Shocking the Bourgeoisie With Iran’s Misunderstood Modernist

The Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat (1903-51). Courtesy New York Times.

by Amir-Hussein Radjy,  New York Times

In April 1951, the police in Paris called on my great-grandfather, Prince Mohamed-Hussein Firouz, to identify a dead body. It was that of Sadeq Hedayat, who is today eulogized as Iran’s great literary modernist. Days before, Hedayat had sealed up the apartment on Rue Championnet where he was staying and opened up the oven’s gas valve before lying down on the kitchen floor.

In Tehran, Firouz had known Hedayat, the son of aristocrats who moved in the same courtly and literary circles. An army officer who was educated in czarist Russia and fastidious about his dress, Firouz carried a trim mustache and tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and read Le Figaro daily. While men like Firouz easily found their place under Iran’s army-led monarchy, Hedayat did not.

In the early 20th century, Iranians of their class proudly appropriated European culture, wore Sulka cravats and sprinkled their Persian with French expressions — as Hedayat did in letters when describing existentialism in France as démodé, or praising Henry Miller and James Joyce for their originalité. Among the last interloping foreign words of his published Persian letters is psychose. “They diagnosed me with psychosis and granted me leave for two months of recovery in France,” he writes, after a visit to the doctor in Tehran.

“As long as Hedayat was alive no one understood him,” the intellectual Jalal Al-e-Ahmad said of his literary mentor months after Hedayat’s death. “Perhaps no one took him seriously.” Today Hedayat is spoken of not only as Iran’s first modern writer but also, as one critic suggests, the first “modern Iranian” tout court. His biography has become almost entirely entwined with his most famous work, BLIND OWL (Penguin Classics, 87 pp., paper, $14), which arrives in a new English translation this year. Posthumous Persian editions carried a cover with an owl wearing Hedayat’s signature round eyeglasses, or the author’s head growing into the form of the nightbird. Two years after the author’s death, Roger Lescot published a French translation that André Breton praised as a masterpiece of surrealism. The novel, its Parisian publisher said, was “the curse of a dream that creeps into reality.”

Turn our dark night into bright dawn

Reem Kelani's "The Singer Said: Bird of Dawn"

Singer-songwriter Reem Kelani's latest release – "The Singer Said: Bird of Dawn" – pays tribute to Mohammad Reza Shajarian. The two-song EP features Kelani's unique take on a famous Shajarian anthem and a second track symbolic of the iconic Iranian singer's life. 

Palestinian-British singer-songwriter Reem Kelani pays tribute to the great Iranian vocal virtuoso Mohammad-Reza Shajarian (1940-2020): included with her latest release is a detailed and comprehensive trilingual booklet (Arabic, English & Farsi) featuring musicological notes, literary translations and a detailed glossary. The EP forms part of Kelani's ongoing project "This Land is Your Land", focusing on the music of the various communities with whom she lived in Kuwait, and with whom she now lives in the UK. Reem and her international band recorded their parts separately – in the UK and the U.S. – during lockdown in 2021. Courtesy Qantara

by Richard Marcus, Qantara

Outside the Persian diaspora, Mohammad Reza Shajarian is little known. Yet, to Iranians around the world, Shajarian remains one of the most beloved and popular voices ever to have graced their country's music scene. He also carries the distinction of having actively protested against both the Shah of Iran's government and the new post-Islamic Revolution state. He didn't wait for them to ban his songs, either; he simply refused to allow either regime to play recordings of his music on state radio.

The voice of "dust and trash"

As a star of Iran's popular music scene, this was no small matter. A supporter of the Green Movement – a popular uprising that followed the 2009 election, triggered by the conviction that hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole victory from reform candidates for the presidency Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi – he found it hard to stomach what the mullah regime was doing to his people. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad subsequently referred to the people protesting against the stolen election as "dust and trash", Shajarian proudly referred to himself as the voice of dust and trash.

"The Singer Said" (Qala al-Mughanni), the opening song, features lyrics penned by Mahmoud Darwish, whom Reem Kelani refers to as the national poet of Palestine. It was chosen for its thematic connection to the life and ethics of Shajarian. The song addresses the struggles of an anonymous singer, making it a fitting choice to represent Kelani's subject.