Rethinking World Literature from Moby Dick to Missing Soluch By Amirhossein Vafa A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield February 2015 ii! ! Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of Dr. Duco van Oostrum. Were it not for his encouragements, I would not have fallen for Melville’s subversive imagination, and Fedallah would never be reborn. This, preceding all future accomplishments, goes to Duco—the Captain of my Pequod! I would like to thank the many brilliant minds at the University of Sheffield School of English who have supported my work-in-progress in the past four years, Dr. Rachel van Duyvenbode, Dr. Richard Steadman-Jones, and Professor Adam Piette. I am equally indebted to my mentors Dr. Roksana Bahramitash and Ms. Goli Emami in my development as a young scholar. I specially thank editors at esteemed journals Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Middle East Critique, and Persian Literary Studies Journal for providing the platform to publish my research, and granting permission to reproduce them here. On a personal note, I dedicate this thesis to my loving parents Mohammadnabi Vafa and Mahindokht Kashfi, who have morally and financially supported my decisions. Last but not least, I stand by my better half Sepideh Gandomi, the power of my heart and the love of my life. ! iii! Abstract of Thesis This thesis stems from interlocking sites of local and global inequalities that span from the public to cultural realms. Considering the US-Iranian relations, and America’s geopolitical presence in the Persian Gulf since the Cold War, my literary study concerns a world order of core-periphery divides that chart the global circulation of travelling texts. Within this process of establishing “national” and “world texts,” silenced are subordinate characters whose untold stories read against the grain of institutional World Literature. Towards an egalitarian cross-cultural exchange, therefore, I examine works of fiction and cinema across a century and two oceans: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Esmail Fassih’s The Story of Javid, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s Missing Soluch, and Amir Naderi’s film The Runner. In contention with the widespread Eurocentric treatments of world literatures, and in recognition of radical efforts to reimagine the worldliness of American and Persian literatures respectively, I maintain that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies. Bridging two literary worlds, then, I introduce the Parsee Fedallah as a figure whose significant role has been subdued in Melville scholarship. To retrieve his unheard voice, or “proleptic narrative,” is to de-territorialize an American master-text, and to bring the character to his Persian literary and cinematic counterparts in a subversive practice of Comparative Literature. In effect, lived experiences of Fassih’s Javid (a Zoroastrian national trope) and Dowlatabadi’s Mergan (a marginalized rural woman) are “proleptic” articulations of Fedallah’s voice in Iranian fiction. In-between Melville’s outward “sea” and Fassih and Dowlatabadi’s inward “land” is an alternative space in which the border-crossing of fictional characters enable counter- hegemonic cartographies. In conclusion, by virtue of his creative conflict with Melville, Naderi’s Amiru points at the silver screen as a visual realm of new possibilities beyond the monopoly of an expansive World Literature. iv! ! Note on Transliterations For transliterations of Persian into English, I have adhered to the Library of Congress scheme for romanization without diacritical marks. Names of authors (Esmail Fassih, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi) and characters (Soluch, Mergan, etc.) appear following the works’ English translations. Unless noted otherwise, translations of Persian-language sources into English are mine, including extracts from original copies of Missing Soluch and The Story of Javid. ! v! List of Figures 1.1 Munis in Shirin Neshat’s Women without Men 4 2.1 “America—the Real Center of the World” as imagined by 46 Ishmael; Library of Congress 2.2 “Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail,” 67 illustrated by Patrick Benson; courtesy of Walker Books 2.3 “Take another pledge, old man,” illustrated by Benson 86 2.4 Mahmoud Dowlatabadi paying homage to Moby-Dick; courtesy 97 of Melville House 3.1 “Map of Persia” (1886); British Library 105 3.2 United States’ military bases encircling Iran; Aljazeera (Piven) 106 3.3 Achaemenid griffin on the jacket of The Story of Javid 137 4.1 “The Voyage of the Pequod,” illustrated by Everett Henry; 157 Library of Congress 4.2 “Fedallah and Mergan,” illustrated by Sepideh Gandomi 159 4.3 Translations of Moby-Dick and Missing Soluch, illustrated by 161 Gandomi 4.4 Southern Khurasan landscape; ISNA (Khamooshi) 192 4.5 Lut desert in Eastern Iran; ISS the International Space Station 198 4.6 Ahab on his boat without Fedallah 208 5.1 Amiru, calling out “Hey!” to an oil tanker 209 5.2 Amiru, frequenting the airport 217 5.3 Amiru’s solitary quarters 218 5.4 Amiru takes “another pledge,” and the crew survives 223 5.5 Closing shot of The Runner 224 vi! ! Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract of Thesis iii Note on Transliterations iv List of Figures v Table of Content vi 1) Towards a Reading of Moby-Dick beyond Tehran 1 Back to the Future 1 Departing a World Republic of Letters 5 Transcending the West 11 Rethinking World Literature from American Literature to 15 Persian Adab Rehearsal of Arguments 27 2) Call Me Fedallah: Reading a Proleptic Narrative in Moby-Dick 41 Whaling Voyage by One Parsee 41 The Subordinate Phantom 51 Bound Round the World! 57 Meeting the Devil in Disguise 64 Call Me Fedallah 80 Chapter Summary 95 3) Call Him Javid: Limning Iranian Manhood in The Story of Javid 99 Relocating a Proleptic Narrative 99 Outward Sea, Inward Land 104 From Fedallah to Javid: An Original Iranian Manhood 110 Call Me Esmail 123 On the Road 128 Qajar Tehran 134 Chapter Summary 148 ! vii! 4) Call Her Mergan: Breaking the Silence of Missing Soluch 152 Binding a Proleptic Narrative 152 Retrieving a Defiant Subject 162 A Tale of Three Women 174 God’s Land: Mergan’s Poetics of Defiance 185 Chapter Summary 205 5) Amiru’s Pledge: A Melvillean Vision from Iran to America 209 On the Waterfront 209 A Melvillean Vision 211 Run, Amiru, Run! 215 Bibliography 225 ! Chapter 1 Towards a Reading of Moby-Dick beyond Tehran Back to the Future In chapter 89 of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, “Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,” the narrator Ishmael speaks of a circumstance amongst whalers when “a whale may be struck by one vessel; then escape, and be finally killed and captured by another vessel” (446). To avoid conflict in such matters, American fishermen, who “have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter,” decree that a “Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it” while a “Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it” (ibid). Never content with the literal significance of his observations, of course, the loquacious Ishmael proceeds to allegorize this simple doctrine of whaling capitalism by thinking in terms of the world that Ahab’s vessel is bound to explore and exploit: What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to Czar? What Greece to the Turks? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish. (MD 449) Sitting as sole survivor of the Pequod’s wreck at the heart of a Great American Novel, Ishmael incorporates the antebellum ideology of Manifest Destiny (to embrace “Mexico” as the “United States”) into “the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World” (MD 449). To his mind, which has already been granted the epistemic power of the pen to speak what his heart desires, the human condition itself is a “Loose-Fish” that will sooner or later be harpooned by an overpowering party. At last, looking us readers in the eye, the flamboyant Ishmael flags “the great globe itself” as a fair game and asks: “what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?” (ibid). Because the following pages on American and Persian fiction are immersed in what the novelist Chad Harbach calls “a thriving cult of 2 Introduction Melvilleania” (62), I could not as a reader with Iranian background ignore Ishmael’s words when I first opened Kermit Roosevelt’s Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. An account of the adventures of a CIA agent and Cold Warrior during the summer of 1953 in Iran, where Theodor Roosevelt’s grandson was conspiring alongside Muhammad Riza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941–1979) to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq in the Operation AJAX, Countercoup is chillingly dedicated to “the long-standing friendship between the Iranian and American people and to its continuation, albeit under different circumstances” (iv). Treating his Iranian reader as a Fast-Fish, Roosevelt is by “different circumstances” referring to Stalinist communism, which then seemed to threaten Iran from its northern neighbor the Soviet Union. More interesting parallels surface as we tap into Roosevelt’s diaries against the canonical backdrop of Moby-Dick during the Cold War—the time when Melville’s magnum opus was thought, quite surprisingly, to celebrate Ishmael’s liberal values against Ahab’s totalitarianism (Spanos 33). As Roosevelt emerges to share Ishmael’s haughty idealism, post-1953 Iranians symbolize the Pequod’s crew as they stood in horror, witnessing the Shah reinstating his claim to power.