking, of which the likes of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre are prominent representatives. Camus believes that life, the world and reason are all worthless and absurd. . . . Sartre says that man is a bundle of useless emotions, and while consciousness is constantly trying to reconstruct itself, the structure keeps falling down all the time. There is no reality but nothingness, and life is unearned and irrelevant. In the works of Sadeq Hedayat this contradiction is evident.21

Before quoting Tabari’s special application of the thesis mentioned earlier to Hedayat’s case, it would be better to proceed immediately to his references to ‘living and optimistic art’: Vis-à-vis that pessimistic art – or, in the words of a French literary journal, ‘black literature’ – there exists a revolutionary and exciting art which struggles for the creation of a new world. This engagé and revolutionary art has in its turn led to the emergence of some geniuses. . . . Gorky and Mayakovsky in Russia, and Aragon in France are the geniuses of the new world.22

Predictably, Tabari sees Hedayat as moving from pessimism to optimism: Hedayat has written The Blind Owl in the dark and hopeless environment of [Reza Shah’s] dictatorship. In this work, Hedayat is a disillusioned and melancholic man who has sought refuge in the strangest dreams of the subconscious. However, after the social changes – the world war, and democracy in Iran – in his ‘Mucking About’ and Hajji Aqa, Hedayat turns into a critical, combatant and hard-headed writer who has definite hopes and objectives.23

Tabari concludes this part of his talk with an exhortation to artists: It is therefore clear that art is, in every sense, a social product, and cannot be separated from society. The efforts of those who are hoping to create an abstract and immaterial [sic] art, and of those who uphold L’art pour l’art [sic] is useless. Art is unavoidably related to society, and like science, religion and politics, plays its own role in social destiny, and becomes an instrument of class struggle. . . . You artists should try to follow a living, real and optimistic philosophy so that your art will be medicine [to society], not deadly poison.24

There can be little doubt that art is in some sense a social product, just as man, the creator of art, is himself a ‘social animal’.25 But this is a far cry from the totalitarian view, Fascist or Communist, that good art is that which they regard as good for society.

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This was precisely the point which Hedayat raised two years later when he attacked Tabari over Kafka with a vehemence that he had not displayed in anything that he had published before (see further later).

Turning points Qavam’s coalition with the Tudeh party lasted only for a short period, and his overtures to the Azerbaijan Democrats were followed by a visit to the Soviet Union, which led to an Iran-Soviet agreement whereby the Russians would, in effect, pull their forces out of Azerbaijan in exchange for the promise of the North Iranian oil concession. But the alleged secret American ultimatum to the Soviet Union over the issue may have been the most effective force in this. This alleged ultimatum has not been found among official documents, but there can be no doubt that extreme American pressure was brought to bear on the Soviets. This was followed (in December 1946) by the dispatching of the central Iranian army to Azerbaijan where they routed the rebels and committed many atrocities in the process.26 The Tudeh party star fell to an all-time low when the people themselves attacked its headquarters in Tehran and tore down its signboard.27 Two months later, Hedayat wrote to Fereidun Tavalloli, a poet, political satirist, and a Tudeh member who was critical of the party’s policies: After the great test which we took – and which was apparently for the sake of freedom, but in fact for its destruction – no one can do anything anymore. . . . And, truly, one must be a descendant of Darius by a gap of six thousand years [i.e. a contemporary Iranian] to be deceived by these silly antics. The story is long and puzzling, but the betrayal had many sides to it. And now the Tudeh are wallowing in their own shit in order to cover up the truth. Anyway, we must eat our own shitty glories spoon by spoon, and say how nice it is too.28

Their excessive measures and campaigns in favour of the local Azerbaijani Turkic, and against the use of the Persian language in schools and public offices, had made Hedayat particularly angry with the Azerbaijan Democrats. Khanlari still remembered Hedayat’s indignation at this event when the Democrats were still going strong,29 but another witness has recorded it in his obituary for the writer in 1951: Sadeq Hedayat had a passionate love for Iran and the Persian language, and was certainly the most patriotic Iranian that I have ever known. . . . During the Pishehvari insurgency [in Azerbaijan] when the Democrat party was trying to replace Persian by Turkic, Sadeq was more incensed than I had ever seen him before. The reader may recall that, although [this journal] backed Pishehvari’s uprising, we nevertheless published a few strongly worded articles about the Democrat party’s attitude towards the Persian language at the time. In that struggle . . . much of the encouragement to the writers of our journal came from Sadeq Hedayat.30

 Hopes and Despairs 113 Yet, Hedayat’s unhappiness with Tudeh party policy had much stronger roots. The party’s cadres and intellectuals, almost to a man, had been opposed to the leadership’s policy towards the Azerbaijan Democrats, although the internal party struggles were not made public at the time. The internal party opposition (known as Eslahtalaban or ‘party reformers’) dated back to before the Azerbaijan episode, but it was this more than any previous issue that sharpened the internal party divisions, and eventually led to the famous party split of January 1948. Centred around Khalil Maleki’s personality, most of the party intellectuals and activists were increasingly aggrieved by the leadership’s methods and policies and insisted that the overdue party congress should be called to hear their grievances. This the leadership refused to do for fear of losing its grip over the party.31 Meanwhile, the leaders of the internal opposition movement regularly met in Hedayat’s rooms, in his father’s house, to coordinate their policies. Hedayat was not a party member, and the use of his rooms was precisely meant to ensure that the meetings would be kept secret from the leadership. But his sympathies clearly lay with the party opposition, and although he did not participate in the proceedings, he listened carefully to what the participants had to say about the internal party situation, when they liberally referred to some party leaders as ‘lackeys of the [Soviet] embassy’. Thus, Khalil Maleki was to write (in 1949) to Abdolhosain Nushin, Hedayat’s friend and a leading oppositionist who did not leave the party in the 1948 split, and was even obliged to join the party’s stage-managed chorus of condemnation against the splinter group: You know very well that my present attitude is precisely that which you and I and the Tabaris, the Qasemis and the Kiyanuris of those days had held in common. . . . Even if wheeling and dealing have made you too forgetful, you must surely remember that, in addition to the above-mentioned, a silent and quiet individual was also present in most of our meetings – an individual who is not very talkative, but who is a good thinker and critic, and for whom both you and I have much respect. Indeed, if you have forgotten the memories of those days, and if you dare, please read these lines to Sadeq Hedayat. He will no doubt make up for the lapses in your memory.32

It was not the collapse of the Azerbaijan uprising, therefore, and the concomitant Tudeh party defeat in the country, which upset Hedayat and caused his relapse into a ‘pessimistic’ mood. On the contrary, it was his disillusionment with that party which had once borne the hope of a new freedom to many intellectuals, and the increasing strain this placed on his relations with the party and his friends and associates within it. There were still some party members, such as his old friend Dr Taqi Razavi, with whom he retained personal contact. There were also one or two younger Tudeh intellectuals, like Enjavi Shirazi, who remained among his café entourage. But, by 1948, he had become almost completely estranged from most of the intellectual leaders of the Tudeh party. This was exacerbated by their increasingly Stalinist attitude towards art and culture, already echoed in Tabari’s attack on the French existentialists and on The Blind Owl. Thus, when in 1948 Hedayat came to write his

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long introduction to a Persian translation of Kafka’s ‘Penal Colony’, he decided not to mince his words: The reason why some people show their teeth to Kafka, and suggest the burning of his books, is that Kafka has not offered any false hopes to the people. On the contrary, he has destroyed many a deceitful idea, and has blocked the way to the false paradise on earth. . . . Those who raise the cane of excommunication against Kafka are stinking beauticians who rub cosmetics on the face of the great idol of the twentieth century. This is the function of the organisers and chorus boys of ‘the gold-plated era’.33

He went even further than that, and attacked Communist totalitarianism in general: Bigotry and demagogy are the age-old methods of liars and charlatans. . . . These people are upholders of the stock, the chain, the whip, jail and torture, the gag and the blindfold. They try to present the world not as it is, but as it suits them; and they demand a literature in praise of their own filthy work, which would make black appear as while, falsehood as truth, and theft as honesty.34

Small wonder that he wrote to Jamalzadeh in the same year that ‘in our life, environment and everything else there’s come a terrifying rift such that we can no longer understand each other’s language’.35

Life in the 1940s Hedayat’s personal life was otherwise as uneventful as before, except that there was now a greater opportunity to sit around in different cafés and chat with close friends and cronies in his usual witty style. If anything, his verbal wit and satire grew and developed, and the unhappier he got the more permanently he put on his public mask of a clown, and the sharper, coarser and more biting became his witty expressions. During the elections for the Fourteenth Majlis he even had a poster made for Ali Asghar Hekmat’s campaign, nominating him for Tehran, above the name of a fictitious Jewish rabbi.36 This alluded to the fact that Hekmat (the hated Hakimbashipur of the short story ‘The Patriot’) was alleged to belong to a famous family of Jewish converts to Islam. On another occasion, Hedayat made a few verses about the shah’s constipation, and went on reading it here and there for friends and acquaintances.37 Once when he and Qa’emiyan were told off by a woman outside whose house they were urinating in the dark after a few drinks, he told Qa’emiyan aloud to remind him not to urinate outside that house again ‘because the landlady lacks manners’.38 His drinking tended to increase with time, and – towards the end of the 1940s – he added the occasional cocaine to the more frequent opium. In 1941, when the Office of Music was closed, and Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine) ceased publication, he was transferred to the College of Fine Arts as a French translator on a meagre salary. He still lived in his large and isolated rooms (only

 Hopes and Despairs 115 one of which was furnished) in his parents’ house. But he spent very little time at home (usually his lunch hours) and spent the rest of the day in cafés or, very occasionally, at a friend’s house. His relationship with his father and brothers was cordial but not intimate, although – typically for an Iranian mother at the time – his mother cared and was concerned about him. Parviz Khanlari remembered how, after Hedayat had gone to live temporarily at their home following a quarrel at his own, his mother had talked to Khanlari’s and the two mothers had managed to persuade Hedayat to return home.39 The cafés he frequented were almost all in and around the central Istanbul-Naderi Street: Ferdows, Naderi, La Mascott, Continental, Parandeh-ye Abi and Zhaleh. He had two lots of personal friends and collocutors. Taqi Razavi, Zabih Behruz and Mohammad Moqaddam (of the old times) all associated with him at his own level, as it were, as did Parviz Khanlari, Hasan Shahid-Nura’i and Reza Jorjani. The other group was made up of his young, or younger, associates, admirers and cronies such as Yazdanbakhsh Qahreman, Rahmat Elahi, Hasan Qa’emiyan, Enjavi Shirazi, Manuchehr Kolbadi, Sadeq Chubak and Jalal Al-e Ahmad. Unusual among his close friends of the late 1940s was Mozaffar Baqa’i who was destined to become a hero of the oil nationalization in 1951, and an unpopular figure later when he turned against Mosaddeq. He was a leading figure in the Majlis for a few years, and Hedayat used to get tickets from him to sit in the observers’ gallery whenever he was delivering important anti-establishment speeches in his open and fiery style. On the couple of occasions when Baqa’i took bast in the Majlis, Hedayat would go there to see him with flowers and sweetmeats, which – according to his brother Mahmud – deeply offended General Ali Razmara, his brother-in-law, the powerful army chief-ofstaff and (later) prime minister, and Baqa’i’s number-one enemy.40 This was in the years 1948 to 1950 when he no longer cared at all for anybody’s disapprobation, and, as he wrote from Tehran to Shahid-Nura’i in Paris, was ‘determined to turn everyone into a mortal enemy’.41 Not long afterwards, they would all express their deep regrets about his death as a great loss to the nation.

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Both the novel Hajji Aqa and the short story ‘Tomorrow’ (‘Farda’) are hailed as the strongest evidence for Hedayat’s new mood of ‘optimism’ in the early 1940s, clearly representing his concern with social and political issues. Ehsan Tabari, the lawgiver of ‘progressive’ literature at the time, praised these works as representing committed literature, in contrast with the dark and ‘pessimistic’ quality of The Blind Owl. True, Tabari was in the forefront of those critics who managed to sell the latter novel as a symbol of political repression under Reza Shah, but he himself cannot have been genuinely happy with this explanation, and that was why his comments on it at the time could not hide a considerable amount of disapproval. Overall, the Tudeh critics concentrated their comments on The Blind Owl among Hedayat’s works of the previous – ‘pessimistic’ – period and paid little attention to his earlier nationalist romanticism or, more surprisingly, his realistic short stories. That the latter works were largely ignored must have been, in part, because no strong socio-political message emerged from them: they could not be described as engagé literature. For, as has been noted, an outstanding feature of Hedayat’s approach in the stories which concern the lives of ordinary people is precisely his own aloofness, and the dispassionate way in which he handles his subject. The only ‘social’ message which could possibly come out of some of these works was the indirect criticism of religious views and practices. But this was a product of his nationalist as well as modernist sentiments and had been expressed much more strongly and directly through the romantic nationalist works. In one sense it is true that both Hajji Aqa and ‘Tomorrow’ are products of the political atmosphere of the early 1940s, when the Tudeh intellectuals were talking about workers and capitalists, and the Soviet Union was at the height of its popularity, especially after Stalingrad. On the other hand, the ideological interpretation of these works to suggest that Hedayat had suddenly been converted into an engagé writer, or even a Marxist critic of the society, is highly misleading. For, once the veil of the newly fashionable terms and concepts is removed, the same old Hedayat shows his face – his social values and his private passions – even through these works of the ‘progressive’ and ‘optimistic’ period. That is, the same old Hedayat who did not, and perhaps could not, commit himself to a given social and political framework, and was in this sense always true to his own personal approach to life and society. This may even explain two Soviet critics’ description of Hedayat as ‘the true representative of the [Iranian] class of petty bourgeois intellectuals’.1 The ideological problem confronting these critics is not difficult to appreciate. Hedayat was clearly not

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a ‘proletarian’ writer, but he was somehow ‘progressive’, so he had to belong to ‘the petty bourgeoisie’, leaving aside the fact that he belonged to the highest strata of Iranian society.

Hajji Aqa The short story ‘Tomorrow’ is not well known, but Hajji Aqa has been hailed both as a great work and as a critique of the Iranian bourgeoisie at the time. In fact, it is neither. Written in 1945, and first serialized in the literary periodical Sokhan, it is the longest fiction which Hedayat ever wrote, and the most celebrated after The Blind Owl. But its literary value falls far short of the latter, and its social and critical quality is less original and less impressive than such realistic short stories as ‘Seeking Absolution’, ‘The Legaliser’ and ‘Mistress Alaviyeh’. In fact, its purpose, style and dominant features are more representative of the author’s satirizing and scandalizing moods, and that is why it lacks a clear theme or ‘plot’. Alternatively, to the extent that there is a continuing theme, it is none other than the somewhat grotesque and unrealistic figure of the hajji himself, and his public and private ways and views: caricature of everything that is vile, amoral and anti-social, and the epitome of social cynicism and opportunism, religious hypocrisy, insatiable financial and sexual appetite, and a host of other destructive qualities. Inevitably, the absence of a strong plot has affected the structure of the story, in which three loosely connected parts may be distinguished. The first part makes up about a third of its length, and depicts the hajji at home, receiving and conversing with a few visitors shortly before the fall of Reza Shah. Part 2 consists of two sections, the first of which is a fairly long narrative about the hajji, his background, his wife and children, and his ideas and attitudes. The second is an extended replica of Part 1 and consists of a single scene in which the hajji is entertaining several visitors at home, now after Reza Shah’s abdication, and engages in long monologues and dialogues. Part 3 describes the hajji’s nightmare after a surgical operation and could have been the subject of a separate and more elaborate short story.

Who is Hajji Aqa? This is a good question, for it is not easy to locate Hajji Aqa within the country’s social strata of the time. That he is described as eighty-nine years old, with four dead, six divorced and seven living wives may be put down simply to the author’s rather exaggerated tendency towards caricaturization in some of his satirical works. But the fact that he is at once a traditional bazaar merchant and a powerful political potentate is much more difficult to square with reality. For example, when he is visited by Davam al-Vezareh during Reza Shah’s rule, he is told by his illustrious visitor: Last night I happened to be at Mr. Mahram-e Khalvat’s house, and your name came up in favourable terms. A certain important foreign dignitary was also present. We talked of life and politics and all sorts of things, and I particularly took care to give Mr. Montakhab-e Darbar a reminder.

 Hajjis and Workers 119 At this point the hajji interjects: Yes, indeed, I particularly recommended that if they wanted to put down the rumblings and revolts . . . in Lorestan, they should send someone I know who has extensive experience in these matters. Look how he put down that conspiracy in Mazandaran against His Fate-Making Majesty. You have to kill a few, and jail a few others.2

Clearly, these words could not have come from a bazaar merchant in 1939. The hajji pretends to be religious but does not even fast in Ramazan, drinks wine openly at parties and keeps a statuette of the Madonna and Child alongside a few nude pictures on the mantlepiece of his private room, while, at the same time, the text of a Muslim prayer hangs from the wall. He is a great admirer of Gustav le Bon – a European writer with a favourable view of Islamic civilization – attends literary gatherings and poetry recitals and says that ‘evolusion’ [sic] is better that ‘revolusion’ [sic], as if imitating the pseudo-modernist dandy in Jamalzadeh’s ‘Persian Is Sweet’. And, to make a long story short, he is a member both of the official academy and of the Institute for the Education of Minds, a kind of Sayyed Nasrollah Vali of the short story ‘The Patriot’, plus his minister Hakimbashipur, disguised as a traditional bazaar merchant (see Chapter 6). This greatly weakens the realism of a character nevertheless regarded by the critics as a symbol of Iran’s mercantile bourgeoisie of the time, but, at the same time, it increases the scope for political satire and social ridicule. In any case, it is difficult to know how Hedayat could have based a novel on the character of a real traditional merchant, given his lack of personal experience of the subject. Yet, the hajji’s caricature must have been based on a real model (or models), as are those of many other characters in the story – either in name, or in social category, or both. For example, the title of Davam al-Vezareh is based on that of Qavam al-Saltaneh, the strong, old-school politician who had been prime minister shortly before the novel was written. Likewise, Sa’ed-Homayun is a caricature of Mohammad Sa’ed al-Vezareh, also an important politician and prime minister at the time. KhaizaranNezhad – a young radical journalist, and an odd-man-out among the hajji’s visitors – may represent one of a few Tudeh intellectuals and sympathizers, particularly Anvar Khameh’i and Ehsan Tabari, while the outspoken poet Monadi al-Haq (or Voice of Truth) unmistakably represents the author himself. Who then is the model (or models) for whom the hajji’s grotesque and exaggerated figure has supplied the caricature? This was a genuine puzzle for a long time. At first, search and reflection pointed to Hajj Ali Naqi Kashani, the big traditional merchant with a colourful personality and an unusual native intellectual ability he reveled in frequent debates with young Tudeh party intellectuals at his own shop in the bazaar, and whose cordiality, tolerance and rigour in the debates are still remembered by witnesses. But he was a genuinely respected personality and a man of principles, was not a politician, and did not have a reputation remotely like Hajji Aqa’s in his public or private life. As an odd intellectual adversary of the Tudeh intellectuals, and a rich merchant who was a target for unjustified attacks by Mohammad Mas’ud’s sensational weekly newspaper, Mard-e Emruz, he might have suggested a well-known model for the traditional merchant that

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Hajji Aqa in fact is not. Indeed, Hajj Ali Naqi’s fame as such, and the mistaken belief that Hedayat’s Hajji Aqa represents the Iranian ‘bourgeoisie’, may well have left the impression at the time (and, with much less justification, later as well) that he is the real-life counterpart to the hajji’s character. But this is bound to be incorrect. Who then was the model for this caricature? Parviz Khanlari provided a solution to the riddle. He was convinced that the basic model had been suggested by Hajj Mohtasham al-Saltaneh (Nuri Esfandiyari), a moderate figure in the Constitutional Revolution, and a politician known for his piety as well as conservatism who had surprised many by cooperating with Reza Shah during the latter’s arbitrary rule. Hajji Aqa tells one of his visitors: I am myself a child of revolution. I was one of the leading figures of the Constitutional Revolution. . . . I was reared on the love of freedom, and democratic principles. But nowadays my views have changed a bit. Caution is necessary in all things.3

And his firm upper-class-politician background is revealed in his angry denunciation of the role of upstarts in politics since the foundation of the Pahlavi state: In the old times the upper classes knew who their parents were and were devoted to their motherland. But nowadays any rascal of a tinker can have pretensions to a seat in the Majlis, so that he can better fleece the people and then go and live abroad.4

Just like Mohtasham al-Saltaneh, the hajji has a rural estate in Mazandaran, and like many old-school politicians of his kind, he has an ambivalent attitude towards Reza Shah, especially in the early years of the latter’s downfall. For, while they spoke of his ‘law-and-order’ policy with approval, they tended to criticize the arbitrariness of his rule, his appropriation of other people’s land and estates, and his attack on religious worship and practices: Reza Khan sent for me several times and pressed me to accept office in a ministry. I demurred because I could see what the outcome would be. After all, it was my head at stake. I tell you he threw dust in people’s eyes. He tore down their homes, he appropriated my own lands in Mazandaran.5

Mohtasham al-Saltaneh had not been very active in politics in the early period of Reza Shah’s rule. He had been a Majlis deputy (inevitably appointed rather than elected), and it is likely that he was offered but did not accept a ministerial post. He was not eightynine years old like Hajji Aqa, but in his late sixties in 1941 when he became speaker in the Thirteenth Majlis, holding office at the time of the Allied invasion and Reza Shah’s abdication. The careful reader of Abbasqoli Golsha’iyan’s diaries of the cabinet meetings in the presence of the shah during those stormy days can learn much about his meek, if not weak and infirm, personality from the account of his performance in one of these episodes. Responding to a British radio campaign against his arbitrary and

 Hajjis and Workers 121 unconstitutional rule, the shah had ordered the Majlis to get on with their constitutional duties. The Majlis had then held a meeting without the shah’s knowledge to discuss the crisis. Having heard the news, the shah summoned a hapless Mohtasham and asked the speaker the meaning of the recent moves by the Majlis. At first, Mohtasham tried to explain that these were part of the very constitutional duties which the shah himself had ordered them to attend to, but as soon as the latter raised his voice, he fell back and began to speak in the same old language of a lackey talking to his master.6 At any rate, in 1938 Mohtasham had been sent by the shah as Iran’s good-will ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, and the hajji’s enthusiastic praise for Hitler may have its roots here. Both before and during the early years of the war the Iranian political public was – like the shah himself – pro-German, although the social class that was least affected by the Aryanist German propaganda in Iran was precisely the religious and mercantile community – the Iranian ‘bourgeoisie’ – whom the hajji is supposed to represent. The hajji tells his visitors: Now, the Germans are fighting for a purpose, but no one bothers to ask what the others are fighting for. They all keep talking about ‘the workers . . . I have no axe to grind; you go and ask the people who work on my estate. The decent way I treat them, and the way they worship me – you won’t find Stalin and his workers getting along like that’.7

Hajj Mohtasham-al-Saltaneh was especially known for his religious devotion, though the social class to which he belonged was not particularly noted for its piety. He still had a full beard, had been to hajj and carried the title of hajj – unusual for a man of his social position. Therefore, in this respect too, he offers a good model for Hajji Aqa’s otherwise unlikely figure of a landlord-politician with a strong public reputation for his devotion to the faith. Hence, in the newspaperman’s campaign for the hajji’s candidacy for the Fourteenth Majlis elections, he is said to be ‘of a fine old Iranian family, reared in all asceticism and piety, whose social efforts and freedom-loving sacrifices are known to one and all.’.8 The likelihood of Mohtasham being the main model for Hedayat’s Hajji Aqa does not rule out the possibility that other models may also have contributed towards his otherwise unrealistic and caricatured make-up. The likeliest of these is Hajj Mokhber al-Saltaneh (Mehdiqoli Hedayat), who was much closer to him as Hedayat’s second cousin and head of the Hedayat ‘clan’ at the time. Indeed, the similarities, in this respect, between Hajj Mokhber al-Saltaneh and Hajj Mohtasham al-Saltaneh are striking. For Mokhber was then over eighty, came from a landlord-politician background with properties in Mazandaran, was a leading moderate figure of the Constitutional Revolution, had been a prime minister under Reza Shah for almost seven years, and yet was critical of the latter’s modernism and attack on religion.9 Indeed, some of the views expressed by Hajji Aqa may well have reached the author’s own ears at the great Hedayat’s home, and with some of them he is even likely to have sympathized: What great achievements have we to our credit? A genius like His Majesty the Pahlavi [Reza Shah’s official title after his abdication, and his son’s accession]!

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We’ve never been able to manufacture a button or a needle, yet we were able to make all European drinks after only three days of trying. . . . Or take the oil dispute [of 1933, when Mokhber al-Saltaneh was prime minister]: when that came up, with all the doctors of law that we have, we had to go and employ a European consultant. This nation is always awaiting a big thug to come along and bellow and fart all over the place before finally kicking them in the head . . . How many times have we copied the Europeans like mimics, without anything coming of it? Since [a long time ago] we’ve been sending students to Europe and look at the result today! But take Japan, which came across such ideas much later than we did, nowadays nobody dares to say boo to them . . . Everybody expected that once democracy had arrived [after Reza Shah’s abdication], the newspapers would write about the harm arising from moral decay and dictatorship, and promote the cause of peace and reconciliation, religion and correct behaviour. But in fact, they all fill their pages with calls for chaos and disorder, and with foreign-inspired intrigues of all kinds. Of course, truth hurts. But we must acknowledge that our stock is rotten to the core. No science, no art . . . Our rulers are all thieves, deceivers and bribetakers, but what else can we expect?10

Such lines are extremely authentic and would have been heard both in some of the old-school conservative households and among the older and educated professional people. Some of them might also reflect the views of the more politically aware merchants, although the references to the employment of a European consultant in the 1933 oil dispute, Japan’s economic development, and the like, would normally have been beyond many members of this class at the time. And while we are still on the subject of Mokhber al-Saltaneh’s possible contributions to the hajji’s make-up, there might even have been a real-life model for Aqa Kuchik, the hajji’s eldest son, in the son of Mokhber al-Saltaneh Hedayat himself. The hajji had taken the very unusual step for a bazaar merchant of that time in sending his son to Europe for higher studies, but his son had returned without any qualifications, ending up as the ‘Court Chauffeur’ as well as an ‘infidel’, thus tarnishing the hajji’s good name and reputation: On his return to Iran, he appeared with brilliantined hair, wearing stylish suits, driving the hajji’s latest model luxury car, and frequenting the best cafés and restaurants with a Pekinese dog under his arm. . . . As bad luck would have it, one night, drunk as a skunk, he drove the car into a tree and smashed it up. At this, his father, after a fine old showdown, chased him out of the house and cut him out of his will.11

Mokhber al-Saltaneh’s son, like Aqa Kuchik, had also been sent to Europe without much tangible result, and to those who knew him he appeared to behave oddly. Jamalzadeh remembers the time when the Iranian embassy in Berlin (where he worked as a local employee for a few years) sent him to meet the then prime minister’s son at the railway station, on arrival from Tehran. Finding him on his own, Jamalzadeh had remarked:

 Hajjis and Workers 123 ‘I thought you’d be accompanied by your wife.’ ‘I’m not married,’ he said dryly, ‘I don’t like fucking.’12 Yet some of the hajji’s lamentations about his son’s performance and behaviour – the Godless drinker who has returned from Europe empty-headed, and let his family down in other ways as well – might well have been as close to the author as the hair on his own chest. To sum up, Hajji Aqa is far from representing what he has been popularly believed to represent, namely, an old and traditional Iranian merchant in the early 1940s. On the contrary, he is a caricature of aged and old-school landlord-politicians of the period of the Constitutional Revolution, with their typically ambivalent attitude towards Reza Shah, admiring him for bringing order and stability to the country, but being highly critical of his monopolization of all power, his arbitrary system of government, his appropriation of other people’s property, his pseudo-Europeanism, his growing reliance on ‘upstarts’, and his attack on religion. Both Hajj Mohtasham al-Saltaneh and Hajj Mokhber al-Saltaneh, in that order, are likely to have supplied the basic material for the construction of Hajji Aqa’s caricature, while the general references to the hajji’s commercial activities and domestic style of living (having numerous wives, for example) are intended to provide some kind of flavour for the figure which he is not, but in part is intended to be. This is a synthetic symbol of much that Hedayat despised both in the political and in the wider socio-cultural spheres, a set of vices and social failings which no single individual, or even any given social class, could represent. Hedayat does not even forget his sentiments against the established literati of the official academy and the Institute for the Education of Minds, though – perhaps realizing that the caricature of Hajji Aqa is being stretched too far – he does not dwell on his membership of these organizations for long. Indeed, of all the various types of villain which the hajji more or less is made to represent, that which is apparently intended – an old traditional merchant – is least authentically portrayed.

The hajji and the ‘bourgeoisie’ There is a certain amount of authenticity in the description of the hajji’s household as that of a big old merchant of the time, though even this is somewhat spoiled by such anomalies as the images of the Madonna and Child together with nude pictures being on the mantlepiece of his private room. The author might even have remembered his early short story, ‘Hajji Morad’ (a name now given to Hajji Aqa’s servant) in some of his descriptions of the hajji’s dressing habits, and his attitude towards his wives (see Chapter 3). However, even regarding these authentically bizarre descriptions of the hajji no obvious familiarity and expertise about an old merchant and his life have been displayed, and nothing has been said which goes beyond the common views of hostile critics on the subject. At least, the hajji’s speech could have been made more representative of a traditional merchant’s in form and content and put to good satirical use. Even some of his discussions of trade, commodity prices and so on lack the genuine style of the real Hajji Aqas of the then world. It looks as if the author simply lacked the social background, contact and experience to be able to go further along this road, and had to make do with the fake figure of a pious landlord-politician cloaked in that of a traditional merchant.

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Hedayat’s target is unmistakably the former type, but the cloak of a traditional merchant is no senseless camouflage. For, apart from the fashion at the time of castigating, not just faceless political opponents, but the ‘bourgeoisie’ itself, this is the social class from which the author himself was probably more alienated, and for which he had less sympathy, than any other category of the Iranian people. The ordinary people were too far removed from the author’s station, and, in their great simplicity, had their own charm and fascination for him. His own social class was familiar, at least, and was on the whole the most sophisticated of all established social groups, even though it took a large share of Hedayat’s disdain and disapproval. But an ordinary bazaar merchant represented almost everything which was offensive to his social, cultural and intellectual consciousness; that is, a mainly traditional class of professional money-makers who knew little about literature, lacked modernist and nationalist finesse, and looked and behaved in the old traditionalist ways and manners. Indeed, Monadi al-Haq, the out-of-place character among the hajji’s visitors, ‘voices’ Hedayat’s own ‘truth’ about such ways and values with a somewhat romanticized eloquence: Even if you build a Wall of China around yourself, you’ll find that the world is changing too fast for you . . . All you’re concerned about is the loo, the kitchen, and the bed . . . Never in your life have you owned or beheld anything beautiful, and even if you had you would not have appreciated it. No beautiful scenery has ever gripped you; no fine painting or inspiring music has ever made a powerful impression on you. . . . You’re nothing but a prisoner of your belly and what lies below it. Your life has less meaning for the world than that of a pig, or the plague bug. Any day would be a festive day for you when you manage to steal another three or four thousand tomans.13

Yet the strongest reason behind the portrayal of Hajji Aqa’s largely non-merchant figure as that of a bazaar merchant must have been what Hedayat was now learning from his Tudeh friends and collocutors about the hated ‘bourgeoisie’. In an empirical sense merchants everywhere obviously make up a monied class. On the other hand, whether the Iranian merchants of the time could be represented as a bourgeois (even a commercial bourgeois) class of the kind that began to emerge and develop in late medieval Europe is, to put it cautiously, a highly contentious sociological question. ‘Seekers are finders’, as the Persian saying has it, and once the Marxist European model of the succession of classes and societies had been supplied from outside the country, imaginary counterparts to them could be concocted in Iran’s history and society by a misuse of theory and misapplication of terminology. In a land in which the state had been the overlord and arbiter of society and economy, landlords whose ownership was a mere privilege, and could be removed at a moment’s notice, were identified as feudal, a merchant class which went back millennia to the ancient times was discovered as the local bourgeoisie, and a motley group of artisans and domestic servants were held to be the working class.14 Here, though, the issue was not so complicated and ‘sophisticated’ as it later became, because the then merchant class was, in fact, not the most powerful adversary of the

 Hajjis and Workers 125 Tudeh party, nor was it the master exploiter of the oil and textile industries or the rural and tribal carpet-weaving, which typically were not owned by bazaar merchants. Hedayat did not know, and perhaps did not care much about the rarefied ‘ideological’ and ‘scientific’ theories which lay behind such misapplied analyses, but the new-fangled and fashionable jargon must have influenced his choice of a traditional merchant as a symbol of the hated bourgeoisie. Yet his personal experience, realism and common sense have led him to portray a character which is basically landlord-politician, the social class which, after the fall and abdication of Reza Shah, had predictably emerged as the strongest political and economic force in the country. Inevitably, the influence of Tudeh ideas as well as the wider popularity and fashionableness of the Soviet Union in 1943 find expression both in the narrative and in the hajji’s conversations with his visitors (whom he has gathered in connection with his candidacy during the Fourteenth Majlis elections). For example: The hajji knew no more about Bolshevism than he did about Fascism. But he supposed that if the Russians [whose forces were already in the country] should one day set foot in Tehran, they would lose no time in confiscating his land and other property, and crucifying his wives and children; and that the heads of such people as himself would be decorating the gallows. . . . Every evening he would listen carefully to the Persian-language broadcasts on Radio Berlin, and his heart would leap with joy with the account of German advances.15 But if the talk happened to turn to the Soviet Union, it would be like a red rag to a bull as far as the hajji was concerned. The fire of his hatred would flare up, and with all the native malice that he possessed he would fabricate outrageous reports and spread his venom far and wide.16

As for the issue of social and political change, Khaizaran-Nezhad, the young radical journalist who has spent some time in Reza Shah’s jail, ventures the following fashionable views against mere charity and piecemeal reform, and in favour of revolution: Either there must be fundamental reform, or our compassion for pregnant mothers, and our collections in aid of the orphans and the poor are mere examples of shameless self-advertisements. Mere talking won’t get us anywhere. Either we must make fundamental changes, as they have done everywhere else in the world (and with visible results) or we must accept the prospect of obliteration in the most ignominious manner imaginable. I can see no other way out but revolution.17

Here the hajji interjects, wondering what the result would be ‘if a revolution is carried through with foreign aid and backing’. Khaizaran-Nezhad takes the point and offers a spirited defence for such an intervention: No revolution in the world has ever been able to depend on itself alone . . . All the power and money are in the hands of the ruling class. For their part, the people have no choice but to weigh up the situation . . . and look for what help they can

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get. America, in its War of Independence, received help from France, France from Britain, and so on.18

But it is significant that the author leaves the political and partisan arguments to Khaizaran-Nezhad, and lets Monadi al-Haq (who represents himself) talk about things which are more familiar and more important to him, and which he feels much more strongly about: ‘When a man sits in the loo bearing the trademark of the Hajji Aqas of this world, he’s not embarrassed by the flies that gather around him. They are creatures which deserve respect, for they’ve never done the dirty tricks he has.’19

Opium of the masses While the visitors are still in the hajji’s estate room, he receives one of them in his private quarters on confidential business. This is Hojjat al-Shari’eh (Proof of the Sharia), a common preacher who is apparently in the hajji’s pay. The hajji reveals his concern about the rising tide of radical and modern ideas and tells his visitor that they should try and strengthen the common people’s belief in religious superstition as a countermeasure. This would at once reduce the potential force of modern ideas and help them safeguard their own social privileges. Religious activity and public worship had been greatly restricted under Reza Shah. Therefore, one of the immediate consequences of his abdication and departure from Iran was the almost spontaneous restoration and expansion of religious activities, including the holding of congregations in mosques and private homes, and of ritual processions for Shia martyrs. The shah’s fall from power also brought back the traditional social and political contacts – and, in some cases, coordination – between landlords and religious leaders, on the one hand, and religious leaders and traditional merchants on the other hand (in general, there was very little direct social and political contact between the two main property classes). The new shah, the army, and the rest of the right-wing nationalist and modernist forces were not the natural allies of any of these social groups and classes, because their fundamental vision was still that of the original Pahlavi state. They harked back to a centralized Iran as a modern Aryan land that had to be ruled by an iron fist. However, full realization of such a vision had to await the passage of another twenty years, when Mohammad Reza Shah launched his White Revolution, and excluded the landlords and the ulama from political power, without extending it to any other social class or category. But, at the time, the Allies’ intervention, the public reaction against Reza Shah and the landlords’ and religious leaders’ economic power and social influence made it necessary for the new shah and the nationalist right wing in general to use the two social categories as their main social base. That is why within a very short space of time the religious leadership and community began to be viewed by modernist radicals as a force of social reaction and political repression even though the persecution which the latter had suffered under the old shah had been similar to their own. The small and extreme band of the Fada’iyan-e Islam had the moral and financial support of some of the powerful ulama as well as (indirectly) the royal court. And the assassination attempts which this group made on the lives of a few public persons must

 Hajjis and Workers 127 have been orchestrated, if not organized, by some elements among all the interested parties. Several attempts on Ahmad Kasravi’s life finally led to his death in a court of law where he had been summoned to answer charges of sedition against the public faith. Abdolhossein Hazhir, the powerful minister of the royal court, was personally involved in ensuring the release of Kasravi’s assailants, only to be killed himself at the hands of one of them a couple of years later. This is the background to the scene in the hajji’s private quarters where he instructs Hojjat al-Sari’eh to step up his campaigns among the faithful to promote religious zeal and fervour. But the specific argument he puts forward involves two problems regarding accuracy and realism, First, if the hajji is a genuine bazaar merchant he is very unlikely to have been motivated by such views as quoted later; this, once again, affects the enigmatic personage of the hajji which, at one and the same time, aims to combine the upper-class cynic and the ordinary bazaar merchant. Secondly, it is in any case unlikely that he would have exposed his cynicism so baldly and unnecessarily to a mere operator who, any moment, would offer his services to the highest bidder: I must tell you about the nub of the matter . . . people must remain hungry and needy and illiterate and superstitious, so that they may be obedient to us. If such and such a little grocer’s son gets some education . . . then it’s farewell to Hajji Aqa and goodbye to Hojjat al-Shari’eh.20

Perhaps the author has intended to ‘read the mind’ of the Hajji Aqas of this world – to expose the ‘reality’ beneath the ‘appearance’ – but even if such extreme cynicism may have been the motive of some landlords and conservative politicians at the time, it is unlikely to have been typical of the thoughts of most traditional merchants. At any rate, when the preacher, perhaps more tactfully, suggests that the idea is to try and ‘reinforce the religious observances’, the hajji corrects him: No, don’t get me wrong. We don’t want you to go fussing over people’s prayers and fasting. On the contrary, what we want – though in the name of religion – is to give currency once more to the old customs and practices. We need fanatics, breastbeaters, passion play zealots, credulous people of all kinds – not pious Muslims, for God’s sake.21

Here the author is reflecting a well-known theory – though it is likely to have been new to himself – that religion is nothing but ‘the opium of the masses’. Almost all religious and ideological frameworks have at times served the function of ‘duping’, if not ‘doping’ large numbers of the people into blind actions, serving the purpose of a select few who have either been cynical or believed that they had the people’s best interests in mind. Plato, Bergson and Sorel were even in favour of inventing lies and myths in the hope of establishing utopian social systems, and there have been lesser mortals who have made good use of such techniques with or without knowledge of those philosophers. On the other hand, religions and ideologies are not just opiums of the masses, and their believers and promoters are not all out to deceive the people for their own material and psychological ends. Here, therefore, we are yet again confronted by the problem which

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the hajji’s unrealistic personality poses. For an eighty-nine-year-old traditionalist, even though he may be a conservative landlord, is unlikely to have said that they did not want ‘pious Muslims, for God’s sake’. Even if individuals such as the aforementioned Abdolhossein Hazhir may have had such private sentiments while they publicly tried to obtain the support of higher religious leaders for their political ends, the thought and action would have been beyond a Hajj Mohtasham al-Saltaneh, let alone a bazaar merchant.

The hajji and foreign plots There is yet another important note in the hajji’s conversation with the religious preacher, which is extremely authentic, going far beyond the specific issue in hand, and openly representing the Iranian school of political analysis. It occurs when the hajji tries to explain to his apparently naive visitor the real purpose behind Reza Shah’s anti-Islamic posture: Reza Khan himself didn’t know what he was doing. He simply used to act according to his instructions. If he did something external like changing the style of hats, it was merely to annoy the Islamic countries alongside us.22

And, as if to provide prophetic confirmation for some current Iranian theories about the Iranian revolution of 1979, he goes on to add: But in fact, he was helping Islamic unity. Rest assured this Arab unity you’re hearing rumblings of nowadays will soon be replaced by calls for the unity of Islam. And they’ll have us by the tail, sure enough.

It may be somewhat confusing for the uninitiated, but the argument simply means that whatever Reza Shah did was on the direct instruction of foreign powers (presumably the British), and even his anti-Islamic policies had been a clever foreign device to provoke a religious backlash, so the religious faith becomes stronger than ever, and, hence, the foreigners could ‘have us by the tail’. The use of conspiratorial theories of politics is highly realistic, although this particular theory is very far-fetched and has not been put forward before or since the novel was written. But there is a technical problem in its use here, for the hajji is apparently criticizing Reza Shah and his alleged foreign masters for the same course of action that he himself is now promoting. Surely, the hajji does not mean that he too is acting on instructions from foreign powers. However, compare this theory with some current Iranian views of the 1979 revolution, advocated by both the supporters and the opponents of the former Iranian regime. Such views maintain that the revolutionary movement was an extremely clever plot, by Britain and the United States in particular, to bring down the shah’s regime and replace it by an Islamic republic. The plot was intended to realize two objectives: one, to encircle the Soviet Union with a ‘green belt’ (a cordon lslamique); two, to force down the oil price. Even the hostage-taking of American diplomats in Tehran (in November 1979) was the devil’s own doing in order to ‘throw dust into the people’s eyes’ (as the

 Hajjis and Workers 129 hajji would have put it). Yet, no one except the biased, the blind and the stupid would fail to see the real silk hats from which these rabbits have been drawn. Indeed, if there is one thing over which the hajji, the conservatives, the Tudeh party, many other Iranian political trends and large numbers of the Iranian intelligentsia – before, at the time, and since – have agreed upon, it is this school of political analysis.

The hajji in heaven Having managed the affairs of this world, the hajji lies down on the operating table (probably with his face down, given his particular ailment), and enters the next one. And he is sent straight to heaven for the single good deed of once having saved a fly’s life. His ghost is then allowed to pay a visit back home where he finds his family, friends and servants jubilant at the news of his death, and busy carving up his estate. He begs to be taken back to heaven, and there he is made doorman at the palace of one of his dead wives whom he mistreated in life. The lady apparently does not recognize him but still tells the angels to ‘throw this little pimp out’. He wakes up in horror and heaves a sigh of relief in his hospital bed. Hajji Aqa contains few basic social and political views and sentiments that are new in Hedayat’s works. The vehement attacks on the political and literary establishments, on Islam and superstition, on Reza Shah and so on are all familiar from (although more explicit than) the author’s previous works. The novelty is in the vehemence and openness with which they have been launched, and in the nuances, which reflect the specific circumstances of the country and the world during the Second World War. Indeed, if there are any real surprises at all, then they lie more in the familiarity of the basic themes and issues, and in the superficial impact which the Soviet and Communist novelty of the time had on their restatement. This gives the lie, not only to the ‘optimism’ theory of Hedayat’s life and work in these years – it is difficult to see any optimism in this novel and its social outlook, unless Hedayat was an optimist all his life – but, even more so, to the lofty claims that the Tudeh party as well as Tudehinspired critics later made for it. For example: ‘After the events of Shahrivar [i.e. Reza Shah’s abdication] and the downfall of the dictatorship, the eminent writer was elated. He forgot his old sadness and melancholy, and, by publishing such works as the “Elixir of Immortality” [of which more in Chapter 11] and Hajji Aqa, he participated in the struggle of the masses for freedom.’23 And further still: It is clear that the expansion of the struggle for the party of the toiling masses [the Tudeh party] increasingly brightens up the rays of hope for Hedayat. In 1945, he succeeds in writing Hajji Aqa. This work which is a masterpiece in its own right . . . was the height of Hedayat’s hopefulness.24

Hedayat was certainly happy about the downfall of Reza Shah, and the relatively more open society which followed it for a while injected some new energy, perhaps even a kind of joie de vivre in him. The rest seems to be more like party political propaganda and/or posthumous mythology.

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‘Tomorrow’25 On the face of it the short story ‘Farda’ makes more persuasive the claim of the author’s alleged optimism about ‘the struggle of the party of the toiling masses’. On closer examination, however, it turns out to be the thoughts and reflections of two workingclass Sadeq Hedayats, or rather of one such person and his mirror image. Therefore, the story is more in line with Hedayat’s psycho-fictions – the only one of its kind written in the 1940s, before the whole problem was made explicit in his last work, ‘The Message of Kafka’ – except that here there is a more concrete social and political framework. It is made up of two separate parts, though there is a continuity of theme and purpose. And, as usual, there is little action in the story, neither part of which contains much besides the lonely reflections and introspections of ‘two’ workers at different points in time, in a stream of consciousness.

Life is a long and frozen tunnel The first part opens with Mehdi Zaghi (Mehdi the Green-eyed) lying in bed and thinking about life, relatives, friends, the past and the future, using, for the first time in Persian fiction, the technique of stream of consciousness. He has a cold, but it suddenly occurs to him that the cold must come from ‘within’ – from inside himself – and he reflects on it in words which might have come from the recluse in ‘The Dark Room’ (see Chapter 8): Got it now! This cold can’t be from the weather; it’s from somewhere else, from inside myself. No matter what the situation, this cold always gets hold of me. I’ve got to drag this body of mine everywhere while being on my knees. One must go to the end. But why must one, what for?26

Other parts are more concrete and contemporary: After six years of labour my hands are still empty. Here we go again. It’s all my own fault . . . If there’s pleasure and joy somewhere in this world, there’s wretchedness and despair everywhere to make up for it. Pleasure and joy belong to a few only. Take the sleek customers of Café Giti where I was working last year. They were spending money they’d not earned. Cars, parks, pretty women, nice drinks – everything is kept for them alone. . . . The other world will belong to them as well, ‘cause it takes money to do good’.27 That night in the corner of the Café’s entrance when that American soldier, who was pissed out of his mind and sweat was pouring down his blood-shot face, was hitting the head of the woman in navy blue so hard against the wall, I couldn’t hold myself back . . . I don’t know what it was they hit on my head . . . I spent three months in jail.28

Yet he has not only refused to join the party or the union; he is even critical and suspicious about the true motives of their activists:

 Hajjis and Workers 131 The other day when Abbas was talking about the union, Gholam made a V-sign and said: Leave him alone, he hasn’t got much up there. It’ll be better for Abbas not to talk with those crooked teeth of his. Anything he says, I’ll do the opposite. If he’s honest, he’d better cure his gonorrhea first. He’s joined the party, so they don’t judge him by his bad looks. Gholam’s right in saying that he doesn’t really understand their motives. Maybe they too have some kind of joy and amusement, but then they try to pretend to misery and wretchedness. But I’m not a party to other people’s joys. I’m different; I need air to breathe.29

In other words, the motives of the party and union members are not as pure and altruistic as they make them out to be. And, in any case, they are there because it brings them worldly benefit, at least the joy and satisfaction of belonging to a herd. Whereas the worker/author is a man of different cut and is looking for something beyond the ordinary joys of this life. Above all, he values his freedom and independence – he needs ‘air to breathe’ – and does not join the party or the union. Already, the author himself is beginning to emerge via the thoughts of the recluse worker who is suffering from psychosomatic aches and pains, and is not prepared to join the others: I’ve got to know all my friends and acquaintances in a bad dream. As if one is passing through a bare desert for hours on end, hoping that there is at least one other person behind him. But as soon as he turns for a helping hand, he finds no one there. He then misses the pothole in front of him and slips right into it. Life is a long and frozen tunnel.30 He is thinking of going to Isfahan next day when he falls asleep muttering ‘Which station did he say? . . . Tomorrow, must . . . Tomorrow.’

The death of the anti-hero In Part 2, we read the thoughts and reflections of Gholam, Mehdi’s mirror image, and a friend and party member. Here we learn that Mehdi has been killed during a strike by the printing workers in Isfahan, though he had still refused to join the party until his hero’s end. Gholam reflects: While Abbas was busy typesetting, he began to read out the news with great effect. (Abbas knew Zaghi as well, but that was just for party reasons, not for Zaghi’s own sake.) Why was he reading the news with such pomp(?): ‘The Funeral of Three Militant People’; no, he read: ‘A Glorious Funeral for Three Freedom-Loving Workers’.31

Gholam is an ordinary party member, but Abbas is a party activist. There is a subtle hint about Abbas’s change of attitude towards Mehdi Zaghi now that he is a useful martyr. This becomes clearer in Gholam’s further reflections:

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[Zaghi] didn’t care about the party and things like that. How come he got killed in the workers’ strike then? That day, at lunch, he got into an argument with Abbas. Zaghi was saying: ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to be hunted down. I haven’t got more than one tommy.’ Abbas replied: ‘It’s this kind of talk which has kept us back. So long as we’re not united our lot will be just as it is. There is only one correct path – can’t be a thousand. You think the workers everywhere in the world are more stupid than you and me?’ Zaghi finished his meal and lighted a cigarette. He then mumbled: ‘You lot aren’t men of action. All you do is talk.’32

There is no doubt about Zaghi’s death during the strike as a result of an attack on the demonstrators by security forces. But there is a lingering doubt about the reason behind his death, as if he might have been seeking to die, or ‘asking for it’. Gholam had suggested to the boys in the workshop that they should hold a private service for him. But there was only one response, and even that had been: ‘God bless his soul, he had a lump up his arse.’ The story ends with Gholam falling asleep, hoping against hope that the news of Zaghi’s death is due to mistaken identity, and thinking of the funeral next day: ‘I will wear my black shirt . . . Tomorrow, the paper . . . my black shirt . . . Tomorrow’. The story’s morbid realism is somewhat less explicit than Hedayat’s other psychofictions, but it is probably more effective because of its concrete social context. Zaghi is a non-conformist, a voluntary exile like others in many similar stories. He hates the social injustices which he sees around him, and he ultimately forfeits his life in defiance of them. But he sees no hope or joy in any effort to fight against them and regards the others who seem to be doing so either as hypocrites or self-deceivers. He even refuses to seek comfort, or at least avoid discomfort, by joining the crowd, the party and/or the union, for reasons which were much more strongly echoed in the author’s ‘Message of Kafka’ a few years later. He does not and cannot survive even among his own kind: even here, he sees selfishness and self-deception; even here, he is in a minority of one; even here, he is lonely and abandoned. Thus, if there is little of substance in Hajji Aqa which the author has not said before about the social and literary establishment neither is there much in ‘Fadra’ which has not been reflected in his earlier psycho-fictions. Much the same is true of the ‘cases’ and other satires which he wrote over this period, with the exception of the allegorical fable ‘The Elixir of Immortality’ and the case of The Morvari Cannon, though these two works are very different from each other. They will be discussed in Chapters 11 and 12.

11

Satire and depression

In a letter to a friend written in 1950, Hedayat begins to poke fun on the slowness of the Iranian postal service, and then goes on to say: ‘There! I’m beginning to produce nonsense again. I’ve got to watch it. On the other hand, it is this kind of nonsense which is keeping me going.’1 In fact, the unhappier he got in his own solitary world the wittier he became in public, and the more deeply entrenched his depression became, the sharper and more biting his tongue and his pen tended to become in both verbal and written communication. Much of his creative work in the 1940s (including Hajji Aqa) may be described as satirical, except that the satire increasingly thickens into gibes and ridicule – even, at times, abuse and invective – as if the poison inside needs to be put down on paper as an outlet for the author’s inner torment. Satire had always been a significant feature of Persian poetry. Sometimes it took subtle forms such as in the works of Sa’di (both in his poetry and prose), Hafiz, Rumi and Ibn Yamin, though in the case of the latter two it occasionally turned coarse and in some of Rumi’s anecdotes even came close to pornography. Regarding subtle satirical pieces and gibes consider the following fragment (qat’eh) by Sa’di: ‫مردکی بود غرقه در جیحون‬ ‫به سمرقند بود پندارم‬ ‫بانگ میکرد و زار می نالید‬ 2 ‫که دریغا کاله و دستارم‬ A little man was drowning in the River Oxus – it was in Samarqand I think – Clamoring and complaining desperately: Woe for my hat and turban!

And this gibe by Hafiz: ‫آن بوی یوسفم‬ ‫آید از‬ ‫پیراهنی که‬ 3 ‫کنند‬ ‫قبا‬ ‫غیورش‬ ‫برادران‬ ‫ترسم‬ The garment that brings me Joseph’s scent from afar I fear his jealous brothers may tear apart.

Classical satirical poetry and prose were frequently expressed in the form of joke (hazl), lampoons and abuse of other persons (hajv); both of them could include obscene

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language in verse, and anecdotal prose, such as those of Obeyd Zakani. Examples have survived that date back at least to the twelfth century. Sometimes it was done for fun; sometimes for private vengeance; sometimes on behalf of a patron to castigate his enemy; sometimes blatantly to obtain money from the victim. Sana’i Ghaznavi, Adib-e Saber, Rashid al-Din Vatvat, Anvari Abivardi, Suzani Samarqandi Qa’ani Shirazi and Yaghma Jandaghi are some of the most renowned examples in a long line of writers of humour, lampoons and /or obscene poetry. For example, the well-known humorous classical female poet Mahsati (or Mahasti, twelfth century) wrote in a quatrain: ‫قاضی چو زنش حامله شد زارگریست‬ ‫گفتا ز سر قهر که این واقعه چیست‬ ‫من پیرم و کیر من نمی خیزد راست‬ ‫این قحبه نه مریم است پس بچه ز کیست‬ When the Qazi’s wife became with child, he cried. Struck by pain, he found it extremely odd, Saying, I am old and cannot have an erection, This whore is not Mary, so whence the benediction?4

Anvari Abivardi (d. 1189) was a master of coarse lampoons usually for personal reasons, such as revenge, demanding money from the victim and the like: ‫انوری نام هجو می نبرد‬ ‫چون ترا چشم بر عطاست هنوز‬ ‫کیر خر نام می برد لیکن‬ ‫می نگوید که در کجاست هنوز‬ Anvari will not mention the word lampoon, Since he still hopes for a donation. He does mention donkey’s prick, But does not yet mention its location.5

His hajv of his own wife are unprintable.6 Khaqani (c.1126–98) wrote in a fragment (qat’e): ‫خواجه اسعد چو می خورد پیوست‬ ‫طرفه شکلی شود چو گردد مست‬ ‫ لیکن نیست‬، ‫پارسا روی هست‬ 7 ‫ لیکن هست‬،‫قلتبان شکل نیست‬ When Lord As’ad goes on drinking, He looks ironical when drunk. He is pious looking, but he is not one, He is not looking like a pimp, but he is one.

Rumi’s Masnavi is packed with more or less subtle satire and irony. But he also has some virtually pornographic tales, a well-known one of which is the story of the lady without a male partner who discovered that her slave girl lets the donkey in the stable have sex with her, not suspecting that she uses a pumpkin as a buffer: ‘She saw the prick

 Satire and Depression 135 but did not see the pumpkin’, Rumi gibes. She tried to imitate her slave girl without the use of the pumpkin and died as a result: ‘She died a disreputable death, my friend / By the donkey’s prick – can you imagine? – was she martyred.’8 In the nineteenth century, among the poets of Bazgasht (the Return or Restoration style), there are examples of coarse lampooning similar to the old classics, notably in the works of Yaghma Jandaqi (1781–1859) and Qa’ani Shirazi (1808–54). Yaghma once described, not just the human race but all the living creatures as motherfuckers, though the Persian term he used was zan-qahbeh. Qa’ani returned his compliments by describing him as the chief motherfucker of all.9 In reviewing the satire especially of the young Hedayat’s contemporary poets, this historical background must be firmly kept in view. The crucial difference was that, in the latter period, lampoons, invectives and the use of obscene words were no longer private to a special circle or elite, but open to the general public. Another important difference between the two traditions is that in that period, many satirical pieces in prose and poetry were politically motivated, even where they targeted one person. Thus, in 1919 Aref Qazvini, livid at Vosuq al-Dawleh’s conclusion of the AngloPersian agreement, described him as one the door of whose home is open to whores, while out of doors his wife is busy turning men into whoremongers: 10

And about a following prime minister:

‫کن‬ ‫باز‬ ‫جنده‬ ‫رخ‬ ‫به‬ ‫در‬ ‫تو‬ ‫خانه‬ ‫ای‬ ‫جنده باز کن‬ ‫را‬ ‫همه‬ ‫زنت‬ ‫وز در برون‬ ‫وزرا‬ ‫ریاست‬ ‫آن که دارد‬ ‫سرا‬ ‫به خداوند خالق دو‬ ‫تراست‬ ‫بزرگ‬ ‫جملگی‬ ‫زان خران‬

‫است‬ ‫خر‬ ‫طویله‬ ‫یک‬ ‫گفت‬ ‫ می توان‬. . . He who heads the ministers, I swear by the God of both worlds – Is a bigger ass than them all, In fact, he is a stable-full of asses.

Mirzadeh Eshqi addressed a fellow poet in a long qasideh, of which the following is a small sample:

O Vahid-e Dastgerdi, filthy-mouthed sheikh, Who call the filth of your mouth poetry!

‫ای وحید دستگردی شیخ گندیده دهن‬ ‫سخن‬ ‫را‬ ‫دهانت‬ ‫گند‬ ‫ای که نامیدی همی‬ ‫ای شپش خور شیخ یاوه گوی شندر پندری‬ ‫ای نداده امتیاز شعربا گند دهن‬ ‫پوستین بر پیکرت چون جلد خرسی کول سگ‬ ‫هیکلت اندر عبا چون دوش نسناسی کفن‬ ‫بر سرت عمامه چون آلوده با گچ سنده ای‬ ‫ رو درآیینه نگر باور نداری گر ز من‬. . .

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O louse-eating sheikh in torn-off rags, Who mistake poetry for the filth in your mouth! Your skin coat is like a bear’s skin on a dog’s shoulder. Your aba looks like a shroud around a baboon. Your turban is like a turd wrapped in plaster, Look in the mirror if you doubt my word.

He also addressed a prime minister in the following verses: ‫ الحق که نه مردی‬،‫از من به قوام این بگو‬ ‫زین کار که کردی‬ ‫ریدی به سر هر چه که عمامه به سر بود‬ ‫دیدی چه خبر بود؟‬ Tell Qavam for me, you are surely not a chivalrous man By what you did You shat on the head of every turban-wearing man Didn’t you see it all?11

Hedayat’s satire is usually more subtle than these, and, unlike classical and neoclassical works, it goes well beyond anecdotes that make a single point on a given subject. On the other hand, it tends to reflect intense feelings, and often disguises a deep sense of anger and frustration about the object of ridicule. Yet it cannot be described as engagé literature, because it lacks an ideological framework, a positive aim, or even a sense of commitment to anything other than the act of ridiculing itself. It is not purely anarchistic in the sense of mindless and licentious destructiveness; rather, it involves an indiscriminate denunciation of perceived evil wherever it may be observed among ideas, beliefs, sects and social groups. That is also why (with the qualified exception of ‘The Elixir of Immortality’, of which more later) none of these works contains a message of hope. In fact, many of the lines seem to have come off the author’s chest, as it were, in spontaneous, haphazard and rapid succession, pouring out sentiments and emotions which he lacks the energy, enthusiasm and patience to develop systematically into a completely polished piece of work. This is particularly true of The Morvari Cannon which is otherwise the best (as well as the last) of his satires written in the 1940s. Almost all of these satirical pieces have been written in the style of the ‘cases’ which he and Farzad had once written in the 1930s (see Chapter 6), although they are typically longer, and look more like ordinary fables and fiction rather than short or long anecdotes. Some of them appear in the collection, Velengari (Mucking About), others as separate pieces, while The Morvari Cannon is a long satire in its own right.

Mucking About ‘The Case of the Anti-Christ’s Donkey’12 is a relatively short piece of allegorical satire written in the early 1940s when many writers, poets and journalists were attacking Reza Shah and his rule in various forms, sometimes by open abuse and invective. In the belief of the Shi’ite (and some other) Muslims the world will come to its end with the advent of the Mahdi, but shortly before his coming a false redeemer – Dajjal, or anti-Christ –

 Satire and Depression 137 tries to impersonate him, and for a while, manages to deceive the faithful. According to popular belief, Dajjal will be riding on a donkey which, with its feats of magical performance, will help the cause of its master. The tale must have been widespread, for even Sa’di, a learned doctor of Sunni Islam, says in a typically brilliant verse: ‫چون سگ درنده گوشت یافت نپرسد‬ ‫کاین شتر صالح است یا خر دجال‬ When a fierce dog finds meat, it will not wonder Whether it is the camel of Saleh or the donkey of Dajjal.

The fable is about the rise and fall of Reza Shah. In Stupidland13 a flock of sheep graze in lethargy and ignorance. One day, a cunning fox from distant parts happens to pass by, discovers a mine of priceless glittering stones14 and looks for a way of possessing it. It finds a ghoulish blackguard, who had hitherto been the jackals’ stable-keeper, and helps him take over the land with the assistance of a hyena. Having fulfilled its mission, the hyena then disappears from the scene, leaving the blackguard to get on with the job: He built private stables and barns made of reinforced concrete, but still kept the rubble for possible use in the future: he just put a coat of paint on them to make them shine and bedazzle the sheep’s eyes. Then he began to overreach himself, and try to abuse the neighbouring lands, big and small. The sheep were stunned and astonished – with their mouths wide open – at these feats of incredible performance . . . and took pride in themselves. Anyone who did not rejoice in these events was first flogged, then thrown to the wolves.15

The ghoul continues to rule in this fashion until one day, thinking that he was going too far, the fox decides to throw him away. He takes all his moveable possessions with him and leaves a serpent behind to sit on his immovable property and continue to ‘suck the sheep’s blood’. Meanwhile the fox brings back the hyena from the graveyard where he had been banished, so that he can pave the way for another ghoulish giant. Stupidland = Iran; the fox = Britain; priceless stones = oil; the ghoulish blackguard = Reza Khan/Reza Shah; the jackals = Tsarist Russia; the hyena = Seyyed Zia; the serpent = Mohammad Reza Shah ‘The Elixir of Immortality’16 combines elements from a number of Persian children’s stories, and the Judaea-Islamic legend of Joseph and his brothers, with some additional trimmings to produce a symbolic satire. Following a catastrophic drought, an old cobbler sends his three sons away to seek their fortune in other lands. For reasons which are unclear, the two elder brothers plot to kill the youngest. The bloody shirt and dead wolf are then sent to the cobbler as proof of his son Joseph’s death. The eldest son reaches the City of the Blind which is full of misery and ignorance. Their blindness is caused by a mysterious gold dust, and they await a prophet to bring them the Elixir of Immortality which will restore their sight. The eldest son poses as the redeemer, becomes rich and powerful, and himself goes blind in the process.

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The elder son has a similar fate. He arrives at the City of the Deaf, where he begins to produce opium and alcohol and sell them to the City of the Blind. He, too, becomes an important person and goes deaf in the process. However, as the reader might have guessed, the youngest brother manages to survive, and he ends up in Evergreen Land where the Elixir of Immortality is the ordinary running water. He is received well by the inhabitants, but his subversive activities against the other two cities result in a war between them and Evergreen. The deaf and the blind somehow manage to defeat the civilized Evergreeners; as luck would have it, however, Evergreen water tanks are damaged in the battle and the Elixir of Immortality runs out, returning sight and sound to the people of the victorious cities. As a result, they turn on their own rulers and generals (including the two bad brothers), and all ends well for Evergreen and its hero. He returns home and treats his father’s eyes (which have lost their sight by constant weeping for his disappearance) with the magic water. The symbolism seems to be either too elaborate or insufficiently developed, so that it is difficult to tell who is who, and where is where. Do both the Blind and Deaf cities symbolize Iran, while Evergreen represents the Soviet Union? Or do the Blind and Deaf stand for Germany and the Western Allies, though the latter were allied to the Soviet Union at the time? Similar problems arise when the symbolism is interpreted directly regarding the cobbler and his sons. In fact, it looks as if the author himself has deliberately tried to make the symbolism complex so that a simple and straightforward interpretation would not be possible. But a clear contrast between good and evil is still there. ‘The Case of under the Bush’,17 on the other hand, avoids that as well, and is more authentically representative of Hedayat’s view that no framework is entirely acceptable, and that all systems, ideologies and social frameworks have their faults. Adam was created, but his offspring multiplied so rapidly as to constrain the Lebensraum of his ‘belly and what lay beneath it’. So, he divided his tribe into two groups, and sent them to look for the ‘antipode’ of where he himself was sitting. The two new tribes then began to look for the elusive antipode, one of them from the Right, the other from the Left. In no time, poets and writers began to emerge in both tribes and write flattering praise about their respective tyrants. Millions of years passed, and the two tribes went on ‘spreading civilisation’ by ‘looting and grabbing’ anything that they came across, and these activities and achievements were recorded by their respective historians in great detail. However, once when the Left tribe was crossing a river, the box containing their historical records and documents accidentally fell from the bridge and was lost forever. And this was the source of all trouble. Sometime later, the Left came across the Right, but it had no documentary proof of its past glories. They tried to boast about their historical achievements – for example, the fact that their chief had once had their own people’s eyes pulled out to the weight of sixteen kilograms – but it did not work, because there was no evidence of it. Therefore, the Right declared the Left an inferior race and imposed a New Order in which members of the Left tribe were mere slaves. But, eventually, the Left first disclaimed descendance from Adam (let alone any claim that it was the Super Race), and then frightened the Right away by a show of force. Afterwards, they ‘installed burning candles into the flesh of their learned historian, and then set fire to him by first-class aircraft fuel, so that no one would ever again be tempted to write history for them’.18 Whatever Hedayat might have had in mind in writing this piece of symbolic satire, it is

 Satire and Depression 139 evident that he had come a long way from the time when he himself had boasted about the superiority of the Iranian nation and race. ‘The Case of the Bird of the Soul’ is a joke with a friend, and a reflection of the author’s continuing interest in a combination of espiritisme and social-science fiction.19 Time passes, habits change, technology becomes supreme, wealth increases and social attitudes and relations sink down to the level of complete docility and conformism: There was no one for nor against. As soon as anyone opened his mouth, the cries of ‘yes, absolutely’, Of course’, ‘certainly’ would be heard even before the words were uttered. Electrical eyes watched the people and electrical ears monitored what they said, so that they would not deviate from the norms of public peace.20

Yet, this piece of Orwellism before Orwell’s 1984 is no more than an interlude in the tale of a learned scholar – answering to the description of his old friend Mas’ud Farzad – who had been studying Hafiz for a long time without getting any acknowledgement for it. Worse than that, he could not even find a publisher for his work. But God decided to intervene, and – in a series of negotiations conducted through an angel – He agrees to give the scholar an exceptionally long life to make up for his failure to publish his work. Hence, he survives all the events which result in the emergence of the brave new world described earlier and is discovered when he is more than a hundred years old. When they ask him about the secret of his longevity, he replies: ‘I have been copying Hafiz all my life; you publish my edition of Hafiz and live twice as long.’ The publication of his edition, however, removes the basis for the privilege of an abnormally long life, and the old scholar surrenders ‘the bird of his soul’ to the angel of death. To say that the bird of someone’s soul flew away is a fairly common metaphor for pronouncing his death. Here, there may also be an allusion to a verse by Rumi: ‫مرغ باغ ملکوتم نی ام از عالم خاک‬ ‫چند روزی قفسی ساخته اند از بدنم‬ The bird of the Celestial Garden am I, not from the realm of Dust, They’ve just made me a cage of my body for a few days.

Farzad’s voluminous and controversial study of Hafiz was published more than thirty years later. He lived for much of his life – and died, in 1981 – a bitter man. He deserves a tribute not only as a faithful friend of Hedayat but as a poet and critic who would have achieved more, and lived a happier life, had he been working in a fairer and more receptive social and literary framework. He wrote humbly, on hearing the news of Hedayat’s death in 1951, ‫تو آب روان بودی و رفتی سوی دریا‬ ‫ما سنگ وکلوخیم ته جوی بماندیم‬ You were a stream of water and flowed to the sea We are pebbles and stones and settled at the bottom.

‘The Case of the Salt Rock’ is a long piece.21 It concerns the life and times of a tribe of ‘ape men’ or ‘the missing link’, and contains a single allegorical synthesis of most of

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what Hedayat despised both in Iranian life and in life in general. There therefore is little novelty in it except that it shows that the author had been reading some social anthropology. For example: As a result of standing on his two feet, the ape-man’s genitals – which hitherto had been hidden – began to show, and, hence, the sense of shame, poetry and lyrics, swear words and pornographic literature came into existence; and his passionate feelings were intensified. In consequence, the male ape-man began to dominate the matriarchal [sic] female of the species.22

One day, the ape-men are visited by Mother Baboon, who tells them, among other things: The whole of your attention is concentrated on your bellies, and what lies beneath it. In your rotten, sensual society, the female of the species is even more seductive than that of free animals. She spends all the time making herself up, so that she can charm the male donkeys [ultra-virile men]. She has turned into a stupid chatter box who has no time for thinking.23

After a long passage of time and much geological evolution, the ape-men evolve into four races: some go red with shame, others black (because of the heat of the sun), others yellow (because of hepatitis) and the rest white with fear. However, one group of ape-men is dominated by someone known as the Big Ghoul24 who organizes them in meetings for ‘the education of minds’ (see Chapters 6), and every morning forces them to sing hymns of praise, such as: We worship the Wise Old Man who is in heaven. . . . We pray to the dead. We praise the Sumerian Calf. We adore our honourable Fuhrer (pishva) and Redeemer (qa’ed), the Big Ghoul, who is the representative of the Wise Old Man [on earth]. We have made ever-increasing progress through the glory of our August Leader. If we walk, eat, and multiply, it is all due to his will. We adore the Big Ghoul.25

However, eyesights somehow begin to weaken, and the remedy is found in the invention of salt-rock spectacles, which solve the problem by making it worse, because, being preoccupied with their eyesores, people tend to be resigned, and the danger of rebellion disappears. That is why the invention is taken up by ‘exploiters, colonialists and smugglers’, and a royal decree ‘emphatically recommends’ it to the public. As it happens, ‘the spectacles become popular only in the Guarded Domain of the Big Ghoul’. On the other hand, someone in another country happens to invent lens glasses, and this leads to an uprising by those who can see clearly. But not in the Big Ghoul’s country, where salt-rock spectacles, despotic tyranny, religious hypocrisy and public ignorance continue to dominate everyday life. Some of the lines and passages of this ‘case’ are (especially in the Persian original) humorous and funny, but some others are long-winded or superfluous. It looks as if the large number of asides and detours are meant to make the points less direct and more subtle, though this is not so much in the use of language, as Hedayat’s humour usually

 Satire and Depression 141 tended to be explicit and direct. There is an underlying tone of disbelief, scepticism and boredom, if not downright cynicism, even when scientific and social developments are cited, and the names of Galileo, Darwin, Marx and others are mentioned. It is more evident from this than perhaps any other previous work that the author has no real heroes, is not excited by any particular idea and has little hope for mankind. In a somewhat different way, the same impression is even more strongly given by The Case of the Morvari Cannon, the longest satire, and the last piece of creative work to be left by Hedayat.

The Morvari Cannon This was first published, in book form, in 1979, a couple of months after the revolution, although even then both the author and the publisher remained unknown.26 Hedayat had written the book with some help from his friend, the economist and intellectual Hasan Shahid-Nura’i. It was completed in 1948, when he sent the typescript with Parviz Khanlari to Shahid-Nura’i for the latter to arrange for its publication in Europe under a pseudonym. Thus, he wrote in his letter of 29 November 1948 from Tehran to Shahid-Nura’i in Paris: For the typing I am indebted to [Dr Taqi] Razavi. . . Anyway, if it was possible to publish, my first condition would be, naturally, to give you a carte blanche, in the sense that you are free to make any changes or alterations that you think fit, so that the collaboration [sic] would be complete. . . . Another point is that it should not appear under the author’s name, even though they will all attribute it to me.27

However, by the time (in December 1950) that Hedayat himself went to Paris, the book had not yet been published, and Shahid-Nura’i lay on what proved to be his death bed. He got the typescript back and gave it to Enjavi who was visiting him in Paris. In 1953, two years after Hedayat’s death, the book began to be serialized in Ateshbar, Enjavi’s weekly newspaper, but the August 1953 coup put an end to that newspaper and any hope of the book’s publication for decades. The satire is based on the ‘history’ of the old cannon which is believed to have been captured from the Portuguese in the successful campaign for the recovery of the Iranian Isle of Hormoz from them in the sixteenth century. In the late Qajar period, the cannon had been put on public view in the middle of Maidan-e Arg (‘Squar de la Cité’, or ‘The Mall’), located in the south-east of the royal compound. When Reza Khan was army chief and prime minister, he had the cannon removed to the grounds of the army stables. Still later, it was moved and installed in the grounds of the army officers’ club in the centre of Tehran. This humorous ‘history’ of the cannon combines fact, fiction, legend and imaginative inventions almost entirely as a means of poking fun on European as well as Iranian history, politics and society. Its real purpose is thus the same as many of the other ‘cases’, except that it is a much longer work, it takes matters to their extremes, and it is in some places hilariously funny. It is one of the best satires Hedayat ever wrote,

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but lacks the fictional quality and organization of one such as ‘The Islamic Mission to European Cities’ (see Chapter 5), and the anger beneath the satirical façade is much more evident than in the other works. A characteristic of the satires of the 1940s which reaches its peak in this work is a tendency to ramble on through too many points, issues, asides, allusions, diversions and digressions, precisely because they seem to be a means of getting much that he holds against this world off the author’s chest. Consequently, they tend to lack a thoroughly thought-out and integrated structure and framework, and much of their effect comes through the parts – separate lines and passages – rather than the work as a whole. In The Morvari Cannon the use of common words and expressions is often at its best, frequently surpassing all the previous works, including ‘Mistress Alaviyeh’ (see Chapter 6): It is well known that under the Martyr Shah [Naser al-Din] the Morvari Cannon was standing on its butt, firm and erect, in Arg Square, staring at everybody. . . . Each year, on the last Wednesday of the year, menopausal women, masculine and worn-out widows, young girls just come up to puberty, sex-hungry spinsters and immature girls approaching the age of marriage would rush from near and far, and crowd around the Cannon so badly that there’d be no room for breathing. The luckier ones would then manage to sit on it, pass under it, or hang a lucky charm from its butt or wheels, or at least rub a part of their bodies against it.28

The phallic symbol was supposed to help them solve their various social and sexual problems – for example, by finding husbands for them, or curing their infertility. The book’s opening passage, quoted earlier, is clearly far from a nostalgic description of a golden past. Yet, it is followed by a favourable comparison of the Qajar era with Iran under the Pahlavis which is extremely important, especially as he mocks and dismisses both the pseudo-modernist and the romantic nationalist features of life under the latter. A modernist (and one-time romantic nationalist himself), Hedayat reveals, for the first time, his profound disillusionment with Reza Shah’s superficial modernism, quite apart from the arbitrary system of government which he had denounced in previous works: Here, too, as almost anywhere else in the world, there was a perfect Fate-Making arbitrary ruler [i.e. Naser al-Din Shah] whose moustache was dripping with blood . . . Nowadays they say a lot of things behind the back of this Martyr Shah, and subject him to a thousand libels and slanders. . . . But, to be honest, although there were not so many banks, the state treasury was full, and it would have taken the guts of a lion for anyone to have had any ill intentions about the crown jewels.29

The last point alludes to the unfounded rumours circulating that Reza Shah had taken the crown jewels with him when he had left Iran in 1941. But what follows is even more devastating:

 Satire and Depression 143 Although there were no oil revenues – which had had no precedent in Iranian history, and it is not clear which glorious state [i.e. Britain] is busy squandering them – the state had not issued a declaration of bankruptcy. And although it was not a buyer of scrap metal and second-hand weapons, at least it wasn’t borrowing and taking orders from foreigners.30

The country enjoyed greater protection, there was more genuine patriotism, and the state did not misrepresent every act of surrender to foreign pressure as a great national triumph: Without fat-bellied brigadiers and generals who would hide behind the borders and run away in the face of the enemy [cf. rumours about the Iranian army’s behaviour in the face of the 1941 invasion by the Allies], no one dared to intrude into the country. Without experts in patriotic propaganda, the people showed greater attachment to their land. Without throwing a christening party and changing the country’s name [cf. ‘Iran’ for ‘Persia’] it looks as if the name and reputation of this country among the foreigners was much greater. . . . There was no such heat in the air about public education, but there were both more learned people, and many more good books were published. Anyway, they’d not yet delivered Bahrain to the Master [Britain]. The giving away of Mount Ararat was not yet regarded as a great conquest. The Shah Baba [Naser al-Din] had not yet lost the right of shipping in the Tigris and the Euphrates . . . or driven a circus in the streets for the renewal of the oil agreement [the 1933 Oil Agreement]. He had not yet called himself The Great, and The August Genius.31

Even religious faith and religious leaders were more genuine: Without the mourning and groanings of Cross-worshipping radios that ‘People beware, faith is about to disappear’, there were apparently more learned theologians and more committed religious leaders.32

And he goes on to conclude: In a word, some norms and standards were still being kept. Not everything had yet been reduced to their lowest common denominator, the people were not living in abject poverty, they did not have to gargle empty boasts, and take pride in the rabble-like behaviour of their respectable leaders. And, to tell you the truth, it looks as if you could find a little more flourish, freedom and humanity.33

The author is exaggerating with respect to freedom and flourish, although it is true that Naser al-Din Shah’s system of arbitrary rule was much less centralized and less totalitarian than that of Reza Shah. However, the significance of these remarks – especially from someone with Hedayat’s modernist views and sentiments – is, first, in their recognition of the superficiality and hollowness of much that had been done in the name of progress since Reza Shah’s rise to power, and the gap between the real

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achievements and the propagandist boasts about them. Secondly, they point out that these developments have not been without their social and political costs, ranging from loss of territory and resources to a decline in the standards of learning. What makes these views especially original is the fact that they are not mere criticisms from the point of view of left-wing modernism, but from an independent standpoint. That is why the author is ready to consider that whatever there was in the traditional past was not necessarily worse than in the modern present. To return to the story, however: one day when the people woke up, they discovered that ‘God had presented them with an arrogant fart of a Fate-Making Majesty’, who was immediately surrounded by an entourage of nouveaux riches and sycophants: This shah apparently wanted to ape the Europeanists, though he was a little shy about it. He, too, like most other shahs in the world, was a constitutionalist, freedom-lover, lazy and pleasure-seeker in his own case, but an arbitrary despot in the case of his people. His job was to strike fear among the people, rob and crucify them, and build houses for himself. But because the word ‘shah’ had become oldfashioned and he didn’t have the cheek to call himself an arbitrary despot, he went even further and said: ‘I am a Europeanist as well as patriotic dictator, a social reformer, and the only prehistoric redeemer which my dear compatriots could have. And I’ll destroy anybody who doubts any of it.’34 The ‘August Shah-in-Shah’ then set about destroying Tehran’s monuments and historic buildings. But ‘since he had no way of destroying the Morvari Cannon’, he first had it removed to the military stables, then installed in the army officers’ club, and he issued strict orders that no old-fashioned women be allowed to approach it, ‘thus making it exclusive for the use of his own respectable harem, and that is how it’s been to this day.’35

So much for the Cannon’s recent history in Tehran. But its real ‘history’ begins when the Moorish Arabs are driven out of Andalusia. At this point comes Hedayat’s customary outburst against Islam and the Arabs: This Jewish God is violent, tyrannical and vindictive, and constantly orders the massacre of the people and the looting of their possessions.

And he generalizes from some of the mundane preoccupations of some religious leaders in his time: The whole philosophy of Islam is founded on filth. If they take the lower organs away from it, Islam will collapse, and will cease to have any further meaning and relevance.

Yet, the author himself is aware of his exaggeration, for he goes on to add: It is true that the Arabs are too little a people to have [founded Islam], and that it was the Jewish agents who themselves created this sedition (fetneh) so as to bring down the Persian and Byzantine empires.36

 Satire and Depression 145 Whatever one may think of this simplistic anticipation of the modern Hagarism theory of the rise of Islam, this time the author does not deprive another world religion of a share of his negative sentiments. Didn’t Jesus tell his followers to sell their clothes and buy swords instead (Luke: 22)? It is therefore clear that all the Semitic prophets and spiritual leaders, even those of them who are reputed to have been peace-loving and humanitarian, were thugs and demagogues.37 However, what about the Cannon and its history? After the Spaniards expel the Moors, they realize that they should discover a route to the Orient that does not pass through Muslim lands. Columbus is sent in search of a sea route and discovers America. He thinks it is Arabia at first, but he is corrected by the local inhabitants who worship the phallus and have made the Morvari Cannon a symbol of it. Eventually, Columbus carries off their gold as well as the Cannon, leaving in their place ‘a few veteran Jesuit priests, who are experts in religious persecution, so that if anyone did not believe in the Trinity, and in our father who is in heaven, they would well and truly let him have it’.38 Hearing about these and other overseas achievements of the Spaniards the king of Portugal makes a move, manages to get the Cannon and sends Vasco da Gama in search of American colonies. Da Gama sets sail for America but ends up on the Isle of Hormoz in the Persian Gulf. In between, they colonize many places in the East, or rather, spread ‘modern morality, democracy, science, western civilization . . . geographical materialism [cf. historical materialism] . . . liberalism, intellectualism, democracy-ism, political activism and demagogy’.39 Years pass until ‘Moustache Ali Shah the Great’ (i.e. Shah Abbas I) decides to drive the Portuguese out of the Persian Gulf. The Persians win the war, but the Portuguese women manage to kidnap (the English word is in the text) the Morvari Cannon and take it to India. The decline of the Ali Shahs (i.e. the Safavids) in Persia results in the reign of Nazar Qoli [Nader Shah]. Three of his wives are barren, and having tried all the remedies, they are told that they should ride over the barrel of the Morvari Cannon to become fertile. That is how they manage to talk their husband into attacking India and carrying off the Cannon back to Iran. The presence of the Cannon in the Persian capital increases fertility, hence population, so much so that they decide to restrict its use only to the last Wednesday of the year. ‘And this was the history of the Morvari Cannon.’ Throughout the book, a deep sense of disillusionment is thinly disguised by the satirical appearance and given away by the abuse and invective. History is a pack of lies, and religions do nothing but preach and practice violence. The export of European civilisation to other lands has meant nothing except colonialism: ‘We will not interfere with your cult of penis worship or your local rulers,’ say the Portuguese colonists to the people of India; ‘we will leave you alone with your traditions and rulers, and will rob you through them.’ Political ideas and ideals too – ‘geographical materialism’, ‘political activism’ and the rest – are bogus. It is a case of everyone deceiving everyone, a conspiracy, not of silence but of false pretences. Not only does the emperor have no clothes, but he who shouts the truth about it is either ignored or silenced. We crucify someone for speaking the truth, and then regard him as a saviour whose very mission had been to be crucified by us. Everything has a function – as a modern sociological theory would have it – and the lie has the greatest function of all. The author would have expressed a recent philosophy of science in something like the following terms: in science, the lie is ‘normal’, the truth, ‘extraordinary’; and the truth, once established,

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gives rise to many lies.40 He would have absolutely agreed with this, but in anger and shame, as opposed to approval or complacency. In Kafka’s The Trial, even Joseph K’s enquiries about the nature of the crime of which he is accused, and of which he has no knowledge, have their function, for they show ‘how the guilty talk’. It may seem strange to raise these issues and mention Kafka in an appraisal of a funny, and occasionally hilarious, satire in which, for example, Mary Magdalen is described as ‘Jenny the giant-cunt (Fatemeh fiel kos) of her own time’. Yet, The Morvari Cannon is, in many ways, the satirical counterpart to ‘The Message of Kafka’, except that Hedayat laughs through the one and cries through the other (see Chapter 12). Much the same message comes through his contemporary letters to friends (see later).

Literary studies Between 1941 and 1946, when he still had the energy to get on with serious work, Hedayat continued his earlier interest in ancient and classical Persian literature, culture and history. In 1942, he translated (from Pahlavi as well as English) the ancient geographical essay, Shahrestan-ha-ye Iran (or Iranian Provinces).41 This was followed in 1943 by the translation of the last part of Yadegar-e Jamasp (or the Legacy of Jamasp); that is, the part which describes Zoroaster’s prophecies about the Iranian doomsday.42 ‘Folklore or Popular Culture’ is a studious piece of research intended to set a framework, and suggest an approach for studying the subject.43 Hedayat has used many European as well as Iranian sources, in addition to his own cumulative experience in conducting such studies. The result is a scholarly as well as useful guide for collecting the relevant material from all aspects of popular life and culture. It goes considerably beyond issues of historical, linguistic and religious interest, and covers matters concerning family, society and economy, almost like a handbook on what to look for in a comprehensive anthropological fieldwork. As such, it may well have become dated by now. But, although this is more of a methodological than substantive work, it displays a higher standard of maturity than his previous studies on the subject (see Chapter 6). Of a still higher standard of scholarship, perhaps, are his translations of two important Pahlavi texts. They had been translated earlier, but they were published in 1943 and 1944 respectively.44 Apart from the translations of the Pahlavi texts, they both contain introductory chapters as well as additional annotations, which are useful to the reader, and indicate the translator’s extensive linguistic, literary and historical knowledge. Zand-e Vohuman Yasn45 is apparently the fullest available Zoroastrian account of the cycles of world development from the Beginning to the End. Although written in Pahlavi, the text is in fact post-Islamic, and this has tended to raise questions about the extent to which some of its details, including points concerning important matters of faith, may have been revised or added to suit the historical context. Hedayat’s own introduction contains a critical summary of its contents as well as a discussion of the significance of religious myths and metaphysics. His prose is about the best for its time, and his approach is scholarly and systematic. Some of his judgements regarding the possible precedence of Zoroastrianism in such beliefs as the coming of the Messiah are somewhat too conclusive

 Satire and Depression 147 for the argument and evidence which he offers. Still, he displays an impressive knowledge of comparable sources and concepts in various Middle Eastern cults and religions. ‘The Record of Ardeshir Babakan’ is, according to Hedayat, a biographie romancée but it looks more like a favourable legend based, as legends usually are, on a few historical facts. Hedayat himself is aware of the occurrence of ‘extraordinary phenomena’ and events in the story, such as the role of farr-e izadi (or divine grace) in helping Ardeshir’s fortunes, though he also points out its realistic features in recognizing the hero’s mistakes and failures as well as his courage and good judgement. But, on the whole, he regards the account as providing evidence for the righteousness of Ardeshir’s cause, and that of the Sasanian dynasty. Last, but not least, mention must be made of Hedayat’s considerable article on Fakhr al-Din As’ad Gorgani’s great romantic epic Vis o Ramin which had been edited and published by his friend Mojtaba Minovi.46 Not only is the critic familiar with the 9,000 verses which make up this monumental work, but he has the knowledge and ability to compare its sources and references with those of other ancient and classical texts, and discuss its linguistic as well as substantive features extensively and with precision. And yet, he went on to draw his 360 tomans monthly salary at the College of Fine Arts as a French translator.

Life and letters In 1947 Jamalzadeh went to Tehran on a mission from the International Labour Office and found Hedayat angry and depressed. A few days earlier Hedayat had discovered that a publisher had issued a cheap edition of his works without his knowledge and permission. And having personally complained to the publisher, he had been told: ‘You should be glad that your worthless rubbish has been published at all.’ Hedayat was deeply hurt, as Jamalzadeh recalls, with the double indignity to which he had been subjected, and highly frustrated at the fact that he felt there was nothing he could do about it. ‘Why can’t you take him to court?’ asked Jamalzadeh. ‘Because he can employ cunning lawyers, and bribe the judge’, said Hedayat.47 As it happened, he did in the end take legal action but the circumstances forced him to settle out of court: he withdrew his lawsuit in return for the publisher’s agreement to destroy the remaining 200 (out of 2,000) copies of the edition.48 In a subsequent visit, Jamalzadeh had been staying in the luxury Darband Hotel in Shemiran (booked and paid for by the ILO) and had invited Hedayat to visit him there. However, as his friend did not show up, and he was about to return to Geneva, he sent Hedayat a card through a mutual friend. Hedayat wrote back: I am truly sorry that I haven’t managed to come and see you during your visit. One reason is that I have badly succumbed to fatalisme [sic]. Besides, just like God himself, I have no fixed abode, and usually frequent Café Ferdows. On the other hand, I heard you’re in a posh hotel in Darband where the likes of me would not even be allowed in.

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He then goes on to give the most important reason: Besides, I’m very tired and lack interest in everything. I somehow go through the days, and every night – after having a lot of drink – bury myself, and spit on my grave as well. But the other miracle that I perform is that I get up in the morning and start all over again.49

A most vivid and authentic description of Hedayat’s life and times towards the end of his life is to be found in a letter to Jamalzadeh from his closest friend at the time, Hasan Shahid-Nura’i. Shahid-Nura’i was a distinguished economist and sophisticated intellectual, between whom and Hedayat – nine years whose junior he was – a close friendship and a sense of mutual understanding had developed over a relatively short period of time. In 1947 he was appointed Iranian commercial counsellor in Paris where he eventually died in April 1951, at about the same time as Hedayat took his own life (see Chapter 13). In a letter from Paris to Jamalzadeh in Geneva, he had talked about Hedayat’s unhappy situation in Tehran. The loyal Jamalzadeh had written back in haste and, true to his usual self, suggested various practical ways in which they could try and help him. In his subsequent letter, written on 19 August 1948, Shahid-Nura’i said that there was nothing they could do for him: Hedayat is currently employed at the College of Fine Arts. His salary is 360 tomans per month. . . . In fact, there is not much work for him to do there. He is supposed to be a translator, but there is no text that needs translating.

There then follows a graphic description of Hedayat’s ‘daily routine’: Every day he drops in there [i.e. the College] for half-an-hour. First, he takes off his hat and puts it in a corner. Then he sits on a chair and rings for a cup of tea. He then begins to stare at the walls for a while, and, if there happens to be a newspaper on the desk, he looks at the front page (but doesn’t read it). After finishing his tea, he puts his hat back on his head, and, without exchanging a word with anyone, leaves by the same way he had arrived. This is Hedayat’s daily routine. There is not a word of untruth or exaggeration in anything that I have said. (My photocopy of the letter given to me by Jamalzadeh.)

And, alluding to Jamalzadeh’s suggestion that perhaps a post in the Iranian foreign service abroad might help, he goes on to say: Neither the ministry of the exterior suits him, nor the ministry of the interior. He too believes that it is a fate which must run its course. I believe that if you run too far the rope will break. Wherever Hedayat and I go, we would be taking our accursed nature with us. And we can’t help it either.

Perhaps Mokhber al-Saltaneh (the grand old man of the Hedayat ‘clan’ and former prime minister) could do something for him, Jamalzadeh had wondered: Mokhber al-Saltaneh does not take a step for him either. Even those bigger than Mokhber al-Saltaneh could do nothing for him. Do what? Perhaps they’d send him somewhere [abroad] on a job or mission. He is fed up with everything.50

 Satire and Depression 149 He was indeed fed up with everything, but Jamalzadeh would not give up so easily. He wrote to Hedayat himself, telling him how well they all thought of him as a writer and a man, how anxious they were about his well-being, how they hoped he would not succumb to the darkness of his mood, and how they were all ready to do what they could for him. (Already in November 1947, Jamalzadeh had bequeathed one-twelfth of his estate to Hedayat in his will.)51 In a letter dated 15 October 1948, Hedayat replied promptly and with gratitude, but he confirmed his friend’s worse fears: I don’t know what to write in reply for it’s a long time I’ve lost the habit of writing. This has happened automatically, just like a lot of revirement [sic] which – consciously or unconsciously – has befallen me.

He had no doubt about Jamalzadeh’s continuing good will towards himself, but the point is that ‘I’m sick and tired of everything and that my nerves have been wrecked. I live from dawn to dusk like a condemned – and even worse than a condemned – man, and I have lost interest in everything. I can neither respond to encouragement, nor find any reassurance, nor deceive myself ’. Up to this point it looks as if there are no external causes behind his sense of anguish and despair. But he goes on to hint at his feelings of alienation, especially now that he had fallen out with the Tudeh intellectuals as well: Besides, in our life, environment and everything else there’s come a terrifying rift such that we can no longer understand each other’s language.

In any case, he is overcome (‘from head to toe’) ‘with wretchedness, exhaustion and boredom’, and he can have no more of it. Hence: I neither have the stomach to complain and bellyache, nor can I deceive myself, nor have I got the guts to commit suicide. It’s just a kind of vomity condemnation which I must bear in a filthy, shameless and fucking environment. Everything has reached a dead end, and there’s no way out either.52

He ends the letter by apologizing for writing ‘so much rubbish’ and wishing Jamalzadeh well. But poor Jamalzadeh did not stop trying. He bought Hedayat an expensive Swiss watch and sent it to him when a mutual acquaintance (Jahangir Tafazzoli) was returning from a European visit to Iran.53 The external and internal – objective and subjective – factors clearly interacted in affecting Hedayat’s mood. The country was in a state of turmoil. For someone like Hedayat, the hopes of a more open and more dynamic social and intellectual atmosphere had been dashed. He was more than ever at loggerheads with the political and literary establishment and was now alienated from the avant-garde Tudeh intellectuals as well. They called him decadent, and he called them liars. He was still living at his parents’ home. They were ageing, and in his early forties, he was no longer a young man. On the meagre monthly salary of 360 tomans, he could maintain himself with dignity as long as his parents were alive and well. Neither his job nor the security of his parental home

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could be relied upon for the years to come. His relationship with his other relatives was cordial, but he could never bring himself to depend on them for his livelihood, nor did they much approve of his lifestyle and social behaviour. For example, he profoundly offended them, and in particular his brother-in-law General Razmara (the powerful chief-of-staff and later prime minister), when he openly demonstrated his friendship and support for Mozaffar Baqa’i who was then the leading figure in the campaign against the Gass-Golsha’iyan Supplemental Oil Agreement, and a staunch opponent of the general.

Letters to Shahid-Nura’i Between 1946 and 1950 (when he left for Paris) Hedayat kept up a regular correspondence with Shahid-Nura’i, writing from Tehran to Paris. In fact, a couple of the letters are addressed to him while he was en route to the French capital, for example in Jerusalem. Twelve of his letters had been published in Khanlari’s Sokhan in 1955.54 In July 1977 when I asked Khanlari about the background to his acquisition of these letters, he explained that they were fifty in number brought to me by Mas’ud Maleki who, in turn, had got them from Shahid-Nura’i’s French wife after his death. We could publish only twelve of them in the circumstances, he said. When I wondered if he would let me have a copy of all of them, he said that several years after the publication of the twelve letters, Shahid-Nura’i’s son, Behzad-Noël, visited Tehran and took all of them back from me. As it turned out later, the total number of the letters was eighty-two, when they all came to light two decades after my meeting with Khanlari.55 They provide a first-hand account of the man, his life, his moods and his plight in the closing years of his life. They make excellent literature as well, containing some of his best prose, and reflecting his darkest moods, often in the wittiest possible form. One of these letters is undated: I was going to put the date but suddenly realised that I didn’t know what date it was – neither the patriotic [i.e. Iranian] nor the Cross-worshipping [i.e. European] date. They say that happy men don’t know the hour (or haven’t got a watch) so it looks as if we are even happier than the happy.56

Early in 1946, his father’s family had moved from their home in north central Tehran to the still largely undeveloped north of the then Tehran. He had found the new house and its surroundings extremely difficult to adapt to, complaining about it in several letters throughout the correspondence with his friend. For example, in February 1946, he wrote: I am even far away from town, that is, it is a while that we have moved to the middle of the desert, under the shadow of the American embassy. Somewhere dirtier and more grotesque than the old place which you had seen. I am angry at

 Satire and Depression 151 everything regarding my room which makes me want to vomit. As a result, I spend most of the time in cafés.57

Complaining about the weather and illness, or both, is almost a permanent feature of these letters, leaving the reader to wonder whether it is not sometimes due to psychosomatic causes: I don’t wish you were here. Today, the room temperature is 37 degrees [centigrade] just like that of a healthy man. I’m lying on the floor and jumping up and down like a fish on dry land. What can you do in weather like this? And in the winter, I shiver like the balls of a cotton-whipper.58 I was ill for some time. But I got up again and began to roam around. Bad aubergines don’t rot away.59 Autumn has begun to show its dirty face – dry, cold and filthy. Water is dripping down my nose.60 Last week I went on a tour of Bandar Pahlavi, Ardabil and Tabriz . . . I left with a mild diarrhea and returned with a bad one. Even at this moment I’m not quite rid of it.61 Ever since winter has come, I’ve been usually (or permanently) having colds, flus and chest pains. This too has been written on our forehead. What can you do?62 It’s some time now I’ve been struggling with all sorts of illnesses. At the moment I’m suffering from diarrhea and we’ll see what happens next.63

He frequently talks in the letters about their mutual friends in Tehran and Europe. Several times, he mentions the Hoveida brothers (Amir Abbas and Fereidun) as his friends. They were both relatively young Iranian diplomats in Paris, the former destined to become prime minister and be killed after the 1979 revolution; the latter, became a high official in the ministry of foreign affairs, being dismissed as Iranian ambassador to the UN after the revolution. Ahmad Fardid, their philosopher acquaintance who was now in Paris and now in Tehran is also mentioned several times, and generally not in good terms. He writes that Fardid disagreed with an article by Shahid-Nura’i. ‘In front of the boys, his mouth was buggered’: He is a weak and dogmatic creature. He believes that European porters are more intelligent than learned Iranians. Apparently, he has made this discovery through intuition [sic]. In Sokhan, no 5, he has written an article on phenomenology that must be read.64

On another occasion, he says he has not replied to Fardid’s letter: ‘I suppose he’s become my mortal enemy, just like the others. Je men fiche, I’ve decided to turn everybody into my mortal enemy.’65 There are many references to Parviz Khanlari, the editor of Sokhan, whom Hedayat used to call Khanlar Khan, a habit which was taken up (though in a less friendly manner) by their younger friend Jalal Al-e Ahmad later when he fell out with Khanlari.

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Khanlari was thinking of going to Europe with his wife (Zahra Kiya), either England or France. In the letter of August 1948, Hedayat writes that ‘Apparently, he and his wife are thinking of going to England according to the former invitation, but some complications have arisen’.66 In October 1948, Hedayat reports that ‘Khanlar Khan is still in Tehran, though he’s got his passport now. He’s wondering between one and two: to go to England or France’.67 In a following letter (also October 1948) he says, ‘I know nothing about Khanlar Khan’s decision. He is busy with his wheeling and dealing.’68 In the earlier letter he mentions Jamalzadeh’s letter (cited earlier), saying that ‘he has shown a lot of kindness’. On several occasions, he mentions Baqa’i, and sends the latter’s regards to ShahidNura’i: ‘I see Dr Baqa’i from time to time, and we go bumming around together. We were together the night before. He bought five pairs of chic [sic] American socks and gave them to me, but changed his mind afterwards and took them back later in the night.’69 His comments on Baqa’i are generally favourable, and he displays admiration for his performance in the Majlis. Later, when Khanlari is about to leave for Paris, Hedayat mentions him a few times again in his letter: ‘Don’t forget to take Khanlari to the tomb of Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, Victor Hugo and even Napoleon, so he has a break and becomes adapté [sic] to the environment.’70 Still later, there is a friendly gibe at Khanlari and his wife, Zahra: ‘Alfred de Musset (meaning Khanlari) and George Sand got together in the end.’71 Reza Jorjani was a university teacher and prominent intellectual, and a mutual friend of Hedayat and Shahid-Nura’i, and like them a regular contributor to Khanlari’s monthly Sokhan. Hedayat mentions him numerous times in the letters,72 until his death gives him an opportunity to vent some of his frustrations, and, incidentally, forecast his own posthumous deification while very few cared about him when he was alive: But, about Reza Jorjani’s death I didn’t dare write to you. . . . He had a sudden heart attack. And of course, the Iranians are experts at mourning the dead. They don’t care about the living, but, after they are dead, they always show their appreciation of them. Every bunch of intellectuals began to show their posthume [sic] appreciation of him by writing obituaries. . . . Overall the poor fellow had an unhappy life and spent it all wandering about in hardship. But what can you do? This is typical of many people’s lives in the country of roses and nightingales.73

A few times he mentions Roger Lescot, the French scholar of Persian literature who was translating The Blind Owl into French, which he eventually completed and published. On one occasion, having heard from Shahid-Nura’i that Lescot is thinking of giving him the copyright and royalties of the French edition, he wrote: I strongly disagree and will not accept it. Make sure you tell him that. Since in a country [Iran] that has given no right to anyone, now defrauding Lescot who doesn’t have a shining life, and has taken the trouble of the translation, and on top of that Iran does not own foreign copyrights, is wily and selfish.74

 Satire and Depression 153 But he displays a complete and total lack of enthusiasm in a project that many a writer would have keenly encouraged: ‘I have no correspondence with Lescot. He wrote a letter two years ago and I didn’t reply to it. Only I’d heard that he’s in the French embassy in Cairo. Where he is now [in August 1948], and what he’s doing, God only knows.’75 Lescot was indeed Oriental Secretary at the French embassy in Cairo at the time; not having heard from Hedayat, he had even asked Dr Qasem Ghani, the Iranian ambassador, about The Blind Owl’s copyright, apparently not knowing that Iran is not party to the Berne Convention.76 Hedayat’s young nephew, Bijan Jalali, had been sent to France by his parents for higher studies, and Hedayat’s sister had asked him to tell his friends in Paris to look after him. Hedayat had written to Fereidun Hoveida. Apparently, Jalali had found life and study difficult there and was constantly complaining to his family, and they referred his complaints to his uncle to do something. He had ended up in Toulouse to study biology but was not happy there and had moved to Paris. Hedayat wrote to Hoveida: ‘What did you do about Bijan Jalali? He is a confused, constipated and “Do not fart at us” creature.’77 Later, he mentions him, saying that ‘he has now become quite a strange thing. Recently; he has written me a letter which must be read. I mean he has blackened several pages with blank verse’, whereas he neither knows Persian nor French well, and yet he has issued verses in both languages: For example, in reply to a long letter of his mother’s he’s written ‘The weather is cloudy / I don’t feel well’ . . .thus making his respectable mother worried; and as it looks, all the symptoms of madness or genius have appeared on his forehead. So much for the supervisions of Mr Fereidun Hoveida. From now on, I have taken a vow not to give him a burglar to take to jail. Anyway . . . putting aside the family interest . . . it is the duty of every true Iranian to kill this respectable genius in his poetical infancy so that our glorious nation would be saved from the risk of surproduction [sic] of geniuses.78

Sending his regards to Nasrollah Entezam, then a diplomat in Paris, later to become chairman of the UN General Assembly, he describes him as a ‘clever chap’, who knows how to look after his own interest, but says that at least he hasn’t got the faults of the others, and protects the reputation of the Everlasting State [of Iran: ‘dawlat-e abad moddaf ’]. This, too, is another stupid idea, whether the reputation of the motherland is saved. What reputation, what motherland? Perhaps it’d be better if it’s not saved at all. We would then be known for what we are.79

In fact, gibes, ridicules and serious critiques of the country’s situation are a recurring theme of the letters. For example, in the same letter he goes on to describe a leading politician as a ‘stupid and servile little man’ for having suggested that students should be sent abroad only for military training, ‘and some other rubbish . . . which I’d vomit if I tried to remember. All that goes on here provokes anger and nausea.’80

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There is hardly any positive comment on life and circumstances in Iran. He writes in his letter of April 1947: The school of fatalism that you have recently accepted looks sounder than all other systems [of thought]. At least it reassures one that whatever happens is outside the power and effort of humans. ‫در کف خرس خر کون پاره ای‬ ‫غیر تسلیم و رضا کو چاره ای‬ Grabbed by a stupid arse-torn bear What choice is there but to submit and bear?81 He has changed the original first verse which reads: ‫در کف شیر نر خونخواره ای‬, meaning ‘Grabbed by a blood-sucking lion’.

Some of his other social and cultural remarks are, on the other hand, less serious, at least in the way he talks about them. ‘Did you know that we, too, are developing religious music?’ he writes in August 1948: Unfortunately, I was caught in a bus the other day, and heard a bit of it. A preacher was reciting verses from the Koran, with his terrible voice, in the abu’ata [Persian musical form]. Do you still doubt our daily progress? Yesterday at Dr Razavi’s I enjoyed listening to some Indian fiddle for fear of [having to listen to] the patriotic radio.82

In July 1950, when his brother-in-law General Razmara had formed a new government, he writes (without mentioning his name) with disbelief about the government’s apparent seriousness in getting on with reforms: ‘This, too, is a scene of a new comedy which is bound to end up in tragedy.’83 Razmara was assassinated in March 1951, a month before Hedayat’s suicide (see Chapter 13). As usual, he was anxious to keep up with the current literary developments and publications in Europe. He received books on Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Joyce, Koestler and so on which he was avidly reading. In his letter of December 1948, he says that ‘apparently the French are frantically busy licking the arse of Islam’, and refers to a new book – L’Islam et L’Occident – in which ‘there is also an article by Henri Massé on Iran. May it all end well’.84 He himself asked for certain recent publications to be sent to him, and Shahid-Nura’i and other friends in Paris also used their own initiative in sending him books which they thought would interest him: I haven’t read [Arthur] Koestler’s book. . . . But what puzzles me is [the extent of] Sartre’s activité [sic]. In my view the play Les Mains Sales was the best of the lot. His periodical [Les Temps Modernes] was good too. I couldn’t put it down after I’d begun to read it.85

Les Mains Sales is the play that greatly offended communists everywhere at the time. It is about a party leader in a central European country whose views are thought to be detrimental to the party’s chances of success. He can neither be dismissed nor disgraced, and a party activist close to him is ordered to kill him for the party’s sake.

 Satire and Depression 155 The man hesitates at first, but eventually implements his order, only to be told that the party line had now changed, and the dead man was a hero. He refuses to remain silent and is in turn assassinated by his own comrades. In 1952, Jalal Al-e Ahmad (who is likely to have been told about the book by Hedayat) translated it into Persian. The book by Koestler is almost certainly his Darkness at Noon, the famous political and psychological novel based on the Soviet purges of the late 1930s. Such interest indicates the direction of Hedayat’s political views at the time, and it is likely to have influenced his attack on the international communist movement in the opening passages of ‘The Message of Kafka’ (see Chapters 9 and 12). Apart from the weather and his never-ending illnesses, he also talks directly about his mood in some of the letters: ‘I’m in need of no consolation, and I know that the future holds nothing but a dead end for me,’ he writes in the undated letter: ‘when one’s head is cut off, Professor Coué’s method of auto-suggestion is unlikely to be of any use.’ ‘I don’t know why I feel so tired; everything gets on my nerves’, he writes in another letter, ‘it won’t end well. I’m not in the mood for any activity.’86 In the letter of 27 August 1950, written more than three months before his departure for Paris, he talks more, as well as more intensely, about his mood. He says in another letter that they keep asking someone who does not have the money to buy pen and paper, to write. And writes in yet another letter: There! I’m beginning to produce nonsense again. I’ve got to watch it. On the other hand, it looks as if it is this kind of nonsense which is keeping me going. No matter how hard I try, I have nothing worthy of writing – I am busy massacring the days. The only thing that has been added to it is forgetfulness, and this itself is a blessing! It is a kind of auto-defense [sic] of the body. . . . There is no cause for complaint either, for one can complain when there is norme [sic] not against nothing. Throughout life, we have been a bête pourchassée [sic]. Now this creature has got completely traquée [sic] and has fallen down, only some reflexe [sic] stupidly do their own job.87

From Hedayat’s previous letter (written on 22 July 1950) it appears that Shahid-Nura’i had ‘taken a step’ to help Hedayat to go to Paris. He writes that, in principle, he is ‘all for travelling, even though it may be on the wings of the Angel of Movement’.88 A few months later he left Tehran for Paris. It was a journey of no return (see Chapter 13). There is much in the letters to Shahid-Nura’i which are worth citing, as they make almost a book-length volume. However, they cannot all be covered within the present compass, except those written about a couple of fairly interrelated matters. In quite a few of the letters, Hedayat speaks about his own conditions and those of the country. For example, once in 1950 in response to his friend’s complaint for not having written for some time, he writes, ‘Perhaps you know that writing letters has become a strangely difficult problem.’ This, among similar evidence from the letters, gives the lie to the claims that he destroyed a copious amount of recently written works before committing suicide (see Chapter 13). In a letter of July 1948, complaining about his and the society’s situation, he quotes a French visitor to Iran that Iranians think of themselves as the French of the East. And think they are very intelligent, whereas few nations are as stupid as them. It is a bitter truth and all

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that we see confirm it. . . . Was the meaning of life being witness to rabble-like behaviour of a bunch of motherfuckers? To hell with it, as for us, we have signed off our [letter of] condemnation.89

In an earlier letter, he had written that ‘everything in this wasteland is exhausting and terrifying. Anyway, I am living wastefully, and keep being vehemently attacked from the left and the right, as if I am responsible for the shitty works of other people’.90 And he writes in a later letter: Since last week that Ettelleat Weekly has honoured me, my hatred of the creatures has been extended a thousand times. I am suspicious of everyone and everything. I am even afraid of my own shadow. . . . What a damned, and filthy land, and what hellish and notorious creatures it has. I feel that all my life I have been the playing ball in the hands of whores and motherfuckers. . . . This strange account was the work of Mohsen Ehteshami. This name was entirely new to me, but he had introduced me as his close friend. He had lied and libeled me so much . . . that was worthy of becoming the future prime minister of this country. He had generally painted me as an alcoholic, misogynous, dangerous, godless and vegetarian. [Farrrokh] Keyvani, Sarkisian and Sobhi had assisted in writing it, and it was addressed to the mullahs, of course intended to encourage thuggery and scandal.

Another theme worth mentioning is Hedayat’s anger and disillusionment with the Tudeh party over the Azerbaijan fiasco. Writing a couple of weeks after the fall of the Azerbaijan rebellion, he says that they had warned the Tudeh of historical Soviet betrayals, mentioning the fate of Kuchik Khan to them, but they were told that now it was very different, Iran being the apple of the Soviets’ eye in the Middle East: ‘Regrettably, the admired bride farted, and in the filthiest manner condemned them to defeat and exposed them for what they were. It did not even show any souplesse [sic] . . . I no longer understand dialectics: being both a highway robber and the Caravan’s guard.’91 The letters to Shahid-Nura’i expose in many ways the causes of Hedayat’s tragic end.

12

The trial The message of Hedayat

Perhaps the strongest theme of Kafka’s most famous novel is the fact that Joseph K. is on trial, and is eventually killed ‘like a dog’, without knowing what wrong he has done: ‘I am accused, and yet I cannot find the slightest offence which might be laid on my charge. . . . What authority is conducting the trial?’ Just as in Hedayat’s psycho-fictional stories there are always two parallel themes running through Kafka’s works. One of these is the subject of the story, and the specific misery, wretchedness, helplessness and alienation of the unfortunate anti-hero, as well as the machinations of the unseen hands which seem to exist for little more than persecuting their victim in a psychologically most tortuous manner; the other is the wider, comprehensive and universal predicament, the abstract grand conspiracy, which transcends the story’s concrete symbolisms, and reveals the author’s macabre conception du monde as nothing but the perpetual alienation and irredeemable condemnation of man. ‘What authority is conducting the trial?’ It is this universal message in Kafka’s works which makes the reader wonder whether he is thinking about the Fall of Man and the sin of the flesh, or an alienation without metaphysical roots which arises from man’s weakness and ignorance in an overpowering and impersonal universe, or trying to reflect the vast social evils with which he finds himself surrounded. Perhaps both the universal and the parochial are intended. Perhaps the one is an inevitable result of the other. Similar questions are raised by Hedayat’s psycho-fictional works, except that he certainly did not have any biblical background in mind when reflecting on the alienation of man. Hedayat’s straight answer to the question posed by Joseph K. is likely to have been as follows: ‘We are guilty by virtue of our existence. That is the charge, and there can be no acquittal, nor even redemption through condemnation and punishment. Our trial has already been conducted and concluded before birth. We are sentenced to be executed “like a dog”.’ ‘The Message of Kafka’ is Hedayat’s own testament, and his final trial to come to grips with the trial of life and death. There is little in the basic philosophy here which is not found in The Blind Owl. Like the latter book, it contains the proceedings of a trial whose findings – hopelessness, failure, condemnation and rejection – are preordained and predictable from the outset. The difference is that here it is conducted through a long piece of literary criticism where the parochial aspects of pure fiction are absent,

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and the subject is tackled at its most abstract and universal level. In other words, it is no longer the reflections of a recluse who might even be suspected of suffering from ‘the oedipal complex’ and being obsessed with his love-and-hate attitude towards women, but the explicit views of the author about human life in a universal framework. This is probably why it also omits any reference to ‘the rabble’ (rajjalehha) – those who lie, cheat and beg from the mighties of the earth and heavens like a dog which wags its tail for a piece of bone – whom the author had seldom omitted to mention in similar moods. Because they, too, are part of the collective wretchedness, which is described as mankind, except that they are content to survive by any means and have no aspiration to try and rise above the wretchedness which has condemned them to being mere survivors. Another general feature in this long essay is that Hedayat’s utter and intractable determinism – if not fatalism – is at last made naked and explicit, without the suggestion of a theory or mechanism – as in some religions and ideologies – as to how this fate is determined, or how it might possibly change for the better.

‘The Message of Kafka’1 This is Hedayat’s last published work. Written in 1948, it was published in the same year as a long introduction to Hasan Qa’emiyan’s translation of Kafka’s ‘Penal Colony’. In its formal maturity, the prose surpasses almost all that the author had previously written by way of intellectual commentary and literary criticism. And, despite the survival of some errors of syntax which are typical of his formal prose (as opposed to his letters), it stands out as a remarkable piece of critical Persian prose of the first half of the twentieth century. It combines simplicity as well as economy of expression with an open and direct – touching, though occasionally biting – sensitivity which is not characteristic of his earlier critical commentaries on other subjects. There is no diversionary tactic, no cynicism, no satire or ridicule, and no venom in its lines. There is no more need for scandalizing the living, for this time the subject is life itself as the greatest scandal of all. He opens the essay by saying that Kafka is one of the most original thinkers and artists of all time: There are very few writers who create a novel idea, theme or approach, and, in particular, suggest a whole new approach to the problem of existence which has not been thought of before. Kafka is the best of such writers.2

Hedayat is clearly aware of the fashionable negative judgement of the Communist intellectuals in Iran and elsewhere at the time about Kafka as a pessimistic, if not decadent, writer. As noted in Chapter 9, he leads an open and undiluted attack on Tabari in particular in some of the opening passages of this essay for holding such views about Kafka and his works. But he still tries to substantiate his defence of Kafka (and himself) in this regard by putting forward an alternative interpretation of what others were describing as decadence and pessimism. According to this interpretation, Kafka does not quite believe that life is a dead end or meaningless void. On the contrary, there is logic to life and all its aspects, although, to invert the famous Shakespearean line, there

 The Trial 159 is madness in the logic. Human beings, both those whom we like and dislike – both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – are nothing but puppets in the hands of invisible forces which can neither be understood nor influenced by themselves: ‘They are nothing but wretched automata, and the more serious and important their position, the more grotesque they appear to be.’ There follows a generalization about human existence which could not have been made to look more pessimistic, though (as the interpreter of Kafka) Hedayat would have argued that it is no more than a true, or factual, description of the phenomenon – a realistic statement which may be construed as pessimistic, precisely because the reality itself is ugly and unpalatable: Man is lonely and helpless. He lives in a hostile world which is not his [true or natural] home. He cannot have genuine ties with, or be committed to, anyone. He himself knows this too, because you can read it off his face. He tries to hide it and pretend that he fits [in this world]. But he gets caught out, because he himself knows that he is superfluous.3

Not only is man superfluous in this world, but the reason why he does not belong here is because he is absolutely, helplessly and inevitably unfree. Moreover, this condemnation is no part of his own fault or design. It is not a Promethean theft or a biblical sin, nor is it – to allude to Rousseau – the original catastrophe of leaving the state of nature and entering a social framework. He did not descend from a celestial or natural paradise into the realm of necessity and alienation. There was no original sin, and there is no hope of an ultimate redemption. ‘In the beginning there was the Fall’ might well have been the opening sentence of Hedayat’s version of pre-history: Man is not even free to determine his own thoughts and actions. He is mindful of the others, tries to justify his own existence, concocts pretexts and runs from one excuse to another. But he is a prisoner of his own pretences, and is caught in a vicious circle out of which he cannot break.4

According to Kafka, man is an ‘unknown’ who is wandering among ‘the many traps which are laid before him’, and encounters nothing but nothingness. ‘This is exactly what gives rise to fear and fright.’ Life is a long and endless tunnel through which we are condemned to pass, and from which there is no escape in life itself. Like Joseph K. in Kafka’s The Trial, we may be stopped and arrested at any moment. We have committed a crime about which we know nothing. In fact, it is the crime of living itself. We are guilty by virtue of existing: The minute we are born we are put to judgement, and the whole of our life is a roll of nightmare which runs through the teeth of the wheels of courts of justice.5

And there are no prizes for guessing how it all ends: Eventually we are convicted, and, in a close and suffocating high noon, he who has arrested us in the name of the law slips a kitchen knife into our heart and kills us like a dog. Both the executioner and the victim are silent.6

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However, the few passages on Kafka’s contemporary relevance are probably even more controversial than the timeless and abstract interpretation of his ideas, although it is done with realism, and in defiance of the Fascist and Communist attacks on Kafka and his works. Alluding to the discovery of Kafka in Europe effectively from the late 1930s, he writes: Kafka suddenly emerged like a great and unusual poem which [nevertheless] carries a bad omen. . . . His acute art, empty of all empty promises, began to show the root of all evil with clarity, without however offering ways and means of combatting it. . . . The reason why some people are angry with Kafka and suggest the burning of his books is because he has not borne any false promises, or offered any crutches to the people. On the contrary, he has exposed many a deceptive idea, and has helped block the way to the false paradise.7

This is the point at which (as we saw in Chapter 9) Hedayat unleashes his wrath on ‘those who raise the cane of excommunication against Kafka’, as ‘stinking beauticians who are busy rubbing cosmetics on the lifeless face of the great idol of the twentieth century’. And he adds: In a world which negates its own purpose . . . where men are alienated from each other as never before, and the fear of men has replaced the fear of God . . . this message, however it may be viewed, is an important one. A new voice has been raised, and it cannot be easily stifled.8

Up to this point it had looked as if Kafka’s message was purely concerned with ontological issues, but it now appears that it contains a dialectic of the abstract and universal, and the concrete and parochial. It concerns both the predicament of man qua man, and the plight of modern man, living ‘in our troubled world’. The relatively brief exposé of Kafka’s life and works which follows is competent and well-informed, and, at least in its freshness and originality, may still be of interest to readers who have some familiarity with Kafka and his European critics. Of greater interest, however, is the light which it throws on Hedayat’s own thoughts as reflected, if not dressed up, in an analysis of the life and works of Kafka. He mentions Kafka’s difficult relationship with his father, which is the basis for the oedipal complex interpretation of some Kafkaologists, though this is not how Hedayat views the subject. He also discusses Kafka’s efforts to come to terms with his cultural Judaism and refers to his ‘love affair’ and engagement with Felice, though he seems to be unaware of the other two women with whom Kafka came (or came close) to having a brief intimate relationship. Significantly, he does not mention Felice by name at all, but only her initials, F. B., which also happens to be the initials of the women in Kafka’s fiction. Comparing Kafka with Pascal, Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, he observes: The basic cause of Kafka’s inner tension is his sense of deprivation. He feels the absence of something [essential to living]; there is no unity; the truth cannot be known; there is duality; man is alienated from himself. A gulf has appeared

 The Trial 161 between man and the celestial world, and everything comes up against a barrier. Is he thinking of the other world? Nay, he simply wishes to be accepted in this world. . . . Kafka suffers from being kept on the margin of existence.9

Is all this true of the world of Franz Kafka? Perhaps, and perhaps not, for prophets, martyrs and visionaries have always been open to wide interpretations. Coming from Hedayat’s pen, however, it gives us direct access to his own thoughts and his own way of looking at his predicament, thus making the task of interpreting him and his works much easier than some of his interpreters have. For this is the author of The Blind Owl now talking to us directly rather than through elaborate symbolisms: Ever since childhood, Kafka had a sense of alienation because of his lack of harmony with others, while at the same time he longed to be in harmony with them. ‘No one ever understood my peculiarities.’ He regards this as a kind of condemnation.10

Kafka feels estranged even among friends, and sees a basic difference between them and himself: So, he falls back on solitude and decides to be lonely. No wonder that the struggle between the self and the external world invokes a great sense of guilt in Kafka – guilt, not sin, for Kafka and his heroes do not think of themselves as being sinful.11

‘Sin’ is obviously a religious concept, and here the interpreter is trying to make sure that no one would suspect either him or Kafka of being the least bit under the influence of religious culture, a point which is true of Hedayat with much greater certainty than it might have been true of Kafka. At any rate, the argument is that man is not paying for his sins, original or otherwise; he is just guilty of coming unwittingly into existence, and he has to pay a terrible retribution for committing this unconscious crime. His punishment is to remain lonely and estranged despite efforts and desires to the contrary, a circular doom which has nothing to do with the apparently conscious choice of eating the apple or stealing fire: ‘Kafka is the first person to have described man’s wretched condition within the context of a world where there is no room for God – a world of nothingness.’12 Kafka’s (and Hedayat’s?) efforts to liberate himself failed so badly that he longed to return to his roots and regain what was lost, but this was no longer possible: He managed to uproot and liberate himself from the yoke of his family, the Jewish community, land and race. . . . But he spent the rest of his life trying to regain all that – ‘Rootless, family-less, childless’. He tried to regain all that, so he could live like the others, but he did not manage to realize this wish.13

These words are so reminiscent of the lines of Hedayat’s anti-heroes when they speak of all the efforts they made, and yet ended up by ‘being empty-handed, chasing an elusive idea’. They also reflect the depth of the author’s desire in his last years, when he was exceptionally isolated, to rejoin the others despite (or perhaps by virtue of)

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declarations in his letters that he wished ‘to turn everyone into a mortal enemy’. Kafka, however, having failed to start living like the others, ‘crawled into a corner and became a witness to his own failure’, just like the insect-man in ‘Metamorphosis’ who becomes a witness to his own pathetic deformity: No doubt they will say that the writer has been a pessimist, and all this is to represent life as being worse than it in fact is. But Kafka’s works cannot be described as either pessimistic or optimistic. Kafka symbolizes a fighter who struggles both against the power of evil and against his own self – he fights the enemy in its various guises. Perhaps he is also in combat against that which could result in his own liberation, [but] he is neither an optimist nor a pessimist.14

The reason why Kafka has been described as a pessimist by his detractors is that he is honest with himself as well as with others. He describes his observations, and reflects his feelings: He has been a victim of his own clear thinking, because while he sees himself being consumed, body and soul, he still maintains his sense of realism. . . . He sees clearly that man wishes to attain perfection, and [at the same time] any attempt to do so is ridiculously limited. The problem comes out of the contradiction between man’s natural and empirical needs, on the one hand, and his logical and theoretical aspirations, on the other. And any fundamental aspiration for [real] freedom appears to be an illusion. . . . But this does not turn him into a cynic.15

Kafka ‘did not shut his eyes’ to reality, and ‘did not give himself up to whims and illusions’. He had taken a one-way road from which there was no return, and even if he had tried to stop himself, he would not have succeeded: Kafka yields up his body to death because he does not wish to be misled by the deceptions of living. . . . Such helpless realism and moral courage would seem to be insufferable. Many of those who have trodden this path have eventually put on some kind of safety belt by accepting an ideology, or joining a group. . . . What other conclusion could there be except that there is no way out, and no hope either?16

And he goes on to quote Kafka’s brilliant, if devastating, prophecy – an even more economic statement of the message which comes out of the parable of ‘In Front of the Law’ – about Kingdom Come: ‘The Messiah will not come except when he is no longer needed. He will come the day after the Day of Judgement.’ But Hedayat is anxious to draw a purely religious, or rather anti-religious, conclusion from this. He has shut out of his vision to its wider and more comprehensive implications. Hedayat’s incidental reviews of The Trial, The Castle, ‘The Penal Colony’, ‘The judgement’, America and other works are interesting in various ways especially because he is a non-European critic who is, nevertheless, completely at ease with European literature. Also, they are refreshing because they lack the professional frameworks of the European critics – the ‘paradigmic’ conformities of concepts

 The Trial 163 and categories – and are not overwhelmingly discussed against the background of European developments. He is aware of European comments and criticisms, but his own assessment remains highly original, though this does not vouch for its acceptability. From The Trial he quotes the conversation between Joseph K. and the priest: ‘I’m not guilty, there’s been a mistake. Besides, how can anyone be guilty, for we’re all human beings, and all alike?’ ‘That is right,’ says the priest, ‘but that is exactly how the guilty talk.’ Referring to the suicide of the commandant in ‘The Penal Colony’, by throwing himself into the hideous execution machine, Hedayat comments: ‘Here, too, perception hits a rock – not just for the victim, but even for the executioner of the law.’ Passive waiting and active effort are equally useless. Life, in any case, invokes a good deal of responsibility without, it seems, affording any rights at all: Our presence on earth, although temporary, is sadly inevitable. Hence, not only hopeful waiting, but even active effort is of no use. But the waiting itself involves a great deal of responsibility, just like K. in The Castle who felt he had no ties with anyone and was therefore freer than ever before; and yet there could be nothing more void and less hopeful than his position. There are therefore those who wish they had never been born, and now that they have, they would like to cover the distance between birth and death as fast as possible.17

The Castle, thus, turns out to be the symbol of ‘a divine curse’: From this standpoint, Kafka’s philosophy is like that of the Cathars [French Christo-Manicheans of the thirteenth century] who believed that life on earth is some kind of a divine curse, and that only death can release the living from the shackle.18

The people in the castle with whom K. (the surveyor) came into contact were ‘looking at him with open mouths, swollen lips, and tortured faces. The description of their looks was a symbolic reflection of the kind of “subservience and slavishness” from which – Hedayat says – Kafka wished to deliver mankind’. The world of Kafka is made up of a roll of dreams in which ‘one is stunned with a gripping nightmare’. Yet these dreams, with their combined quality of ‘complexity, hollowness and grotesqueness’, happen in the realm of reality; that is, in the realm of wakefulness ‘which they have sold to us as the world of reality’. This might seem to be a more suitable comment on The Blind Owl than on Kafka’s work. However, Hedayat goes on to add that Kafka merely lays bare the inner truth about the insufferable human conditions without suggesting any solutions for their improvement. In other words, like Hedayat himself, Kafka has no ideology: Kafka creates anxiety without posing painful questions or entering meaningless discussions. His art condemns reality, that is he uses surrealism to condemn reality itself. Hence there is no dividing line in his art between the serious and the grotesque.19

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Is Kafka’s problem Kafka’s (and Hedayat’s) alone, or does it affect humanity in general; Is it personal, concrete and parochial, or social, abstract and universal? In his interpretation, Hedayat moves from one line to another, as if the two are inseparable, or merely two aspects of the same thing. If other people do not see the problem about existence raised by Kafka (and Hedayat), then that is simply because they have shut their eyes to it. Truth is manifest; only falsehood has been invented. Kafka believes in a ‘mechanistic determinism which is an affront to all art; what he lays bare is not freedom but hopeless necessity’. Yet, however ugly the truth may be, it must be faced in its full consequences. Just like the commandant in ‘The Penal Colony’, one must be ready to face the most insufferable tortures with a smile on the face: Kafka’s heroes never complain of the difficulties, the trials, the deprivations and failures which they must bear. They are never surprised, and they take their fate with realism and without apparent anger, displaying an astonishing degree of forbearance as if the whole thing concerns somebody else.20

In our suffering we are all equal. The difference is in our response to it, ranging from wilful ignorance through frustration, resistance and rebellion, to understanding and resignation. Man is helpless not (as religious interpretations might have it) relatively to God’s greatness, but absolutely, because of his own nothingness. How can nothing be anything at all – anything that is, higher than the miserable little insects and animals in some of Kafka’s works: In Kafka’s works everything bears a negative relationship to life. His heroes – or, better still, anti-heroes – are all head-down, all crushed. Kafka’s humbleness is like that of Christian sages, although in an inverted way. His brand of humbleness is not the same as helplessness and inability before God. On the contrary, by negating man himself he denies the existence of God and reduces humanity to a worthless nothing. The heroes he chooses from the animal world cannot be lower and more contemptible.21

If man is nothing, then there is no need for God at all. Thus, we reach an anti-Voltairean conclusion from basically Voltairean premises. Hedayat displays awareness of what we may describe as Kafkaesque dialectics, though his awareness is vague and literary as opposed to precise and philosophical. This is a dialectic without a synthesis in which contradictions and antinomies persist in justifying each other in a circular, tautological fashion. If the coming of the Messiah is necessary, then it is equally necessary for him to come one day too late. The door of the Law has been made just for one peasant to enter, but he is allowed to enter only when he is utterly incapable of moving. The Castle has employed the wretched surveyor to work for it, but he is invited in only at the point when he is morally and physically exhausted. Every possibility contains its own impossibility, and it is this which ultimately prevails: The Messiah comes when he is no longer needed; the peasant is admitted when he cannot move; the surveyor is accepted when he cannot make it. This is how Hedayat sees Kafkaesque dialectics:

 The Trial 165 What brings tension in reading Kafka is not the fact that he can be interpreted in different ways. It is because on every issue there is a coded probability of the negative as well as the positive. . . . ‘Knowledge is at once the step which leads to eternal life and the barrier against it.’ This is also true of his own works: everything is a barrier, but it could also be regarded as a step.22

‘Our salvation is in death, but not this death.’ Thus, we do not really die, but it turns out that we do not really live either.23 Salvation is in death, but we have faith in living as well. So it looks as if there is no salvation, but neither are we entirely hopeless, because it is this hope [of living] which leads to our death, and bears the sign of our hopelessness.24 Behind the metaphysical fear there is the helpless sense of revenge and rebellion against creation, against the fact that man is a puppet in the hands of fate – the very man who must give up the ghost like a dog from the wound of a dagger.25 And yet suddenly – and almost as if counterposing his own dialectics to that attributed to Kafka – Hedayat concludes the essay on a much less hopeless note: Although the message of Kafka leaves no room for hope, and through it all effort meets with failure, and nothingness threatens us from all sides, and there is nowhere to seek refuge to, no contact except with the void, and no place to run away from suffocation, yet Kafka rejects this world. . . . If this is your situation, then it is no reason why you should surrender before fate, and put up with suffering.26

Indeed, he goes much further than that: Kafka believes that this world of lying, cheating and grotesqueness must be demolished, and a better world built in its place.27

It is likely that the emphasis on the previous words (the only instance in the whole of the essay) is due to a well-intentioned editorial intervention in the later editions of the book. Nevertheless, the fact that Hedayat himself has apparently chosen to contradict the basic moral of the argument may indicate his awareness of the prevailing intellectual opinion which was dismissing Kafka as little more than a decadent and petty bourgeois demoralizer. There is, of course, no mention of how this ugly world should be got rid of and replaced by what? But the closing passages indicate that, in writing down his message at the time, Hedayat is not yet sure what practical conclusions should emerge from it. Hence, the essay is concluded in the following words: If the world of Kafka is entangled in the void, it does not necessarily follow that it should be uncritically accepted. . . . It looks as if Kafka has had a solution which he has not put forward. In his unfinished work the crux of the matter has not been given.28

The conclusion is not as surprising as it might appear at first sight. For if ‘the solution’ had been found, and the work (of Hedayat) had been completed, it is unlikely that this

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message would have been written. When he killed himself, he did not even leave a suicide note, or, in other words, he had already written his testament in this essay when he had not yet decided to take his own life, bringing the argument to its logical as well as practical conclusion. The position is analogous to the case of the disillusioned lover who, nevertheless, is hoping against hope that things will turn out differently, and love will be restored once again. He or she writes angry letters to the beloved, describing his or her own sense of betrayal, and denouncing them for all the ills that their deception and duplicity have brought to them. But in doing so, they are still hoping that they will demonstrate the truth of their love to him or her and show that in fact he or she has been mistaken. Otherwise, he or she would not write at all. In these pages, Hedayat, too, has been crying out for a hope against hope. He can see ‘the solution’ which he feels Kafka has found but has not spelled out. But he is not yet ready to resort to it, and, hence, he ends the essay with no practical solution in sight. It became obvious three years later.

13

The execution Hedayat’s suicide

There are few things in life which are more powerful and persistent than a legend that people would like to believe. The legend of Hedayat’s suicide is briefly as follows. Having become desperately unhappy with the suffocating social and political atmosphere which developed after the fall of the Democrats in Azerbaijan and (especially) the banning of the Tudeh party early in 1949, Hedayat had lost all hope and energy for living, and had decided to take his own life. But he did not want to kill himself in Tehran, either because he thought it an unworthy a place for him to commit suicide, or because he loved Paris and wished to die there – or both. Another version is that he decided to kill himself outside Iran, because he did not want to pollute his Aryan motherland with his own corpse! Therefore, he left his post, sold his belongings and flew to Paris where he committed suicide. ‘Hedayat’s suicide was his last work [of art].’ This legend is not just part of an oral tradition: on the contrary, its various versions are to be found in numerous books, articles, memoirs and reminiscences which have been published since his death. Apart from the facts that an elementary knowledge of psychology would give the lie to this heroic description of an essentially unheroic act, in most cases, suicide attempts are more or less impulsive acts, even though a tendency to suicide may have been there for some time. People who are about to kill themselves are hardly in a mood for conversation, let alone for the kind of difficulties which Hedayat had to overcome just in order to reach Paris. And once he got there, he did not commit suicide in the first few days or weeks of his arrival. On the contrary, he killed himself when he was left with no choice but to return to Iran. His decision to go to Paris at the time may be compared to his journey to India in the 1930s. Something analogous to this also happened in the 1940s. His hopes of a more open and exciting society to which he might have a greater sense of belonging were dashed, not least because of the Tudeh party’s major mistakes, as well as its growing tendency towards becoming a monolithic Stalinist party. He offended and alienated the Tudeh’s intellectual lawgivers. His work was coming to a dead end, witnessed by The Morvari Cannon and ‘The Message of Kafka’ which, despite their own worth, indicate his difficulty in getting on with fresh creative work. He was unhappy in his job, and not too happy with the aimless social life which he otherwise led in the company of a few quarrelling friends and cronies. Hence, the journey to Europe offered itself at

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least as a temporary respite. Paris was the obvious place, not just for its own sake but also because his friend Shahid-Nura’i had an important post in the Iranian embassy there and had been encouraging him to go there. Once in Paris, when his hopes and expectations were dashed, he considered going to Geneva (where Jamalzadeh was), or to London where Mas’ud Farzad still had a post in the BBC Persian Service (Minovi had left England by this time). But before he could take either of these steps his sick leave from his post in Tehran came to an end, and he took his life. Older and less resilient than in the 1930s when he returned from Bombay (though, even then, with the greatest misgivings), the long- and short-term effects of his problems and difficulties proved unbearable. Hedayat left Tehran on 3 December 1950 and arrived in Paris the following evening. He stayed the night with the Jamalzadehs in Geneva while waiting to catch his flight connection to Paris the next day.1 He was still employed at the College of Fine Arts, now at the salary of 490 tomans per month. Various people had helped him get sick leave on full pay – the only pretext he could offer for being absent from work – for a period of four months. The fact that General Razmara, his brother-in-law, was prime minister was certainly helpful, though he is unlikely to have played a direct role in this. Rumours that Razmara was thinking of giving him a job in Paris – perhaps as cultural counsellor at the Iranian embassy – must be without foundation, for he was given no such position either before leaving for Paris, or after arriving there, and was forever running around in that city to obtain certificates of ill-health in the hope of extending his sick leave. He was not in a good mood even when he arrived in Paris, and the quick frustration of his expectations was to make matters worse. On 5 December, the day after his arrival, he wrote in a short letter to Abolqasem Enjavi Shirazi: I’m not in a mood to continue this letter. Nor am I tempted to drop in town, etc. Perhaps things will sort themselves out; perhaps not. Maybe I’ll find time for yapping later on.2

Within a couple of weeks, he lost much of his hope of getting help and support from Iranian friends and acquaintances. Shahid-Nura’i was mortally ill (though this may not have been clear at the time), but Hedayat seems to have hoped to be given a clerical post by him, for he wrote (on 22 December) to Enjavi that ‘Shahid Nura’i . . . apparently doesn’t need a secretary [any more] because he has now employed a French woman.’ And, more generally: I don’t mix much with the Iranians . . . contrary to the pretences [made before my coming to Paris] no one was jumping for joy to see me here.3

He was still on the same theme when he wrote to Enjavi on 14 January 1951: I’m not having much fun here. I have isolated myself from others, especially Iranians, and the money is about to run out. But it doesn’t matter; no colour is thicker than black.4

 The Execution 169 Arriving in Paris, he was (as he wrote to Enjavi) ‘taken straight to Shahid-Nura’i’s home’ where he spent a couple of days before moving to a cheap hotel in Montparnasse. He was to move from there to another cheap hotel in St Michel, and to yet another one in Place Denfert-Rochereau, before finding himself a studio flat, a week after moving into which he took his own life.5 Enjavi himself was preparing to go to Paris for graduate studies in law, and had asked Hedayat to send him application forms from the university. He was to change his mind and go to Geneva instead, although he briefly visited Hedayat in March 1951. The French immigration authorities had initially given Hedayat leave to stay for two months in France. This expired by early February. Meanwhile, Fereidun Farvardin – a friend of Hedayat, and a Zoroastrian Iranian – had invited him to pay a visit to Hamburg as his guest. In his letter of 9 February to Enjavi (who was now in Geneva) he explains why, because of visa problems, he cannot spend more than a week there, and adds: The cost of living in France is increasing by day. . . . My financial situation is not so good, and I’m about to run out of money. I think by the time I return from Hamburg there will not be much left in the kitty. . . . Shahid-Nura’i’s health is deteriorating fast, and I don’t know how it will end up. At any rate, whether or not I’ll go to Hamburg, my address is going to change.6

Having made up his mind to go to Geneva instead of Paris, Enjavi had tried to encourage Hedayat to join him there, but – in the same letter of 9 February, his last to Enjavi – Hedayat replied that ‘in the present circumstances, coming to Switzerland is out of the question’. However, having returned from his trip to Hamburg, and thoroughly fed up with all aspects of his life in Paris, in his letter of 26 February to Jamalzadeh he mentioned the possibility of going to Switzerland: A couple of months of my short leave [from work] have now completely gone to waste. Recently I paid a visit to Hamburg. Contrary to my expectations it turned out to be quite pleasant. But I haven’t got much joy from this place [i.e. Paris]. Besides, they create ridiculous problems for [the extension of] my permit of stay. I’ve decided to leave France and spend the rest of my [sick] leave in London or Switzerland. From what I’ve heard it is very difficult for Ali’s Followers [’Shi’aian-e Ali’ – Iranians!] to obtain the Swiss visa. So, I’m thinking of going to London.7

Jamalzadeh wrote him an encouraging reply saying that he was about to go on an ILO mission to Tehran, and that he would contact him the minute he returned to Geneva. A few days after Hedayat’s death in April Jamalzadeh was to write to their mutual friend, Père de Menasce: I shall never forget the day when the telephone woke me up, and Hedayat’s voice told me of his arrival in Geneva [en route to Paris] . . . He slept in my bed. . . When we were hugging each other in the airport, he promised to come back to Geneva and spend some time here. Alas it was not possible to see him again. The

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last letter which I have from him is dated 1 March. In it he regrets the fact that he has wasted three months in Paris and gives the news of his forthcoming visit to Geneva. Unfortunately, I was about to go to Tehran, and wrote back saying that I expected him on return.8

As a result, we find Hedayat writing (10 March 1951) to his brother Mahmud: I have now managed – with great difficulty – to have my stay in France extended for a further two months. But I’m thinking of going to Switzerland or somewhere else. There are lots of problems here for Iranians.9

Meanwhile, he had been busy trying to concoct medical evidence in support of an application to his employers in Tehran to extend his sick leave for another period. Thus, we read in his letter of 9 February to Enjavi: Right at the beginning of my arrival here, I saw a doctor, and got some documents which date back to the December of last year. If I have them endorsed by the embassy now and send them to the College [of Fine Arts, in Tehran] their dates will not be helpful towards my application any more.10

Apart from such practical difficulties, the letters to Enjavi are punctuated with references to his loneliness, moodiness, edginess and difficulty in getting down to serious work. Thus, in the letter of 22 December: I don’t mix much with Iranians, excepting one or two people. But the funny thing is that – apart from the fact that I haven’t yet taken a wrong step – I don’t even feel like going to cinemas, theatres, cafés, etc., and at nights I go to bed much earlier than I used to in Tehran.11

The reference to ‘a wrong step’ probably refers to drug taking. However, he writes in the letter of 9 January: Tell the others that the reasons why I haven’t written to anyone should be clear. Firstly, I am not in the mood for this particular pastime: ‘I have been silent for so long that I have forgotten how to speak’ [a Persian verse]; secondly, I am fed up with spreading words and emotions.12

Finally, in his letters of both 14 January and 19 January, he emphasizes that Hasan Qa’emiyan should not have ‘The Message of Kafka’ reprinted, because this should be revised for a new edition, and ‘at the moment I’m not in the mood for it’.13 Shortly after Hedayat’s suicide, Père de Menasce wrote to Jamalzadeh (whose reply to him was cited earlier): On the Thursday before his death, I went to see him, and we talked about various intellectual topics. But whenever I talked about the studies in Iranian folklore

 The Execution 171 which he should undertake in the future – saying that this was the basic role that he should play [in contemporary Persian literature] – he would react with a kind of ambiguity and disillusionment.14

Henri Massé had noticed a similar kind of lethargy and general lack of enthusiasm in Hedayat, just after his return from Hamburg late in February: I told him that he still had a lot to contribute, and that he was a kind of writer in whom his country would take pride. . . . I sensed a noticeable moral and spiritual change in him. . . I spoke about the matter to our mutual friend Abbas Eqbal [the Iranian scholar and historian] who also displayed some anxiety.15

Mostafa Farzaneh, then a young student in Paris who regarded Hedayat as an intellectual mentor, was one of the few Iranians who was in regular contact with him. In a recent book he has given the account, in surprisingly elaborate detail, of their meetings and conversations between early December 1950 and 3 April 1951. It includes many occasions of going to cafés, cinemas, even nightclubs and on a few excursions to the Parisian suburbs. This seems to contradict Hedayat’s letters to Enjavi that he did not have any desire to go out. Farzaneh remembers Hedayat having told him about two draft short stories, one of them called ‘Earthquake’, the other, ‘The Cursed Spider’. Neither of them was yet in a final form, and Hedayat refused to read the latter to him because he did not think it was ready even for a private reading. However, he ‘hurriedly’ read out the draft of ‘Earthquake’ to him once when they were in a café together, and this is what Farzaneh recollects from it: Two travellers meet in a traditional café in Semnan. Sitting on a wooden bench, they smoke the shisha, drink tea, and talk about their plans after buying the lands around that café: a sound building, a farm, sheep rearing, a guest house . . . But, suddenly there is an earthquake, and the two realise that there is no sign left of the café, the garden and the green, the farm, etc., and that the bench on which they are sitting is standing between two huge cracks in the ground.16

The other story, which was merely outlined verbally by Hedayat to Farzaneh on another occasion, is definitely a psycho-fiction. This is the case of a spider who has been cursed by its mother and is no longer capable of weaving webs. It becomes dependent on others, and a pathetic little creature who is lonely and rejected.17 The sketch is strongly reminiscent of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, though here the creature is in fact an insect, not a man turned into an insect. In an earlier source, Farzaneh also mentions Hedayat reading parts of a full-scale novel to him, and produces a short sketch from what he remembers.18 But this is no longer mentioned in his recent book. Instead, there is an allusion to such a possibility which will be mentioned later in this chapter. Early in March, Enjavi arrived in Paris on a visit from Geneva, and did not find Hedayat in a good mood. He had been regularly seeing Shahid-Nura’i in what increasingly looked like the latter’s death bed, and this was distressing to him, not least

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(according to both Farzaneh and Enjavi) because of the apparent lack of fortitude with which Shahid-Nura’i was taking his illness.19 In the end they both died at about the same time, neither of them hearing the news of the other’s death. Enjavi and Hedayat spent most of the few days which the former spent in Paris on excursions to Parisian suburbs and other outings, somewhat in the style of Hedayat’s meetings and contacts with Farzaneh. ‘But it honestly wasn’t easy to be with him’, remembers Enjavi, ‘in the circumstances in which he was.’20 Once they went to the Swiss embassy together to try and get a Swiss visa for Hedayat. It so happened that (for reasons explained by Enjavi) the Iran-Swiss diplomatic relations had been cooling off, and the embassy was reluctant to give Swiss visas to Iranians.21 No wonder that (as noted earlier) Hedayat had written to Jamalzadeh shortly before that the Swiss were reluctant to give visas to ‘Ali’s Followers’. Enjavi was still in Paris when (on 7 March 1951) General Ali Razmara, the powerful prime minister and Hedayat’s brother-in-law, was assassinated in Tehran. The selfconfessed assassin was a member of the Islamic terrorist group, the Fada’iyan-e Islam, though it later became clear that the royal court may have had a hand in it.22 Surprisingly, the matter was apparently not even mentioned between Hedayat and Enjavi, for he would otherwise have remembered any discussion of such an important (public and private) event. Yet there has been some speculation about the possible contribution of this event to his decision to take his own life. As noted in Chapters 9 and 11, according to his brother Mahmud, Hedayat did not have a close relationship with his brother-in-law and was not much fond of him. Nevertheless, in his letter of 10 March to Mahmud, cited earlier, he expresses regret at the general’s assassination, sends his condolences to the family and displays fear about religious fanaticism gripping the country. The letter is short; it begins with a discussion of the problems surrounding his continued stay in Europe, and its reference to the family tragedy is formal as well as brief. Yet the fact was that his sister and family had been struck by a catastrophe of great proportions. Besides, they could not be too concerned with Hedayat’s problems, and could not give him much assistance with his immediate needs.23 But perhaps the strongest reason why Razmara’s assassination may have told on his already frail nerves is that the family had lost its extremely powerful and influential member, and that the public was in a strong anti-Razmara mood. This meant that there was no hope left that he would obtain an extension of his sick leave from the College of Fine Arts. Thus, he was left in Paris, penniless, friendless, helpless, in a highly depressed state and with the prospect of going back to Tehran and the circumstances from which he had tried to run. Some indication that he may have been distressed by his family’s loss of influence after Razmara’s assassination is given in the one instance when he mentioned his death to someone. This was Mostafa Farzaneh, who remembers him saying: Now that Razmara has been killed, not even those few boys in the [Iranian] embassy who used to come and look me up give a damn about me. Even the one who receives my letters care of his address – although he has a car and a telephone – doesn’t let me know if he’s got a letter for me unless I myself ring him up several times. To hell with it anyway; what do I want letters for?24

 The Execution 173 The allusion is to the relatively young diplomat, Fereidun Hoveida, of whom more later. One of the last occasions on which he saw Farzaneh was 1 April 1951. He was still in the cheap hotel in Denfert-Rochereau. A couple of days later, he moved into a small studio flat, and a few days after that he killed himself. The first of April was a Sunday, and Hedayat was already washed and shaven when his young visitor arrived. At one stage, Farzaneh noticed that the wastepaper basket was full of torn papers. Hedayat explained that these were drafts of recent works which he had got rid of because ‘the rabble’ (rajjalehha) were not worth his efforts: ‘I feel sick when I take the pen in my hand.’ The papers in the basket may have included the drafts of the two short stories which Farzaneh mentions earlier in his book. But he implies that there might have been a draft novel among them as well. He thought of various ways of rescuing the papers, and even got into some kind of argument with Hedayat over them later when they went out together.25 But perhaps the matter was not as dramatic as Farzaneh describes it. Whatever there was in that basket must have been very much in draft form and is unlikely to have been of earth-shaking importance relative to the author’s peaks of achievement. After all, he went on saying in letters as well as conversations that he was in no mood to engage in serious work. And it does not necessarily mean that Hedayat had already made up his mind to commit suicide, and hence wished to destroy his remaining literary effects. Farzaneh was to see Hedayat the next day and, briefly, on Tuesday 3 April as well. But this was to be the last time the two met. When he rang up his hotel on Wednesday, Hedayat was not in, and on Thursday he was told by the hotel manager that Hedayat had moved out, without leaving a forwarding address (all this while his postal address had been care of Fereidun Hoveida in the Iranian embassy). Hedayat had been looking for a studio flat for some time, and had now moved to No. 37B, rue de Championnet, as it turned out after his suicide. The second of April had been the day on which Hedayat’s four months’ sick leave had fallen due, without the slightest prospect now of its being extended. He would certainly lose his job if he did not return soon, and he had no money to support himself for an indefinite period. The idea of going to London (which would have meant that he would have had to depend on Mas’ud Farzad) cannot have got anywhere, for we hear no more about it later. Geneva had been on top of the list, mainly because of Jamalzadeh, but also given that Enjavi was now there; but there had been visa problems, as we have seen. As noted earlier, Jamalzadeh was in Tehran during March, and had previously written to Hedayat that he would try and arrange for his going to Geneva when he returned. Having got back to Geneva, Jamalzadeh wrote a letter to Hedayat, care of Dr Mahmud Mehran, the future minister of education, then Counsellor for Student Affairs at the Iranian embassy. Mehran wrote back on 6 April, immediately after receiving Jamalzadeh’s letter: I gave the envelope which you had addressed to Mr Sadeq Hedayat to Mr [Fereidun] Hoveida to deliver to him. His address is as follows: Hotel Florida, Place DenfertRochereau, Paris 14eme. But I rang up this morning to talk to him about something, and they said he had gone abroad for a few days and has asked them to keep his

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letters. However, they did not know where he had gone and when he would return. Hence, he may not receive the letter which you have sent him straight away.26

It is tempting to believe that if Hedayat had received Jamalzadeh’s reassuring letter he would have remained alive, for his suicide at the time was directly related to the desperate situation in which he found himself. However that might be, it looks as if he had deliberately decided to cut himself off from his usual Iranian contacts in Paris, though he was still seeing others, one of them being Père de Menasce whom he saw on Thursday, 4 April, and an Armenian couple of whom more later. At any rate, the fact that he told the manager of Hotel Florida that he was going abroad makes one suspicious that he might already have been thinking of the possibility of suicide. Enjavi remembers that, back in March when he was visiting Paris, he had been with Hedayat on a couple of occasions when he was looking for a studio flat. Therefore, the mere fact that he had now moved into such a flat is not sufficient proof that he was already determined to terminate his own life. What can be said with certainty is that, by early April, Hedayat was reaching the end of the rope. According to an account of the date of Hedayat’s death and how this was discovered told by the journalist Ismail Jamshidi, the only people who saw him before his death were the Iranian Armenian couple who were destined to raise the alarm about his suicide. The man had known Hedayat from earlier times in Iran and referred to him as ‘Sadeq Khan’. His father had owned a delicatessen in the district where the Hedayats lived, but he and his wife had been settled in Paris for many years. How they had come into contact with Hedayat in Paris is not known. The man’s own reference to Hedayat looking them up ‘whenever he was in Paris’ looks suspicious because this was the first time he had returned to Paris after 1930. At any rate, the couple had invited Hedayat for supper on one or two occasions, the last one being sometime between 4 and 9 April. In return he had asked them to dinner for 9 April. When they knocked at his door that evening there was no reply, and they could sense the smell of gas leaking out of the flat. They spoke to the concierge and she unlocked the door of his flat and found the body.27 Now, this account has been virtually proven to be fake by the video documentary about Hedayat’s life and death which was made in 2000. It shows that the last person to see Hedayat was Edouard Saenger, a friend of Roger Lescot who had met Hedayat in Tehran and the three of them had spent time together. They had found each other later in Paris, and it was he who had found the studio-flat for him. Hedayat had invited him and his wife for 4 pm on 9 April. When they get there on that day, they get no response from the flat. They talk to the concierge, and he tells them that the day before the smell of gas was sensed in the corridor and so, they turned the gas main off. This shows that Hedayat had been already dead on that day, and that he committed suicide on the 8th.28 He had returned to his flat at night, entered the kitchenette, spread a blanket on the floor, shut the kitchenette door from inside and sealed it off with cotton wool, turned on the gas ring and lay on the floor. There was no suicide note, though there had been many such notes indirectly scattered in his works and letters, like the one in ‘The Message of Kafka’. Saenger immediately phoned the police; they opened the door of the flat, and found the body lying on the kitchenette’s floor. The next day, there was a small item in the

 The Execution 175 French press reporting his suicide. His niece (Mrs Mahin Firuz, who lived permanently in Paris) informed his family by cable, and they decided that he should be buried in Paris. The burial rites were performed in the (Moroccan) Paris mosque a week after his death. A few friends and acquaintances were gathered in the mosque, including Henri Massé who delivered a short speech. The coffin was then taken to the famous Père Lachaise cemetery, and he was buried alongside many well-known French men and women. His brother Mahmud later arranged for the original gravestone to be replaced by the present one, which has both Persian and French inscriptions in a design that is reminiscent of The Blind Owl. The man having thus borne his own cross, it was now time for legends and mystifications to begin the familiar process of idolization and deification.

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14

The legend and the man

The legend The best review article to appear in the first year of Hedayat’s death is Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s ‘Hedayat of The Blind Owl’ which opens with the following observations: As long as Hedayat was alive no one understood him, for the reason that, in all the circles which he used to frequent, they received the news of his death with great surprise. Perhaps no one took him seriously. All of them were more familiar with the masks that he used to put on in gatherings than with the man himself; [more familiar, that is] than with what was eating him from within ‘like leprosy’ and was silently dragging him towards death and disappearance.

But as soon as the great impact of the event began to die down, everyone thought that ‘Alas, why did we not realise sooner that he was so and so, and did such and such? And that was when they all got wise; we all got wise’. After his death had solved the riddle, they all got to know – perhaps some have yet got to know – why he killed himself.1 In fact, it would be truer to say that for a long time many did not quite get to know Hedayat, the reason for his suicide, or even the real significance of his works. For, the moment he passed away, he passed not into the annals of history, but into the realm of myths and legends. There was a great rush to claim his legacy by groups and individuals alike, sometimes to the extent that the observer could even be reminded of the buzzing of the yellow wasps around the corpse in The Blind Owl. Indeed, this may well have been at the back of Al-e Ahmad’s mind when he wrote about their getting wise after Hedayat’s death, even though he was writing barely ten months after the event, when the process of hagiography, idolization and deification had only just begun. For there were times to come when the expression of any disagreement with anything that Hedayat might have said or written would be tantamount to ignorance, stupidity, treason or even being an agent of imperialism. It is fairly clear that Hedayat’s monumental failure during his life, and his great success after his death, are directly related to each other. For, when a man of exceptional originality and courage fails in this world precisely because he plays for much higher stakes than the others, and makes too many enemies in the process, it is almost inevitable that he should be canonized and idolized when he is no longer there to cause trouble, and has left a legacy which may be exploited to great advantage.

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However, the outsider’s fate is much more difficult to suffer in societies where material, intellectual or psychological survival itself is dependent upon the protection of at least one of the parties or frameworks within the relevant field. Here, the battlelines are rigidly drawn, and the rejection of one framework must be accompanied by the acceptance of another. And he who approaches all of them with a more or less critical attitude and is not prepared to toe the line or stay silent regarding any of them, is likely to be rejected, denounced and even hounded by them all. On the other hand, once he has disappeared from the scene, and no longer poses any real or imaginary threat to the existing establishments, it would be natural for them to vie with each other in claiming his legacy, and blowing his image out of all human proportions, in the process. Such is the logic of the treatment – in life and after death – of men like Hedayat, in societies like Iran.

The first two years (1951–3) The news of Hedayat’s suicide caused considerable stir in Tehran both among the intellectualité and in the wider community of modern educated people. The public response would probably have been even stronger and more widespread had the event not coincided with the public euphoria which greeted oil nationalization and Mosaddeq’s premiership at the time. In any case, the press were united in praising Hedayat’s works and lamenting his tragic end.2 A few formal and informal memorial meetings were held. The meeting held by the University of Tehran at the College of Arts on 18 April 1951 was attended by the university president as well as members of the Hedayat family, and was addressed by Parviz Khanlari, who delivered a measured and studious speech.3 In another meeting held at the Hall of Culture, the satirical poet Yazdanbakhsh Qahreman spoke on behalf of Hedayat’s inner circle of friends, and Mojtaba Minovi read a few pieces of his works. The old literary establishment was silent; only Sa’id Nafisi – a reluctant member of that establishment – wrote a short and favourable note.4 The reaction of the Tudeh press was guarded and somewhat critical in the first few days, but they quickly changed their tune, and began to exploit the situation. For example, the newspaper Mehregan wrote on 13 April: Last week Sadeq Hedayat died in Paris. There have already been many articles in the press discussing the value of his works which, in recent years, were clearly tending towards decadence. . . . Hedayat has definitely a prominent place in the history of modern Persian literature. However, in recent years, corruption and baseness – the two insoluble problems of our intellectuals – condemned him too, like a few other men of arts, to decline and fall. This artistic and moral decline of Sadeq caused many of his old friends to leave him.

The notice in Parcham-e Solh (a Tudeh-sponsored newspaper) published on the same day was more complimentary, but it still reflected the Zhdanovist view of art and artists:

 The Legend and the Man 179 Last week, Sadeq Hedayat, the great contemporary writer, died in Paris. . . . Hedayat was a humanitarian writer who was fighting against the meanness of the [social] environment as well as unjust constraints. . . . Hedayat was a sincere enemy of the corrupt ruling class of Iran. . . . In recent years, the trend of events once again moved the sensitive soul of this able writer into a state of despair and disappointment. The Hedayat who had left The Blind Owl behind himself and produced such a [valuable] work as Hajji Aqa once again fell into the realm of darkness . . . We admire the dazzling and extraordinary art of Hedayat. He was a humanitarian writer, and a seeker of happiness for mankind, but, as he did not establish himself in the barricade of struggle and did not put on the invincible armour of battle . . . he perished in the soul-destroying straits of darkness.

However, three days later, Chelengar, the famous satirical Tudeh publication, was absolutely unequivocal in its praise of Hedayat: It would be no exaggeration to say that the goddess of art herself is in mourning. . . . All of us who are interested in writing owe a large debt to this great literary teacher of ours . . . and realize the big gap between ourselves and a teacher who was such a skillful innovator.

Hedayat was too good a prize to lose because of his opposition to the ruling establishment, and his earlier sympathies for the Tudeh party. On the other hand, the relations had later turned sour, and he had been a ‘pessimist’ like the ‘decadent’ Kafka. The first difficulty was overcome by simply ignoring the facts, and (in later years) even implying that he had been a loyal party member, while his ‘pessimism’ was increasingly explained by putting it down to the country’s political circumstances. There were inevitable inconsistencies, however. For example, in an early article, Kafka’s ideas are described as ‘a decadent and imperialist philosophy’ while imperialism itself is held responsible for Hedayat’s death, a view which was later to be reiterated by Bozorg Alavi in a German publication.5 The same article describes The Blind Owl as a response to Reza Shah’s ‘black dictatorship’, and blows up Hajji Aqa, ‘Tomorrow’ and other works in that vein as Hedayat’s best – his ‘optimistic’ – works. And it goes on to explain his ‘falling down the abyss of despair’ by the decline in the fortunes of the Tudeh party. It thus contains the elements of the ‘pessimistic-optimistic-pessimistic’ theory of the cycle of Hedayat’s life and works which was soon to be formalized and sold to many readers and critics for years to come. On the other hand, many of the other comments and notices which appeared shortly after Hedayat’s death were also a mixture of hagiography, adulation and misinformation. For example, the article by an anti-Tudeh writer claimed that Hedayat had once before tried to kill himself by jumping from the Eiffel Tower into the River Seine (!), and that he had been a founding member of the Tudeh party but had resigned from it after discovering that is leaders were ‘Russian lackeys’.6 However, after the first reactions to the news of Hedayat’s death had subsided, reviews and commentaries on his life and works – and especially those written by non-Tudeh

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intellectuals – tended to become more substantive and serious. Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s ‘Hedayat of The Blind Owl7 (mentioned earlier), his reviews of a new edition of The Three Drops of Blood and of Vincent Monteil’s booklet on Hedayat;8 and Parviz Dariyush’s review of the same booklet9 as well as his own memorial article10 have stood out as some of the most balanced and sophisticated commentaries on the subject for many years. Hushang Sa’adat’s review article on a new edition of Chiaroscuro (Sayeh Roshan)11 and Gholam’ali Sayyar’s review of the French translation of two of Hedayat’s short stories by Vincent Monteil are also measured and competent.12 Khalil Maleki’s (unsigned) article indicates a wide reading of Hedayat’s works, though it inevitably tends to emphasize Hedayat’s disillusionment with the Tudeh party, and his ‘settling of scores’ with ‘Mr Ehsan Tabari, our home-bred Zhdanov who – just like the Russian Zhdanov – regards himself as an expert in every art, science and technique’.13 Abdorrahim Ahmadi’s short piece (in Tehatr) and long article (in Shiveh) reveal an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of Hedayat’s works, but follow the Tudeh party’s standard line.14 The first anniversary of Hedayat’s death was marked by a memorial meeting addressed by Mojtaba Minovi who ended his speech by noting: Some people insist on identifying him with such-and-such a party, and others allege that he believed in such-and-such an ideology. The truth is that, ever since twenty years ago when we first got to know him, that friend of ours was opposed to all kinds of baseness, hypocrisy, shamelessness and tyranny.15

In their first anniversary notices, the Tudeh press tended to underplay, or omit altogether, references to Hedayat’s ‘pessimism’, and his lack of enthusiasm for political activity. For example, in an article entitled ‘Sadeq Hedayat, the Father of Modern Iranian Writers’, Chelengar’s editor described himself as a student and imitator of Hedayat’s satire, and ended his article by saying: The death of Sadeq, this progressive, humanitarian and able writer, was a catastrophic loss to the country’s modern literature. [But] those who follow Sadeq’s path are inspired by him, and will go on following the path which he himself did not manage to tread through to the end.16

Likewise, he was described by another Tudeh newspaper as being a real human being who loved art and humanity, [and who] wanted art for the society, and in the services of the society. . . . Hedayat’s suicide was not an ordinary event and is not at all a sign of weakness on the part of that literary genius. On the contrary, his suicide was the final act of protest, and the sign of an unyielding defiance by all those who could no longer bear to see their fellow men buried alive in this environment.17

Here we see the genesis of the cult of Hedayat’s suicide – indeed the cult of suicide itself – which was to become dominant among the intellectuals later in the 1950s as a result of the 1953 coup and its aftermath.

 The Legend and the Man 181 There was less activity on the second anniversary of Hedayat’s death, but a number of articles – notably those by Dariyush, Maleki and Ahmadi, cited earlier – were of a high quality.18 However, on the third anniversary, April 1954, there were only one or two short notices which are hardly worth mentioning. This was eight months after the coup, when many newspapers and publications had been banned, and most members of the intellectual élite, regardless of party affiliation, were either in jail or had been frightened into silence.

Hedayat’s image after the coup The political regime which came into being as a result of the 1953 coup was a conservative dictatorship led by a coalition of the shah, the army, the landlords and the religious establishment. There were tendencies towards greater modernism and a more personal dictatorship by the shah towards the end of the decade, but these were quickly checked by the politico-economic crisis of 1960–3. It was from 1963 onwards that the shah’s personal rule became established, and social and economic modernization increasingly turned into official Americanism. Therefore, in the period 1953–60 little is to be found on Hedayat in the daily and weekly press, except for occasional claims that he was responsible for the increasing moodiness and suicide attempts among the younger generation. When they wished to be kinder to him, they blamed it all on Jean-Paul Sartre and his existentialist philosophy, as the real basis for Hedayat’s attitude to life. For example, when a prominent medical student shot himself in Tehran, and a gifted art student jumped from a building in Rome, one of the better weekly reviews lamented that both Hedayat and these young men had perished as a result of their belief in Sartre’s philosophy, whereas the culprit himself was having fun every day in the cafés of the Latin Quarter in Paris! On the other hand, the onset of the conservative dictatorship, the collapse of the Popular Movement and the demise of the Tudeh party quickly resulted in a mood of resignation among the public at large and shattered the hopes and illusions of the younger generations. Depression and drug addiction began to develop into serious social problems. Nihilism and the cult of death became popular among intellectuals and educated young people. There developed an almost subterranean cult of Hedayat and Hedayatism, and, by extension, Kafkaism and existentialism: Hedayat, Kafka, Sartre and Camus became the most important authorities on life and death in private intellectual gatherings and conversations. The monthly literary review Sokhan was the only journal to publish fairly regular pieces on Hedayat and his works, and these were mainly of a professional and/or personal variety. They included a couple of articles by Hasan Qa’emiyan on European studies of Hedayat, memorial notices by Jamalzadeh on the anniversaries of Hedayat’s death and a dozen of Hedayat’s letters to Shahid-Nura’i, edited by Parviz Khanlari.19 Qa’emiyan was also busy supervising new editions and reprints of Hedayat’s published works, editing his ‘scattered writings’, and compiling a collection of papers and articles written about him by French and Russian authors and critics.20 In the 1960s and 1970s Hedayat’s public image began to change. The White Revolution, and the failure of the 1963 uprising, led to an official move away from

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cultural conservatism and traditionalism, although repression against all forms of political opposition and public criticism was highly intensified. The heroes of the younger generations now tended to range from Castro, Che Guevara and Mao to the children’s story writer Samad Behrangi and such critics of westernism as Al-e Ahmad and Shariati (although the views and commitments of the latter two were far from identical). Hedayat was still a popular writer, but he was no longer an undisputed idol of the young, the opposition and the intellectuals, nor a bȇte noire of the regime. He was still being read widely, and his books were selling well, though not as well as Al-e Ahmad’s and those of some radical poets. In the 1960s critical studies of Hedayat tended to become more serious and substantive, by far the best of them being Parviz Dariyush’s ‘Payment of a Debt to Sadeq Hedayat’.21 Others were mainly written with reference to a couple of his works, and especially The Blind Owl. Bahram Meqdadi’s ‘Hedayat and the Oedipal Complex’22 was an attempt to apply the famous Freudian model to Hedayat’s case, which has had many European precedents in the case of Kafka and similar European writers. There had been a few earlier attempts, for example Sorushabadi’s A Psychological Interpretation of Hedayat’s Works,23 Peymani’s ‘Let Us Discuss Sadeq Hedayat in an Informed Way’ (which is more of a polemic than an appraisal)24 and Shari’atmadari’s Hedayat and the Psycho-analysis of His Works.25 The Hedayat legend experienced something of a revival in the 1970s, this time in the official and officially inspired press. This was the high tide of official modernism and, as we have seen, Hedayat was no longer the literary idol of the young generation. Nevertheless, Katira’i’s useful effort in compiling many of Hedayat’s unpublished or inaccessible letters, essays and other works, together with the reminiscences of some of his personal friends, was in parts censored.26 This was followed by the publication of a number of booklets (which were not regarded as being harmful to the state) such as M. Y. Qotbi’s This Is The Blind Owl,27 Ismail Jamshidi’s Hedayat’s Suicide,28 Sadeq Homayuni’s The Man Who Was Talking to His Shadow29 and Hasan Qa’emiyan’s polemic, The Literary Charlatans and Hedayat’s Works.30 The best and most serious of these books was Abdol-Ali Dast-gheib’s A Critique of Hedayat’s Works, which was published in the year of the revolution.31 Jamshid Mesbahipur’s Social Reality and the World of Fiction32 (published just after the revolution) includes two chapters on The Blind Owl and Hajji Aqa. The chapter on The Blind Owl is diligent as well as competent. The author shows awareness of the link between the two parts of the story, though (perhaps following Kamshad) he believes that the second part should have come first. Yet, he goes further than many before him in capturing the psychological and philosophical undercurrents in the novel. His appraisal of Hajji Aqa, on the other hand, is more conventional, and suffers from some of the basic weaknesses of the earlier reviews. Consequently, he describes Hajji Aqa as ‘a truly typical example of the traditional bourgeoisie’, and regards the novel as representing an ‘optimisme fantomique’ on the author’s part. However, and in the same decade, masses of mainly spurious material poured out of the state-controlled daily and weekly press. More than anyone else, it would have surprised Hedayat himself to have watched the regular Hedayat spectacular in Rastakhiz, the official newspaper of the National Resurgence Party, and similar dailies.

 The Legend and the Man 183 In particular, a series of articles appeared in Rastakhiz, ending up with the remarkable claim (in the issue of 5 December 1977) that Hedayat committed suicide because Enjavi had ‘attracted to himself the woman whom Hedayat passionately loved’.33 There were many more pieces by others, some of them marking the anniversary of Hedayat’s seventieth and seventy-fifth birthdays, most of them ‘pro’, and some ‘anti’.34 The last issue of Sokhan to be published on an anniversary of Hedayat’s death included an article by Meqdadi comparing The Blind Owl with Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.35 A screen version of The Blind Owl, and a film entitled The Last Days of Sadeq Hedayat (both of them directed by Kiyumars Derambakhsh) were made in 1976 and 1977 respectively.36 The revolution and its aftermath did not leave Hedayat and his works unaffected. Just after the revolution, The Morvari Cannon was published by an anonymous publisher. This was quickly followed by the publication of ‘The Islamic Mission to European Cities’ which had also been hitherto unpublished. There was clearly a political motive behind the publication of these works, and this led to anti-Hedayat responses in the popular press. Thus, a piece appeared in the daily newspaper Bamdad, written by a former fellow student of Hedayat in France, which described him as ‘a member of the party of those people who do not wash their bottoms’, and included reminiscences, by the writer, about Hedayat’s student days in Reims, including his ‘long nails’, his winedrinking and the ‘dirty words’ which he spoke at the dinner table.37 The pro-Tudeh and anti-Tudeh interpretations of Hedayat’s views also experienced a brief revival, but died down quickly, perhaps because the Tudeh party then thought it unwise to claim Hedayat as one of their own.38 In the meantime, Hedayat was not forgotten by sections of the Iranian opposition abroad, mainly for his anti-Islamic views. Thus, in 1981, an opposition group based in Paris reprinted his ‘The Islamic Mission to European Cities’ from the handwritten original. Mostafa Farzaneh’s Acquaintance with Sadeq Hedayat was later published in two volumes, in Paris.39 The first volume almost entirely comprises the author’s memoirs and reminiscences about his contacts and conversations with Hedayat in Tehran and Paris, parts of which had been already published. It contains information on Hedayat’s life and times in his later years, though the verbatim account of the conversations, and the existence of some other minute details, give the impression that parts of it have been written with the benefit of hindsight. The second volume is, on the other hand, an attempt at a fairly broad review and appraisal of Hedayat’s work. The publication of Farzaneh’s book stirred up only a brief round of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ response to Hedayat in the Iranian press.40 In the last thirty or so years, there have been highly unfavourable and scathing programmes in the state television on the person of Hedayat, one of them going as far as claiming that he and the whole of the Hedayat clan were agents of Britain! On the other hand, Sam Kalantari and Mohsen Shahrnazdar produced a wellresearched and technically competent documentary entitled ‘From No, 37’ on Hedayat’s life and death, though not much on his works. Although such predictions are extremely hazardous in the case of Iran, it looks as if the Hedayat legend as it has been known in the past has now largely withered away, and it will no more be regarded as an unforgivable crime to say that not everything that

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he wrote and said and did is necessarily acceptable. Fortunately for him, it seems that he is no longer an effective instrument of private and public propaganda, political or otherwise, putting aside the TV attacks mentioned earlier.

The man There is much less evidence and information on Hedayat’s private life than a student of his life and works would have liked to find. In Iran, both documentary evidence and oral information about the lives of famous individuals are hard to obtain, and the oral tradition which is available must be treated with more than the usual caution. On the other hand, one wonders, for example, whether the interpretations of Kafka’s life and works would have been significantly different without his letters to Felice or ‘Letter to His Father’. In fact, the significance of these letters (the latter of which is fictional) does not lie so much in the light which they may be thought to throw on the autobiographical content of Kafka’s fiction, or in making the psychoanalytical interpretation of himself and his works more convincing.41 The letters have certainly contributed to such interpretations, but their absence is unlikely to have deterred professionals and amateurs alike from interpreting Kafka’s literature in purely psychological terms. If anything, the psychological evidence supplied by the letters tends to devalue the psychoanalytical interpretations by making them too obvious to miss. Besides, the trouble with the oedipal complex and similar concepts and categories is that they explain too much from too little information; for, almost in every case, it will be possible to discover a ‘dominant other’ (if not a dominant father) who is either loved and idolized, or envied and feared, or all of them at the same time. It would be silly to deny that Kafka’s relationship with his father must have had a considerable impact on the development of his personality. Still, this does not tell us much about the world of Franz Kafka or about his literature, which is the real cause of our interest in him.

Psychology and politics The psychological studies of Hedayat are not even based on some such direct evidence as letters, personal or fictional. Indeed, many of the booklets and articles on Hedayat’s psychology are based wholly or mainly on The Blind Owl – as if it is an autobiography – and their authors have tended to neglect a wealth of other literary evidence which could be used in such studies: ‘The Woman Who Lost Her Man’, where either the woman is a masochist, or women deserve as well as enjoy the crack of the whip; ‘The Three Drops of Blood’, in which a young man shoots a he-cat because it courts his shecat; ‘Puppet Behind the Curtain’, the story of a young man who falls in love with a soulless manikin; ‘The Dark Room’, about the recluse who says he longs to return to the security of his mother’s womb; ‘The Stray Dog’ which destiny has, as it were, thrown to the wolves, and which is nostalgic about the care and comfort of its infancy; and so many other ‘cases’ from Hedayat’s psycho-fictions which we have come across in the

 The Legend and the Man 185 foregoing chapters. Therefore, by contrast with Kafka, psychological interpretation in the case of Hedayat has tended to be rather thin and has ignored much of the evidence which could have been put to use. If anything, one is more struck by the sense of outrage and indignation which the psychological interpretations often provoke in Hedayat lovers. Let us suppose that both Hedayat and Kafka in fact suffered from the oedipal complex or some such neurotic disorder. Yet, we would still want to know why they wrote, and specifically wrote what they wrote. The psychoanalytical interpretations are in themselves insufficient in explaining Hedayat’s psycho-fictions, let alone those realistic and romantic works which bear no trace of his own individual psychology. An author’s personality and/or personal history are clearly important, but they do not tell us everything about his works. Rousseau’s alleged masochism (or his impotence in later life), Robespierre’s unhappy experience at school, Marx’s physical illness and financial troubles, Nietzsche’s suspected incestual tendencies, Sartre’s childhood experience of his grandfather’s bourgeois clowning – such facts and hypotheses may tell us something about these and other famous individuals which they share with large numbers of unknown people, but they will not explain why Rousseau wrote at all, or wrote revolutionary social philosophy instead of romantic poetry, or why Sartre did not kill himself rather than denouncing the French bourgeoisie or even (in the end) literature itself. However, as we have tried to show in this book, a good deal of Hedayatology has been dominated by ‘the social and political’ rather than by the psychic, the mysterious and the occult. We have already discussed the famous ‘pessimistic-optimistic-pessimistic’ theory of his life and works, and its exclusively political explanation, though there is no denying that his moods were more positive during some periods of his life, and worse in the course of others. He was far from insensitive to the social and political situation, was opposed to Reza Shah, welcomed his abdication as well as the emergence of the Tudeh party, and was alienated from it during the Azerbaijan fiasco and after. But he was not a political animal, did not believe in any ideology and could never have made an engagé writer in any circumstances. Above all, he valued freedom, including his own freedom of thought, too highly for any of that. And to measure the relative value of his works – as the Tudeh critics did – against their political background would be to stand the subject on its head. For he wrote the best of his works of almost all varieties in the so-called pessimistic periods, that is in the 1930s and in the latter half of the 1940s. The fact that he was born and bred in an upper-class family must surely have affected his social placement and the nature of his contact with the society, though it had no fewer drawbacks than advantages for him. But in any case, it would not extend explanation of the type and quality of his works beyond the obvious, because, in contrast to writers like Hejazi, his own individuality far outweighed his social background. Strangely enough, Komisarof has made the apparently complimentary claim that Hedayat was a ‘representative of the petty bourgeoisie’. This may mean that, although Hedayat came from an upper-class background, he represented the interests and/or values of the lower-middle classes, but it flies in the face of the facts of his life and works.

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Personality and literature Hedayat’s sensitivity towards the plight of both ‘man and animal’ can be traced back to his youth, and certainly to the time when he wrote and published a long essay by that title. His cult of death is directly and eloquently expressed in his essay ‘Death’, which he wrote when he was twenty-four. His difficulty in adjusting to disciplined work can be inferred from his wanderings in Belgium and France, returning home without an academic diploma, and rejecting the offer of going back to Europe to read the subject of his own choice. His suicidal tendency was first manifested when he jumped into the River Marne at the age of twenty-five. By all accounts, he was a shy, self-conscious and proud individual who always aimed at perfection, and these qualities are reflected in both the conduct of his life and the content of his fiction. He would not ‘beg’ either of women or of ‘the mighty of the earth and the heavens’; he would be overjoyed with a little recognition if this was fairly and freely given to him, but would otherwise prefer silence, solitude and suffering. The anger, resentment and, if you will, bitterness which are betrayed by some of his letters, satires and psychofictions do not stem from native arrogance. They arise from the clash of his subjective pride and self-esteem, on the one hand, with his objective alienation and deprivation, on the other hand. He was probably sexually active, but there is no evidence of a love affair in his life with a man or a woman, nor is it likely that he ever enjoyed such an experience. He was a non-conformist in every respect all his life. He spoke, wrote and did what he felt to be right, and was extremely good at making enemies by breaking the (largely unwritten) family and social rules. He was in a strict minority, vis-à-vis the literary establishment, the political establishment and the political opposition all at once, but was astonished at their hostile reaction, because he had no ulterior motives, and felt that he was acting with the honesty and integrity of a free soul. He was, therefore, an opposition within the opposition, an internal émigré, a stranger in his own land. The phenomenon as such is not unique to him, to Iran, to writers and artists, or even to public men alone. What makes him unique is that – in addition to possessing those personal attributes – he was an Iranian, a man of his own time, and a gifted writer who used his gift, in the first instance, to communicate with himself. The famous declaration of the narrator of The Blind Owl that he writes for his own shadow is a dramatic manifestation of the urge in the author to talk to himself, a tendency that can be discerned from some of his other works as well, even ‘Dash Akol’. It is not so much an attempted self-analysis as an almost unconscious act of selfexposure where, not the author’s real-life experiences, but his innermost feelings pour out through fiction. It is in this sense that, like Kafka, he became ‘literature itself ’; and, hence – again like Kafka, but somewhat less explicitly – he wished to be something else; that is, to be like other, more ordinary people, to find a woman and fall in love with her, to enjoy some external recognition beyond the appreciation of a few personal friends, and to suffer less for what after all accounts for his genius. He reminds the reader of the violinist in his little-known short story ‘Tajalli’ who was in pain to see himself perform so well when he was alone with his fiddle, but so inadequately when he tried to establish a direct line of communication with others, especially women (see Chapter 8). Literature

 The Legend and the Man 187 for him was both a means of communication and a smokescreen behind which he tried to hide his agonizing soul, but it inevitably exposed much that he wished to hide behind it. He used literature both as a cover for his unusual sensibilities, and as a means of giving vent to them, but the more he tried the more he became engulfed by literature itself, and aloof from the outside world. This is much more readily discernible from his psycho-fictions as compared with his works about the lives of the common people, though it may be observed from his romantic nationalist fiction as well. His psycho-fictions combine various degrees of symbolism, realism and surrealism, and they concern abstract and universal issues which are introduced within a fictional and parochial setting. On the other hand, his studies of the ordinary people tell stories in the usual sense of this term and are so realistic that they make the author look almost like a ‘neutral’ observer. The latter are mainly about others; the former, mainly about the author: the contrast between the two categories of psycho-fictions and pure fictions is as clear in theme and style as is the relative degree of the author’s involvement in them. While the problems, predicaments and preoccupations of the narrator of The Blind Owl, the recluse in ‘The Dark Room’, Sharif in ‘Dead End’ are strongly related to the author’s innermost feelings and frustrations, he expresses (quite unlike an engagé writer) no strong views or sentiments about the pilgrims of Mashhad or Karbala. In fact, he comes nearest to being engagé (in the usual sense of this term) in his social and literary satires, and the romantic nationalist plays and short stories. In a word, his psycho-fictions are basically symbolistic and surrealistic, his pure fictions, realistic, his drama, romantic, and his satire, allegorical. He is thus an eclectic writer both in theme and style, while his psycho-fictions are most representative of his own moods and preoccupations. Apart from his art, he was also a scholar and a man of learning, and his studies of Persian folklore won him almost as much fame, during his own lifetime, as his fiction writing. He was well-versed in classical Persian literature, and this was reflected in his studies of Khayyam as well as his literary reviews. He did not quite create a new prose style in a way that this could be claimed for Jamalzadeh and (even more strongly) Al-e Ahmad; his prose is not entirely free from formal errors; and the style somewhat varies between different types of work. Yet, in a number of ways, his prose is unique to himself, and this is particularly evident from his letters. Therefore, he was, by his very nature, far from a system builder, the founder of a school, or the leader of a well-defined literary movement. And though it may sound contradictory, this accounts for the global impact which he made on his contemporaries among modern writers and intellectuals, and on the following generations. Some of the earlier works of Chubak and Al-e Ahmad – for example, Chubak’s ‘Adl’, and Al-e Ahmad’s ‘Bacheh-ye Mardom’ – are closest to reflecting the influence of Hedayat’s pure fiction, but there has been no serious attempt at imitating his psycho-fictions or satires. In other words, it was everything about him in general, as opposed to anything by him in particular which impressed itself upon those who knew him or read his works. And although he has been dead for seventy years, his shadow is still cast over modern Persian fiction. Hedayat was an Iranian writer of his time, but he was also a sensitive human being, the nature of whose thoughts and sufferings went well beyond a given time and

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place. From this point of view, he may be compared, for example, with Simone Weil, the unusual French intellectual who was his contemporary. She opposed the interwar French capitalism as much as he disliked Reza Shah’s despotism. She joined the Communist party in order to help, but left it soon, saying that, if they were successful ‘they would oppress again, as in Russia’.42 He was first hopeful about the Tudeh, but later he turned against it, calling them liars and harbingers of the whipping board. She fought in the Spanish Civil War, wrote on philosophy, politics and society, was almost converted to Catholicism by an unusual monk, joined the French Resistance during the war, ended up in England, and died there of consumption (in 1943) while refusing to eat. The official verdict was suicide. All through her adult life she complained of violent headaches, tension, dizziness and exhaustion. ‘One always needs for oneself ’, she once wrote, ‘some external signs of one’s own value.’43 Among the notes which she wrote in London, the following lines have been quoted from a Persian poem: Why, when I am ill, does none of you come to visit me. When if your slave is ill, I hurry to see him? Crueler for me than illness is your contempt.44

These lines could well have been repeated, with reference to himself, by Hedayat, who was seldom understood or given recognition for what he was, what he did and what he suffered for, as long as he was alive. He lived an unhappy life and died an unhappy death; but he left a great legacy behind him. Perhaps the failure of his life was the price for the success of his works.

Notes

Chapter 1 1 See further, Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, the Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis, ‘The Revolution for Law: A Chronographic Analysis of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran,’ Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 47, no. 5 (September 2011), pp. 757–77; ‘Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, ‘Three Lives in a Lifetime’, in IRAN, Politics, History and Literature (Abingdon (England), and America and Canada: Routledge, 2006). 2 See, for example, Katouzian, ‘The Revolution for Law, A Chronographic Analysis of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran’. 3 See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘Nationalist Trends in Iran: 1921–1926’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, November 1979. 4 See further, Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, paperback edition 2006). 5 See further, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, The Emergence of Iranian-Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 6 See M. Sobhdam (pseudonym), Maktubat-e Mirza Fath’ali Akhundzadeh (Mard-e Emruz, 1985), p. 16. 7 Ibid., pp. 20–32. 8 Ibid., pp. 34–5. 9 Ibid., p. 45. 10 Ibid., p. 65. 11 For an example of Talebof ’s sober and mature comments on zealous revolutionary developments, see Yahya Arianpour, Az Saba Ta Nima, vol. 2 (Tehran: Zavvar, 1993). 12 For a detailed account, together with long quotations, see Ibid. 13 For a comprehensive study of modern Iranian (romantic) nationalism, see Zia-Ebrahimi, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism. 14 See Ahmad Shamlu, Hava-ye Tazeh (Tehran, 1951). 15 See for a detailed description of the story, Arianpur, Az Saba Ta Nima, vol. 2.

Chapter 2 1 See, for example, Arianpur, Az Saba Ta Nima, vol. 1; Homa Katouzian, ‘Neoclassical Persian Literature, Bazgasht-e Adabi in the Nineteenth Century’, in IRAN, Politics, History and Literature; and, further, Lesan al-Molk, Nasekh al-Tavarikh, nineteencentury lithographic edition, Tehran.

190

Notes

2 See, for example, Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Musavi (ed.), Khaterat-e Ehtesham al-Saltaneh, second edition (Tehran: Musavi, 1988); and Ali Akbar Sa’idi Sirjani (ed.), Nazem al-Eslam Kermani, Tarikh-e Bidari-ye Iraniyan (Tehran: Agah-Novin, 1983). 3 For his own version of the events, see Hajj Mokhber al-Saltaneh (Mehdiqoli Hedayat), Khaterat o Khatarat (Tehran, 1963); see further, Homa Katouzian, ‘The Revolt of Sheikh Mohammad Khiyabani’, in Iranian History and Politics, the Dialectic of State and Society (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); see also Mohammad Taqi Bahar (the poet-laureate), Tarikh-e Mokhtasar-e Ahzab-e Siyasi dar Iran, vol. 1 (Tehran, 1944). 4 See, for example, Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990) and The Political Economy of Modern Iran (London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1981). 5 Direct quotations from Mahmud Hedayat’s handwritten testimonial supplied to the author. 6 Notes from conversations in Tehran with Dr Razavi, July and August 1977. 7 My own photocopy of the unpublished letter by courtesy of the late Dr Razavi. 8 Notes from conversations with Parviz Khanlari, July 1977. 9 See, for example, Iraj Bashiri, Hedayat’s Ivory Tower (Minneapolis: Manor House, 1974), for an extreme and wholly unconvincing Buddhist interpretation of The Blind Owl. 10 Sadeq Hedayat, Roba’iyat-e Omar Khayyam (Berukhim, 1921), p. 22. 11 See further, Chapter 5. 12 Hedayat, Robai’yat, pp. 22–3, emphasis added. 13 See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘The Hallmarks of Science and Scholasticism: A Historical Analysis’, The Yearbook of the Sociology of Sciences (London: Reidel, 1982). 14 Hedayat, Robai’yat, p. 23. 15 Ibid., pp. 23–4. 16 Ibid., pp. 24–5. 17 Ibid., pp. 25–6. 18 Ibid., p. 27. 19 Ibid., p. 28. 20 Favayed-e Giyah-khari (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). See Chapter 3. 21 Ensan o Heivan (Tehran: Berukhim, 1921), reprinted in Hasan Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1965), p. 266. 22 Ibid., p. 268. 23 Ibid., p. 270. 24 Ibid., p. 273. 25 Ibid., p. 276. 26 Ibid., p. 277. 27 Ibid., p. 283. 28 Ibid., p. 288. 29 Ibid., p. 289.

Chapter 3 1 See Sir Denis Wright, The Persians Amongst the English (London: I.B Tauris, 1985). 2 See Hossein Khan Shaqaqi (ed.), Mirza Mehdi Khan Shaqaqi, Khaterat-e Momtahen al-Dowleh (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1983).

 Notes 191 3 See, for example, Homa Katouzian, Khalil Maleki, the Human Face of Iranian Socialism (London: Oneworld, 2018) and Homa Katouzian (ed.), Khaterat-e Siyasi-e Khalil Maleki, second edition (Tehran: Enteshar, 1990). 4 For the testimony of such a student, see Dr Nosratollah Bastan, Afsaneh-ye Zendegi (Tehran, 1967). 5 See Hasan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Vincent Monteil has also mentioned dentistry. See his Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Institut Franco-Iranian, 1952). 6 See DC Komisarof in Hasan Qa’emiyan (ed.), Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Parastu, 1964), p. 231. 7 See, for the document in question, Abolqasem Jannati-Ata’i, Zendegi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 88. This book carries no publication detail, but it looks as if it has been printed (though not published) in Tehran in the 1970s, and reprinted and published in the 1980s outside Iran. 8 I have my own photocopies of this and many more Hedayat letters to Razavi and others. Many of them have been published in Mahmud Katira’i’s useful Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Ashrafi, 1970). See pp. 201–2 for the letter. Unfortunately, the book was censored in part, but a few uncensored copies (of which I possess one) reached private hands. 9 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 207–8. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., pp. 199–201. 12 Unpublished letter. See author’s photocopy. 13 See Rahmatollah Aminfar, ‘Riyakari-ye Taghutiyan . . .’, Bamdad, 21 May 1980, and Chapter 14. 14 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 203–4. 15 Ibid., pp. 204–6. 16 Notes of conversations with the late Dr Taqi Razavi in Tehran, July to August 1977. 17 Ibid. 18 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 182–3. Mahmud Hedayat kindly let me see this and Hedayat’s other postcards to him in August 1977. 19 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 184–5, and 204–6. 20 Ibid. 21 See Komisarof and Rosenfeld, ‘Moqaddameh-ye Tarjomeh-ye Rusi-ye Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat’, in Qa’emiyan (ed.), Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat. 22 Iranshahr, vol. 4, no. 11, February 1927, reprinted in Hasan Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1965), pp. 292–3. 23 Ibid. 24 See Bashiri, Hedayat’s Ivory Tower, p. 40. 25 See Chapter 1. 26 See ‘La Magie en Perse’, in Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh, pp. 625–50. According to Qa’emiyan, this essay first appeared in Le Voile d’Tsis, vol. 3, no. 79, July 1926. I have been unable to check the date in the original source, but if July 1926 is correct, the essay might have been written in Tehran before Hedayat’s departure for Europe. However, it is more likely that the date is 1929. 27 Favayed-e Giyahkhari (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 28 Ibid., p. 10. 29 ‘Humour for In-betweeners; Sadeq Hedayat’s Puppet Play Afsaneh afarinesh (The Myth of Creation) as a Cross-Cultural Phenomenon’, in, Dominic Parviz Brookshaw

192

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Notes

(ed.), Ruse and wit: the humorous in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish narrative (Boston, MA: Ilex Foundation, 2012). See ‘Madeleine’, in Zendeh beh Gur (Buried Alive) (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). See ‘Zendeh beh Gur’, in Ibid., and Chapter 7. Unpublished letter, of which I hold a photocopy. ‘Asir-e Faransavi’, in Zendeh beh Gur. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 53. See ‘Hajji Morad’, Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 47. See Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 203.

Chapter 4 1 See, for an analysis of the process through which these developments took place, Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran. Persian translation by Mohammad Nafisi and Kambiz Azizi, Eqtesad-e Siyasi-ye Iran, twenty-fifth impression (Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2020). 2 See Chapters 5–9. 3 For a discussion of the aforementioned works together with their full publication detail, see Chapters 4–7. 4 See Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran. 5 See Katouzian (ed.), Khaterat-e Siyasi-ye Khalil Maleki, second edition (Tehran: Enteshar, 1990); and Katouzian, ‘Khalil Maleki va Mas’aleh-ye Adam-e Gheir-e Adi’, in H. Katouzian and A. Pichdad (eds), Yadnameh-ye Khalil Maleki (Tehran: Enteshar, 1991). 6 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, March 1982. 7 See further discussion. 8 See Chapter 6. 9 See Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 108–11. 10 Letter of 29 August 1931, Ibid., p. 212. 11 Ibid., p. 213. 12 Ibid., pp. 213–15. 13 Conversations with Jamalzadeh (Geneva, June 1977) and Moqaddam (Tehran, August 1977). 14 Jamalzadeh, June 1977. 15 Moqaddam, August 1977. 16 Later in the 1940s he put this in his famous satire, The Morvari Cannon. 17 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, June 1977. 18 See Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran and The Political Economy of Modern Iran. 19 See letter of 1 September 1932 in Katira’i, Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 214. 20 They included Rashid Yasemi, Ahmad Bahmanyar, Vahid Dastgerdi, Abbas Eqbal Ashtiyani and Badi’al-Zaman Foruzanfar. But there were more than seven (Taqizadeh, Sa’id Nafisi, Mohammad Qazvini, Qasem Ghani, Ali Asghar Hekmat, etc.), as there were in fact more than four in the Rab’eh. See, Homa Katouzian, Barg-ha’i az Zendgi-ye Man (Leaves from the book of my life) (Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2020).

 Notes 193 21 Conversations with Mas’ud Farzad, London 1961; Katouzian Barg-ha’i az Zendgi-ye Man. 22 See Chapter 6. 23 See Chapter 5. 24 See Katouzian, Barg-ha’i az Zendegi-ye Man. 25 See Ibid. 26 See his letter of 13 January 1931 to Taqi Razavi (in Paris), in Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 208–11. 27 See Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran. 28 He had a great deal of respect for E. G. Browne’s love of Iran and knowledge of Persian literature and collaborated with him in the editing of Shamseddin Qeis Razi’s classic work on the Persian prosody, Almu’jam fi Ma’a’ir-i Ash’ar al-’Ajam. See Cyrus Ghani (ed.), Yaddasht-ha-ye Doktor Qasem Ghani, vols 1–3, 8–10 (London, early 1980s), for several letters by Qazvini as well as a lengthy appreciation of him by Ghani himself. 29 See Jamalzadeh, Shahkar (Tehran: Ma’refat, 1954). 30 ‘How can a minister of war have literary taste?’ I was once asked by Mas’ud Farzad in relation to Forughi. See Katouzian, Barg-ha’i az Zendegi-ye Man. 31 See Ghani, Yaddasht-ha. 32 See his Yaddasht-ha, vol. 8, p. 272. 33 See his letter of 12 February 1937 to Minovi in Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 126. 34 Letter of 16 February 1937 to Minovi, Ibid., pp. 129–31. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., pp. 217–8. 37 Letter of 15 November 1937 to Minovi, Ibid., pp. 129–31. 38 See Chapter 7. 39 See Chapter 6. 40 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, March 1981. 41 Letter of 11 February 1936 from Tehran to Minovi in London, Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 121–4. 42 Ibid., and letter of 12 February 1937, pp. 124–9. 43 Letter of 12 February 1937 to Minovi in Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat. 44 See Partow’s interview by Hushang Hesami, Rastakbiz, 2 February 1975. 45 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, June 1977. Jamalzadeh gave one of two last remaining copies to the University of Tehran’s Central Library, and the other one to me. 46 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 217–19. 47 Jamalzadeh’s letter to me of 6 October 1976. 48 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 132. 49 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, June 1977. 50 Letter of 12 February 1937 to Minoivi in Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat. 51 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, June 1977. 52 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 127. 53 Ibid., p. 137. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., pp. 139–41. 56 Homa Katouzian, ‘Sadeq Hedayat’s The Man Who Killed His Passionate Self ’, Iranian Studies, summer 1977. 57 See further, Homa Katouzian, Darbareh-ye Buf-e Kur-e Hedayat, 8th impression (Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2018).

194

Notes

Chapter 5 1 See Abdorrahman Seif-e Azad (ed.), Divan-e Mirza Abolqasem Aref Qazvini (Tehran, 1948), p. 72. 2 See Ibrahim Khajeh-Nuri, ‘Davar’, in Bazigaran-e Asr-e Tala’i (Tehran, 1942). 3 See Divan-e Aref; Ali Akbar Moshir-Salimi (ed.), Kolliyat-e Mosavvar-e Eshqi (Tehran, n.d.), pp. 425–6. 4 See Divan-e Kamel-e Iraj Mirza, (ed.), Mohammad Ja’far Mahjub (Washington: Sherkat-e Ketab, 1987), p. 177–8. 5 See Divan-e Ash’ar-e Mohammad Taqi Bahar, (ed.), Mohammad Malekzadeh (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1956), vol. 1, p. 270. 6 Ibid., pp. 307–9. 7 See Divan-e Aref. 8 Ibid., p. 300. 9 Ibid., pp. 373–4. And further on this subject, ‘The Turkish tongue is good for pulling out / It needs to be cut out of this country’, pp. 380–4. 10 See Aniran: Three Short Stories (Tehran, 1931). 11 Ibid., p. 3. 12 Ibid., p. 22. 13 Ibid., p. 23. 14 Ibid., p. 56. 15 Parvin Dokhtar-e Sassan (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 16 Maziyar (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 17 Ibid., p. 10. 18 Ibid., p. 12. 19 Jamalzadeh’s copy of the first edition, by courtesy of the owner. 20 Maziyar, p. 79. 21 Ibid., p. 93. 22 ‘Akharin Labkhand’, Sayeh Roshan (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 23 Ibid., p. 79. 24 Ibid., pp. 155–6. 25 Ibid., p. 158. The theme of the destruction of the Bermecides had been already used in another, much more romantic and melodramatic, story, of which Hedayat is likely to have been aware. But this had been based on the downfall of the mainstream (western) Bermecides of Baghdad. See Seyyed Abdorrahim Khalkhali, Namayesh-e Dastan-e Khun ya Sargozasht-e Barmakiyan (Tehran, 1923). 26 ‘Al-bi’tha(t) al-Islamiya il’al-Bilad al-Afranjiya’. 27 Mahmud Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat. 28 I have in my possession both a copy of this and a copy of the old typed version (which carries sketches by Hedayat at each section heading). 29 ‘Isfahan Nesf-e Jahan’, in Parvin Dokhtar-e Sassan. 30 Ibid., p. 72. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., pp. 89–90. 33 Ibid., pp. 111–13. 34 Ibid., p. 115. See further, pp. 116–18. 35 Taraneh-ha-ye Khayyam (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963).

 Notes 195 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 61. Owsaneh, in Hasan Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh. Ibid., p. 296. Neirangestan (Tehran: Danesh, 1933). Conversations with Mojtaba Minovi, August 1975. The entry is in ibid., p. 112. Neirangestan, p. 1. Ibid., p. 3. ‘Taraneh-ha-ye Amiyaneh’, in Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh. Ibid., pp. 344–64. Reprinted in ibid., pp. 122–38. See Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 128. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 133.

Chapter 6 1 See Homa Katouzian, ‘Persian Literature’, in Robin Ostle (ed.), From Romantic Nationalism to Social Criticism, Middle East Literature, 1914-1950 (London: Methuen, 1991). 2 This topic has been discussed at some length in Homa Katouzian, Ideology and Method in Economics (London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1980), especially Chapter 6. 3 See especially, Alavi’s short story, ‘Arus-e Hezar Damad’, Chubak’s ‘Adl’, and Al-e Ahmad’s ‘Bachcheh-ye Mardom’. 4 ‘Talab-e Amorzesh’, in Seh Qatreh Khun (Tehran: Parastu, 1965). 5 Ibid., p. 108. 6 Ibid., p. 112. 7 Ibid., p. 115. 8 Ibid., p. 117. 9 Ibid., p. 121. 10 Ibid., p. 123. 11 Ibid., p. 124. 12 Ibid., p. 125. 13 Ibid., pp. 125–6. 14 Ibid., p. 126. 15 ‘Mohallel’, in Seh Qatreh Khun. 16 Ibid., pp. 222–4. 17 Ibid., p. 228. 18 Ibid., pp. 236–7. 19 Ibid., pp. 237–8. 20 Ibid., p. 241. 21 ‘Alaviyeh Khanom’, in Alaviyeh Khanom, va Velengari, the collection which was first published in the early 1940s though ‘Alaviyeh’ had been written in 1933. The reason why it was not published earlier was the exceptionally coarse language used by the personages, which would not have passed the censors in the 1930s. The title has been

196

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Notes

translated into English as ‘Lady Alaviyeh’. However, Khanom has a double meaning here which is best rendered by the English term ‘Mistress’ in its two meanings from classical and modern English. ‘Alaviyeh Khanom’ (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963), p. 12. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., pp. 44–6. ‘Mordehkhor-ha’, Zendeh beh Gur (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 88. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., pp. 90–1. Ibid., pp. 98–9. ‘Dash Akol’, Seh Qatreh Khun. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., pp. 66–7. Ibid., p. 74. Ibid., p. 76. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., pp. 83–4. Ibid. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 87. ‘Mihan Parast’, Sag-e Velgard (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). See Chapter 4. Sag-e Velgard, p. 154. The Hekmat family allegedly had converted from Judaism to Islam in the nineteenth century. ‘Busy discovering anti-Islamic literature’ alludes to the matter concerning note 44 in this chapter. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 166. Ibid. Ibid., p. 171. Vagh-vagh Sahab (Mr Bow Wow) (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1962). See Parviz Dariyush, ‘Ada-ye Dein beh Sadeq Hedayat’, Keyhan-e Mah, no. 2 (September 1962), pp. 3–32. Vagh-vagh Sahab, pp. 31–2. Ibid., pp. 70–2. ‘Ghaziyyeh-ye Ekhtelat-numcheh’, Ibid., pp. 136–55. Ibid., pp. 139–43. ‘Dar Piramun-e Loghat-e Fors-e Asadi’, Majalleh-ye Musiqi, November 1940. See further, ‘Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, Three Lives in a Lifetime’, in Katouzian, IRAN, Politics, History, Literature. See ‘Farhang-e Farhangestan’, in Alaviyeh Khanom, p. 90. ‘Jeld-e Haftom az Khamseh-ye Nezami’, Hasan Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh, pp. 382–91. Ibid., p. 387. ‘Shiveh-ha-ye Novin dar She’r-e Farsi’, Ibid., pp. 404–9.

 Notes 197 63 ‘Dastan-e-Naz’, Ibid., pp. 394–401. 64 His piece appeared in Tehran Mosavvar (a popular weekly magazine) in 1957. Hasan Qa’emiyan’s over-reaction to this may be read in his pamphlet Viktor Hugo-ye Vatani va Shahkar-e U (The Home-produced Victor Hugo and His Masterpiece) (Tehran, 1957).

Chapter 7 1 These observations date back to 1976 when this book was first drafted. Since then, further studies, and especially Michael C. Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s ‘The Blind Owl’: Forty Years After, have tended to clarify or modify some of the relevant issues. But a comprehensive analysis and appraisal of all the matters arising from the novel was still due. This and the following chapter are intended as contributions towards such an appraisal. See further, Hillmann, ‘Hedayat’s The Blind Owl: An Autobiographical Nightmare’, Iran-shenasi, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989). 2 See Chapter 8. 3 See Chapter 5. 4 Conversations with the late Parviz Khanlari in Tehran, July 1977. A copy of the Bombay manuscript is held by the Tehran University Library; another is in my possession. As a single example of the formal errors which have been corrected in the later editions, compare: az ruz-e abad ta azal (Bombay manuscript, p. 6) instead of ‘az ruz-e azal ta abad’ (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1351/1972), p. 9. All the following page references will be to this published edition. 5 Ibid., p. 14. 6 Ibid., p. 15, emphasis added. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 18. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 22. 11 Ibid., p. 24. 12 Ibid., pp. 40–1. 13 Ibid., pp. 42–3. 14 Ibid., p. 45. 15 Ibid., p. 59. The ‘reason’ given for this marriage is obviously weak, but it is not so farfetched as it may now look in a modern society. 16 Ibid., p. 68. 17 Ibid., p. 122. 18 Ibid., p. 115. 19 Ibid., p. 9. 20 Ibid., p. 74. 21 Cf. Hedayat’s short story, ‘Puppet Behind the Curtain’ in Chapter 8. 22 See Bashiri, Hedayat’s Ivory Tower. 23 The Blind Owl, p. 54. 24 Ibid., p. 59. 25 Ibid., p. 73. 26 The narrator relates that, according to his foster mother, the old man had been a potter in his youth, and he had now been left with one of the jugs he had made in the past. Ibid., p. 53.

198 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

Notes

Ibid., p. 98. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 103. See further, pp. 84–5. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., pp. 86–7. Ibid., p. 88. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., pp. 109–10. Ibid., p. 110. The owl is an agent of bad omen in Iranian culture. Ibid., p. 53. For example: ‘The woman and the serpent best be buried in dust / It would be best without these dirty sluts’ (Ferdowsi, Shahnameh). The Blind Owl, pp. 115–16. The Blind Owl, p. 105, emphasis added. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 103. See Chapter 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 93. Cf. Hedayat’s 1927 essay on death, Chapter 3 and Chapter 8. The Blind Owl, p. 96. See Chapter 11. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., pp. 71–2. Note the reference to cypress trees on a river, just as in the narrator’s illustrations in Part I. See Chapter 8. Ibid., pp. 90–1. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 76. ‘Katiya’, Sag-e Velgard (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1342/1963), p. 72. See the discussion earlier, and The Blind Owl, p. 99. Hasan Qa’emiyan, Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1343/1964), p. 37. But there is room for doubt, since in the 1933 letter, the remarks are made in a joking and light-hearted way, and in the 1936 letter it is not clear whether he is talking about himself, or anyone in general. See further, Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 117 and 172. See further, ‘Women in Sadeq Hedayat’s Fiction’, in Homa Katouzian (ed.), Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous World, Routledge (London and New York, paperback edition, 2011). See Bahram Meqdadi, ‘Buf-e Kur va Oqdeh-ye Odipi’, Jahan-e Naw, vol. 25, nos 1 and 2 (Spring 1970), pp. 1–10; on the other hand, Shari’atmadari’s Sadeq Hedayat va Ravankavi-ye Asarash (Tehran, 1964) hardly does justice to its title. The Blind Owl, p. 10. ‘Buried Alive’, in Zendeh beh Gur (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1342/1963), p. 16.

 Notes 199 66 See Roland Bathes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in David Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory (London and New York, 1988). 67 See Roland Barthes, S/Z (London, 1975). 68 See Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature. 69 See Bashiri, Hedayat’s Ivory Tower.

Chapter 8 1 See Mardom, May–June 1947. 2 A. Omid (pseudonym), Shiveh, April–May 1953. 3 See Janette S. Johnson, ‘The Blind Owl, Nerval, Kafka, Poe and the Surrealists: Affinities’, in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s ‘The Blind Owl’. 4 Michael Beard, Hedayat’s Blind Owl as A Western Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 4. 5 See Vagh-vagh Sahab, p. 123. For a discussion of the collection see Chapter 6. 6 The earlier commentary on the phrase ‘blind owl’ is this author’s own. But see, for further discussion, Mohammad Ghanunparvar, ‘Buf-e Kur as a Title’, in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. 7 The quatrain is famous; I take responsibility for all the English translation of poems in the whole of this book. 8 See Taraneh-ha-ye Khayyam, p. 46. 9 Ibid. 10 The earlier commentary on Khayyam and The Blind Owl is this author’s own. However, see further Leonard Bogle, ‘The Khayyamic Influence in The Blind Owl’, in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. 11 See ‘Hedayat-e Buf-e Kur’, Elm o Zendegi (December 1951), pp. 63–78. The reference to Rilke is on page 69, and the brief discussion of the Indo-Buddhist influence is on page 77. For an English translation of this article, see Ali A. Eftekhari (trans.), in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. 12 See ‘Hedayat-e Buf-e Kur’, Elm o Zengedi, p. 69, note 1: ‘Rainer Maria Rilke, Les Chahiers de M. L. Brigge, Edition Emile-Paul, p. 45’. 13 Manouchehr Mohandessi, ‘Hedayat and Rilke’, Contemporary Literature, vol. 23 (1971), p. 212. 14 Ibid. 15 Bashiri, Hedayat’s Ivory Tower. 16 It comes in the description of the narrator’s room in Part II, when he has returned to a previous existence. See Buf-e Kur, pp. 50–1. 17 See Richard A. Williams, ‘Buddhism and the Structure of The Blind Owl’, and David C. Champagne, ‘Hindu Imagery in The Blind Owl’, in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. 18 See Chapter 7, text and appendix. 19 See The Blind Owl, p. 31. 20 For the full text of the letter, see Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 131–7. 21 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, March 1982. 22 See Sokhan, vol. 2, nos 7 and 8 (June and July 1945). 23 ‘Seh Qatreh Khun’, in the collection of short stories, Seh Qatreh Khun, eighth edition (Tehran: Parastu, 1965), p. 16. For an English translation, see Carter Bryand, Guity

200

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Notes

Nashat and Marilyn Robinson Waldman (trans.), in Hillmann (ed.), Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. For a French translation, see F. Razavi, Trois Gouttes de Sang et Six Autres Nouvelles (Tehran: Keyhan, 1959). For an English translation of the whole collection, Seh Qatreh Khun, see Sadeq Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood, trans. Deborah Miller Mostaghel (London: Oneworld, 2008) with an introduction by Homa Katouzian. Quoted, with some modifications, from the English translation, p. 18. Seh Qatreh Khun, p. 18. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., pp. 24–5. Ibid., p. 29. ‘Arusak-e Posht-e Pardeh’, Sayeh Roshan (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963), p. 82. Ibid., pp. 84–5. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 93. Ibid., p. 95. ‘Mardi keh Nafsash ra Kosht’, Seh Qatreh Khun. ’Wa man qatala nafsin ‘amdan fajiza’ihu Jahannam.’ Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 218. ‘Zendeh beh Gur’, in Zendeh beh Gur. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 16. Cf. Hedayat’s interest in drawing. Ibid., p. 17. Cf. the process whereby he begins his return to a previous existence in The Blind Owl. Ibid., p. 38. ‘Tarik-khaneh’, in Sag-e Velgard. Ibid., pp. 132–3. Ibid., p. 133. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., pp. 134–5. Ibid., p. 138. Ibid. ‘Bonbast’, in Sag-e Velgard. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., pp. 55–6. ‘Suratak-ha’, Seh Qatreh Khun, p. 152. Cf. The Blind Owl, in Chapter 7. Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., p. 165. ‘Changal’, in Seh Qatreh Khun. ‘Abji Khanom’, in Seh Qatreh Khun. ‘Davood-e Guzh-posht’, in Zendeh beh Gur. Ibid., p. 59. ‘Sag-e Velgard’, in Sag-e Velgard. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 22. See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘Man and Animal in Hedayat’s Stray Dog’, in Katouzian (ed.), Sadeq Hedayat. ‘Zani keh Mardash ra Gom Kard’, in Sayeh Roshan.

 Notes 201 65 ‘Lunatique’ and ‘Sampingé’ first appeared in the French language newspaper Journal de Teheran in 1945. They are reprinted in Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh. 66 ‘Laleh’, in Seh Qatreh Khun. 67 ‘Tajalli’, in Sag-e Velgard. 68 See Chapter 3. 69 See Chapter 7. 70 Ibid.

Chapter 9 1 See Homa Katouzian, The Persians, Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, paperback edition, 2010); Musaddiq and The Struggle for Power in Iran. 2 See Abbasqoli Golsha’iyan’s diary of the events in Ghani (ed.), Yaddasht-ha-ye Doktor Qasem Ghani, vol. 11. 3 Conversations with Zeinol’abedin Mo’tamen, the schoolmaster in question who had later revised his views about the Pahlavi regime. 4 See, for example, the newspapers Iran, Tajaddod-e Iran, Setareh, Kushesh and so on, various issues. 5 For example, the long poem by Hamidi Shirazi which ended: ‘In peacetime, he looked like a powerful lion / He posed as a strong man but gave in on the day of danger.’ 6 See Katouzian, Musaddiq and The Struggle for Power in Iran. 7 See Katouzian, Khalil Maleki, p. 31. 8 See Anvar Khameh’i, Panjah Nafar va Seh Nafar (Tehran: Entesharat-e Hafteh, 1981), and Forsat-e Bozorg-e az Dast Rafteh (Tehran: Entesharat-e Hafteh, 1982); H. Katouzian (ed.), Katerat-e Siyasi-ye Khalil Maleki, second edition; Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 9 See Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran. 10 See direct quotations from the then party programme in, Anonymous, Nazari beh Nehzat-e Kargari-ye Iran (Tehran, 1979). 11 See Khameh’i, Katouzian and Abrahamian cited in note 7. 12 See, for the full text of the letter, Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 146–7. 13 See Ali Akbar Siyasi, Gozaresh-e Yek Zendegi (London: Siyasi, 1988). 14 See Khameh’i, Katouzian and Abrahamian cited in note 7. 15 See Nakhostin Kongereh-ye Nevisandegan-e Iran (Tehran, 1947, reprinted 1978). 16 Ibid., pp. 157–8. 17 Ibid., p. 158. 18 Ibid., pp. 159–60. 19 Ibid., pp. 160–1. 20 Ibid., pp. 243–4. 21 Ibid., p. 244. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., pp. 246–7.

202

Notes

25 See Katouzian, Ideology and Method in Economics, Chapters 4–7. 26 See further, Katouzian, Khalil Maleki, and The Persians, Ancient, Medieval and Modern Iran. 27 See Khameh’i, Katouzian and Abrahamian cited in note 7, and Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, Chapter 8. 28 See, for the full text of the letter, Hasan Qa’emiyan, Darbareh-ye Zohur va Alamat-e Zohur (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1962). Hedayat was in Tehran, Tavalloli in Shiraz. 29 Conversations with Parviz Khanlari, July 1977. 30 See Iran-e Ma, 19 April 1951. 31 See Khameh’i, Katouzian and Abrahamian, cited in note 7, and Khalil Maleki and Anvar Khameh’i, Pas az Dah Sal Enshe’abiyun-e Hezb-e Tudeh Sokhan Miguyand (Tehran, 1958). 32 For the full text of the letter, see Katouzian (ed.), Khaterat-e Siyasi-ye Khalil Maleki, pp. 408–11. 33 See ‘Peyam-e Kafka’, in Goruh-e Mahkumin (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963), pp. 15–16. According to the late Dr Taqi Razavi (in conversations with this author, July and August 1977) these lines were a direct response to an article by Ehsan Tabari. It has not been possible to locate this article, though Tabari’s views about Kafka’s ‘petty bourgeois decadence’ were well known. However, in an article written in 1953, Khalil Maleki openly describes the previous lines as a challenge to Tabari (see Chapter 14). 34 Goruh-e Mahkumin, p. 16. 35 See Chapter 13. 36 For a reprint of the poster, see Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat. 37 See, for the full text of the verses, Mostafa Farzaneh, Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat (Paris: Farzaneh, 1988), p. 93. 38 Conversations with Eprime Eshag, Oxford, October 1987. 39 Conversations with Khanlari, Tehran, July 1977. 40 Conversations with Mahmud Hedayat, Tehran, July and August 1977. See Chapter 11. 41 See Chapter 11.

Chapter 10 1 See Komisarof and Rosenfeld, ‘Moqaddemeh-ye Tarjomeh-ye Ruysi-ye Montakhabat-e Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat’, in Qa’emiyan (ed.), Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat, p. 277. See further, D. C. Komisarof, ‘Darbareh-ye Zendegi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Ibid. 2 See Hajji Agha (English translation by G. M. Wickens) (Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 1979), p. 19. All the quotations and references will be to this English edition, but the English text has been occasionally modified with reference to the Persian original. The spelling of ‘Aqa’ has also been preferred to Wickens’s ‘Agha’. 3 Ibid., p. 89. 4 Ibid., p. 86. 5 Ibid., p. 69. 6 See Golsha’iyan’s diary in Ghani (ed.), Yaddasht-ha-ye Doktor Qasem Ghani, vol. 11, especially pp. 593–5. 7 Wickens, Hajji Aqa, p. 82.

 Notes 203 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Ibid., p. 91. Cf. Mokhber al-Saltaneh’s own memoirs, Khaterat o Khatarat (Tehran, 1963). Hajji Aqa, pp. 85–6. Ibid., p. 39. Conversations with Jamalzadeh, March 1982. Hajji Aqa, pp. 99–100. See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘The Ardisolatic Society: A Model of Long term Social and Economic Development in Iran’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, July 1983. Hajji Aqa, p. 45. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 87–8. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 108. See Anonymous, ‘Sadeq Hedayat’, Tehatr (the official publication of the then Iranian Actors’ Association), no. 6, March–April 1953. See A. Omid (pseudonym), ‘Sadeq Hedayat’ (for the occasion of the second anniversary of the author’s death), Shiveh, April–May 1953. ‘Farda’, first published in Peyam-e Naw, nos 7 and 8, June–July 1946; reprinted in Qa’emiyan (ed.), Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh-ye Sadeq Hedayat. Ibid., p. 189. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., pp. 191–2. Ibid., pp. 194–5. Ibid., p. 195, emphasis added. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., pp. 201–2.

Chapter 11 1 See his letter of 27 August 1950 to Shahid-Nura’i, Sokhan, April–May 1955. See further. 2 Kolliyat-e Sa’di, ed. Mohammad-Ali Forughi, second edition (Tehran, 1977), p. 832. 3 Ghazalliyat-e Hafiz, eds. Adib and Purandokht Borumand (Tehran, 1988), p. 191. 4 Divan-e Mahsati (Mahasti ) Ganjavi, ed. Abd-al-Rahman Faramarzi (Tehran, 1957), p. 24. 5 Behesht-e Sokhan, ed. Mehdi Hamidi (Tehran, 1987), p. 438. 6 See further, Divan-e Anvari, ed. Mohammad Taqi Modarres Razavi (Tehran, 1968). 7 Divan-e Afzal-al-Din Badil-ebn-Ali Najjar, Khaqani Shervani, ed. Zia-al-Din Sajjadi (Tehran, n.d., date of the preface 1959), p. 847. 8 Jalal-Din-Rumi, Ketab-e Mathnavi-ye Masnavi, ed. Reynold Nicholson (Tehran, n.d.), Book Five, p. 89.

204

Notes

9 Divn-e Qa’âni, Mirz Habib Shirâzi (Bamba’i, 1889). See further, Ali Asghar Halabi, Tarikh-e Tanz o Shukh-tab’i dar Iran va Jahan-e Eslami ta Ruzegar-e Obeyd-e Zakani (Tehran, 1998). 10 Divân-e Âref-e Qazvini, ed. Abd-al-Rahmân Seif-e Âzâd (Tehran, 1948), p. 320. For a study of Âref ’s life and works, see the entry on him in Encyclopaedia Iranica http:​/​/ www​​.iran​​ica​.c​​om​/ar​​ticle​​s​/are​​f​-qaz​​​vini-​​poet. For a few previously unpublished works by Aref in addition to critical comments on his life and works by a number of leading twentieth-century literary critics, see Asar-e Montasher Nashodeh-ye Aref-e Qazvini, ed. Seyyed Hadi Ha’eri (Tehran, 1993). 11 See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘An Approach to Humour in Persian Literature’ IRAN NAMAG, A Quarterly of Iranian Studies, spring 2018; ‘Satire in Persian Literature: 1900-1940’, in A History of Persian Literature: XI, General Editor Ehsan Yarshater, Literature of the Early Twentieth Century, From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah, ed. Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015); ‘Literature and Politics in Iran, 1919–1925,’ Iran Nameh, A Quarterly Journal of Iranian Studies, vol. 30, no. 2 (Summer 2015); Tanz o Tanzineh-ye Hedayat (Satire and Irony in The Works of Sadeq Hedayat), second edition Tehran (Pardis-e Danesh, 2016; Toronto: Ketab-e Iran Nameh, 2015). 12 ‘Qaziyeh-ye Khar Dajjal’, in Alaviyeh Khanom va Velengari (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 13 Sarzamin-e Khar dar Chaman. 14 Gohar-e shab cheraq. 15 Alaviyeh Khanom, p. 123. 16 ‘Ab-e Zendegi’, in Zendeh beh Gur (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). The fable was written in the 1940s, and later appeared in the reprints of the previous collection which had first been published in 1930. 17 ‘Qaziyeh-ye Zir-e Buteh’, in Alaviyeh Khanom. 18 Ibid., p. 33. 19 ‘Qaziyeh-ye Morgh-e Ruh’ (dedicated: ‘to M. Farzad’), Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 67. 21 ‘Qaziyeh-ye Namk-Torki’, Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 135. 23 Ibid., p. 138. 24 Ghoul-e bi shakh o dom. 25 Ibid., p. 146. 26 Tup-e Morvari (Tehran, 1979). It has been published under the name of Hadi Sedaqat, the anagram of his name which Hedayat had once used in publishing Hajji Aqa. 27 See Sokhan, April–May 1955, p. 204. 28 Tup-e Morvari, p. 1. 29 Ibid., pp. 2–3. 30 Ibid., p. 3. 31 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 32 Ibid., p. 3. 33 Ibid., p. 4. 34 Ibid., p. 9. 35 Ibid., p. 13. 36 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 37 Ibid., p. 23. 38 Ibid., p. 34.

 Notes 205 39 Ibid., p. 50. 40 Cf. Thomas Kuhn’s theory of the structure of scientific revolutions in a book of that name. See further, Katouzian, Ideology and Method in Economics, Chapter 4; and ‘The Hallmarks of Science and Scholasticism: A Historical Analysis’. 41 See Mehr (literary periodical), vol. 8, nos 1, 2 and 3, 1942. 42 See, Sokhan, vol. 1, nos 3, 4 and 5, 1943. 43 See, ‘Folklor ya Farhang-e Tudeh’, Ibid., vol. 2, nos 3–6, 1945. 44 Zand-e Vohuman Yasn va Karnameh-ye Ardeshir-e Papakan (published in a single volume) (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). 45 The title means the Pahlavi-Sasanian version (or revision) of Vohuman Yasn, Vohumana being a principal deity in the pre-Zoroastrian Iranian cult. 46 See Peyam-e Naw (literary periodical), nos 9 and 10, 1945. 47 Conversation with Jamalzadeh, June 1977. See also his memorial article on Hedayat, ‘An Ghamgosar-e Sadeq’, in Sokhan, March–April 1966. 48 See Enjavi Shirazi’s reminiscences in Mahmud Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sedeq Hedayat, p. 195. 49 The letter has not been published. I hold the original copy by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. 50 My photocopy of the letter, by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. 51 I hold a copy of his then will, by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. 52 My own photocopy, by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. This letter has several times appeared in print; for example, in Iran-e Ma, 24 May 1951. 53 I have a photocopy of Hedayat’s short note of acknowledgement and thanks to Jamalzadeh for the watch. 54 See ‘Nameh-ha-ye Sadeq Hedayat beh Dr. Hasan Shahid-Nura’i’, Sokhan, April–May 1955, pp. 199–209. 55 See, Hashtad o daw Nameh (eighty-two letters), ed. Naser Pakdaman (Paris: Cheshmandaz, 2000). 56 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 200. The full text of the letter gives the impression that it had been written in mid-1948; also, in Hashtad o daw Nameh, 40, p. 134. 57 See, Hashtad o daw Nameh, p. 53. 58 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 202. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 68, p. 180. 59 ‘Nameh-ha’. 60 Ibid., p. 203. 61 Ibid., p. 205. 62 Ibid., p. 207. 63 Ibid., p. 208. 64 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 14, p. 76. 65 Ibid., p. 200. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 40, p. 135. 66 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 47, p. 148. 67 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 202. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 50, p. 153. 68 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 204. See also Hashtad o daw Nameh, 51, p. 156. 69 ‘Nameh-ha’, pp. 203–4. See also Hashtad o daw Nameh, 51, p. 156. 70 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 204. See also Hashtad o daw Nameh, 54, p. 161. 71 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 207. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 73, p. 188. 72 For example, Hashtad o daw Nameh, nos, 52, 55, 66, 68, 93, 117, and many more. 73 ‘Nameh-ha’, pp. 207–8. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 74, pp. 189–90. 74 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 27, p. 108. 75 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 201. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 45, p. 145.

206

Notes

76 See Cyrus Ghani (ed.), Yaddasht-ha-ye Doktor Ghasem Ghani, vol. 8 (London: Cyrus Ghani, 1982), p. 272. 77 Ibid., 68, p. 180. 78 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 206. It is clear that Khanlari had edited a substantial part of this account. See further, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 69, pp. 182–3. 79 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 202. See further, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 50, p. 153. 80 ‘Nameh-ha’. 81 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 23, p. 100. 82 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 201. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 45, p. 145. 83 Ibid., p. 208. 84 Ibid., p. 205. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 55, p. 163. 85 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 200. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 40, p. 135. 86 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 202. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 40, p. 135. 87 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 209. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 78, pp. 195–6. 88 ‘Nameh-ha’, p. 208. See also, Hashtad o daw Nameh, 76, p. 193. 89 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 41, pp. 137–8. 90 Hashtad o daw Nameh, 25, p. 105. 91 Ibid., 17, pp. 83–4.

Chapter 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

‘Peyam-e Kafka’, in Goruh-e Mahkumin (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963). Ibid., p. ll. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 15–16. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., pp. 27–8. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., pp. 34–5. Ibid., pp. 44–5. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 74.

 Notes 207 27 Ibid., p. 75, emphasis in the original. 28 Ibid.

Chapter 13 1 Conversations with Jamalzadeh, June 1977; Jamalzadeh’s reminiscences on this in Sokhan, various issues. 2 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 87. 3 See the full text of the letter in ibid., p. 188. 4 Ibid., p. 191. 5 Mostafa Farzaneh mentions the names and addresses of these hotels; the name and address of the last one occurs in a letter by Mahmud Mehran to Jamalzadeh (see later). See M. F. Farzaneh, Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat, vol. 1 (Paris: Farzaneh, 1988). 6 Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 192–3. 7 I hold a photocopy of this letter by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. 8 See the full text of this long letter in Iran-e Ma, 25 May 1951. 9 See Sa’id Nafisi, ‘U Digar Chera Raft?’ Kaviyan, 25 April 1951. According to Nafisi, this was Hedayat’s last letter to his brother Mahmud. 10 See the full text of the letter in Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 193. 11 Ibid., p. 188. 12 Ibid., p. 189. 13 Ibid., p. 191. 14 See Iran-e Ma, 25 May 1951. 15 See Qa’emiyan, Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 149–50. 16 See Farzaneh, Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat, vol. 1, p. 364. See further, Homa Katouzian, ‘Khodkoshi-ye Sadeq Hedayat va Khaterat-e M. F. Farzaneh’, Fasl-e Ketab, no. 6, London, Spring 1990. 17 Farzaneh, Ashna’i., p. 376. Farzaneh had also mentioned this short story in a much earlier article about his contacts with Hedayat in Paris. See Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 284. 18 See Ibid. 19 See Farzaneh, Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat, vol. 1, various pages, and Enjavi’s reminiscences in Katira’i, Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, pp. 271–2. 20 See Enjavi’s reminiscences in Katira’i, ibid., p. 272. 21 Ibid., p. 273. 22 See further, Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, and Kahlil Maleki, The Human Face of Iranian Socialism. 23 The full text of the letter has been published once in an obscure book. See Hasan Qa’emiyan, Darbareh-ye Zohur va Alamat-e Zohur (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1962). The first part of the letter which excludes the reference to Razmara’s assassination had been quoted shortly after Hedayat’s death in an article by Sa’id Nafisi. See the text, and note 9. 24 See Katira’i, Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, p. 281. The allusion in the letter is to Fereidun Hoveida (the brother of the later prime minister) who worked in the Paris embassy at the time. The reference to Razmara’s death is also mentioned in Farzaneh’s Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat. 25 Ibid., pp. 382–6.

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Notes

26 I hold a copy of this letter by courtesy of Jamalzadeh. 27 See Rahmatollah Moqaddam-Maragheh’i’s lengthy report of his interview with the couple in Paris shortly after Hedayat’s death, in Ismail Jamshidi, Khodkoshi-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Ata’i, 1970). 28 From No, 37, Sadegh Hedayat, PENDAR ARTISTICGROUP, 2000.

Chapter 14 1 See Jalal Al-e Ahmad, ‘Hedayat-e Buf-e Kur’, Elm o Zendegi, January 1952. 2 See, ‘Bozorgtarin Zayeh’eh dar Alam-e Honar va Adab-e Iran’, Iran (newspaper), 14 April 1951. ‘Dargozasht-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Keyhan, 15 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat, Nevisandeh-ye Bozorg-e Iran Dargozasht’, Parcham-e Solh, 15 April 1951. ‘Fawt-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Mehregan, 15 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat, Tavanatarin Nevisandeh-ye Iran Dargozasht’, Daneshju, 17 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat’, Chelengar, April 1951. ‘Marg-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Omid-e Naw, 18 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat az Nakhostin Tashkil-dahandegan-e Hezb-e Tudeh’, Tehranshahr, 18 April 1951. ‘Marg-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Ettela’at-e Haftegi, 19 April 1951. ‘Shadravan Sadeq Hedayat’, Iran-e Ma, 19 April 1951. ‘In Mawjud-e Vahshatnak, Sadeq Hedayat’, Tehran Mosavvar, 19 April 1951, ‘Nevisandeh-ye Mo’aser-e Iran, Sadeq Hedayat’, Peygir, 20 April 1951. ‘Dargozasht-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Ettela’at-e Mahaneh, 21 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat Dargozasht’, Nameh-ye Arak, 21 April 1951. ‘Yadi az Sadeq Hedayat’, Ziba, 22 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat’, Jahan-e Τaban, 22 April 1951. ‘U Digar Chera Raft?’, Kaviyan, 25 April 1951. ‘Sadeq Hedayat’, Akhbar-e Hafteh, 4 May 1951. ‘Beh Yad-e Sadeq Hedayat’, Ghogha-ye Zendegi, 11 May 1951; ‘Marg-e Sadeq’, Jonb o Jush, 24 May 1951. 3 See Khabar-ha-ye Daneshgah (supplement to vol. 5, no. 7), April 1951. For a severe criticism of Khanlari’s speech, see Khorus Jangi, vol. 2, no. 2, April 1951. 4 ‘U Digar Chera Raft?’ Kaviyan. 5 See Peygir. For Alavi’s contribution, see Ε. Eichtner and W. Sundermann (trans.), Die Prophetentochtes (Berlin, Rutlenund Loeing, 1960). In his review of this book, Jamalzadeh wrote: ‘We read in the biographical essay that “Hedayat’s death must be registered in the annals of the crimes of imperialism”. . . . To regard imperialism as Hedayat’s murderer is a matter for a good deal of scepticism.’ See further, Rahnama-ye Ketab, April 1961, pp. 130–3. 6 See Ezzatollah Homayounfar in Tehranshahr. 7 See Elm o Zendegi, February 1952. 8 See Ibid., March 1952. 9 See Mawj, May 1952. 10 See Elm o Zendegi, April 1953. 11 See Ibid., September 1952 (published under the pseudonym: H. Sa’d). 12 See Ibid., April 1953 (published under the initials: G. S.). 13 See Niru-ye Sevvam, 7 April 1952. 14 See, respectively, Tehatr, April 1953 and Shiveh, April 1953. The first article is unsigned: the second is under the pseudonym: A. Omid. 15 See Anjoman-e Giti, Aqayed va Afkar Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran, 1954), pp. 105–8. 16 See Chelengar, 21 April 1952. 17 See Golbarg, 1 May 1952, emphasis added.

 Notes 209 18 See further, Ateshbar, 11 April 1953. 19 See, for example, ‘Ta’sir-e Asar-e Hedayat dar Orupa’, Sokhan, September 1953; ‘Buf-e Kur dar Orupa’, Ibid., October 1953; ‘Ancheh Buf-e Kur Mibinad’, Ibid., December 1953; ‘Yek Nevisandeh-ye Nawmid’, Ibid., April 1954. 20 See his Yadnameh-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1957). 21 ‘Aday-e Dein beh Sadeq Hedayat’, Keyhan-e Mah, September 1962, pp. 3–32. 22 See ‘Hedayat va Oqdeh-ye Odipi’, Jahan-e Naw, Spring 1970, pp. 1–11. 23 See Barresi-ye Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat az Nazar-e Ravanshenasi (Tehran: Ibn Sina, 1958). 24 See Raje’ beh Sadeq Hedayat Danesteh Qezavat Konim (Tehran, 1964). 25 See Sadeq Hedayat va Ravankavi-ye Asar-e U (Tehran, 1964). 26 Mahmud Katira’i (ed.), Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat. 27 In Ast Buf-e Kur (Tehran: Tabesh, 1971). 28 Khodkoshi-ye Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Ata’i, 1972). 29 Mardi keh ba Sayeh-ash Harf Mizad (Tehran: Musavi, 1975). 30 Shayyadan-e Adabi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: 1975). 31 Naqd-e Asar-e Hedayat (Tehran: Sepehr, 1978). 32 Vaqeh’iyat-e Ejtema’i va Jahan-e Dastan (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1979). 33 The articles were by Abolqasem Partaw-A’zam (who also mentions Enjavi, though only by his initials). He had written a few ‘factional’ booklets and articles before on Hedayat, at one time provoking him to write to Shahid-Nura’i: ‘Even more grotesque is that Ibn Sina (I mean the publishers) have published a book by Partaw-A’zam on my biography which is no better than [articles published in] Ettala’at.’ See Hedayat’s letters to Shahid-Nura’i, Sokhan, April 1955. 34 The ‘pros’ are numerous and can be easily spotted in various issues of the leading daily newspapers. As for the ‘antis’, see ‘Buf-e Kur, Joghd-e Shum’ (unsigned), Rangin Kaman, 12 May 1973; and Khalil Azar, ‘Man Sadeq Hedayat va Asar-e U ra Mahkum Mikonam’, Khandani-ha, 5 May 1970. 35 Bahram Meqdadi, ‘Buf-e Kur va Khashm o Hayahu’, Sokhan, April 1979, pp. 557–71. 36 For reviews and notices, see, for example, Keyhan, 5 June 1976, and Khandani-ha, 14 January 1978. 37 See Rahmatollah Aminfar, ‘Riyakari-ye Taghutiyan . . .’, Bamdad, 21 May 1980. Aminfar did not go entirely unanswered. See Ahmad Morovvati’s short rebuttal in Bamdad, 24 May 1980. 38 See Mahmud Ehya’i, ‘Hajji Aqa-ye Hedayat’, Bamdad, 20 April 1980, and A. Pur-ostad (possibly a pseudonym), ‘Kart-e Ozviyyat Baray-e Sadeq Hedayat?’ Bamdad, 23 April 1980. 39 Ashna’i ba Sadeq Hedayat. 40 See Nashr-e Danesh, vol. 9, nos 2 and 3, 1989. 41 For a professionally competent (but still controversial) psychoanalytical interpretation of Kafka, see S. Arieti and J. Bemporad, Severe and Mild Depression (London: Tavistock Publishers, 1980). 42 See Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), p. 246. 43 Ibid., emphasis in the original. 44 Ibid., p. 525.

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Hedayat’, Ghogha-ye Zendigi, 11 May 1951; ‘Marg-e Sadeq’, Jonb o Jush, 24 May 1951. Khabarha-ye Daneshgah, supplement to vol. 5, no. 7, April 1951. Khorus Jangi, vol. 2, no. 2, April 1951. Ezzatollah Homayounfar in Tehranshahr. Homayuni, Sadeq, Mardi keh ba Sayeh-ash Harf Mizad, Tehran: Musavi, 1975. Jannati-Ata’i, Abolqasem, Zendegi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat, n.p, n.d. Jamalzadeh, Mohammad Ali, Shahkar, Tehran: Ma’refat, 1954. Jamshidi, Ismail, Khodkoshi-ye Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: Ata’i, 1970. Katouzian, Homa, Buf-e Kur-e Hedayat, 9th impression, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2020. Katouzian, Homa, Hasht Maqaleh dar Tatikh o Adab-e Moaser, 4th impression Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2018. Katouzian, Homa, Sadeq Hedayat va Marg-e Nevisandeh, 7th impression Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2018. Katouzian, Homa, Tanz o Tanzineh-ye Hedayat, Second edition, Tehran: Pardis-e Danesh, 2016. Katouzian, Homa, Darbareh-ye Jamalzadeh va Jamalzadeh-Shenasi, Second edition, Tehran: Sokhan, 2011. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Sag-e Velgard-e Hedayat’, Iranshenasi, Spring 2003. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Nameh-ha-ye Hedayat’, Iran Nameh, Autumn 2001. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Tanz-ha-ye Dramatik-e Hedayat’, Iranshenasi, Winter 1999. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Tanz-e Farsi dar Doreh-ye Hedayat, II’, Iranshnasi, Summer 1998. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Tanz-e Farsi dar Doeh-ye Hedayat I’, Iranshenasi, Spring 1998. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Tanzineh dar Asar-e Hedayat II’, Iranshenasi, Summer 1997. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Tanzineh dar Asar-e Hedayat I’, Iranshenasi, Spring 1997. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Nameh-ha-ye Hedayat II’, Iranshenasi, Summer 1996. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Nameh-ha-ye Hedayat I’, Iranshenasi, Spring 1996. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Ravan-dastan-ha-ye Hedayat’, Iran Nameh, Summer 1992. Katouzian, Homa, ‘Khodkoshi-ye Sadeq Hedayat va Khaterat-e M. F. Farzaneh’, Fasl-e Ketab, no. 6, London, Spring 1990. Katira’i, Mahmud, Kebat-e Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: Ashrafi, 1970. Khajeh-Nuri, Ibrahim, Bazigaran-e Asr-e Tala’i, Tehran, 1942. Khalkhali, Seyyed Abdorrahim, Namayesh-e Dastan-e Khun ya Sargozasht-e Barmakiyan, Tehran, 1923. Khameh’i, Anvar, Forsat-e Bozorg-e az Dast Rafteh, Tehran: Entesharat-e Hafteh, 1982. Komisarof and Rosenfeld, ‘Moqaddemeh-ye Tarjomeh-ye Ruysi-ye Montakhabat-e Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat’ in Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: Parastu, 1964. Komisarof, D. C. ‘Darbareh-ye Zendegi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat’, in Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: Parastu, 1964. Mahjub, Mohammad Ja’far (ed.), Divan-e Kamel-e Iraj Mirza Washington: Sherkat-e Ketab, 1987. Malekzadeh, Mohammad (ed.), Divan-e Ash’ar-e Mohammad Taqi Bahar, Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1956. Meqdadi, Bahram, ‘Buf-e Kur va Khashm o Hayahu’, Sokhan, April 1979. Meqdadi, Bahram, ‘Buf-e Kur va Oqdeh-ye Odipi’ Jahan-e Naw, vol. 25, nos 1 and 2, Spring 1970. Mesbahipur, Jamshid, Vaqe’iyat-e Ejtema’i va Jahan-e Dastan, Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1979. Moshir-Salimi, Ali Akbar (ed.), Kolliyat-e Mosavvar-e Eshqi, Tehran: Moshir-Salimi, n.d. Omid, A. (pseudonym), ‘Sadeq Hedayat’, Shiveh, April–May 1953. Partow, Sheen, ‘Hedayat dar Hend’ interview by Hushang Hesami’, Rastakbiz, 2 February 1975.

 Select Bibliography 215 Peymani, Hushang, Raje’ beh Sadeq Hedayat Danesteh Qezavat Konim, Tehran: n.p, 1964. Qa’emiyan, Hasan, Shayyadan-e Adabi va Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: n.p, 1975. Qa’emiyan, Hasan, (ed.), Darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat, Tehran: Parastu, 1964. Qa’emiyan, Hasan, Darbareh-ye Zohur va Ala’em-e Zohur, Tehran, Amir Kabir, 1962. Qotbi, M. I., In Ast Buf-e Kur, Tehran: Tabesh, 1971. Seif-e Azad, Abdorrahman (ed.), Divan-e Mirza Abolqasem Aref Qazvini, Tehran: n.p, 1948. Shari’atmadari, Hossein, Sadeq Hedayat va Ravankavi-ye Asarash, Tehran: n.p, 1964. Siyasi, Ali Akbar, Gozaresh-e Yek Zendegi, London: Siyasi, 1988. Sorush-Abadi, Barresi-ye Asar-e Sadeq Hedayat az Nazar-e Ravanshenasi, Tehran: Ibn Sina, 1958. The Tudeh Party Press, Nakhostin Kongereh-ye Nevisandegan-e Iran, Tehran: The Tudeh Party, 1947, reprinted 1978.

Index 1921 coup d’état  3 1953 coup d’état, Hedayat’s image after  181–4 ‘Abunasr Rock’ (‘Takht-e Abunasr’) (short story)  102 ‘Afaringan’. See ‘Prayers for the Dead’ (short story) affective depression  82, 83 Agence Pars  27 agony  55, 56, 59, 72–5, 101. See also suffering Ahmadi, Abdorrahim  180, 181 Akhavan-Saless  7 Akhundzadeh, Fath’ali  3–4, 5 Ala, Hossein  18, 20 Alavi, Bozorg  25, 28–9, 40, 54, 109 arrest  28, 33 ‘Div, Div’ (Demon, Demon)  41 ‘Gileh Mard’ (Man from Gilan)  6 on Hedayat’s death  179, 208 n.5 Prison Notes  7 social criticism  6 Tudeh membership  107 ‘Alaviyeh Khanom’. See ‘Mistress Alaviyeh’ (short story) Al-e Ahmad, Jalal  8, 54, 115, 151, 182 ‘Bacheh-ye Mardom’  187 From Our Suffering  7 ‘Hedayat of The Blind Owl’  177, 180 on Rilke’s and Buddhist connections in The Blind Owl  90 translation of Les Mains Sales  155 Tudeh membership  107 Alexander the Great  40–1 alienation  83, 110, 171 cultural  73–4 Hedayat’s  124, 149, 161–2, 186–7 Kafka’s  160–1 man’s  157–8, 160–1 nafs  97

social  98, 99, 101, 103, 124, 132, 163 from women  22–3, 35, 61–3, 71–2, 74, 75, 76, 78–9, 81–2, 94, 95–6, 98, 100–2, 158 allegorical satire  136–7, 139–40, 187 animal rights  13–14 animus and anima  82 Aniran (Non-Iranian) (short stories: Partow, Alavi and Hedayat)  25, 29, 40–1 ‘Div, Div’ (Demon, Demon)  41 ‘Sayeh-ye Mongol’ (The Mongol’s Shadow)  41 ‘Shab-e Badmasti’ (The Night of Drunkenness)  40–1 anthropomorphism  49, 74, 89, 94, 96 Anvari Abivardi  134 ‘Aqa Musheh’ (Little Master Mouse) (children’s tale)  51 Arab(s) conquest of Persia  39, 40, 41, 46, 51 criticism  4, 5, 37 Hedayat’s views  42, 48 nationalist Iranian resistance against  42–3 satirical fiction  144–5 Arab architecture  46–7 Arani, Taqi  26, 40 Ardeshir I, Sasanian King  147 Aref Qazvini, Abolqasem death  40 excommunication (takfir)  37 nationalism  3, 39–40 political satire  135 ‘This Cradle of Zoroaster’  39–40 Asadi Tusi, Persian Dictionary  66 Ateshbar (newspaper)  141 atheism  13, 48, 63 authorial intention  83–4 Azerbaijan Crisis (1945–6)  107, 108, 112–13, 156, 185

 Index 217 Bahar, Mohammad Taqi  7, 38, 66, 108, 109 Bamdad (newspaper)  183 Bank Melli Iran  20, 25, 26–7, 29, 31, 33 Baqa’i, Mozaffar  115, 150, 152 barrenness/infertility  54–6, 142, 145 Barthes, Roland  83–4 Bashiri, Iraj  32 The Blind Owl  84–5, 90, 91 ‘Death’  21 Beard, Michael, The Blind Owl as a Western Novel  88 Behruz, Zabih  40, 47, 115 Belgium  10, 18, 19, 186 Brussels  17 Ghent  17, 21 The Benefits of Vegetarianism  22 Bermecide (Barmaki) family  43–4, 194 n.25 bigamy  54–6 The Blind Owl (Buf-e Kur) (novel)  6, 24, 25, 110, 175, 186, 187 agony  72–5 childhood nostalgia  80 criticism/studies  113, 182, 183, 197 n.1 film version  183 French translation  152–3 grammatical and linguistic errors  69 hereditary burden  80 ‘historical fantasy’  34, 91 identity  76–8 imagery  71, 72, 74–7, 93, 94 Indo-Buddhist allusions  71, 78, 85, 89–91 influences/‘affinities’  87, 111 Khayyam’s influences  88–9 metaphor  89 mood and atmosphere  92, 94, 111, 117, 179 perfectionism  78–9 plot  70–2 psychoanalysis  82–3, 184 as psycho-fiction  34, 35 and psycho-fiction (earlier) compared  92–102 publication  31, 32 ‘the rabble’  73–4, 79, 80–1 serialization  108

structure  84–5 symbolic critique of Reza Shah’s rule  69, 111, 117, 179 Western influences  87–92 women  81–2, 94, 95–6 Bolshevism  39, 125. See also Tudeh Party/intellectuals Bondheshn  41 bourgeoisie Hajji Aqa  118, 119–20, 123–7, 182 Hedayat as representative  117–18, 185 Kafka  165, 202 n.33 Britain  3, 17, 28, 105, 128, 137, 143 London  28, 107, 168, 169, 173 ‘The Broken Mirror’ (short story)  82 Browne, E. G.  11, 193 n.28 Buddhism  11, 14, 32 The Blind Owl  71, 78, 85, 89–91 ‘The Last Smile’  44 Nirvana  48, 75, 90 Buf-e Kur. See The Blind Owl (novel) ‘Buried Alive’ (‘Zendeh beh Gur’) (short story)  19, 22, 25, 35, 83, 103 alienation from women  82 and The Blind Owl  98 childhood nostalgia  80, 98 self-reproach  80 Café Ferdows (Tehran)  105, 115, 147 Café Rose Noir/Zhaleh (Tehran)  28–9, 115 Camus, Albert  111, 154, 181 L’Etranger  73 caricature  63, 118–19, 123 ‘The Case of the Antichrist’s Donkey’ (satire)  36, 136–7 ‘The Case of the Bird of the Soul’ (satire)  139 ‘The Case of the Conversation’ (satire)  65–6 ‘The Case of the Disbelieving Chap and His End’ (satire)  65 ‘The Case of the Elegy for the Poet’ (satire)  65 The Case of the Morvari Cannon. See The Morvari Cannon (satire) ‘The Case of the Salt Rock’ (satire)  139–41 ‘The Case of Under the Bush’ (satire)  138 censorship  44, 50, 51, 191 n.8, 195 n.21

218

Index

Chelengar (newspaper)  179 ‘Sadeq Hedayat, the Father of Modern Iranian Writers’  180 Chiaroscuro. See Sayeh Roshan (short story)  childhood/infanthood, nostalgia for  80, 98, 101, 184 children’s tales  49, 51, 137 Chubak, Sadeq  8, 54, 107, 115 ‘Adl’  187 classical scholarship  29–30. See also literary establishment ‘The Claws’ (short story)  101 College of Fine Arts (Tehran)  114, 147, 148, 168, 170, 172 colonialism  145 Columbus, Christopher  145 common people  8, 36, 124, 186 The Blind Owl  73–4, 76, 80–1 ‘readerly’ works  84 short stories  6, 53–63, 82, 109–10, 117 communism. See Tudeh Party/intellectuals comparative literature  51 Constitutional Revolution (1905–11)  1–2, 5, 120, 123 cosmic nihilism  74, 90 critical realism  6, 8, 35–6, 53–4 satire  63–6 short stories  54–63, 117, 187 cruelty, to animals  13–14, 22, 59. See also suffering cultural criticism  53 ‘The Cursed Fortress’ (‘Gojasteh Dezh’) (short story)  102 ‘The Cursed Spider’ (short story)  171, 207 n.17 Da Gama, Vasco  145 Dariyush, Parviz  65, 180, 181 ‘Payment of a Debt to Sadeq Hedayat’  182 ‘Dark Room’ (short story)  35, 130, 187 and The Blind Owl compared  80, 98–9 childhood nostalgia  80, 184 ‘Dash Akol’ (short story)  61–3, 186 Dashti, Ali  106 Dast-gheyb, Abdol’ali, A Critique of Hedayat’s Works  182

‘Davood the Hunchback’ (short story)  80, 101 ‘Dead End’ (short story)  82, 187 and The Blind Owl  99–100 death. See also suicide The Blind Owl  79, 80 ‘The Dark Room’  98–9 ‘Dash Akol’  63 ‘death of the author’  83–4 Hajji Aqa  129 in Kafka  163, 165 in Khayyam  12–13, 48 ‘The Last Smile’  44 posthumous idolization/ deification  65, 152, 177–8, 179  as solution  21, 46, 79, 80, 93, 98, 103, 162, 163, 165 ‘Tomorrow’  131–2 ‘Death’ (‘Marg’) (essay)  17, 19, 21, 80, 92, 186 decadence Kafka’s  158–9, 165, 202 n.33 Tabari on  110–11 Dehkhoda, Ali Akbar  109 Amsal o Hekam  49 deism  12, 49 depression affective depression  82, 83 ‘Buried Alive’  22 ‘Dash Akol’  62 ‘Death’  21 Hedayat  24, 82, 83, 133, 147–9, 155, 156, 172 (see also suicide: Hedayat) Khayyam  12, 13, 48 ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’  97–8 ‘Puppet Behind the Curtain’  95 social problem  181 ‘Three Drops of Blood’  94 Vagh-vagh Sahab  88 Derambakhsh, Kiyumars  183 Descartes, René  13 determinism  12, 13, 35, 92, 158–9, 161, 163–4, 165. See also fatalism dialectics, Kafkaesque  164–5 dictatorship  2, 3, 5, 36, 52, 87, 105–6, 111, 117, 122, 129, 144, 179, 181 divorce (Islamic)  56–8

 Index 219 ‘Don Juan of Karaj’ (‘Don Juan-e Karaj’) (short story)  102 drug use  71, 114, 170, 181 ‘Earthquake’ (short story)  171 Ebtehaj, Hushang  7 ego  bat as  102 nafs  35, 96–8 Ehteshami, Mohsen  156 Elahi, Rahmat  115 ‘The Elder Sister’ (short story)  101 ‘Elixir of Immortality’ (‘Ab-e Zendegi’) (satire)  129, 136, 137–8, 204 n.16 engagé literature  36, 53, 111, 117, 136, 185, 187 Enjavi Shirazi, Sayyed Abolqasem  113, 115, 141, 168–72, 174, 183, 209 n.33 Entezam, Abdollah  27 Entezam, Nasrollah  20, 153 Eshqi, Mohammad Reza (Mirzadeh Eshqi)  3, 37, 40, 135–6 Eskandari, Soleiman Mirza  106 essays  7 Akhundzadeh  3–4 Hedayat  21–2 youth years  11–15, 23, 92, 103 estebdad  2–5, 9, 106, 120–1, 123, 142, 143–4 E’tezad al-Molk (Hedayatqoli Khan-e Hedayat) (father)  9 Ettala’at (periodical)  156, 209 n.33 Europe academic destination  17 civilization  145 influencer  1, 4–5 racist theories and ideologies  51–2 Europeanism  6, 37, 40, 122, 123 European poetry  4–5 existentialism  8, 92, 111, 113, 181 farce  102 ‘Farda’. See ‘Tomorrow’ (short story)  Fardid, Ahmad  151 Farrokhi Yazdi, Mohammad  3, 40 Farvardin, Fereidun  169

Farzad, Mas’ud  25, 27, 28–9, 64–5, 136, 139, 168, 173, 193 n.30 Farzaneh, Mostafa  171, 172–3, 207 nn.17, 24 Acquaintance with Sadeq Hedayat  183, 207 n.5 fatalism  35, 79, 80, 147, 154, 158. See also determinism Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury  183 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh  41, 79 fiction  1, 5. See also novels; psychofiction; satires; short stories ‘Fire-worshipper’ (‘Atesh-parast’) (short story)  102 First Congress of Iranian Writers (1946) representatives and participants  108–9 reviews of Hedayat’s contributions  109–12 Firuz, Mahin (niece)  175 Fitzgerald, Edward  11, 48–9 folklore/folk songs  25, 34 romantic nationalism  47–51 satire  146–7 ‘Folklore or Popular Culture’  146 ‘Folk Songs’  50–1 foreign intervention  2, 106, 107, 108, 112, 125–6, 128–9, 137–8, 143 Forughi, Mohammad-Ali  30, 193 n.30 Foruzanfar, Badi’al-Zaman  109, 192 n.20 France  17–18, 22, 186 Besancon  18, 19, 22 Paris  10, 17, 18, 20, 21, 32, 41, 44, 85, 103, 107, 141, 150, 155, 167–72, 183 Reims  18, 19, 20, 183 ‘The French P.O.W.’ (short story)  22 Freud, Sigmund  6, 34, 82, 182 ‘From No. 37’ (documentary: Kalantari and Shahrnazdar)  183 Ganjavi, Nezami  66 Germany  105, 121, 138 Berlin  3, 17, 21, 22, 37, 46 Hamburg  169, 171 racist theories and ideologies  51–2 Ghani, Qasem  30, 153, 192 n.20 ‘The Ghouls’ (short story)  35, 60–1, 82

220

Index

Goebbels, Joseph  52 Gojasteh Abalish (Abalish the Damned) (translation)  25, 32 Gorgani, Fakhr al-Din As’ad, Vis o Ramin  147 Gozaresh-e Gamanshekan (The Repentance Letter of the Apostate) (translation)  32 Hafiz  9, 133, 139 Hajji Aqa (satirical novel)  7, 24, 36, 204 n.26 bourgeoisie  119–20, 123–6, 182 criticism  182 and Hedayat’s optimism  108, 111, 117, 129, 179, 182 models for Hajji Aqa character  118–23 political conspiracies  128–9 political context  117, 126–7 religion  126–8 structure  118 ‘Hajji Morad’ (short story)  22–3, 123 Hamidi Shirazi, Mehdi  201 n.5 Hazhir, Abdolhossein  127, 128 Hedayat, Aliqoli Khan (Mokhber al-Dowleh) (great-uncle)  9 Hedayat, Hedayatqoli Khan-e (E’tezad al-Molk) (father)  9 Hedayat, Isa (brother)  10, 20 Hedayat, Jafarqoli Khan-e (Naiyer al-Molk) (grandfather)  9 Hedayat, Mahmud (brother)  10, 17, 20, 51, 115, 170, 172, 175, 207 nn.9, 23 Hedayat, Mehdiqoli (Mokhber al-Saltaneh) (second cousin)  9, 17, 121–3, 148 Hedayat, Mortezaqoli Khan (Sani’alDowleh) (second cousin)  9 Hedayat, Rezaqoli Khan (greatgrandfather)  9 Hedayat, Sadeq  8, 186 ancestry  9 cult  181, 186 death (see under suicide: Hedayat) early years  9, 10 education  10 education in Europe  17–20 European references  11, 13, 14, 50, 141

existentialist  92 family  9–10, 27, 115, 149, 178 final months/years  147–50, 167–73 friendships and associations  28–31, 113, 115, 147–9, 151–2, 168, 192 n.20 illness  151, 188 influencer  187 jobs  20, 25, 26–7, 31, 33, 114, 147, 148, 168, 170, 172 and Kafka compared  73, 185, 186 lawsuit  147 legend  177–8, 182, 183–4 life in 1940s  114–15 love affair/private life  81–2, 184, 186 moodiness/dark moods  23, 148, 150, 155, 170–2 new home in Tehran  150–1 personality  186 pessimism-optimism-pessimism cycle  23–4, 108, 111, 113, 117, 129, 179, 180, 185 philosophical and psychological formation  14–15 as representative of petty bourgeois intellectuals  117–18, 185 social and intellectual background  5, 185 vegetarianism  20, 156 and Weil compared  188 works  25, 34–6 (see also genres, for e.g., short stories; individual titles of works, for e.g., Hajji Aqa) Hejazi, Mohammad  6, 185 Hekmat, Ali Asghar  51, 108, 109, 114, 192 n.20 Hillman, Michael C., Hedayat’s ‘The Blind Owl’: Forty Years After  197 n.1 historical novels  1 historical plays  5, 22, 25, 29, 36 romantic nationalism  41–3, 187 history  66, 138, 141–5 Hitler, Adolf  52, 105, 121 Homa’, Jalaleddin  109 Homayuni, Sadeq, The Man Who Was Talking to His Shadow  182 homosexuality  74, 81–2, 186 Hoveida, Amir Abbas  151

 Index 221 Hoveida, Fereidun  151, 153, 172–3, 207 n.24 human existence  15, 34, 44, 157, 158–9, 161, 163–4 estrangement  103 past/previous  71, 72, 75, 85, 94, 102 idolization/deification (posthumous)  65, 152, 177–8, 179 imagery. See mirror imagery imperialism  179, 208 n.5 incest  101 India  23, 31–3, 167 Bombay  26, 30, 32, 33, 34, 47, 51, 52, 69, 91, 168, 197 n.4 Mysore and Bangalore  32–3 references  71, 78, 90, 91 Iranian Revolution (1979)  2, 128–9 Iranian Studies (journal)  34 Iran/Persia Arab conquest  40, 41, 46, 51 European influences  4–5 Gilan  47 Isfahan  46–7 landlord-politicians  120–3, 125 Mazandaran  42, 47, 120, 121 Mongol conquest  40, 41, 64 post-Islamic  3 post-Reza Shah abdication  126 pre-Islamic  3–4, 5, 21, 47, 48 pro-German sentiments  3, 7, 51–2, 105, 121 resistance to Arab rule  42–3 satire  137, 153 society  6, 53–4, 65, 124, 155–6 (see also common people) Tehran  18, 19, 21, 22, 32, 33, 42, 85, 105, 167, 168, 183, 191 n.26 Iranshahr (journal)  17, 22 Isfahan Nesf-e Jahan (Isfahan, Half-ofthe-World) (travelogue)  25, 36, 46–7 Islam  3, 4, 5, 51 divorce  56–8 satirical fiction  44–6, 144–5 unity  128 ‘The Islamic Mission to European Cities’ (satire)  44–6, 142, 183

Jalali, Bijan (nephew)  153 Jalili, Jahangir  6 Jamalzadeh, Mohammad-Ali  7–8, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 42, 54, 80, 91, 114, 122–3, 147–9, 168–74, 181, 187, 207 n.5 ‘Farsi Shekar Ast’ (Persian Is Sweet)  5, 37, 119 on Hedayat’s death  208 n.5 watch gift  149 Yeki Bud o Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time)  5, 30 Jamshidi, Ismail  174 Hedayat’s Suicide  182 Jorjani, Reza  115, 152 Jung, (C)Karl  34, 82 Kafka, Franz  11, 24, 154, 181 America  92, 162 The Castle  92, 162, 163, 164 contemporary relevance  160 decadent and pessimistic  158–9, 162, 165 and Hedayat compared  73, 185, 186 Hedayat’s defence  112, 113–14, 160, 202 n.33 influencer  91, 92 ‘The Judgment’  92, 162 letters  184 ‘Metamorphosis’  73, 92, 162, 171 ‘Penal Colony’  114, 158, 162, 163, 164 translated by Hedayat  92 The Trial  35, 73, 146, 157, 159, 162, 163 Kalantari, Sam  183 Kamshad, Hasan  17, 84, 90, 182 Karnameh-ye Ardeshir-e Babakan (The Record of Andeshir Babakan) (translation)  25, 32, 147 Kashani, Hajj Ali Naqi  119–20 Kasra’i, Siavash  7 Kasravi, Ahmad  26, 127 Katira’i, Mahmud, Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat  182, 191 n.8 ‘Katiya’ (short story)  81, 102 Kaveh (newspaper)  3, 37 Keikavus Ibn Iskander, Qabusnamah  65 Kermani, Mirza Aqa Khan  4, 40–1

222

Index

Keyhan (newspaper)  92 Keyvani, Farrokh  156 Khameh’i, Anvar  107, 119 Khanlari, Parviz  8, 47, 66, 70, 91–2, 107, 115, 141, 151–2, 181, 206 n.78 Hajji Aqa character  120–1 memorial address  178 ‘Persian Prose in Recent Times’  109–10 Khaqani  134 Khayyam, Omar Hedayat on  11–13, 48–9 influences in The Blind Owl  88–9 Khayyam’s Quatrains (essay)  11–13, 103 Kiyanuri, Nur al-Din  7 Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon  154, 155 Kolbadi, Manuchehr  115 Komisarof, D. C.  17, 185 Lahuti, Abu’l-Qasem  3, 40 ‘Laleh’ (short story)  102 ‘La Magie en Perse’ (essay)  21, 191 n.26 lampoons (coarse)  133–5 The Last Days of Sadeq Hedayat (film: Derambakhsh)  183 ‘The Last Smile’ (short story)  36, 43–4 Le Bon, Gustav  119 ‘The Legaliser’ (short story)  35, 56–8, 118 Lescot, Roger  152–3, 174 letters Akhundzadeh  3–4 Hedayat, 1931  29 to Enjavi Shirazi  168–9, 170, 209 n.33 to Jamalzadeh  169 to Mahmud  170, 172, 207 nn.9, 23 to Minovi  30–4, 47, 51, 52, 82, 91, 107, 198 n.60 to Razavi  10–11, 18–20, 22, 23, 26–7, 28, 51–2 to Rypka  26, 30–1, 32 to Shahid-Nura’I  115, 141, 150–6, 181, 205 n.56 Jamalzadeh to Hedayat  149, 152, 173–4 to Menasce  169–70 to Shahid-Nura’I  148

Kafka  184 Menasce to Jamalzadeh  170–1 Minovi to Hedayat  91 Shahid-Nura’I to Jamalzadeh  148 Lewis, C. S.  73 liberation  35, 75, 79, 96, 103, 161–2 Nirvana  48, 75, 90 literary criticism/studies  25 folklore  47–8, 146 Hedayat  179–80, 182 Kafka  157–66 Khanlari’s  109–10 Khayyam  48–9 modern poetry  66–7 Naz novel  67 Persian Dictionary  66 Tabari’s  110–11, 113, 117 Tudeh approach  110–11, 117 Zoroastrian account of world development  146–7 literary establishment and Hedayat  149, 178 and Rab’eh  28–31 satire  63–4, 123, 129, 132 and Writers’ Congress  108 literary revolution  2–5 literature, and Hedayat  186–7 ‘The Little Red Scarf ’ (Little Red Riding Hood) (children’s tale)  51 ‘Lunatique’ (short story)  101–2, 201 n.65 ‘Madeleine’ (short story)  22, 102 madness  22, 83, 93, 94 Mahsati/Mahasti  134 Majelleh-ye Musiqi (Music Magazine)  25, 33, 34, 50–1, 114 Maleki, Khalil  26, 107, 113, 150, 180, 181, 202 n.33 Man and Animal (essay)  13–14, 21, 103, 186 sequel  22 ‘The Man Who Killed His Ego’ (short story)  35, 79 alienation from women  82 and The Blind Owl  92, 96–8 death  98, 103 Maragheh’i, Zein al-Abedin  4 Siyahatnameh-ye Ibrahim Beig (The Travelogue of Ibrahim Beig)  1

 Index 223 Mard-e Emruz (newspaper)  119 ‘Marg’. See ‘Death’ (essay) Marxism  7–8, 40, 106, 107 Mary Magdalen  146 ‘The Masks’ (short story)  82, 101–2 masochism  101, 184 Massé, Henri  154, 171, 175 Mas’ud, Mohammad  6, 109, 119 Maziyar (play: Hedayat and Minovi)  5, 25, 29, 36, 42–3 Maziyar’s uprising  42–3 Mehr (periodical)  108 Mehran, Mahmud  173–4, 207 n.5 Mehregan (newspaper)  178 The Melodies of Khayyam  25, 36, 48–9 memorial meetings  178 Menasce, Jean de  169–70, 174 Meqdadi, Bahram  82, 183 ‘Hedayat and the Oedipal Complex’  182 Mer’at, Ismail  17, 18 Mesbahipur, Jamshid, Social Reality and the World of Fiction  182 ‘The Message of Kafka’ (‘Peyam-e Kafka’) (essay)  14–15, 91, 146, 157–66 alienation  160–1 determinism  158–9, 161, 163–4, 165 dialectics  164–5 liberation  161–2 political criticism  155 reprint  170 metaphor death  139 jug of wine  49, 89 uncertainty of life/glory  48–9 Minovi, Mojtaba  25, 27–34, 42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 82, 91, 107, 147, 168, 178, 180, 198 n.60 mirror imagery The Blind Owl  71, 72, 74, 75–7 ‘Dead End’  100 ‘Lunatique’  102 ‘Three Drops of Blood’  93, 94 ‘Tomorrow’  130, 131 Mirza, Iraj  37–8 Mirza, Mohammad Baqer, Shams o Toghra  1 Mirzadeh Eshqi. See Eshqi, Mohammad Reza

Mister Bow Wow. See Vagh-vagh Sahab (satire: Hedayat anf Farzad)  ‘Mistress Alaviyeh’ (‘Alaviyeh Khanom’) (short story)  25, 35, 58–60, 82, 118, 142, 195 n.21 modernism  3–4, 65, 142–4, 181, 182 modernization  37–8, 49, 143–4 modern literature  109. See also genres, for e.g., poetry early developments  1–2, 5 Mohammad, Prophet  51 Mohandessi, Manuchehr  90 Mohtasham al-Saltaneh Esfandiyari, Hajj  120–1, 123, 128 Mokhber al-Dowleh (Aliqoli Khan Hedayat) (great-uncle)  9 Mokhber al-Saltaneh. See Hedayat, Mehdiqoli Mongols  40, 41, 64 ‘The Mongol’s Shadow’ (‘Sayeh-ye Mongol’) (short story)  41, 43 Monteil, Vincent  180 Moqaddam, Mohammad  27, 28, 47, 51, 115 The Morvari Cannon (Tup-e Morvari) (satire)  7, 66, 136, 141–6, 167, 204 n.26 Arabs and Islam  144–5 colonialism  145 common words and expressions  142 disillusionment  145–6 publication  183 Qajar and Pahlavi eras compared  142–4 Mucking About (Velengari) (satire)  108, 136–41 Farzad’s study of Hafiz  138–9 good and evil  137–8 rise and fall of Reza Shah  136–7 scientific developments  140 social anthropology  140 ‘The Myth of Creation’ (satire)  22 Nafisi, Sa’id  27, 178, 192 n.20, 207 nn.9, 23 nafs (ego)  96–8 Naiyer al-Molk (Jafarqoli Khan-e Hedayat) (grandfather)  9

224 Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Iran  142, 143 nationalism  2, 51. See also romantic nationalism official  5, 36, 40, 52 Naz (novel: Hamid)  67 Neirangestan (folklore)  25, 50–1 newspapers anti-Hedayat coverage  183 Hedayat’s death  178–9 Hedayat’s death anniversary notices  180–1 role in literary development  1 ‘New Trends in Persian Poetry’  66–7 nihilism  74, 90, 181 Nima (Nima Yushij)  7, 66, 109 novels  25. See also The Blind Owl (Buf-e Kur); Hajji Aqa; Kafka, Franz draft novel  173 emergence  1 psychological novels  34, 155 Nushin, Abdolhossein  28, 33–4, 107, 113 obscene poetry  133–4 occult sciences  10–11, 21, 102, 185 The Blind Owl  85, 90 ‘cult d’un Dieu unique’  21 oedipal complex  74, 82, 83, 158, 160, 182, 184, 185 Office of Guardianship for Iranian Students in Europe  17 Office of Music  25, 33–4, 114, 115 ‘On the Damp Road’ (travelogue)  47 optimism Hedayat’s  23–4, 108, 111, 117, 129, 179, 182 Tabari on  110, 111 Owsaneh (folksongs)  25, 49 Pahlavi dynasty  3, 142. See also Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Iran Pahlavi texts  25, 30, 32, 40, 41, 47, 50, 51, 91, 108, 109, 146–7 painting  71, 83 pamphleteering  7 Parcham-e Solh (newspaper)  178–9 Partaw-A’zam, Abolqasem  182, 209 n.33 Partow, Sheen  25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33

Index ‘Shab-e Badmasti’ (The Night of Drunkenness)  40–1 Parvin the Sasanian Girl (play)  22, 25, 36, 41–2, 43, 83 ‘The Patriot’ (satirical short story)  31, 36, 51, 63–4, 108, 114, 119 perfectionism  35, 75, 78–9, 95, 103, 110, 162, 186 Persian dictionary Asadi  66 Farhangestan (official academy)  63–4, 66 Persian language  40, 112 pessimism Hedayat  23–4, 87, 111, 113, 117, 179, 180, 185 Kafka  158–9, 162 Tabari on  110–11 ‘Peyam-e Kafka’. See ‘The Message of Kafka’ (essay) Peymani, Hushang, ‘Let Us Discuss Sadeq Hedayat in an Informed Way’  182 pilgrims and pilgrimages  54–60, 187 poetry bazgasht (restoration style)  135 classical satirical poetry  133–4 critique of contemporary poets  66–7 dominance  109 and ‘literary revolution’  4–5 Marxist ideology  7–8 modernization  38 romantic nationalism  37–40 traditional uses  1 political criticism  1 Akhundzadeh  3–4 Alavi  7 Hedayat  7, 155, 185 (see also political satire) Jamalzadeh  5 political satire  24, 135, 136–7, 141–3, 153–4 pornography  133, 134 Portugal  145 ‘Prayers for the Dead’ (‘Afaringan’) (short story)  82, 102 press. See newspapers; Tudeh press prose. See also essays; letters Hedayat  110, 187

 Index 225 subordinate position  5 traditional uses  1 psychoanalysis  185. See also psycho-fiction Alavi  6 The Blind Owl  82–3 psycho-fiction  34–5, 53, 61, 69, 184–5, 187 earlier works and The Blind Owl compared  92–102 Khanlari on  110 women  35, 82 ‘writerly’ works  84 psychological novel  34 psychology  8, 101, 184–5 ‘Puppet Behind the Curtain’ (short story)  103, 184 and The Blind Owl  92, 95–6 Purdavud, Ibrahim  40, 47 Qa’ani Shirazi  134–5 Qa’emiyan, Hasan  114, 115, 170, 181, 197 n.64 Darbareh-ye Zohur va Alamat-e Zohur  207 n.23 The Literary Charlatans and Hedayat’s Works  182 Neveshteh-ha-ye Parakandeh  191 n.26, 201 n.65 Qahreman, Yazdanbakhsh  115, 178 Qajar dynasty  141, 142 Qavam al-Saltaneh  108, 112, 119, 136 Qazvini, Mohammad  29, 30, 192 n.20, 193 n.28 Qotbi, M. Y., This Is The Blind Owl  182 ‘the rabble’  35, 71–5, 79, 80–1, 94, 100, 103, 156, 158, 173. See also common people Rab’eh (The Four)  28–31, 64, 192 n.20. See also Alavi, Bozorg; Farzad, Mas’ud; Minovi, Mojtaba Rastakbiz (newspaper)  182–3 Razavi, Taqi  10–11, 18–20, 22, 23, 26–7, 28, 51–2, 113, 115, 141, 154, 202 n.33 Razmara, Ali (brother-in-law)  10, 115, 150, 154, 168, 172, 207 nn.23–4

readers, role of  83–4 realism  35, 132, 159, 187. See also critical realism characterization  119–23, 125, 127 historical  42 Kafka  162, 163–4 socialist  4, 24 ‘The Record of Ardeshir Babakan’. See Karnameh-ye Ardeshir-e Babakan (translation) reductionism  82 religion. See also Islam and conflict  38 as ‘opium of masses’  126–8 Semitic  42, 48, 144–5 restoration (bazgasht) poetry  135 ‘Revelation’ (short story)  102 revolution. See Constitutional Revolution (1905-11); Iranian Revolution (1979); literary revolution Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Iran  2, 3, 25, 33–4, 46 abdication/fall  23–4, 105–6, 126, 129, 185 anti-Islamic policies  128 Hedayat’s criticism and disillusionment  7, 69, 142–4 landlord-politicians’ ambivalent attitude towards  120–3 life under  69, 111, 117, 179 oil dispute/concession  28, 105, 122, 137, 143 satire  136–7 ridicule  29, 64–7, 133, 136, 153 Rilke, Rainer Maria  21, 89 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge  84–5, 90, 91 romantic nationalism criticism  142 historical plays  41–3, 187 Iranian context  51–2 and ‘literary revolution’  2–5 literary studies  47–51 rise  36–40 satires  44–6 shift from  6–7 short stories  40–1, 43–4, 187 travelogues  46–7

226 rule by fiat  2, 4, 5, 9, 105, 106, 120–1, 123, 142, 143, 144 Rumi  83, 97, 133, 139 Masnavi  134 Russia. See Soviet Union/Russia Rypka, Jan  26, 30–1, 32 Sa’adat, Hushang  180 Sa’di of Shiraz  49, 133, 137 Bustan  58, 96–7 Sa’ed, Mohammad  119 Saenger, Edouard  174–5 ‘Sag-e Velgard’. See ‘Stray Dog’ (short story) ‘Sampinge’ (short story)  102, 201 n.65 ‘Sang-e Sabur’ (The Patient Stone) (children’s tale)  51 Sartre, Jean-Paul  91–2, 111, 154, 181, 185 Les Mains Sales  154–5 ‘The Wall’  91 Sasanian dynasty  42, 147 satires  22, 23, 29, 31, 136 anti-establishment  36 critical realism  63–6 ‘the education of minds’  64, 140 historical background  133–5 political  24, 135, 136–7, 141–3, 153–4 romantic nationalism  44–6 Sayeh Roshan (Chiaroscuro) (short story)  25, 180 ‘Sayeh-ye Mongol’. See ‘The Mongol’s Shadow’ (short story) Sayyar, Gholam’ali  180 scientific developments  140–1 ‘Seeking Absolution’ (short story)  35, 54–6, 82 ‘Seh Qatreh Khun’. See ‘Three Drops of Blood’ (short story) ‘S.G.L.L.’ (short story)  82, 102 Shahid-Nura’I, Hasan  115, 141, 148, 150–6, 168, 169, 171–2, 181 Shahrnazdar, Mohsen  183 Shamlu, Ahmad  3, 7 ‘Shangul o Mangul’ (children’s tale)  51 Shariati, Ali  182 Shari’atmadari, Hossein, Hedayat and the Psycho-analysis of His Works  182

Index Shirazi, Mirza Ismail  32–3 short stories Alavi  7 Khanlari on  109–10 political criticism  5, 7 romantic nationalism  40–1, 43–4, 187 social criticism  5, 6, 53–63, 117, 154, 185 sin  54–6, 159, 161 Sobhi, Fazlollah  156 social anthropology  140 social criticism  1, 6–7 Akhundzadeh  3 Hedayat  6, 117, 154, 185 Jamalzadeh  5 socialist realism  4, 7, 24 Sokhan (periodical)  91–2, 108, 150, 151, 152, 181, 183 Sorush-Abadi, A Psychological Interpretation of Hedayat’s Works  182 sources The Blind Owl  69, 87–8 Buddhist  87, 89–91 European  11, 13, 14, 50, 51, 87–92, 141, 146 Greek and Roman  41 Persian/Iranian  29, 51, 88–9, 146, 147 Soviet Union/Russia  2, 3, 17, 39, 105, 106, 107, 111, 112, 117, 125, 128, 137, 138, 156 Spain  145 Stalin, Josef/Stalinism  2, 24, 106, 113, 167 State Construction Company  25, 26, 31, 33 Stray Dog (Sag-e Velgard) (short stories)  25, 32, 51, 102, 108 ‘Stray Dog’ (‘Sag-e Velgard’) (short story)  35 childhood nostalgia  80, 101, 184 stream of consciousness  130–1 suffering  30, 62–3, 70–1, 72, 83, 89, 110, 131, 163–4, 165, 177–8, 186–8. See also agony; cruelty suicide  80, 97, 98, 101 cult  180, 181, 186 and existentialism  92, 181 Hedayat  166–75, 183

 Index 227 first attempt  19–21, 186 intention  107, 174 public response  178 Tudeh press reaction  178–9 ‘The Penal Colony’  163 superstitions  25, 50, 126, 127 Suratgar, Lotfali  109 surrealism  21, 35, 53, 93, 163, 187 Switzerland, Geneva  31, 32, 168, 169–70, 173 symbols and symbolism. See also metaphor bat  102 The Blind Owl  69, 90, 111, 117, 179 bourgeoisie  123–5 The Castle  163 ‘The Elixir of Mortality’  137–8 Kaveh  37 love  96 owl  88 phallic symbol  142, 145 political repression  69, 111, 117 psycho-fiction  53, 187 self  75, 76 Tabari, Ehsan  7, 8, 107, 109, 119, 180 The Blind Owl  111, 117 Hajji Aqa  117 Hedayat’s criticism  112, 202 n.33 ‘On Criticism and the Nature of Art and Artistic Beauty’  110–11 Tafazzoli, Jahangir  149 ‘Tajalli’ (short story)  186 Talebof, Abd al-Rahim  4 Masalik al-Muhsinin (Ways of the Beneficent)  1 Taqizadeh, Seyyed Hasan  3, 29–30, 37, 66 Tavalloli, Fereidun  109, 112 ‘Three Drops of Blood’ (‘Seh Qatreh Khun’) (short story)  25, 35, 69, 96, 103, 180, 184 and The Blind Owl  93–4 ‘Tomorrow’ (‘Farda’) (short story)  117, 130–2, 179 tragedy  102 translations The Blind Owl  152–3 Hedayat  180

Kafka  92, 158 Pahlavi texts  25, 30, 32, 47, 51, 91, 108, 109 Sartre  91–2, 155 Shahrestan-ha-ye Iran (Iranian Provinces)  146 Yadegar-e Jamasp (The Legacy of Jamasp)  146 Zand-e Vohuman Yasn  146–7 travelogues  1, 25, 36, 46–7, 109 Tudeh Party/intellectuals  7, 8, 24 criticism of Hedayat  110–11, 113, 117, 129 demise  181 formation  106–7 Hedayat’s criticism, disillusionment and estrangement  112–14, 149, 156, 167, 180, 185, 188 Hedayat’s sympathies  107 model for characterization  119 split  113 and Writers’ Congress  108–9 Tudeh press, Hedayat’s death  178–9, 180 Tup-e Morvari. See The Morvari Cannon (satire) United States  112, 128–9 University of Tehran  178 Vagh-vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow) (satire: Hedayat anf Farzad)  25, 26, 29, 36, 64–6, 82 ‘blind owl’ phrase  88–9 ‘Varamin Nights’ ((‘Shab-ha-ye Varamin’) (short story)  102 vegetarianism  13, 14, 20, 22 veiling of women  38 Velengari. See Mucking About (satire)  Vosuq al-Dawleh, Hassan  135 weather  151 Weil, Simone  188 ‘Whirlpool’ (‘Gerdab’) (short story)  102 wine  49, 74, 80, 89 wit  23, 29, 114, 133, 150, 151

228 ‘The Woman Who Lost Her Man’ (short story)  101, 184 women angel (ethereal)/harlot  35, 70, 71–2, 73, 74, 75, 78–9, 80, 82, 83, 90, 94, 95–6, 103 barrenness/infertility  54–6, 142, 145 divorce  56–8 hypocrisy and deception  60–1 incest  101 in Kafka’s life  160 love-and-hate attitude towards  22–3, 35, 61–3, 71–2, 74, 75, 76, 78–9, 81–2, 94, 95–6, 98, 100–2, 158, 186 masochism  101, 184

Index obscene poetry  134 pilgrimage  58–60 ‘the rabble’  35 social alienation  101 social anthropology  140 veiling  38 Yaghma’i, Habib  109 Yaghma Jandaqi  134–5 Zakani, Obeyd  134 ‘Zendeh beh Gur’. See ‘Buried Alive’ (short story) Zhdanov, Andrei  4, 24, 110, 178 Zia, Seyyed  3, 137 Zoroastrianism  21, 146–7

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