Conclusion: Canonization and Literary Dissemination

Conclusion: Canonization and Literary Dissemination The study of world literature is significant to Persian literature and con- temporary 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 over- come 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 dis- course, 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 representa- tion 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.

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