Conclusion: Canonization and Literary Dissemination

The study of world literature is significant to Persian literature and contemporary Iranian culture for a variety of reasons. Different forms of nativism, on the one hand, and Eurocentric ideas, on the other, domi- nate critical studies, and engaging world literature is an attempt to overcome constricting ideologies, to acknowledge and rediscover the world, and to widen the scope of cultural discourses. Given the significance of translation in modern culture, world literature has been part of literary history; however, the anxiety of recognition, i.e., being recognized as a creative and competent literary tradition in the world, has also been part of modern literary concerns. This study engaged Sadegh Hedayat’s works to display how he developed a poetics of modernity and responded to his peripheral condition in world literature through diverse literary creations. Hedayat’s work has an important place in the canon of modern Per- sian literature primarily because he has been an immensely influential author. Despite the diversity of his writing, however, knowledge of his work to international—and even national—readers is scant and limited to The Blind Owl. To redress this partial understanding, his short and long fiction, textual strategies, including use of humor as a critical discourse, and views on translation, adaptation, and folklore were reviewed in separate chapters to highlight the underestimated thematic aspects of his works and the complexity of his formal designs, reflecting on how

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 185 license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 O. Azadibougar, World Literature and Hedayat’s Poetics of Modernity, Canon and World Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1691-7 186 CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … various classical and modern literary traditions enriched and participated in the formation of his literary imagination. The aim has been to draw a more comprehensive image of Hedayat as a writer and to approach his writing through works that have been largely understudied so far. Historicizing his writing, I argued that his views on many subjects, such as nationalism and religion, consistently transformed; the lack of such a historical perspective is a factor that has allowed his work to be partially classified and reductively simplified. Developing his poetics of modernity, his groundbreaking fictional creations, pioneering research, use of simplified language, and the expanded field of literary representation captured aspects of the impact of modernization on Iranian culture, and narratively formalized the peripheral modernity he experienced. His sophisticated textual strategies have so far resisted criticism. His research is helpful to understand the arguments formalized in his short stories, revealing some of the resources that nurtured his imagination. The diversity of themes in his fictional work indicates a literary imagination that was creative in utter consciousness of his historical condition. The mad characters, unreliable narrators, and ironical narratives challenge the stability of the classical worldview. In many of his stories, particularly in speculative science fiction, he reflected on the impact of science on human beings and the significance of spiritual experience in defying the rationality that imposed itself on and simplified life. His critiques of science extended to the relationship between humans and the environment, and the consequences of social normativity on human beings. Despite such a diverse literary profile and rounded authorial character, the reception of Hedayat’s creative work has been simplistically reductive and limited to a tragi-romantic image. While this is very much due to his fatal suicide, the way his work was internationally recognized has played a key role in the formation of his national status. The dissemination and reception of Hedayat’s work have been regulated through institutions that have unwittingly contributed to the formation of the reductive image of a prolific writing career. In this process four factors have been influential: The translator, literary institutions, the media, and genre. To explain this process, I describe how The Blind Owl reached its international audience and recognition. Roger Lescot translated the text for the first time into another language, i.e., French. It is not clear when his translation was completed, but it had to wait until 1953 to be published in France. Lescot does not CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … 187 explain the reasons for his choice but since he knew Persian and visited Iran, he seems to have been familiar with Hedayat’s work. His choice might have been guided by a variety of factors, such as personal interest; but the fact that this text is radically different from Hedayat’s previous works was probably a decisive factor. Having translated the novel, Lescot was searching for a publisher without much success. Obviously, the com- petitiveness of the field of publication, and the fact that the author he was promoting was from a less known literary tradition had an influence on this. But Lescot was persistent. In a letter to Hassan Chahid-Nouraï, Hedayat updates him on the publication of the French version of the novel. It seems Lescot was negotiating the publication of his French translation with Grasset, a big publisher in Paris; but a Joseph Breitbach, an American journalist who was a mutual friend of the author and the translator, wrote to Hedayat to inform him that Lescot had changed his mind because the owner/director of Grasset had been sentenced, “and since it was possible that the translation of the book would disappear, he [Lescot] did not take any further actions” (Katirai 1970, 157–78; Chahid-Nouraï 2000, 155).1 Lescot was later appointed as the cultural attaché of the French Embassy in Cairo and met with the Iranian Ambassador to Egypt to attract his support for the publication of the French translation of the novel in France. The meeting did not lead to any results. After that, Lescot had the novel serialized in La Revue de Caire (1952), which was published in six installments.2 If the journal in Egypt had been the only venue the novel was published in, The Blind Owl would have had a completely different fate; it would have been either forgotten, or remained on the remote margins of global literary dissemination primarily because the journal it appeared in does not seem to have been part of an influential literary network—at least for translated literature. On the contrary, if the novel had been published by Grasset, a large and prestigious publisher in France, things might have developed completely differently.

1 These are the same letter dated 19 October 1948. In Katirai, however, the publisher mentioned is Granet which might be a spelling mistake. 2 The novel was published in consecutive issues in La Revue du Caire, with the ﬁrst part in issue 147–48 (February–March 1952) and the last part in issue 153 (October 1952); apparently no issues were published in July and August. I thank Marie-Delphine Martellière, at Centre d’Étude Alexandrines, for providing me with the information and the full text of the relevant issues. 188 CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY …

At the end, Lescot managed to have his translation published by José Corti, a small publisher focused on translated literature with a catalogue that listed important authors. The names of the publishers of both the French and the English translations of the novel were significant in giving Hedayat’s text a specific status. This is revealed in Farzaneh’s corre- spondences with Henry Miller. Farzaneh had sent Miller a script he had written based on The Blind Owl and asked him whether he could help to adapt the novel for film. Miller who had already received a French copy of The Blind Owl from an Iranian student in Paris responds: “To my surprise it had been published by my old friend José Corti. When I returned to America I was even more surprised to find that it had been published in English by two of my publishers, John Calder of London, and the Grove Press of N.Y.” What he does next is interesting: “Both editions are now exhausted, I believe, and not due to be republished, alas! I bought up as many copies as I could and have been giving them out as gifts to people I think can appreciate such an extraordinary work” (Farzaneh 1993, 517). It is highly likely that The Blind Owl had reached surrealists and particularly André Breton via José Corti’s publishing network in France, and it is through this movement that the novel received recognition and found a foothold in the history of modern literature, pigeonholed as such, achiev- ing an international status that would define and guide the national reception of the novel as well. Therefore, as other studies have also shown (Heilbron 1999; Sapiro 2016), besides the translated text, multiple other factors are involved in the process of international circulation and canonization: The accessibility of the text as a material product, the status of publishing institutions, and a network of influential literary fig- ures/institutions that would promote the translated product. Besides the role of the translator and the publisher, another factor that sustained a memory of Hedayat and consolidated his status in the national literary canon is the media, in particular radio BBC’s Persian service. Hedayat’s friend, Mojtaba Minovi, worked for the corporation and he ran an introductory program on the author and The Blind Owl. Given the influence of BBC Persian service at the time, their airtime was a significant added factor, a liminal space between the international and national, that capitalized on Hedayat’s international recognition and built a national status for the author through promoting him as a valued author. CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … 189

Adaptations of Hedayat’s works in film and other arts, as well as docu- mentaries about him, have further promoted him as a national writer with an international status.3 Genre has also played a role in the reception of Hedayat’s work in world literature. Even though a main critique of the present study has been the simplistic and reductive reception of Hedayat’s work, one has to note that the majority of his creations resist available genre categories. Consider ghazieh and his humorous writings: While linguistically, com- municating their sense of humor is difficult in translation, the referential nature of each and their humorous intentions make extensive explana- tions for a foreign reader essential. The Blind Owl, on the other hand, is a novel, has a poetic language, is minimally referential, and resists the norms of realistic fiction writing at a suitable time in the history of literature. One wonders if translations of The Pearl Cannon or Mr. Haji would have been similarly received by surrealists. These factors led to studies of Hedayat’s work, particularly after his death, at various universities in the West. If Lescot had not persisted in republishing the novel in France via a relatively prestigious publisher, it would have probably never achieved its initial status, and its canonization might have taken a completely different path. This recognition, however, came with a disadvantage. The way the novel entered world literature pri- oritized readings that conveniently pigeonholed Hedayat’s work and cat- egorized it through a ready-made label; this facilitated the participation of The Blind Owl in world literature but fixed Hedayat in that image: The surrealist writer, the tragi-romantic author. In other words, for a peripheral literary system, whereas translations of primary sources can be enrich- ing and lead to the introduction of new forms and genres, the force of critical discourses coming from more central contexts can lead to the loss of critical agency. An important side effect of this reception is that Hedayat’s short stories, though formally innovative and reflecting on a variety of subjects, have been received through the same critical lens. As a result, Buried Alive and Three Drops of Blood, which open with mysterious stories that seem to be like The Blind Owl, have been studied more often than Penumbra, which opens and ends with science fiction. Likewise, the satirical realism

3 Various directors have adapted the novel for film: Kiumars Derambakhkh (1975), Raoul Ruiz (1987), and Reza Abdoh (1992). For more information on other adaptations of the novel, as well as adaptations of other works, see IMDb. 190 CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … of Mr. Haji and the narrative carnival that is The Pearl Cannon and deliv- ers a postcolonial transnational story, have been marginal in the reception of Hedayat’s work in world literature. In this case, one novel is recognized because its codes are visible to a particular dominant critical perspective; others novels have not been received favorably. This signifies potential journeys a text from a peripheral literature could take: Be defined and classified through the dominant discourse to cir- culate in a partial way, or resist that to establish its own critical norms and be sidelined. Of course, things do not work in this clear-cut way and are often much more complicated, but given that the critical system in modern Persian has been overwhelmingly Eurocentric, these options have determined the outward circulation of Persian texts in translation. What is not easy to explain is why in modern Persian close-reading literary texts, factoring in the linguistic element, and considering the formal features have not been significant in literary criticism, particularly when such detailed readings could contradict the received idea about a specific text. This is probably a methodological issue: The established idea about a work or author, regardless of how it was formed in the first place, is not challenged through textual details, but rather further confirmed in added studies. Concluding his discussion of world poetry and the influence of translation on the national reception of a poet, Stephen Owen writes: “The international audience admires the poetry, imagining what it might be if the poetry had not been lost in translation. And the audience at home admires the poetry, knowing how much it is appreciated internationally, in translation. Welcome to the late twentieth century” (1990, 32). Even though his argument has been challenged by emphasizing the impact of international literary circulation on nurturing national poetry (e.g., Dam- rosch 2003, 19–24),4 Owen does seem to have a point in terms of the influence of international recognition on national status, as there is a sim- ilar give and take between Persian and world literature. This is eloquently analyzed by Casanova who considers “the milieu” as a determining factor in this relationship. Casanova argues that literary “prestige” depends on “a restricted and cultivated public, and an interested aristocracy or enlightened bourgeoisie; on salons, a specialized press, and sought-after publishers with distin- guished lists who compete with one another; on respected judges of

4 Damrosch cites Rey Chow’s Writing Diaspora (1993) in developing his own reading of the Bei Dao’s poetry. CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … 191 talent, whose reputation and authority as discoverers of unknown literary texts may be national or international; and, of course, on celebrated writers wholly devoted to the task of writing” (Casanova 2004, 15–16). Therefore, in the absence of a suitable milieu, consisting of critical discourses and institutions that assess literary products and promote them in the national culture, the translation of a work and its alleged reception in the world provides a prestige that is not easy to give up in Persian— due to the anxiety of recognition. This has also meant that other works cannot be read independently because the defining discourse has already been established. In short, the recognition of Hedayat’s work has been a blessing and a curse. Obviously, this also means that the developments of literary criticism, which should offer new ways to read texts, have not been able to overcome rigid frames to look at texts differently. Hedayat’s interest in science and critiques of translation, for instance, are among the factors that could have been considered in the development of Iranian modernity, in general, and literary modernity, in particular. His environmental concerns, exploration of marginality, and the impact of normativity on individu- als are also powerful critiques of the modern nation-state. But the fact that Persian literary criticism is not yet independent, and looks to other contexts, most notably Europe, for ideas and theories, means that these aspects have been muted so far. In order to explore Hedayat’s poetics of modernity, and compare his views with the work of other authors, there are many aspects of his work that could be formally examined further. The use of irony and the significance of form in his fiction, as a major difference between classical and modern poetics, is yet to be studied in detail; Hedayat uses humor as a modern element to comment on social and cultural discourses. Likewise, his use of parody and adaptation have not been well understood. Regard- less of his psychological state, these textual strategies accommodate other texts and use them in new and different ways, creating complex intertextual dialogues that render his texts more resistant to simplifying critical tools. The dominance of a romantic idea, connecting the genius of the author to his/her creativity and originality is a critical obstacle that needs to be overcome. Extended close reading of the stories that have been briefly reviewed in this study are required to highlight the alternative significations of each text, and to explore them more rigorously outside the rigid frame of received ideas; this is the only way to disassociate the influence of 192 CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY …

Hedayat’s career from a single novel. For instance, an interesting fea- ture of Hedayat’s texts is the diversity of geographical areas in his fictional work; so, whether his fiction represents the young nation-state is a question worth exploring. Similarly, there are discussions in his corre- spondences that could help us analyze his works; just as there are traces of postcolonial ideas emerging in his letters during his stay in India, his com- ments on other national and international topics in his letters would be useful in the study of his oeuvre. Such detailed examinations will balance our understanding of his fiction and research. Hedayat’s linguistic innovations are important for Persian as they pro- vide a new grammar for releasing imagination from subjugation to older, established, and more prestigious literary notions, forms, and genres. However, this linguistic innovation has itself been an impediment to the wider literary circulation of his texts: There is something local in the stories that cannot be easily transferred to global readers. This is similarly intertwined with the question of genre: While, for instance, Hedayat resists dominant genres in his ghazieh, a mixture of generic/linguistic innovation and referential satire make it difficult to communicate the text and its significance to readers from other cultural backgrounds and literary expectations. This is a serious topic for Translation Studies in Persian: How is it possible to adequately translate such texts for readers of other languages? Such investigations will pave the way for two different kinds of research. First, for revisiting classical texts to study them not as cultural documents used in the discourse of identity, but rather as literary texts that could inspire new creations. This should lead us to reconsider modern historiography in Persian and the conceived gap that allegedly exits between classical and modern literature. As I have argued, one of the pio- neers of literary modernity used classical literature as a source of inspira- tion to nurture his literary creativity. This way, reading classical literature beyond the nationalist discourse reveals imaginative texts that could be adjusted to modern needs. As such, a new history of Persian literature is needed, something that conceives of the relationship between classical and modern literatures not in terms of an inconsistency divided by a gap, but rather as a continuum defined by ideological ruptures. Further investigations of Hedayat’s work could also look beyond the text to examine the sociology of literary production in Iran, and the relationship between translated literature and original production. The transfer of ideas, their ideological transformations, the absence of strong CONCLUSION: CANONIZATION AND LITERARY … 193 institutions that regulate the literary market—and the reasons for that— and the impact of low literacy, popular culture, the rise of visual culture, and the persistent status of classical poetry in shaping the current field of literary and cultural production will tell us much not only about the reasons why Hedayat’s work has enjoyed consistent prestige in the Persian literary system, but also how the field of cultural production is struc- tured, what its rules are, and how cultural positions are distributed (see e.g., Nanquette 2020). These lines of research will undoubtedly lead to further questions that will be helpful in rethinking the philosophy of literature and science, as well as the critical tools at our disposal for literary analysis.

References

Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Translated by Malcolm DeBevoise. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chahid-Nouraï, Behzad Noël, ed. 1379 (= 2000). Hashtad-o do Nameh beh Has- san Chahid Nouraï (Eighty-Two Letters to Hassan Chahid-Nouraï). Intro- duction by Naser Pakdaman. Paris: Cheshm-Andaz. Chow, Rey. 1993. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press. Farzaneh, M. F. 1372 (= 1993). Ashenayi ba Sadegh Hedayat (Getting to Know Sadegh Hedayat). Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz. Heilbron, Johan. 1999. “Towards a Sociology of Translation: Book Translations as a Cultural World-System.” European Journal of Social Theory 2: 429–44. IMDb. n.d. Sadegh Hedayat: Writer. Website. Accessed 20 August 2019. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0373119/?ref_=tt_ov_wr Katirai, Mahmud. 1349 (= 1970). Ketab-e Sadegh Hedayat (The Book of Sadegh Hedayat). Tehran: Entesharat-e Ashraﬁ and Farzin. Nanquette, Laetitia. 2020. Iranian Literature After the Islamic Revolution and in the Diaspora. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Owen, Stephen. 1990. “What Is World Poetry?” The New Republic 19 (Novem- ber): 28–32. Sapiro, Giséle. 2016. “How Do Literary Works Cross Borders (or Not)?” Journal of World Literature 1 (1): 81–96. Index

A Arab, 33, 35, 39, 59, 79, 80, 83, About The Second Coming and Its 104, 131 Signs, 50, 165 Ardeshir Papakan’s Record, 39, 158, absurd, 95, 142–144, 153 160, 161 absurdities, 162 aristocratic, 20, 35 Academy of Persian Language and Aryan, 21, 53, 168 Literature, 3, 54, 60, 153 atheism atheistic, 96, 169 adab, 60, 65, 71, 116 Attar, 8 adaptation, x, 9, 12, 13, 15, 55, 63, Austrian, 104 78, 125, 139, 155, 156, 159–162 authority, 86, 143, 149 aesthetic, 10, 12, 16, 33, 34, 41, 55, authorial, 70, 108, 134, 141, 143 59, 60, 70, 77, 87, 99, 125, 135, authorship, 169 144, 156, 162 Afghanistan, 3 Africa, 170 B agency, viii, 69, 141 Bakhtin Alavi, Bozorg, 35, 39, 61, 81 Bakhtinian, 142, 155 Andalusia, 129, 131 carnivalization, 114, 128 Aniran, 35, 37, 46, 81 Baku, 20 Arabia, 79, 129, 131 Bangalore, 39 Arabic, 3, 20, 34, 54, 61, 115, 131, BBC, 188 146, 149, 150 Belgium, 20, 21, 172

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 195 license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 O. Azadibougar, World Literature and Hedayat’s Poetics of Modernity, Canon and World Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1691-7 196 INDEX

The Benefits of Vegetarianism, 20, 21, upward mobility, 103, 150 26, 90, 101, 146, 165, 169 close-reading, 11, 134 Berlin, 20, 21 colonialism, 109, 126, 129, 131, 132 binary, 96, 100, 179 anti-colonial, 7, 59, 83, 170 blasphemy, 34 colonial, vii, viii, ix, 13, 35, 38, 59, The Blind Owl, 10, 15, 25, 38, 40, 68, 72, 80, 82, 83, 98, 114, 44, 47, 48, 56, 58–60, 64–68, 122, 127–129, 132, 133 99, 108, 113, 114, 122, 125, coloniality, 109 126, 133, 140, 151, 154, 171, colonization, vii, 72, 130 185–189 colonizing, 131 body, 56, 62, 87 postcolonial, 39, 64, 108 body aesthetic, 87 pre-colonial, 108 Breton, André, 64, 123, 141, 188 Columbus, 129–132 Brussels, 20 comic, 34, 88, 144, 146, 151, 179 Buried Alive, 33, 84, 89, 104, 140 Comparative Literature, 4 comparative literary studies, 2, 4, 6, C 7 caliph, 82, 83, 97, 98 comparative perspectives, 4, 5 canon, 2, 8, 12, 41, 60, 66, 107, 158, comparative studies, 9 161 intercultural, ix, 7, 100 canonical, x, 9, 16, 45, 55, 60, 70, literary studies, 1 77, 125, 158, 161, 166, 168 Constitutional Revolution, 53 canonization, 14, 16, 55, 58–60, context 62, 64, 69–71 contextualizing, 65 canonizing, 125 historical context, 69, 79, 124, 135, capitalism 136 capitalist, 119, 122 corruption, 120, 122, 126 pre-capitalist, 122 corrupt, 121 underdevelopment, 72, 122 Corti, José, 188 Casanova, Pascale, 66, 68, 69, 145, Costa Rica, 129 169 Costello, D.P., 123 censorship, 4, 60 cultural identity, 3, 5, 7, 9, 55, 60, Chekhov, Anton, 34 61, 63 Chérau, Gaston, 34 children’s literature, 178 children’s story, 183 China, 38, 108, 130 D class, 19, 21, 36, 42, 62, 90, 103, da Gama, Vasco, 129 115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 126, Darolfonun, 19, 20 167, 172, 174, 179 Darwin, 93–95 class mobility, 103 Darwinism, 170 social mobility, 103, 134, 135 Dash-Akol, 56, 92, 93 INDEX 197 death, 21, 56, 60, 63, 67, 80, 81, 93, F 95, 96, 99, 101, 102, 106, 120, Fakhreddin As’ad Gorgani, 160, 161 135, 169 farangi, 53, 98 deconstructive, 125 Ferdowsi, 8, 56, 159 deconstructs, 72, 133 fictionality, 66 de Nerval, Gerard, 64 film, 37, 41, 44, 56, 151, 157 Denmark, 19 folklore, x, 14, 15, 35, 36, 39, 62, Descartes, 101, 170 72, 78, 84, 93, 116, 159, 162, dialogism 165–167, 174–177, 180, 183 dialogic, 80, 141 foreign, 4, 6, 7, 34, 35, 60, 61, 72, internal monologues, 42, 85, 87 79, 81, 82, 91, 118, 136, 149, monologic, 88 150, 153, 158 monologue, 86, 89, 105, 118, 123, foreigner, 67, 81, 83 128 xenophobic, 7 diction, 33, 62, 71 France, 19, 21, 22, 43, 65, 84, 123, didactic, 35, 85, 162, 178 156 didacticism, 60, 116, 142, 178 Frankenstein, 92 discourse, 71, 125, 137 Franklin Book Programs, 8 domestic violence, 89, 96, 135, 182 Freud, 146–148 dominance, 3, 8, 72, 83, 113, 136, Freudian, 144, 147, 148 178, 181 dominant, vii, 11, 12, 15, 56, 65, 68, 71, 72, 97, 140, 159, 179, G 180 gender, 3, 82, 101, 134, 137 Doyle, Conan, 151 female body, 87 gay, 15, 102, 103 gender equality, 3 E heteronormativity, 101, 134, 135 Egypt, 67 heterosexual, 103 Enjavi-Shirazi, 43, 71 homoerotic, 102, 134 enlightenment, 122, 182 queer, 101 epic, 56, 81, 129, 131, 133, 135, 161 sexual orientation, 100, 103 epistemological, ix, 60, 96, 108, 168, “General Plan for a Region’s Folkloric 174, 180 Research”, 174 essentialist, 96, 124 genius, 71, 119, 139 ethicality, 89, 90, 92, 108 Gent, 20, 25 ethical, 87, 90–93, 101, 103, 106, Germany, 19, 21, 53 108, 117, 129, 130 ghazieh, 125, 128, 143–145, 152, moral lessons, 142, 143, 178 162 Eurocentrism globalism, 4 Eurocentric, 9, 16, 33, 68, 127, Gogol, Nikolai, 41, 157 133 Golestan, 117 198 INDEX

Grasset, 187 imitating, 99, 149 Greece, 67 imitative, 72, 125, 149 grotesque, 34, 82, 123, 142, 182 India, 37–39, 42, 47, 66–68, 107, 108, 122, 128–130, 156 institutional, 9, 16, 27, 87, 107, 120, H 151, 173 Hafez, 8 international, viii, 2, 3, 16, 38, 64, Hassan Chahid-Nouraï, 34, 40, 42 65, 67, 68, 108, 130, 142, 146, Hedayat, Jahangir, 19, 22, 23, 44, 55, 151 93 intertextuality, 78 hegemony, ix, 1, 2, 5, 66, 135, 136, intertextual, 10, 88, 92, 116, 158 125–127, 152, 181 hekayat, 117, 142 irony, ix, 4, 37, 63, 85, 88, 93, 140, “The Hekayat with a Lesson”, 35, 46, 152–154 142 dramatic irony, 140 heroic, viii, 35, 58, 79–81, 83, 129, ironical, 85, 86, 134 159 situational irony, 85 heroism, 33, 82, 83 Islam, 13, 59, 60, 80, 87, 92, 97, historical-biographical, 10, 11, 91, 136, 160, 166 124 Islamic, 20, 41, 53, 59, 62, 65, 79, “How I Did Not Become a Poet and 97, 98, 158, 160, 177 a Writer”, 40, 153 Islamicize, 1 humanities, 1 Muslim, 33, 79, 81–83, 97, 172 Humans and Animals, 20, 169, 170 Issa Hedayat, 22, 25, 140 humor, x, 13, 19, 23, 31, 72, 127, 139–142, 151, 152, 155, 162 humorous, 13, 15, 69, 70, 86, 88, J 92, 96, 114, 127, 139–144, Jalali, Bijan, 20 151, 152–156, 162 Jamalzadeh, Mohammad Ali, 14, 40, 43, 54, 65, 117, 134, 142 Japanese, 41 I ideology, 42, 55, 72, 82, 83, 117, 121, 133, 135, 142, 160 K ideological, viii, 13, 41, 60, 62, 66, Kafka, 41, 42, 67–69, 156, 165 93, 96, 142, 156, 160, 168, Khayyam, 20, 37, 67–69, 96, 180 165–169 imagination, x, 7, 11, 16, 55, 56, 62, Khayyamic, 96 71, 72, 79, 113, 122, 133, 134, Kielland, Alexander Lange, 34 136, 139, 150, 178, 180–182 kitsch, 40, 59, 126, 142 imaginative, 35, 71, 156, 161, 178 knowledge, 16, 23, 38, 67, 99, 140, imitation, ix, 55, 91, 99, 149, 169 149, 150, 156, 168, 172, 173, copy, 35, 42, 99, 103, 167 176, 182 INDEX 199

L M “La Magie en Perse”, 21, 165, 172 madness, 85, 89, 90, 94, 96, 98–100, La Revue de Caire, 187 105, 106, 108, 135, 136 Latin, 34, 153 mad, 70, 86, 89, 92, 96, 134 Leily and Majnun, 148 madman, 85, 89, 105 Lescot, Roger, 123, 154, 182 Mahmud Hedayat, 22, 23, 25, 65, linguistic, 2, 5, 11, 12, 37, 40, 62, 63, 140 66, 71, 77, 78, 88, 99, 114–117, Mahmud, 31 126, 128, 132–134, 141, 145, marginality, 14, 93, 103 153, 162, 176 marginal, 7, 78, 87, 100, 104, 106, colloquial language, 128 108, 122, 125, 133, 136, 137, common language, 14, 37, 62, 71, 142, 156, 170 100, 118, 134 Marie Thérèse, 22 Lisbon, 129 market global market, 4 literary circulation, 7–9, 11, 16, literary market, 6, 8, 68, 152 63–65, 70, 71, 157, 162 Mas’ud Farzad, 37, 61, 143 circulated, 129, 151 Maziyar, 36, 79, 82–84, 97, 114 dissemination, viii, x, 2, 9, 71, 133, Miller, Henry, 188 151, 160 Minovi, Mojtaba, 36, 43, 61, 82, 108 literary mobility, 45 modernity, 4, 6, 15, 16, 99, 100, mobility, 8 123, 136, 137, 139, 146, 160, literary form(s), x, 8, 9, 44, 53, 60, 166, 169, 171, 174, 177, 179, 70, 71, 77, 85, 86, 91, 100, 113, 180, 183 116, 117, 125, 128, 141, 142, European modernity, vii, 6, 34, 53, 144, 146, 156–158, 162, 170, 98, 99, 103, 105 178–181, 183 Iranian modernity, viii, 99, 126, formal, ix, x, 10–12, 15, 63, 66, 77, 134, 135, 150, 167 88, 93, 100, 108, 119, 122, peripheral modernity, ix, 12, 71, 124, 132, 134, 135, 140, 141 78, 84, 96, 98, 100, 108, 128, genre, 8, 14, 41, 53, 54, 56, 61, 141, 174 64, 66, 69, 71, 134, 144, 146, modernization, vii, ix, 6, 8, 10, 13, 151, 158, 162, 175, 176, 178, 19, 33, 53–56, 66, 71, 84, 99, 179, 183 100, 108, 117, 119, 126, 128, literary modernity, 14, 27, 67–70, 134, 135, 148, 152, 153, 161, 126, 145, 146 176, 177, 180, 181 literary system, 8, 9, 151 modernizing, 53, 54, 66, 78, 81, literati, 37, 62, 68, 145, 152, 166, 90, 93, 100, 136, 166, 176, 169, 180 180 literary establishment, 60 Mohammad Golbon, 55 London, 43 The Mongol Shadow, 35, 79, 81 Lukacs, Georg, 177 Monteil, Vincent, 65 200 INDEX

Mr. Haji, 40, 41, 83, 103, 113, Nobel Prize, 69, 144, 145, 151 117–122, 127 normativity, 87, 103, 136, 170 Ms. ’Alaviyeh, 36, 64, 113–116, normative, 62, 166, 178 118–120 novelistic, 66, 113, 148, 159 Musiqi magazine, 39, 152 Mysore, 39 My Uncle Napoleon, 132 O occidentalist, 128, 154 omniscience, 85 N omniscient, 86 Napoleon, 129 Operation Ajax, 132 naqqali, 115 oral, 35, 39, 44, 78, 88, 93, 125, Natel-Khanlari, Parviz, 13 152, 156, 159, 165, 167, 175, nation 176, 178, 179, 181, 182 national, viii, 3–7, 14, 16, 35, 36, orientalist, 64, 69, 149, 167 54, 55, 59–61, 64, 67, 71, Owsaneh, 35, 88, 175, 176 72, 79, 82, 122, 132, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152, 166, 169, 176–182 P nationalism, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 21, 35, Pahlavi, x, 15, 20, 38, 39, 41, 78, 97, 36, 38, 41, 59, 72, 82–84, 97, 104, 150, 156–161, 165, 180 109, 122, 124, 176 Pahlavi University, vii nationalist, 16, 21, 35, 36, 42, 55, Paris, 21, 23, 25, 33, 42, 43, 65, 67, 59, 60, 68, 78–83, 91, 100, 68, 79, 84, 107, 132 117, 121, 124, 133, 136, 156, parochialism, 6 158, 166, 168 parody, 141, 142, 144 nationalistic, 16, 33, 61, 124, 133 irreverent, 126, 132 national literature, 5, 9, 12, 55, 60, parodic, 10, 11, 15, 37, 40, 130, 65, 139, 141, 158 135, 140–145, 154 nation-building, 5, 6, 33, 60, 78, parodies, 37, 72, 78, 128, 162 79, 83, 100, 153, 169 patriarchal, 146 nation-state, 5, 53, 54, 59, 117 The Pearl Cannon, 13, 15, 40, 42, patriotic, 82, 118, 176 44, 64, 83, 113, 114, 126, 128, nativism, 4, 6, 9, 62 132, 133, 140, 149 nativist, viii, 11, 63, 181 peripheral, 3, 6, 69, 71, 132, 133, “New Method in Literary Research”, 145, 148, 151 40, 154 peripherality, 6, 91, 136 “New Styles in Persian Poetry”, 40, periphery, 67, 69 153 Persian Gulf, 129 Neyrangestan, 36, 93, 175, 177 Persian Tales, 39, 47, 175, 177 nihilism, 59, 60, 70, 157, 168 Pezeshkzad, Iraj, 132 nihilist, 165 philosophy, ix, 20, 70, 97, 119, 145, nihilistic, 70, 71, 77, 88, 134 168, 170, 172, 183 INDEX 201 platonic, 56, 107, 135, 148, 161 religious, 1, 3, 34, 38, 41, 59, 60, plurilingual, 2 67, 68, 70, 87, 89, 91–93, 96, Poe, 63, 126 97, 105, 107, 114–117, 126, poetics, x, 10–12, 14, 15, 35, 36, 55, 128–130, 135, 136, 148, 150, 56, 58, 61, 62, 65, 70, 71, 84, 156, 159, 160, 161, 165, 168, 85, 91, 93, 100, 108, 116, 120, 169, 171, 172, 177, 181 134, 141, 142, 144, 146, 161, religious spirituality, 13, 86, 91, 179 134, 135 poetics of modernity, x, 11, 13, 15, representation, 2, 6, 34, 35, 62, 64, 60, 69, 71, 72, 78, 109, 114, 87, 97, 99, 126, 142, 159, 182 133, 155, 159, 161, 166 revolutionary, 4, 8, 54, 56, 58, 103, Portugal, 130 120, 169 progress, 53, 54, 90, 93, 119, 122, Reza Shah, 53, 55, 66, 119 146, 169–171 The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam, 45, psychoanalytical, 10, 11, 124 167 psychological, 11, 87, 88, 90, 92, 97, The Songs of Khayyam, 47, 167 99, 124, 127, 134, 135, 140, Russia, 104 141 S sab’eh, 61 Q Sa’di, 8, 117 qasideh, 120, 144–146 Sartre, 42, 61, 156 qesseh, 175–177, 182 satire, 13, 37, 64, 141 ridicule, 129, 144, 149, 154, 155, 179 R satiric, 33, 38, 40, 41, 78, 99, 125, rab’eh, 61 126, 140, 141, 144, 147, 150, rationality, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98, 108, 152, 154, 162 123, 135, 148, 174, 177 satirical, 23, 31, 36, 70, 125, 127, irrational, 89, 90, 92, 135, 144 130, 140, 146, 153 rationalization, 179 satirize, 37, 142, 152 rationalized, 121, 180 Schnitzler, Arthur, 34 Razmara, Haj Ali, 20 science, ix, 1, 38, 86, 91, 94, 95, 104, realism, 64, 87, 128, 135 128, 167, 169, 171, 173, 177, realistic, 64, 71, 86, 87, 135, 148, 179 156, 159–161, 175, 180, 182 scientific, viii, 36, 59, 64, 70, 86, rebellion, 25, 83, 97, 98, 141, 168 92, 93, 95, 96, 116, 128, 134, recognition, 2, 3, 5, 10, 14, 67–69, 135, 154, 158, 173, 174, 179, 133, 142, 146, 151, 176 181 religion scientific rationality, 13, 70, 86, 91, anti-religious, 33 94, 95, 116, 123, 134, 135, religiosity, 87, 119 171, 177 202 INDEX science fiction, 93, 94, 134, 135, 137, tragic, 117 178 translation, x, xii, xiii, 6–9, 14–16, 20, secular, 15, 59, 69, 72, 117, 127, 34, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46–50, 54, 133, 148, 150, 156, 162 55, 65, 67–69, 71, 77, 78, 88, self-reflexive, 175, 176 94, 98, 116, 123, 133, 139, 148, Shiite, 114, 115, 171 150, 155–160, 162, 165–167, Shin Partow, 35, 37, 81 182, 185–191 Sokhan magazine, 152 translated into, 10, 44, 133, 152, spirituality, 70, 85, 91, 95, 96, 108, 181 148 translator, 10, 40, 43, 80, 150, spiritual, 56, 62, 86, 91, 93, 96, 154, 157 98, 107, 108, 115–117, 135, transnational, 3, 9, 15, 61, 64, 72, 136, 171, 172, 174, 176, 177 128, 132 “The Story of Coquetry”, 40, 154 Transoxiana, 130 The Stray Dog, 40, 100 triangulation, 104 subversive, 97, 130, 136, 139, 153 love triangle, 91 Sufism triangulate, 90, 103, 136 Sufi, 91, 135 triangulated, 70, 91, 92, 100, 104, Sufist, 107 108, 136 suicide, 16, 22, 23, 56, 58, 64, truth, 56, 58, 61, 66, 71, 85, 87, 67–69, 77, 85, 86, 90, 92, 95, 120, 130, 133 104, 105, 107, 108, 124, 127 superstition, 37, 87, 93, 96, 119, 175, 177 U surrealism, 10, 64, 65, 123 unreliable narrator, 33, 85, 86, 88, surreal, 64, 70, 152, 182 143 Switzerland, 43, 95 unreliable character, 86 unreliable narrativity, 86 urban, 103, 104, 134 T USA, 132 Tajikistan, 3 American, vii, 8, 63, 154 Tchaikovsky, 23, 165 Uzbekistan, 3, 41, 43 Tehran, 19, 20, 24, 26, 37, 43, 84, 103, 118, 129 The Thousand and One Nights, 182 V theory, 1, 133, 166, 177 Vagh Vagh Sahab, 37, 69, 78, 125, theorize, 2, 14 140, 141, 143, 148, 151 Three Drops of Blood, 171 Veis and Ramin, 41, 125, 160, 161 Three Drops of Blood, 36, 88, 89, 93 tragic, 67, 68, 101 tragi-romantic, ix, 10, 11, 14, 44, 56, W 58, 69–71, 77, 80, 136, 139, “The Wandering Nightingale”, 42, 141, 162, 165, 183 181, 182 INDEX 203

“The Water of Life”, 40, 181 Y Watt, Ian, 179 Yadegar-e Jamasp, 41, 48, 165 world literature, x, 1–10, 12–14, 16, Yushij, Nima, 65 20, 41, 45, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 125, 126, 133, 137, 139, 141, 145, 146, 155–158, 160, 166, Z 168, 175, 178, 180 Zarathustra, 21, 97, 172, 173 World War I, 104 Zoroastrian, 83, 96, 160, 177 World War II, 118 Zoroastrianism, 59, 172