The Purpose of This Chapter Is Not, in Spite of Its Title, to Engage

CHAPTER FIVE LITERARY CANONIZATION The purpose of this chapter is not, in spite of its title, to engage theoretical issues of literary canonization but rather to focus on the specific case of the reception and subsequent canonization of Sadeq +HGD\DW¶VBuf-e Kur (The Blind Owl). My purpose is to pinpoint and furtheU WKH SUHYLRXV FKDSWHUV¶ DUJXPHQWV DQG WR DVVHVV WKH FULWLFDO discourse which has dealt with the novel in Persian to date. The Blind Owl is an ideal candidate for our meta-critical purposes because it is one of the rare novels in Persian that has received abundant critical attention and, therefore, reviewing its reception gives us access to the sum total of critical discourses applied to the novel in Persian. What is more, this novel lends itself to interpretation in the light of the SUHYLRXV FKDSWHUV¶ DUJXments, which are not merely theoretical discussions in the abstract but capable of defining a practical framework for dealing with the novel in Persian to reassert the significance and autonomy of literary discourse in modern Iran. The Blind Owl Sadeq Hedayat was born in 1903 in an elite family in Tehran, where he attended the first modern Iranian school established based on European models, the Darolfonun,1 as well as the French Catholic school, Collège Saint-Louis ,Q DV SDUW RI WKH ,UDQLDQ VWDWH¶V development plans and along with a group of other students, he was sent abroad on a scholarship to study in Belgium. Before long and unhappy with his stay there, he changed his field of study and moved to Paris. In 1927 and after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, he returned to Iran without a degree and took up various jobs to maintain himself; but he would not keep any for too long. 1 The school was established in 1851 with the main purpose of training students in technical fields. Language education was part of its curriculum and led, among other things, to a later proliferation of translations from European literatures. 102 The Persian Novel Even though Hedayat had started writing before leaving to study in Europe, it was actually after his return to Iran that he took his writing career more seriously and published research papers in literary magazines, rendered translations and wrote fiction. His non-fictional writing involves critical pieces on a range of topics like folklore culture, Khayyam, Kafka, and vegetarianism. He translated modern European literature, mainly from French, and introduced the works of Kafka, Sartre and Chekhov, among others, into the Persian literary system. In 1937, he traveled to India and studied ancient Persian languages and translated some ancient texts from Pahlavi into modern Persian. His fiction is composed in various genres and includes a number of minor plays as well as satirical pieces, short stories and novels. Of his short story collections one could mention Zendeh be Gur (Buried Alive, 1930), Seh Qatreh Khun (Three Drops of Blood, 1932), and Sag-e Velgard (The Stray Dog, 1942). His major satirical pieces are Vagh Vagh Sahab (Mr Bow Wow, 1934), written in collaboration with Masµud Farzad, and Tup Morvari (The Pearl Canon, 1947). His novels are limited to Buf-e Kur (The Blind Owl, 1937) and Hajji Aqa (Mr Hajji, 1945). In spite of his prolific writing career, Hedayat could not make a living from his translations or original writings. While this was partly due to low literacy rates and reading habits in Iran, one cannot ignore the fact that he was a significant part of a modernizing force that was very much resisted and marginalized by the literati at the time.2 In any case, as a person Hedayat is a cult figure in modern Iranian culture not only because of his fatal eventual suicide in Paris in 1951 but also because of his rebellious and uncompromising character which struggled to remain independent during politically unstable times, even despite the poverty he suffered in his life. The significant impact of Hedayat on modern Persian literature is not due to his character but a result of his creativity as a writer of fiction, which climaxes in The Blind Owl, debatably known as the first modern novel in Persian.3 The novel was first published in India, 2 During the first decades of the twentieth century, traditional-minded literati who dominated the literary and cultural scene were a group of scholars known as sabµeh, ³7KH 6HYHQ´ 0RFNLQJ WKHP +HGD\DW IRUPHG D JURXS DORQJ ZLWK OLNH-minded authors like Masµud Farzad, Mojtaba Minovi and Sadeq Chubak, which called itself rabµeh³7KH)RXU´ 3 The life of the novel in Persian prior to The Blind Owl is short. For a very brief survey of the history of the novel in Persian, see Chapter Seven. .

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