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WRITING READING

From the very start, my relationship with writing has been difficult, convoluted, involuntary, and unavoidable.  Such was not the case with reading, which always has been generously open to me as a garden promising a pleasant promenade whenever I wanted it. Neither demanding nor dominant, reading gives me a comfort zone, whereas writing challenges me constantly whether or not I’m ready. But, despite their contradictory functions in my life, writing and reading are interwoven and inseparable.

            The connection between reading and writing began to be revealed gradually in my twenties when, almost secretly, I realized I had an irrepressible need to write out the stories inside me amid a life tangled in social turbulence, political repression, war-time horrors, and personal problems. Learning about this connection didn’t lead to, on one hand, any immediate easy perception of the complicated interrelations and interactions between writing and reading and, on the other, between them and myself as a writer.    

From my pre-school years in a small working-class town on the shores of the Caspian Sea, I don’t recall libraries, books, or magazines, either at home, kindergarten, or the school where I took Grade One.  Nor do I remember story-telling then. But luckily my young parents, the lovely young washing woman whose weekly company around a big copper basin full of foaming, steaming water and dirty laundry I enjoyed a lot, the old Jewish neighbour who was our babysitter and my mother’s mentor in child-rearing, and the house keeper who lived with us to be less harassed by her nasty husband, all used stories to tame a restless little girl. At the time, my future story provider, grandma, lived far away.  

Then we moved to Tehran, where I could spend time with my grandmother, who enjoyed pampering her first granddaughter and entertaining her with as many stories as she wanted. She, as a traditional school teacher, wasn’t ignorant about age appropriateness. However, when telling folk tales or something she’d read somewhere, she barely bowdlerized.  Listening to the radio, whether children’s or adult programs, was another way to quench my thirst for stories. In Tehran as well, I was able to buy children’s magazines and books and take in anything readable stuff that came to my way. I don’t think I read any notable children’s books or one of the classics. As a bookworm, I read everything, but what really fascinated me were serial stories in magazines to which my parents subscribed, sometimes historical stories full of intrigues, often stories whose impoverished plot was an innocent beautiful girl becoming a prostitute because of bad guys and eventually rescued by an exceptionally good lover. This was, more or less, the vulgar counterpart of the folk tales’ familiar plot – a poor beautiful girl, captive of evil guys, rescued by a Prince. Interestingly, those were years in which one commercial trend in the Iranian film industry, “FilmFarsi”, was inundated with banal versions of a favourite plot – the love between partners from two extremes of social status. 

My teens were the years in all my life when I read with most freedom, and as well in the most relaxed and random way.  Certainly, my grandmother could no longer help. Trusting me, my parents left me free to choose what I my read. The only exception was when I was fourteen, and my father caught me reading “Buf-e Kur” (“The Blind Owl”), the masterpiece of the most prominent contemporary Iranian writer, Sadeq Hedayat, who’d committed suicide in Paris a year or two before my birth. My father advised me that a suicidal writer could have depressing effects on young adults. This was all he’d heard or read about Hedayat. Getting the message in my own way, I went to my grandmother’s house, and read the novel in the desirable solitude she and her place offered me.         As in childhood I kept reading materials written for adults. I grabbed any book I could find on relatives’ bookcases, in libraries, or bookstores. My high school teachers, confining their instruction to a fossilized presentation of Persian classics with emphasis on grammar and vocabulary, failed to invoke any desire for literature. To be fair, I do recall that a newly hired young Grade Eight teacher, introduced Forugh Farrokhzad, the great contemporary poet, on the day she was killed in a car accident. In fact, she did it unintentionally. She’d come to class with eyes full of tears and when her nosy pupils importunately demanded to know what had upset her, said for the first time a few words about a  famous contemporary. Overall, my literature teachers helped me to realize that I had no talent or desire to pursue academic literary studies, that I valued science in general and mathematics in particular rather than their stereotypical humanities packages, and that I had to find my own way to world literature by myself. Learning this wasn’t by any means disappointing. On the contrary, I was happily proud to be an independent autodidact. Years later I learned the disadvantages of not having an advisor or a systematic reading plan. My big regret is that I read some masterpieces at a time when I was unable to absorb them, and later re-reading them wasn’t enough. This aside, I joyfully plunged into world literature. Shifting from Russian to French to English to German to American, I concentrated on works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Other than Hedayat, who uniquely charmed me, the great European and American writers of the last two centuries extremely appealed to me.  Coming to terms with modern Persian literature happened only later in my university years.  The main gate to world fiction, especially short stories, was the prestigious literary periodicals and anthologies that flourished in the 1960s. Furthermore, my serious intention to learn English privately in British Council classes directed me to a  new ocean of material.

During my school years, despite my constantly growing love for reading, no trace of a serious interest in writing came. The composition class, in which students were supposed to learn how to write, was either stressful or boring. Thinking about compulsory writing on a pre-determined topic inside a time limit itself made me nervous. I disliked conventional topics like “What’s your favourite season?” or “What are the benefits of sheep?” or “Science or Wealth? Which one is better?” I had zero tolerance for so-called literary subject matter, because I had no talent for writing what seemed to me redundant nonsense. While the topic required logical thinking and argument, I felt comfortable enough to put pen to paper, though, even in this case, the fact that writing was not an option hindered me from enjoying it.  Moreover, unlike many teen-agers, I didn’t write journals. My writing adventure only consisted of a sudden unexpected urge to write a story-like text. This only occurred once or twice as an involuntary reaction or impression, and after a while I threw the result into the wastepaper basket. Years later, during my first university years, the urge overwhelmingly returned, maybe because university disappointed me. This time I immediately knew how serious it was. It was absolutely out of my control. I had a very clear physical reaction: I felt something inside me, not only in mind but in body too, that forcefully sought a way out. I would wander around the campus, day after day, looking for a corner out of people’s sight to write chapters of a novel. The result of this second attack, although obtained easily and almost automatically, was also added to the trash bin. In discarding it, I wanted to see if the compulsion was strong enough to come back to me again. Besides, I convinced myself there could be no regret in ditching the manuscript of a first novel because I now felt that I could write anytime I liked.

Such was the start of my writing odyssey, a process of laborious effort and emotional ups and downs that has never been satisfactory, despite its occasional pleasures. When I realized that it was inevitable, I started to educate myself through methods tailored to my own needs and interests. Besides my constant search for gems of world literature, I found Persian literature. As eclectic as before, this time I gave myself rules and disciplined myself to get the most of my reading. This added a new dimension and function. Doubtless what I’d read before had educated me indirectly. But now I was aware of the learning process. Gradually, for the benefit of writing, I developed a second reader inside myself. While the first reader simply searched for the “joy of reading”, the second one was a student industriously looking for learning materials. The second reader’s goal was to discover the deep source of the first reader’s joy. In doing that, she had to be an up-to-date, well-read reader, with sufficient knowledge about language, culture, literature, and other subjects; yet, first and foremost, she was to probe into the variations and forms of narratives to recognize their parts and details and to understand their structural unity. The achievements of the second reader were only a means to an end, the development of the first reader’s sensibility.

This aside, another great function of reading has been its ability to inspire, essential to my fiction writing. Whether inspiration, the holy spark, comes from a mysterious source, or from the way something happens to you, is unclear to me. Whether it is a divine blessing, or a simple probability among infinite ones, I’d like to see it as an exquisite butterfly that alights on me, sometimes for a moment, sometimes as long as it can find a secure place in a corner of my mind to make its cocoon. But what are these butterflies? An image, a sound, a scent, a touch, or a taste. Or even a simple letter or word. It might be a real scene, a concrete event, a tangible thing, or something completely imaginary. Whatever it is, it comes from the world outside me, from nature and its inhabitants, from others, either their realities or their imaginations. Thus, others’ writings are where I may hunt butterflies for my own.

I tend to believe that one can’t write about life without living it. However, a writer like Borges proves that, for some writers, reading might be the most vigorous action and actual adventure, something that can replace, or be, real-life experience. My personal experience demonstrates my strong need to live with my all capacity and calibre. Yet I cannot ignore how forcefully some of my readings preoccupy my mind, and in fact occupy my life. Through the years of pleasure and challenge, reading has revealed interesting aspects of its role, from the informative to the educative, from provoking thought to motivation and inspiration. Nonetheless, as a born day-dreamer, what fascinates me most is the impact of my reading of narratives on my mind. That some stories, read once, keep living with me and in me, always surprises me. Sometimes I attribute their high impact to their quality, and rate them thus. But I sense that there are other unknown factors probably not pertinent to their quality. Regardless of any judgment, what matters is that these narratives, or in many cases, vestiges of influential stories, are active parts of my intellectual life in a way that I can claim that I’ve lived them. They are neither data filed and stored in my mind’s drawers, nor mere recollections. Whether they are a scene, an image, a gesture, a dialogue, or a character, they are as alive as their counterparts in my own writings.

This leads me not to discriminate between the characters created by other writers and by myself. In terms of the present, some characters from my readings are more alive than characters in my writings. Sometimes I doubt if a character comes from my reading or from my writing. I may not remember the names of their creators. In the world they live in, the creators have no importance or dignity. The coexistence of all these characters gives me the pleasure of sharing myself with others as well as sharing others with myself. One may say that it manifests our undeniable need for each others’ imagination and intellects. It also proves that the realm of our imaginative world, literature and art, is a land without borders where I’d like to live and die, not only with my fantasies but in the actual act of writing and reading.

First published in Arabesques Review,  July 2007

[Originally written in English]

LITERARY SELF-DISCLOSURE AND THE FEMALE DISCLOSER

Without denying or underestimating the sophisticated relationship between writers and critics, as well as creative writing and criticism, let me first note that I express my ideas mainly as a reader who happens to be a writer.  Abdicating critical responsibility, my views are primarily based on my speculation and experience as a reader/writer rather than on studies on the subject.  I will attempt to briefly explore and illustrate the notion of self-disclosure within literature and its part in the body of a literary work, the interplay of writer and work in the light of it, and the relationship between the woman writer and writing as self-disclosure. The paper will be focused on Forugh Farrokhzad as a poetess who has so far exemplified best the female discloser in the scene of modern Persian literature.

 

In the pre-modern era disclosure had no positive social value.  In fact, neither did it have a social function, nor a distinct role in social interactions.  Patriarchal culture and pre-bourgeois economic, and monarchic political power could not successfully operate outside a well-established context based on tradition and common law.  The institutional structure of society was founded on a traditional culture fed by a homologous ethics.  This ethics nourished, supported, and propagated confidentiality and secrecy.  Politics and religion, as well as economics, had such guarantors.  Needless to say, the different constituents of a social system like this one had to follow a strict pattern of harmony and homophony; otherwise it would move towards disorganization and decomposition.  As a component of the system, secrecy was a subcategory of fidelity and loyalty in an extensive spectrum covering political, social, and economic perspectives as well as cultural and ethical ones.  The whole body of rules and regulations, along with the whole body of beliefs, disowned any violations of fidelity.    Diligently making efforts to sanctify secrecy, the dominant ethics made disclosure of facts and events severely limited.

 

Among the many differences between the past and the present, I can highlight a few. In politics we now have the system of democracy, which I broadly interpret to cover all its functions and implications. Globalization has brought an urgent need for accessible information. Media saturates social and private life. Psychiatry in general and psychotherapy in particular, pervade contemporary life.  Since monopolization of political power in theory, if not in practice, fallen into disrepute, fidelity and secrecy fail to sustain their old vigour.  On the other hand, one fundamental requirement of the information age is the constant flow of information.  Without a huge production of information, computer technology loses its food source.  The growth of technology and proliferating information in turn generates an ever-increasing number of information seekers.  The high demand for information, along with the incredible load of information and the inevitable progression of communication technology, calls for incessant revelations of facts and events.  Consequently, secrecy is in continual danger of annihilation.  Here the media brings into the limelight political scandals, economic secrets and financial frauds, the private life of celebrities, and sensational crimes.  Secrets are no longer under wraps, nor do they wear their old halo.

 

Cultural changes, along with socioeconomic upheavals, gives new, if not opposite, definitions to old concepts of secrecy and privacy, as well as new ideas and perceptions.  On the whole, culture is the field of changing images of essentially stable human states and conditions.  One changing image, among others, is that of privacy. There is an astonishing insistence on revealing what had been kept hidden in the past.  Privacy is a relative concept that changes according to general elements like place and time, as well as individual factors like personal attitudes.  Hence the differences between western and eastern approaches towards this issue remain salient.  Although, for example, speaking of personal sexual matters is taboo, not only in underdeveloped Asian countries, but also in Japan, we are overwhelmed by all forms of sex-related matters in the West.  Significantly, ordinary people, not only celebrities, reveal sexual secrets on talk shows. The Western attitude has spread across the world.  Psychoanalysis, which put weight on the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind as a therapeutic method, changed the semantic load of “disclosure” and simultaneously maximized its applications, functions, and implications.  

 

The focus of secrecy and disclosure has now shifted.  Within the wired time frame, contemporary individuals have learned to be concerned about the secrecy of their incomes, despite the fact that they are not unaware that not only government departments, banks, financial companies, but even low-ranking employees of marketers have easy access to all the details of this age’s holy secret.  Although reluctant to be open with their lovers, they are willing to divulge the most hidden aspects of their sex life, either in psychotherapy sessions or in front of live audiences and TV viewers.  Individuals, citizens of an information-glutted global village, assume themselves entitled to be informed about anything concerning of all other inhabitants of the planet, yet keep themselves away from any attempt to socialize with their neighbours –  if  they are even familiar with their faces.  Having been saturated by the trivial details of private life of celebrities and the characters of soap operas, serials, movies, and best sellers, they are incapable of pondering a fellow commuter’s appearance on a bus or subway.   Contemplating a nearby person’s condition, situation, health, or mood violates privacy, whereas probing into famous people’s personal affairs in not only legitimate but also encouraged – chiefly because it meets the market’s requirements.  Indeed, the dweller of the post-modernist world has the undeniable privilege of potentially accessing any possible data about any possible subject matter while being exhausted from the non-stop rapid treadmill of never-ending changes and tangled in a labyrinth of infinite information. Thus he or she misses the chance to probe into the rare rich moments of human contacts that provide entry across the threshold of the inner self. 

 

Socially, disclosure has an inevitable impact upon the literary scene of a historical period because social ideas and perceptions constitute a significant portion of human identity – either of the writer or reader, or each and all characters in a literary work.  Although this effect is not a minor one, it functions indirectly by involving in the formation of mind and mentality rather than by playing a frontal role. It should also be noted that disclosure’s function is not restricted to this covert task.  In a specific period one or other aspects might be temporarily highlighted and assume a different role and function.  What I hope to shed light on is the side of disclosure in which it works as a tool in the hand of the writer as it becomes a vehicle conveying the literary intention of the writer or a means leading to an ideal end.  In this perspective disclosure displays itself differently.  Here it becomes overt in the literary work, not hidden within the mentality of an actual writer or reader or fictional characters.  No matter if the writer implies it as a consciously chosen device or if it somehow cunningly imposes itself on the writer, and also no matter who or what is its target, its presence is concrete and measurable.

 

In the world of words written “confessions” are the primary forms of self-disclosure.  The Confessions of St. Augustine, written in fourth century, is considered as a precursor of existentialism and the first autobiography as well.  Reflecting the anguish of a guilt-ridden conscience, confessions are rooted in a religious or ethical ground.  The feature of religious confessions is that they, in the hope to approach God or an external source, reveal the conflicts of man’s inner self in confrontation with evil.  In the past, the only possible way to vent inner sufferings and wounds was via a spiritual window since it was installed within a divine framework far stronger than any human-made structure.  The challenge of modern man is to explore his own being in search of a meaning that is not dependent on any source outside the self.  The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, taken after St. Augustine’s one, is an autobiography of the Romantic era associated with optimistic self-examination and self-scrutiny.  It was remarkably followed in the nineteenth century by the Romantic writers in France and England and specifically in Russia where it led to confessional writings of Dostoevsky.  Today, literary self-disclosure may find itself in all variety of personal expressive writing, from autobiography to confessional novel to expressionistic poetry.  No matter what form it may take, philosophically rooted in existentialism, it empowers the individual and requires honesty and truth telling.  

 

At present, the most common form and function of self-disclosure are found within psychiatry or psychotherapy, in which it is considered as a means to an end.  Either in the old frame, confession, or in the new one, psychiatric vent, self-disclosure is a means that aims to release covert agonies and traumas.  In the case of the former, the individual ultimately seeks the Lord’s forgiveness; the case of the latter the individual looks forward to becoming unburdened.  Both of the foregoing processes demand a reward in exchange for a painful disclosure.  This reward may be interpreted as something with a magical power to erase ills from the disturbed discloser’s mind and memory.  Unlike these, literary self-disclosure entails unwillingness or inability to achieve this reward.  Self-disclosure becomes literature in its purest sense.  For this reason literary self-disclosure cannot search for anything irrelevant to the ultimate goal.  As a matter of fact, a literary self-disclosure not only does not erase ills from the discloser’s mind and memory, but embeds it in the reader’s mind and memory.

 

Among different literary forms fiction gives the widest space to “disclosure”.  This happens not only because of its nature, but also because of the wide range of possibilities it possesses.  One may say that poetry presents the most transparent mirror – and disclosure is nothing but transparency.  As well, poetry has the most intimate relationship with poet as an individual.  A poem, more than any other form, clearly and concisely reflects the poet’s most hidden and internal depth.  Drama presents the most overt stages of disclosure in a social or individualistic context. But whereas poetry and drama entail certain limitations, fiction opens countless doors to countless closets.  Historically, poetry and drama preceded fiction, especially in the case of the novel, a relatively new artistic form mostly developed for and by individualism.  Any artistic expression generally can be interpreted as a form of disclosure, so we are not deprived from outstanding examples of disclosure and self-disclosure within poetry and playwriting.  Of the latter, one immediately thinks of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, in which O’Neill elaborately embeds his wounded self in the body of a play.  I will later discuss a modern Iranian poet and her forms of self-disclosure.  My point here is simply that the potential possibilities fiction provides for self-disclosure are more than what other literary forms can offer.  A playwright is not as free as a novelist to portray what is outside and beyond the framework of the immediate scene.  The essence of poetry requires a delicate and complex approach that makes the act of disclosing less accessible.  

 

All the characters of a literary work, including the narrator, are shadows of fulfilled or unfulfilled selves of the writer.  Not portraits or pictures of the writer’s selves, but their shadows; for from the very moment that they begin to be created in the writer’s mind to their entering readers’ minds they experience a fictional existence that is a variation of existence itself.  Not only heroes, but also anti-heroes, are entitled to a place at the table where the writer puts his or her selves.  Although a writer may intend or tend to allocate his or her selves only to “good guys” of the fiction, the “bad guys” of the imaginative universe grab their seats.  This may happen because all selves come from the same source – the writer – or because of the potential equity in this unique wonderland.  No matter why and what heroes and anti-heroes appropriate, the fact is that all selves are varied manifestations of the writer’s whole self, a “true self” sometimes unknown to the writer, and consists of better and worse selves.  This self, assembling all other different selves, gives voice and elbow room to all actual and potential selves.  It includes strong or dominant ones and weak or subservient ones as well as an inner one and an outer.  Thus it covers the dark and light sides of a single identity and comprises masked and unmasked faces of a personality.

 

Fantasy and its realizations in fiction, drama, and poetry is the territory of all possible selves of a writer, including false ones that might be inaccessible, or an image of an ego ideal.  From the perspective of self-disclosure, this is the inner self that deserves to be focused, though it may reflect aspects of other selves.  External selves, whether true or false, are able to come to light independently.  The lit side of the inner self is also eager to show up.  However, the dark side is reluctant to show itself.  This has to do with the nature of secrets within the mind rather than of an individual’s conscious intention. The collaborative hand of social conventions and the individual’s believes will not allow the person to break the seal of secrecy on certain envelopes in the memory drawer.  No one but the writer can unseal some of these envelopes, if not all of them.  In a broad sense the dark side of an inner self seeks to conceal the unpleasant – from an unforgivable sin to a trivial fault to a minor imperfection or embarrassing memory.  For the public table the writer seeks to present his or her best.

 

 One may argue that this ideal presentation is achievable without a need to reveal the writer’s concealed inner self.   Some writers prefer an impersonal approach that enables them to keep a clear and observable line between their real life and the fictional world created by their imagination.  Compared to those who involve themselves so deeply in the creative process that they merge with it, they look like dabblers in a pool instead of swimmers struggling in an unpredictable sea.  They may perform aquabatics but also enjoy a very distinct life on land.  They keep their literary identity distinct from their personal one, either because they consider literary creativity as a profession rather than a way of life, or because they are reluctant to probe into their own depths.  Regardless of the approach chosen, authors may feel an urgent need to spotlight an unpleasant personal defect embedded in a certain “self” in order to perfectly present it.  Fictional characters are not simply the pictures of an author’s character. All of them, along with their stories and conflicts, come from a unique imagination. This requires that writers input something of their own selves into characters who are not only different from but also opposed to own ones.   Sometimes this “something” is a disturbing one.  Writers who take the personal approach have to face the decisive inevitability that projecting one’s own self is hazardous, demanding divulgence that, frequent or infrequent, is complete.  Hence, both groups to a different degree encounter tough decisions. Avoiding revelation when it is required by the work leads it to incompleteness or leaves its structure imperfect.

 

Surrounded by an atmosphere of tension, the planet of fantasy reflects a broad spectrum of varied conflicts that drive characters to seek a resolution.  Interestingly, its fictionality not only does not make it avoid conceivable conflicts but also highlights all forms of dissonance and antagonism.  From the start of the journey, the writer encounters different routes leading to the creation of an imaginary world as well as the onset of the life of a literary work as an independent being.  Disclosure represents one of these routes.  Generally speaking, disclosure, in all its possible forms, is a means to an end. For this reason, it should follow some rules and principles in order to achieve the goal.  Outside literature, this goal is a concrete one that benefits some to the detriment of others.  Within literature, no objective is acceptable other than a literary end identified by its literary quality.  Disclosure in literature does not target the advantages of some and the disadvantages of others, for if it did, the literary essence would be a sacrificial lamb offered in exchange for what can easily and efficiently be obtained in the media.  The disclosure of a writer is not to bring forth a feasible benefit for anybody, including and especially the discloser.  If literary aims are fulfilled, readers are led toward endless possibilities of discovery.  Regardless of what writers dream up when they select disclosure as a route, the key criterion for the success of the odyssey is whether or not the readers are led to that magic land. 

 

If full disclosure is chosen as an option it must serve the ultimate objective of the journey.  But it imposes requirements. First and paramount, it demands sincerity – not a quality easy to find, though for some it is innate.  For writers this is a coin with two sides, one is visible to the eyes, the other seen by the audience.  If the journey is a divine duty to writers, they, as devoted pilgrims, have no choice other than believing in the necessity of being honest and open with and to themselves first, and to others, second.  Beyond a doubt self-disclosure in a literary context demands the utmost truthfulness and openness; otherwise it fails to prove its legitimacy as the best route of the pilgrimage.  This drives the writer to the stage of an ordeal that not everybody can endure.  The trial measures loyalty to the work rather than to any other thing, including personal affairs and interests.  Nothing can guarantee survival but complete attention and devotion to the work.

 

Literary self-disclosure also demands constant rebelliousness against one’s own self.  Not every self-discloser can meet these Herculean demands, for this type of rebellion only occurs in the absence of self-satisfaction as well as of self-justification.  Unlike a strip teaser expecting a tip, a literary self-discloser who strips does not expect any recompense, including relief or consolation.  On the contrary, from the very beginning, the self-discloser feels, if not consciously, that the journey is nothing but a persistent exposure to a state of total vulnerability.  Rebellion against the self, coming from an unknown source of agitation, urges the rebel to practice strict self-observation in the search of purification. Unlike rebellion against other people brings in some sort of confidence and satisfaction, this form has nothing to offer except the possibility of a wider scope of sensibility to emotional impressions. Of course, from the writer’s viewpoint, nothing is more desirable than this range of sensibility. All forms of opposing actions and reactions, including and particularly those pertaining to an individual who plays the dual roles of defendant and plaintiff, are exhausting, if not debilitating.  Nevertheless, a real rebel looks at the rebellion as the most proper response to existence, and keeps rebelling against established authority, which sometimes may be one’s own self.

 

Looking at the sky of modern Persian literature through the telescope of self-disclosure, at once we are fascinated by two brilliant stars outshining others, including few who have written autobiography:  one is Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951), the other is Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967).  They are very different figures that share one thing: revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings in their works.  The first, still the most distinguished figure in modern Persian fiction, was an introvert man whose actual life withholds any clues indicating the presence of sexual relations or even emotional involvements with women.  The latter, entitled “the greatest Iranian woman poet” (1), was an extrovert woman with a short turbulent lifetime coloured by romantic entanglements and brief sexual encounters but that ended in a profound love.  Hedayat, raised and educated in a French milieu, had an insatiable appetite for Western literature and was an ardent promoter of it.  Farrokhzad took little account of the Western literary legacy.  Hedayat was zealously anti-religion; Farrokhzad had a religious mentality (2).  Although, this difference is not significant per se, it turns into a considerable one when viewed from the angle of self-disclosure.  But despite differences of gender, generation, genre, background, and personality, Hedayat and Farrokhzad have something in common:  an outstanding contribution to the trend of self-discovery in contemporary Persian literature that makes them pre-eminent.  Hedayat deserves a separate discussion.  Here, I will focus on Forugh Farrokhzad as an exemplar of a female discloser who was brave enough to completely uncover her own soul.

 

Born in Tehran, Forugh was the third of seven children of an urban middle class family.  Her father was a military officer of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s era.  Unlike her four brothers who were sent to Germany to pursue their education, she studied in a Tehran high school until the ninth grade and then was sent to a technical school to study dressmaking and painting. At sixteen she fell in love with a distant relative who was much older than her and married him despite the objections of both families.  The new couple went to Ahvaz, a town in the south of Iran.  A year later Forugh gave birth to her only son.   Her marriage failed soon and she lost her son’s custody after divorce.  She went back to Tehran and lived as a single woman who was most concerned about her individualistic liberty and poetry.  During her lifetime, Forugh published four collections of poetry and made several documentary films, including “The House Is Dark”, which won the prize for best documentary film in the Oberhausen Festival of 1963.  She was killed in an automobile accident at thirty two.  Some years later her fifth collection of poetry was published.

 

As most critics agree, the literary career of Forugh is divided into two distinct but attached periods: during the first she published three books of poetry (The Captive, 1955; The Wall, 1956; and The Rebellion, 1957); in the second, two other (Another Birth, 1964; and her posthumous volume: Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, 1974) were published.  For my argument, the similarities of the two periods are more important than the differences.  From the start Forugh did not deviate from self-disclosure.  She was consistently honest, rebellious, and personal.  An urgent need to express herself, along with her openness and bravery, led Forugh to choose no other route than self-disclosure, not as a potential route towards her artistic ends, but the only one.  The reason why her poetry is so autobiographical, as a critic argues, “…has to do with her conception of poetry as a companion, mirror, and means to self-knowledge.”  He states that Forugh thought “that she should live and compose poetry as frankly and unhypocritically as possible.” (3)

 

The two periods clearly reflect how painstakingly she went through an evolutionary process and how elaborately she succeeded in transforming a sentimentalist persona, whose most prominent feature was explicitness in retelling sexual relationships, into an exalted persona who accomplished transcendence through love and discovered the mystery of an ambiguous language befitting comprehensive human love.  The development of her poetry shows a movement that is, as a critic says, “…clearly not away from the self, but rather toward an understanding of self through the perception and confrontation of larger realities -- both the gloomy social realities of a modern, mechanized world, and the faith-inspiring realities of the natural, regenerative world.” (4) 

 

As an example, one may compare “The Sin”, from her second collection, The Wall, with “The Conquest of the Garden” from Another Birth, her fourth collection.  While the former is from the first period, the latter belongs to the second period.  The persona of “The Sin” recalls and portrays intimate moments of a sexual relation that is forbidden as the title indicates.  The poem reads:

 

I sinned a sin full of pleasure,

in an embrace which was warm and fiery.

I sinned surrounded by arms

that were hot and avenging and iron.

 

In that dark and silent seclusions,

I looked into his secret-full eyes.

My heart impatiently shook in my breast

in response to the request of his needful eyes.

 

In that dark and silent seclusion,

I sat dishevelled at his side.

His lips poured passion on my lips,

I escaped from the sorrow of my crazed heart.

 

I whispered in his ear the tale of love:

I want you, o life of mine,

I want you, o life-giving embrace,

o crazed lover of mine, you.

 

Desire sparked a flame in his eyes;

the red wine danced in the cup.

In the soft bed, my body

drunkenly quivered on his chest.

 

I sinned a sin full of pleasure,

next to a shaking, stupified form.

O God, who knows what I did

in that dark and quiet seclusion. (5)

 

The persona of the other poem, “The Conquest of the Garden”, talks about a forbidden love too.  This poem reads as such:

 

That crow which flew over our heads

and descended into the disturbed thought

            of a vagabond cloud

and the sound of which traversed

            the breadth of the horizon

                        like a short spear

will carry the news of us to the city.

 

Everyone knows,

Everyone knows

that you and I have seen the garden

from that cold sullen window

and that we have plucked the apple

from that playful, hard-to-reach branch.

 

Everyone is afraid

everyone is afraid, but you and I

joined with the lamp and water and mirror

and we were not afraid.

I am not talking about the flimsy linking

            Of two names

and embracing in the old pages of a ledger.

I’m talking about my fortunate tresses

            with the burnt anemone of your kiss

and the intimacy of our bodies,

and the glow of our nakedness

like fish scales in the water.

I am talking about the silvery life of a song

which a small fountain sings at dawn.

 

We asked wild rabbits one night

            in that green flowing forest

and shells full of pearls

in that turbulent coldblooded sea

and the young eagles

on that strange overwhelming mountain

what should be done.

 

Everyone knows,

everyone knows

we have found our way

            into the cold, quiet dream of phoenixes:

we found truth in the garden

in the embarrassed look of a nameless flower,

and we found permanence

In an endless moment

when two suns stared at each other.

I am not talking about timorous whispering

            in the dark.

I am talking about daytime and open windows

            and fresh air

and a stove in which useless things burn

and land which is fertile

            with a different planting

and birth and evolution and pride.

I am talking about our loving hands

which have built across nights a bridge

            of the message of perfume

                        and light and breeze.

Come to the meadow

to the grand meadow

and call me, from behind the breaths

            of silk-tasseled acacias

just like the deer calls its mate.

 

The curtains are full of hidden anger

and innocent doves

look to the ground

from their towering white height. (6)

 

The frank expression of the persona, along with the poet’s life style, remains nothing unsaid or unseen.  The theme of both poems is a sinful love and the implications of sexuality.  However, these poems reveal a distinct difference between the two periods of Forugh’s poetry with respect to poetical quality and intellectual mentality.  “The Sin” remains in a closed circle of sentimentalist description and poetic clichés, which has nothing to present but a shocking confession.  “The Conquest of the Garden”, on the other hand, goes beyond the limits of an affair and succeeds in exploring the meaning of “love” in its broadest sense.  This poem, as a critic states,”… is a fine example of Forugh’s mature poetry” that “…contains one of her oldest themes – the celebration of love, passionate love, and a disregard for conventional affront.” (7) 

 

By reviewing the poems of Forugh’s five collections, one can easily trace the inevitable self-disclosure of a poet that in her constant approach towards an aesthetic perfection unveils herself as frankly as possible.  References to the poet’s private life, as well as indications to her moods, feelings, and emotions are abundant, overt, and unambiguous.  In addition, the quality of intimacy leads the reader to identify the persona with the poet.  As such, each book displays a certain stage in the poet’s life as well as a certain phase of her artistic progression. 

 

Many critics have discussed why and how Forugh rebelled against traditions and a patriarchal society that did nothing but restrict and restrain a woman like her who struggled with every breath for liberty.  Her first three books embodied her protest against any authority that wanted to subordinate and subdue her.  During this period she insistently questioned ethical constraints and all the representatives of dominant ethics, from God to her close relatives, by following her passions and her emotions, whether in real life or on paper.  Facing limitations on her life as a woman poet in a society tangled in the purgatory of confused tradition and modernity, she not only rebelled against restrictions and prohibitions, but also questioned herself.  Portraying own feelings and sexual experiences and simultaneously considering them as “sins” may be interpreted as mere confessional accounts, regardless of literary quality.   However, her clearness in questioning and even condemning herself while doing the same with others reflects both her innate openness and her inevitable rebelliousness.  Defining honesty within “unveiling and revealing”, Forugh had no choice other than to disclose all the sensual and emotional ups and downs of her female self.  The three books of the first period were basically confessions of a bold woman rather than pure poetry.  But if we consider the whole canon of her poetry as a kind of Bildungsroman, as some critics do (8), and consequently look at these collections as a premise that led to poems of the second period, they will be appreciated not only as honest confessions or frank self-revelations, but also as grounds for some of the best contemporary Persian poetry that happen to be female voice.  These gems of modern Persian literature are brilliant for their unique quality, reflecting an aesthetic essence polished by honesty and rebelliousness.  In her second phase the sexual openness turned toward a specific secular spiritualism sanctifying love and deepening the concept of lovemaking.  Concurrently, her boldness in trespassing social taboos developed into an ethical bravery questioning all and any human defects. 

 

As feminist criticism has often pointed out, the difficulty of a woman’s achieving a voice, or the marginalization of women’s voices, has been a barrier to women’s progress. In women’s literature, voice has also been used for resistance.  In other words, despite a resistance to voice, the result of centuries of patriarchy, some women have been able to slay the silence in order to assert their presence.  In search of a way out of spatial and verbal exclusion, struggling for survival in a society dominated by men and their exclusive voices, Forugh realized that her own voice could be the only manifestation of survival. She stated, “The Voice Alone Is Left!”  Conventional boundaries existed in a social system rooted in Eastern patriarchal traditions make any individualistic efforts, including finding and sustaining a personalized voice, so challenging that attaining an independent voice seems difficult enough for men, let alone women.  Because of so many obstacles against self-fulfillment fulfilling oneself turns into an ordeal not every talented individual can undertake.   Undeniably, the secondary status of women makes it more arduous and doubles the trials of articulation.  Feminine experience, formed by history and genetics, must address its advantages and disadvantages in order to achieve empowerment.  It is in the process of this sophisticated interplay that factors used to be, and continue to be, obstructive turn out to be facilitative.  Moved by external pressures and impelled by inward drives, Forugh rebelled against obstructions instinctually and intuitively rather than consciously.  A personalized feminine voice evoked by pure poetic sensations led her to a deep understanding of the forms and functions of an enriching poetic response in answering not only the personal desires of the poet but also the universal demands of human beings.  Her honesty and rebelliousness, among other factors like the love late in her life, were features that helped Forugh to transcend barriers so rapidly.  These elements were coloured by the feminine. 

 

Among disclosers, many start divulging others’ secrets and stop at this point.  Those writers who do this, in fact, tend to replace a literary function by a social function.  For whatever reason they avoid or limit probing into their own self, either directly or indirectly, and remain far from a complete self-discovery that jeopardizes privacy or the protected self.  Clearly, modern Iranian writers and poets, like others involved in intellectual activities, have felt an urgent demand to approach identity and self-discovery.  However, restrictions imposed by a deep-rooted tradition have made and still make the process of finding and establishing a new identity strenuous and problematic.   Men find it difficult to disregard the advantages and privileges offered by tradition.   For women the story is different; they are more willing to replace old by new, for after all they have been wounded by impositions and discriminations of a patriarchal system ignoring their human rights.  In the meantime, attaining a new identity also requires not only competing with privileged rivals, but also fighting their own old habits.  This difference, resulting from different historical backgrounds, partly affects the method and the forms of self-disclosure performed by men and women. Although the necessity and importance of new definitions and new identifications are clear to all who want to have a living presence in the present era, on the whole men are hesitant, if not reluctant, to disclose themselves, whether for the fear of losing their dominant position or because of their expectations and illusions of and about their masculine image. This obvious unwillingness is the main reason for the lack of candid male autobiographies in modern Persian literature. The self-aggrandizement induced by social mechanism of a traditional society is so inhibiting that it doesn’t often allow men to strip off their veils even when they put pen to paper only for this purpose.  In spite of a powerful tradition of expressing the burning desire to unveil in Iranian mystic literature, male writers appear to spin words to provide themselves with a protective cocoon promising the impending appearance of a wonderful butterfly rather than to reveal an ugly pupa.  Having suffered from so many imposed deformations, however, female writers seem to discover that in the process of liberating their pens, as well as their minds and souls, disclosure is more helpful than cocooning.  

 

Besides the socio-cultural factors distinguishing a female discloser from a male one, femininity, in the sense of gender, has its own role in forming and manifesting self-disclosure.  A line should be drawn between female nature and all the impositions of a tradition-ridden society and male value structure wishing to re-establish patriarchal principles. Female nature embodies the biological and psychological features of women regardless of any other outward impacts.  Thus, it implies factual characteristics rather than advantages or disadvantages of a gender.  One of the attributes ascribed to femininity is the quality of caring and care giving that reflects maternalism and in a context of disclosing may generate more understanding and also more sympathy towards others.  Patience and receptiveness, reflecting a psycho-sexual feminine attitude, are also among features that may affect self-disclosure in different senses: inclination to accepting the accusation and consequently the position of a “sinner” as well as displaying love, affection, compassion, and forgiveness towards “sinners and wrong doers”.  Similarly, womanly curiosity and attention to details may add feminine touches to the texture of literary self-disclosure.  Last but not least is the female approach to notions of bravery, honesty, and rebellion, which make a significant difference in a self-disclosing context.  Men, for example, tend to define bravery in the frame of heroism and victory; women may interpret it as facing the reality of their inferior status and imposed gender limitations.  Should men find honesty as an ethical virtue, women consider it as a librating force.  And finally, when men pursue a subversive aim in rebelling, women follow a constructive inspiration in rebellious attempts.  

  

By and large, female experience offers a feminine spirit to a self-disclosing literary text that cannot be considered as a criterion for literary evaluation per se.  However, this spirit in the case of women writers can deservedly indicate their laborious struggle to achieve their own individuality and, through this and by this, to enrich universal literature.  Regardless of a feminist or non-feminist perspective, finding and retaining a female voice become crucial for women authors as the natural way to prove themselves independent literary individuals.  Needless to say, nobody can predetermine a unique way to create literature, either in a sense of adhering to a gender-based voice or in a sense of choosing self-disclosure as the only format for literary quality.  But it is undeniable that, as Forugh stated, quite naturally a woman writer may have a feminine vision that is different from a male’s.  I’d go further and emphasize the inevitably different approach, if not vision, women have to choose if they want to be faithful to their existence and their presence not only in reality but also in mind and imagination.  This faithfulness to one’s experience is what makes Farrokhzad determined to be “the voice of her existence”.  In order to do this she perceived her poetry as a mirror reflecting not the lights but the shadows of herself and her life, a mirror that could reveal the name of the saviour to the woman poet who, despite all inhibitions and suppressions, disclosed herself truthfully to universalize her personal experience and to lead the reader to endless discoveries.

 

  

Notes:

 (1) Reza Braheni,  “Va zakham haye man hameh az ‘shegh ast [And My Wounds Are All From Love],” in Shahrvand, no. 653, 655, 657, 659 (Jan.-Feb. 2002) 

(2) Houra Yavari,  “Sharmashenayi va bigonahi dar sh’r-e Forough-e Farrokhzad … [Shame Conscience and innocence in Forough Farrokhzad’s Poetry …],” in Sang, vol. 5, no. 12 (1380/2001)

(3) Michael C. Hillmann, A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press & Mage Publishers, 1987), 2-3

(4) Another Birth: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. Translated by Hasan Javadi and Susan Sallee (Emeryville: Albany Press, 1981), 7

(5) As quoted in Michael C. Hillman. A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press & Mage Publishers, 1987), 77

(6) Ibid., 96-97

(7) Ardavan Davaran, “The Conquest of the Garden: A Significant Instance of the Poetic Development of Forugh Farrokhzad,” in Another Birth: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. Translated by Hasan Javadi and Susan Sallee (Emeryville: Albany Press, 1981), 118-119

(8) Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words:  The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse:  Syracuse University Press, 1992), 136

****

Toronto, 2003; presented in Iranian Studies Conference (2008)

THE CAP OF HADES

My childhood was a small planet enveloped by the atmosphere of my grandmother’s stories.  All I possessed on my planet was small-scale:  home, school, a long narrow street, a couple of alleys, a few people.  But what I could have, immeasurably, was made available to me through the imaginary milieu of her stories.  Our holy trinity secretly united storyteller, story, and listener, so magically charmed that I felt myself invulnerable.  The world of stories was the realm of impossibilities.  In it, all impossible things could become possible; all I had to do was to wish and dream, and the rest came true in one way or another.  In fulfilling dreams, the magic was in the process and the interaction whereby common objects allowed common people to be empowered.

 

Among the impossibilities, what fascinated me most was the ability to become invisible.  The idea of not being seen by others was exciting per se. However, something beyond this attracted me vaguely.   I could sense the freedom to do whatever I liked and to go wherever I wanted without fear that it would be forbidden.  Moreover, invisibility to me equated safety.  To be unseen was a privilege, a special advantage offered only to heroes and heroines.  This blessing could turn the blessed one into a hero or heroine.  Some years later, while discovering the joy of immersion in mythological tales, I was fascinated by the effect of the Cap of Hades, simply because I could see nothing but its positive aspects.

 

 Then came the years of exposure to a series of real storms flooding me with undeniable realities. The true nature of invisibility began to emerge.  I learned that society as a heterogeneous complex whole consisted of different groups with different labels and weights.   Among categories, I noticed that those based on social power were crucial in terms of determining each individual’s share of the world.  I realized a group could see itself “in power” as long as it continued to ignore others. The ignorance of one group could bring out another group’s invisibility.  In this setting, invisibility could bring nothing but misery and misfortune to the unseen.   I understood that in real life the Cap of Hades was how powerful people made others powerless.

 

 The problem of becoming an outsider, the disadvantages of non-membership, and the drawbacks of being second-class citizens are not exclusive to particular societies or countries, though they take different shapes in different environments and contexts.  In Canadian society, although the category of the powerless includes all lower-class people —immigrant and native-born alike —the most important distinction occurs between the ruling class and minorities consisting of native peoples and a growing population of “visible” immigrants.  The weak socio-economic position of immigrants and ethnic minorities, along with institutional barriers, tends to make them voiceless in society.

 

When I came to Canada as an immigrant, I was aware of my social status as a member of the minority.  What I did not know then was the quality of my social standing.  I was unaware that I was invisible, and would remain invisible, in my second land, ironically enough one chosen for its promise of democracy. What complicated my obliviousness was the fact that I had taken root in an upside-down land where people are accustomed to be ignored by a very small ruling group orbiting around a dictator, and also one where writers, deprived of primary professional rights and facing a professional ordeal, have to struggle merely to put pen to paper. Since the very beginning of my arrival in Canada what attracted my attention most was the vast variety of faces, colours, races, and accents.  It took me some years to discover the scope and depth of the ignorance and invisibility prevalent in Canada, as well as the relation between them.

 

One wintry morning during my first days in Toronto, job hunting, I left home in search of a company that had an opening. Having taken time to consult a map and review the address and directions, I was sure I could find the place easily.  Since it was at the other end of the city, I had to take a subway as well as two buses. When I got on the first bus, flurries were blowing in the street, but, viewed through the window, they seemed to me nothing but the white blessing of a vast, generous land receptive to anybody.  An hour and half later, when I got off the second bus, I noticed that the blessing had turned into a snowstorm from some unknown territory of cold.  Feverishly determined to find my destination, I ignored it and began to look for the building number.  As gusty hands pushed me back, I found that I had missed it by several thousands.

 

After a while I began to doubt the address on the piece of paper folded in my wet gloved fist, and my sense of direction as well.  There was no pay phone or a store in sight so that I could check the address.   But I had already asked for the address on the phone, and I didn’t want to betray that I had got it wrong, nor did I want to ask an explanation or paraphrase for fear of revealing myself as an incapable newcomer.  So I resolved to get help from passers-by and kept wandering streets in search of a clue.

 

 As much as I was determined not to give up, the snowstorm was equally bent on defeating an opponent trusting to Quixotic naivete. Thoroughly unsuitable for the weather, my clothes were soaked. My sodden shoes again and again caused me to slide and fall on the slippery sidewalk. With frozen fingers and toes, numbed nose and ears, and a shivering body, I kept grappling with the furious squall.  Whenever I fell down I tried to get up quickly. But several times I couldn’t stand without making a huge effort.  Some moments were tense with mixed feelings of fragility, loneliness, and bewilderment at the blank stony looks people gave me as they passed.

 

 I remember another job-hunting day in Toronto, years later.  I headed for a library, seeking a post as a clerk.  That hot, humid summer day, I walked in order to have time to review what I’d learned about finding a job, now an obsession.  Having attended several workshops and counselling sessions, I was confident that I had good background knowledge.  I was aware of my advantages and disadvantages.  I knew my strengths —education and experience —were doubtful here, since there was no regulatory body to accredit my credentials and my non- Canadian experience was considered irrelevant. However, knowledge of the job and volunteering experience could be considered if I were lucky enough to find the right place or right person at the right time.  Clearly, what made my qualifications questionable were official obstacles I encountered as an immigrant.  This led to the vicious-circle consequences of sometimes being judged overqualified, sometimes under qualified. My disadvantages also involved unofficial barriers.  I had learned by experience that having a strange-sounding or spelled name could be grounds for rejection; that the Canadian labour market was sensitive to age; that religion, though never asked about directly, could be a negative factor; and, last but not least, that an immigrant applicant, despite official policies on equity, could not compete with a native-born counterpart.

With all this in mind, I went to the library’s Human Resources Department and asked for a job. After a while, I was given an application form.  Experienced enough, I confidently entered detailed information.  But there was one question for which I had no answer: ARE YOU A MEMBER OF A VISIBLE MINORITY?  I had never thought about it. The meaning of the term and the implications were clear enough.  Yet how could I answer such an ostensibly straightforward question?  I well knew that not to belong to the majority meant that I was a member of minority.  But thinking about myself as a member of a visible minority, regardless of what benefits it might bring me, was annoying, if not offensive.  The odd juxtaposition of a negative quality like “minority” and a positive adjective like “visible” was itself complex and contradictory.  In the meantime, my ignorance about my physical visibility as a mark that could be decoded by others suddenly seemed an open wound.  I felt trapped and entangled. How could I know the reply to this question?  Look in my pocket mirror or ask somebody who looked like me?  I knew that the HR officer was observing me impatiently, but I felt that my pen had halted forever inside that blank space.

 

Some years later, with visible lines on my face after a long period of being enmeshed in a desperate struggle for sustenance, I indulged myself by taking time off my evening job to attend a multicultural event.  The program included a lecture on a dying language, which the speaker used during his last ten minutes, thus forcing the audience to listen to a language they could not understand.

 

 When I came out, it was as bitterly cold as a Toronto autumn night should be, but I felt warmed and stimulated by the ebbing echo of those empty words.  I indulged myself again, this time in taking a cab.  I’d hardly sat in the back when I heard the driver’s voice.  My mind, still occupied by a victimized language, was unwilling to listen to English in any form.  In a few minutes, though, the driver caught my attention with his sweet Spanish accent and, even more, by his enthusiasm to communicate.  In his fifties, he was a stout man, his speech constantly changing pitch, occasionally halted by the pauses of a non-native speaker, but he was keen on keeping eye contact through the rear-view mirror.  Looking at his expressive eyes and hands, I felt I was being driven into a series of stories within the familiar frame of the immigrant’s odyssey yet coloured with his personal history.

 

Having told me about his lasting love for his wife despite a recent divorce, he continued his blues by expressing the deep frustration of an immigrant artist condemned to go through a dual denial of identity by sacrificing his vocation in favour of physical survival.  Coming from a Latin American land embroiled in political turmoil, he had soon realized that, with scant savings and no market knowledge, he could not count on making a living as a sculptor.  What made the reality harsher was that he could not afford sculpting supplies.  I kept listening, assuming my visible-immigrant presence was the best proof of a sincere empathy.  He ended by telling of a poet friend of his who had died recently in utter isolation, leaving behind nothing but a few shoeboxes full of paper scraps bearing the legacy of his poems.

 

After this supplement to my first hard-won evening of leisure in Toronto, I took refuge in my cramped room.  Disturbed at being kept from writing over the past years, I sat at my desk to express myself through the only means I knew — words.  I had to transform the image of a sculptor’s shaping hands welded to a steering wheel, and shoeboxes of poetry preserved in a taxi’s trunk, into words emerging from my inner self.  I turned on computer and started to keyboard all I had in mind without looking at the screen.  After an indefinite time, I felt I was done.  I looked up to see what I’d accomplished.  The screen was blank.

 

Here and now, I sense the phantom of a storyteller wandering in and among these scenes.  I stare at it to recover a trace of my grandmother.  It’s in vain, for this is the phantom of someone who, wearing the Cap of Hades, has haunted the world of invisible people.  Yet this storyteller, like my grandmother, has the immortal voice of voiceless individuals.  And this voice is now telling us a Canadian story:

Once upon a time, there was a very old land that happened to welcome some white newcomers who came and forced its native people to wear the Cap of Hades.  Then came other newcomers, for the door, once opened, could never again be closed. This definitely did not sound good to some of the older arrivals.  In the meantime, it was clear as day that a welcoming land with an open door needed newcomers.  For this reason the old-timers found a solution:  newcomers were certainly welcome, but only through accepting a gift: the Cap of Hades. 

 

Toronto, 2004

 

 

IRANIAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THEIR NARRATIVES

 

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution struck, the quality and quantity of women writers’ work have decisively changed the course of Persian literature. Poetry, after centuries of literary dominance, yielded to fiction, and men’s prose writing, especially fiction, yielded to women’s. The trends are related. 

Inheriting a great literary legacy, the Islamic regime suppressed it at once. Recovering from the first shock of the revolution took almost a decade. Then, after revolution, war, and exile, writing reappeared in a new form and with new features and revitalized itself. Post-revolutionary Persian literature, unlike what had preceded it, has two parts: one inside the country; the other, written by exiles and immigrants scattered across the world, but especially in Europe and North America. For my purposes, they are one.

Westernized ideas had found their way to Persia in the 19th century, when the country was under increasing colonial pressure from Great Britain and Russia. Imperialism brought the material products of Western civilization, and also conceptions of nation and nationalism[1], the nation-state, political freedom, social justice, and critical thinking. These sociopolitical theories and systems were introduced to an Eastern society that for centuries had hibernated or been paralyzed under despotism. In its wake came a movement seeking parliamentary liberalism and political democracy, resulting in the Constitutional Revolution (1906).  Yet, the Constitutional movement was hindered by barriers external and internal, and failed to achieve its goals until, many years later, it rose again in the form of the new anti-monarchial movement that led to the 1979 Revolution.

In our time, we cannot ignore the relationship between literature and democracy. Just as voting (or not voting) is the main tool to fulfill a citizen’s democratic right, writing and publishing, as forms of public expression, is an individual right. Both democracy and literature are predicated on the idea that free speech is the right of any individual who is willing to be a free citizen of the society. It’s a basic characteristic of modernity.

The 1979 Revolution, like every revolution, rejected the established values and norms of society and replaced them with new ones developed to serve it and to meet its objectives, which immediately encroached upon arts and literature.  From the start, artists and writers had to redefine themselves and their arts in the newly invented Islamic order. They had to do this through their choice of discipline, the degree of its legitimacy according to the Sharia religious code, and whether artistic production could be compatible with Islam. Arts like music and sculpture were ignored, if not rejected, basically because of Sharia, but literature was privileged to receive the most attention of the ruling clerical caste in general, and the Ayatollah Khomeini in particular. Besides his Islamic belief in the value of “the word” and “the pen”, he, as a Muslim political leader with ambitions to conquer the world, had overthrown an armed monarchy by the magic of the word. 

However, the Iranian literati, with their strong historical background in social and political engagement, could not yield to Khomeini’s demands and dreams. Because they could not meet the new regime’s requirements, they were forced underground, in the sense of keeping their mouths shut and their pens away from paper, not only because of state censorship and the like, but also due to the poor economic conditions of the publishing industry, and the lack of such literary outlets as journals. In the meantime, the Islamic Republic attempted to educate and train literati in the service of religious ideology. Inside and outside Iran, it took some years for dissident writers and poets to get actively published.

Apart from its interactions with modern world literature, contemporary Persian writing draws on a rich heritage of classical literature that includes such world-famous figures as Hafez, Rumi, and Khayyam. Over a millennium, this literature has been the highest manifestation of Persian language and culture, and played a striking role in uniting peoples of diverse ethnicities, who’d been constantly subjected to invasions, occupiers, and tyrants. As the cultural product of a patriarchal society, it is a masculine literature. The legacy is enriched by traditional forms, from epic to lyric to fable. However, it is poetry, whether narrative or not, that is most valued. In its long history, classical Persian literature has seen cycles of flourishing and diminishing productivity and creativity. Once in a while, a certain style had dominated until it was replaced by a new one. Despite the presence of some prose masterpieces, poetry has always been the prevailing genre.

 Indeed, classical Persian poetry has a worldwide fame. Contemporary Persian literature is still far from being recognized internationally. Even after writers were introduced to the novel about the time of Constitutional uprising, and prose writing found new importance, poetry remained as prominent as before. As happened in Europe during the Renaissance, one might have expected that with the advent of modernity, poetry, deeply bound with tradition, would yield to a prose that could better describe the aspiration of the new era. The Constitutional movement did debate about “old” and “new” things, including the roles of old and new literature as a literary discourse.  But this mainly covered the conflict between traditional and new styles and trends in poetry. It led to the emergence of the style termed “Nimayee”, after Nima Youshij (1896-1959), founder of modern Persian poetry. Until the 1979 Revolution, poetry remained dominant, mainly because it managed to modernize itself through the work of poets like Nima, as well as Forugh Farrokhzad, who echoed the spirit of the era, drawing not only on social and historical consciousness but on their own individuality.

An outstanding body of novels and short stories developed during the period between the two revolutions. The Constitutional era, thanks to the advent of modernity, could free prose writing from the exclusive possession of an elite closed attached to royal courts and make it accessible to ordinary people. This evolution was brilliantly exemplified in the work of Ali Akbar Dehkhoda (1879–1959), especially his satirical Charand va Parand  (Nonsense) column published in the newspaper Sur-e Esrafil after 1907. Among achievements were of M.A. Jamal’zadeh’s collection of short stories, Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time, 1921) whose preface is considered the manifesto of modern Persian fiction[2], and Sadeq Hedayat’s most internationally recognized novel, Buf-e Kur (The Blind Owl, 1936). The absolute-dictatorship years of Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, followed by the absolute disappointment in the aftermath of the C.I.A.-engineered coup d’état in 1953 against Mohammed Mossadeq, then Prime minister and leader of the National movement.

Then the golden decade of the 1960s arrived, in which prose and poetry flourished concurrently. It was then that Forugh Farrokhzad reached the peak of her achievement, and Simin Daneshvar was honored as the only major woman novelist after the release of her Suvashun (Mourners of Siyavash, 1969). Thanks to the regime’s relative tolerance for progressive ideas, as well as a wave of world literature translated into Persian, Iran’s variety and richness was astounding. Nonetheless, the number of distinguished writers and poets in general, and particularly the number of women among them, was not astounding.

Since the Constitutional Revolution in 1906, Iran has felt enormous changes and upheavals, including a shift from monarchy to republic. But Iran is far from being a civil society based on democracy and freedom. Despite their differences, both Pahlavi’s monarchy and the Islamic Republic, as totalitarian regimes, have failed to bestow democracy. Some theorists have tried to reconcile Islam, particularly political Islam, to modernity. Yet the Islamic Republic, whose philosophy is based on the absolute authority of the Imam, the supreme leader, and his control over every member of the ommat, followers, has not recognized the individual’s rights. Since one cannot find words like “individual”, “citizen”, and “nation” in Khomeini’s political glossary, the Islamic regime can only countenance the integrated whole of the ommat, whose collective identity is based on obedience and subordination. The fact that Khomeini and some of his followers could use words like “nation” when and where required, and that elements of the Islamic regime’s ideology could overlap with the Parliament and the Constitution, by no means prove that it might some day tolerate democracy. From the beginning, there was no “nation” consisting of “individuals”. Indeed, individuality made no sense after “nation” suddenly metamorphosed into “ommat”.

Iran was exposed to modernity in the 19th century, when the novel was the dominant form of Western literature. Although nationalism could be easily understood, the understanding of individualism proved to be difficult for people of an Eastern society that had long ignored the concept. The Eastern mentality historically emphasized unity rather than diversity. What motivated people in the Constitutional uprising was freedom in its social, political sense. It was mainly after the Islamic regime’s total oppression that the individual’s freedom became focal.

The intense intrusiveness of the regime left no space for people to decide about details of their lives, making them aware of what they’d been denied. The intrusion tremendously adds to the psychological complexities of everyday life. As well, living in the Islamic Republic does not preclude simultaneously living in the totally different world offered by Western culture and technology. In the confrontation between illusion and reality, the experience of contradictions, conflicts, disintegrations, and detachments could best be expressed in fictional narratives.

Hasan Mir Abedini, a scholar of contemporary Persian literature, noted in 2004 that the number of women who published novels had reached 370, “13 times as many as a decade ago,” and “about equal to the number for men today.”[3] In a society where unemployment and inflation is high, and social and political tensions are at their peak, what drives these men and women to write? They cannot count on royalties as a source of income — if they should be lucky enough to receive any. They know that publishers are extremely cautious, fearful  not to lose their investment, either through the heavy hand of censorship, or by failure in the marketplace. They also know that the publishing process is usually a very long and uncertain one and, at any time, unexpected events may halt it.  In many cases, they may have to self-publish if they can’t find a firm to take on their work. Yet, despite these discouraging factors, they persist. Their silent words between covers convey their own voice and story. These words also give voice to readers. The democracy that cannot be found in real life can be sought in a fictional world in which there is room for everybody, privileged or underprivileged, good and evil. Only fiction, with an infinite capacity for imagination and reality at the same time, can liberate those who feel trapped in an unwanted reality.

One salient difference between the Constitutional Revolution and the 1979 Revolution is that, in the latter, the presence and role of women were vital, both because it was inclusive and tapped women’s new capability. The 1979 Revolution brought women into full social and political life. Both the variety of social and political groups participating in and supporting it, and the contribution of women to it, were exceptional and phenomenal. The Pahlavi regime had offered the Westernization of women as a symbol of its progressive social program, but within a despotic monarchy. Moreover, some women were excluded from joining in social action. Now, for the first time in Iranian history, masses of those women, who’d been prevented from taking an active part during the Pahlavi era because of religious, cultural, and economic barriers, were now encouraged to enter the public sphere.

The Revolution’s religious leadership, which had needed these women in order to battle an opponent equipped with all the tools of power and repression, exploited the repressed energy they’d amassed over the years. They were used in enormous street demonstrations to shout out slogans. When it came to recruiting disciples or converts Khomeini, a fundamentalist Muslim with an unleashed ambition for a return to the Mohammedan era, sought support equally from men and women. By this means, millions of women imprisoned by religious and traditional do’s and don’ts were drawn into public life. As a pragmatic political leader, Khomenei did his best to obtain the trust of not only women who could be potential followers because of their ignorance or religious beliefs, but those who, affiliated to other ideological and political groups, were secular supporters of the Revolution.

But immediately after the Islamic Republic was established, he began to proclaim a series of harsh patriarchal restrictions. He imposed the Islamic dress code, abolished the family protection law, barred women from becoming judges, and segregated men and women in some public spaces.  Needless to say, well-educated and intellectual women were most threatened.  However, the Islamic regime continued implicitly to call on women whenever, for some reason or another, it needed masses who could be manipulated.

Despite what the regime intended, Iranian women from different social classes and with different beliefs and opinions persisted in struggling for their rights as female citizens. The costly eight-year war with Iraq, and the noticeable growth in population and in women’s literacy, were among factors that reinforced their active presence in public life.  Their role in bringing the reformist Ayatollah Khatami to power was one example of their vital participation.  During the past three decades, a country basically governed by a fanatical clerical caste has been a battleground for all women, whether inspired by Western or Islamic paradigms, be they anti-regime or pro-regime, believer or non-believer, privileged or underprivileged.

The limitations of a patriarchal society overwhelmingly dominated by a theocratic oligarchy impose more pressure on women than men. Paradoxically, these restraints make them more motivated, innovative, and energetic in their struggle for social equality. They have to defy legal and traditional barriers that bar their progress and deny their rights as human beings; and this cannot be done unless they prove themselves as qualified rivals in an unequal competition with their male counterparts. Writing is one of many ways Iranian women have developed to overcome obstacles. That writing is an inexpensive as well as the most accessible, and in some respects the most traditional, form of artistic communication accounts for its popularity. Under oppressive conditions, writing promises relief, if not rescue. The increasing number of blogs in general, and those written by girls and women in particular, is one indication of it. The significant number of female journalists also points to this fact, despite its inherent dangers. The number of female authors, either in Iran or in exile, is ever increasing, too. Such writers use the pen not only as a means to create a literary text, but also to tell their stories to others who, like them, urgently need their stories told.

Looking for the origins of story-telling, the American novelist Reynolds Price says: “A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens—second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our days’ events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.”[4] This universal necessity, which could be met by oral storytelling in the past, can be answered today in various forms, including cinema and fiction, both the dominant artistic forms of the post-revolutionary era. According to Maryam Habibian, “Ironically, the post-revolutionary film industry has restored an Iranian tradition of strong female characters that had been lost in most pre-revolutionary films. Female roles have changed drastically from the pre-revolutionary era, both behind and in front of the camera.”[5] The double charm of film and fiction in a society under the shadow of a repressive regime mainly comes from their expressive power. They can reach the reader or audience by telling and retelling what is not supposed to be said.

As Farzaneh Milani says, “For centuries, female narrative talent was mostly channeled away from public forms of written self-expression.” Traditional storytelling had been “a safe and domestic craft”, as “an outlet for women’s creativity”, “an artistic arena in which they found an expression for their life stories”, as well as “a strategy for survival”[6].

After Iranian women writers began to appear in the 1930s, Hasan Mir Abedini observes that until 1961 limitations prevented women’s creative talents from flourishing. During 1961-1970, “The statistical gap between male and female authors drops and women gradually find their special literary stance.” This process continues until the first decade after the revolution, marked by the disaster of the war with Iraq and repression of the regime, there are “five male authors for every one female writer.”[7] Two decades later, after the Iran-Uraq ceasefire, and especially since 1997, when reformists won the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, women writer have had an unparalleled presence. Not only have there been an almost equal number of them compared to men,   their books have outsold men’s.[8]

Overall, women’s writing shares the form of development, and suffers the same restrictions, as other aspects of contemporary Persian literature. However, this doesn’t preclude women’s works from having their own particular features. Having experienced social discrimination, female writers are driven to write about their own time and place, their own surroundings, their own conditions. This gives their works an urgent feminist voice. Regardless of their different styles, talents, backgrounds, and mind-sets, and no matter whether they live in Iran or not, their works reflect a search for an individualistic identity. It is in the process of discovering “self” and “other” that this feminist voice emerges, and articulates a self-definition.

            Since the Constitutional Revolution, Iranian society has experienced a transitional stage from tradition to modernity, from living under dictatorship to practicing democracy, from a patriarchal social system to a civil society based on the equality of all citizens. Contemporary Persian literature reveals the interrelationships between the individual and a society undergoing change, including the key role of women. In the pre-revolutionary era, women were considered mere subject matter for social changes, not independent agents and,  despite some involvement in political protests in the late years of the Qajar dynasty, women were not generally active in public life. In a highly masculine society they were, however, then and afterwards, a source of conflict in the controversy between tradition and modernity. Women’s rights, whether under Reza Shah, who unveiled women by force, or under his successor, Mohammad Reza Shah, who boasted that he’d given them their rights, were considered as things that could be magnanimously offered them by male monarchs. Moreover, the liberal, Western view of gender relations in the Shah’s era excluded most women, those who belonged to traditional middle-class or lower-class families.            The 1979 Revolution brought out masses of women to the streets, and what happened after kept them outside the walls of their homes. Since then, despite restrictions imposed on them by the Islamic regime, they are no longer mere subject matter but change makers.  They have become highly visible producers or consumers of cultural and literary products. Female readers significantly shape and reshape the literary market. Unlike those in the pre-revolutionary era, they have a very diverse social background and demand writings and literary works able to reflect their own lives and concerns. In parallel, women writers feel compelled to write about matters that shape not only the reality of their lives but also their dreams and nightmares, to question the dictates of the world in where they live, and to identify their own self and that of the “other”. Using a feminine approach, they look for their own identity and individuality, which leads them to find the “other” within their private lives. They examine power relations from their own viewpoint and begin their quest from their own homes. In an attempt to discover their inner self, they explore the hidden corners of their private space. To define their social entity and develop their social role, they probe into the details and routines surrounded them. They’d rather move on from parts to whole, from home to world, from self to other.  They appeal, not to an inaccessible heavenly world, but to an earthbound world that, despite all its harshness, lets them praise life and ignore death by giving birth to others and rebirth to themselves.

            In seeking a language, style, and genre that will meet their needs, they realize that narrative serves their purpose best and is their greatest source of strength. Poetry’s importance has receded. Persian poetry, despite its brilliant history, has a small readership. That poetry cannot find as many readers as the prose does is partly due to its nature. In poetry, language is used in an uncommon manner to create an aesthetic quality. As such, it is not as accessible to readers as prose. The revolutionary change that happened to Persian prose in Constitutional era, along with the introduction of the modern novel and short story, enabled ordinary people to enjoy prose narratives. The sociopolitical upheavals after the 1979 Revolution strengthened their popularity. The past decade has been marked by an emerging mass readership and of women’s writing that makes an impact. In finding their own voices, women writers have found the right style and form to narrate their stories.  

 

 

Notes          

 

 

[1] Fereydun Adamiyat, in his valuable books on Iran’s history, emphasizes that nationalism was imported holus bolus from the West. He argues that its elements  were inherent in the history and culture of Iran, and thus Western nationalism could flourish more easily in Iran rather than in other Middle Eastern societies. Andisheh’ha-ye Mirza Fath Ali Akhund’zadeh., Tehran: Khvarazmi, 1349, 113-114.

[2] Interestingly, on the relations between literature and democracy, Jamal’zadeh says: “Generally the same essence of the Iranian political despotism, which is famous in the world, is found in our literature. That is to say when a writer takes pen in hand,  he addresses only well-educated people  and does not pay any attention to other people at all. He even ignores many people who are literate and can read and understand simple texts. In short he is not after literary democracy…”Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud, Tehran: Sokhan, 1384 (2005),  13-14. 

[3] Zanan. no.115. Azar 1383 (Dec. 2004)

[4] Reynolds Price, A Palpable God, New York: Atheneum, 1978,  3.

5 Maryam Habibian, Under Wraps on the Stage:Women in the Performing Arts in Post-Revolutionary Iran. The Fourth Nordic conference on Middle Eastern Studies: The Middle East in a Globalizing World. Oslo, 13-16 August 1998, 1.   

6  Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992, 177-78.

7 Hassan Mirabedini, The History of the Female Storywriter. (http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/articles/history_female_storywriters.php)

8 Nazila  Fathi, “Women Writing Novels Emerge as Stars in Iran”, New York Times, June 28, 2005.

 

 

 

First published in Gozaar [online magazine], September 2006

[Originally written in English]

 

 

ENGLISH HAS RAPED ME

 

Today exile and emigration, as global phenomena, have afflicted Iran, too. Yet in the past, facing invasions from Arabs, Mongols, and Turks, Iranians were reluctant to leave their land and generally preferred to tolerate, or compromise with foreign or local tyrants rather than flee them. To explore and examine the issue of immigration in its widest sense, embracing exiles and refugees, is too big a topic for this short essay. However, I must point out that the waves of Iranian emigration during the past 25 years, the consequence of an authoritarian religious regime is part of an overwhelming global movement closely associated with other general features of our age, and globalization in particular.  Deriving from the problems of immigration, this essay also derives from a particular perspective, and from a personal history.

            English has raped me! One insignificant proof of this claim is that the very word rape so dominates my mind.  Nonetheless, I do not mean to declare and prove a crime, but to report an event. I say it again: “English has raped me!” I never thought that one day I would use the first person singular pronoun as the object of such a sordid verb.  Not because I assumed that rape was impossible, but because I greatly feared it.  The fear of rape, even when not acknowledged, remains in women’s minds, hidden but always present. Rape has a special quality of violence.  Nowadays, violence does not seem as indecent as it did in the past, because the media constantly displays a wide range of physical or mental tortures.  Yet, not only in traditional closed societies, but also in the most violent cultural products in the West, rape connotes the utmost in torture.  From one viewpoint, this might be considered an outcome of a still-dominant patriarchy. Patriarchy views women and their chastity as a precious property exclusively possessed by men, and thus its plunder is especially heinous.  I recall nights in Tehran in the 1960s when any steps behind me caused fright as I walked between bus stop and home on my way back from an evening English class. I also recall the nights of Toronto in the late 1990s, fearful of rapists and serial killers on my route home from an evening computer class. During this second period, thanks to my innate talent for breaking clichés, I sometimes tried to think about a rapist as a victim and thus acquit him of the crime. Going further, I attributed my fears solely to patriarchal ethics and concluded that if such an incident occurred at the dark edge of a ravine, I should imagine that the cold ground was, say, an examining table in a gynecologist’s office, and should his fingers intrude into …  On such nights, these naïve fantasies could more or less reduce my panic-stricken pulse and the intensity of the toxic moment. However, they could not reduce the overall ferocity of the fear nor, when all seemed safe, could reason or intellect diminish rape’s essence. Though freed from traditional or patriarchal dogma, neither considering the rapist as a victimizer or a victim, I, specifically as a woman, still find rape hateful.

            I’ve often thought that a brutal intrusion into a soul or mind – even more than into one’s body, land, or property – would be impossible without a green light’s having been given. Reading the story of Faust, I concentrated on Faust’s willingness to compromise with Satan, and overestimated his consent. This assumption somehow made me happy since it summoned the belief that one could possess a soul or mind absolutely, and safeguard it from any destructive invader. Should a writer cross a border, it pleased me to think, she would be safe and secure in knowing that her wealth was within.  When it would become time for me to cross the border, I thought, my mind and language were wealth invisible to ideological inspectors and worthless to customs officials.  I crept into the sweet fantasy of bearing my home on my back forever like a snail. At that point, the idea didn’t seem naïve.  When the fundamentalist regime founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini crushed the opposition and many Iranians obsessively thought of exile, I thought that my devotion to writing would prevent leaving my native land. After private, long-nurtured practice, I could see that my writing had improved and, more, I could feel that my relationship with language had advanced.  At that time, I was unafraid of dangers or trouble waiting for me beyond my country’s borders. My anger towards an authoritarian regime was so harsh that it did not let me pity whatever I might have to leave behind. Therefore the idea of leaving was clearly stronger and more reasonable than the idea of staying, yet an inner voice told me that leaving would mean rejecting a love that had appeared at my door. In the 20 years I remained in a place that was my language’s home, I felt confident that my instinct was right.  Regardless of the sufferings imposed on me in a land ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, and all my inner despair, remaining there let me plunge and immerse myself in the ocean of a language that was my first language – not by my choice though, given a choice, it would be my ideal language. Through the years of internal exile in my disaster-stricken home, Persian language (Farsi) was language was not only the light of my home, but my light and my home.

            English has raped me!  This statement is a confession rather than a complaint to the police. This is why it is so hard to say.  Rape may be the crime about which victims are most reluctant to complain.  Since its victims are mainly women, the fearful reluctance may derive from the prohibitions of patriarchal ethics.  In a traditional society, within the domain of religious power, the extent of concealing sins, as well as the willingness to observe taboos, is greater than it is in an open society.  Regardless of what a society may impose on an individual and what it expects of him or her, the very fact of physical conjunction between the criminal and the victim makes revelation difficult.  While spiritual invasion is imposed on the victim, rape as sexual torture intrudes. The victim becomes implicated in a sin that has been initiated by another but committed inside herself.  This makes the victim feel that she is somehow an accomplice. Faust’s covert/overt and voluntary/involuntary compromise with Satan comes to mind.  Yet, before measuring what part rapist and victim each contribute to linguistic rape, we’d better understand the way it happens.

            After leaving my fatherland, the home of my mother tongue, I might have arrived in a country where English wasn’t spoken, but  I didn’t know what such  a language would do with me or what I would do with it. Besides general features as a medium of communication, any language has a specific context and distinguishing characteristics.  In the case of English, two factors had a significant role in what has happened to me.  First, English is a language that many people consider to be global, and certainly it has a global position.  Regardless of contradictions of the idea of “World English”, or whether English speakers have the right to spread it all over the world, English is certainly the dominant language in science and technology, as well as commerce and communication.  Moreover, English has constantly spread its influence over the world of the arts and literature.  This position endows it with a power and ease of movement greater than what it might ordinarily deserve. Second, English has been my first foreign language.  It goes without saying that a foreign language is not the mother tongue learned in a mother environment and, outside its natural milieu, it is powerless to impose itself, or to supplant the native language. For me, English lacked supernatural power.  It appeared to me as my first foreign language when I was in grade 7, and was a window on the infinite perspective of world literature and science.  Though I started learning it mainly at the British Council, I never found it an invader or intruder.  As a “foreign language”, it was a tool for accessing to the most valuable human legacy, arts and science, as well as for communicating with other cultures.  Thus, it was more than useful – so pleasant, so magnificent, in its right place, and without interfering with my immersion in my native language.

            But English also appears in another mode, as “English as a Second Language.”  This term, taken from comparing it with the “first language” – another name for mother tongue, but disregarding its emotional aspects and just reflecting the language’s rank – indicates a survival language for immigrants living in an English-speaking country, a guarantee of their social-cultural presence in the new society.  It is the most basic tool of communication with the host society and the only permit to be accepted by it.  Whereas “English as a Foreign Language” stops at the point of knowing and understanding the culture of people whose native language is English, the basic function of ESL is to let the learner enter this culture in order to acculturate or assimilate with it.  The deterministic force and covert compulsion of ESL deriving from its ability to guarantee survival, give it an aggressive and dominating manner of which EFL is free.  The difference between EFL and ESL results from their different roles:  While EFL looks for friendship and companionship, ESL imposes force.

            Clearly, the “English” that has raped me is my subject, not the other English, whose company has always been delightful. In my view, the only relationship that the position and function of ESL demands is forced intercourse.  But why and how do I see this intercourse as forced?  It may be said that the involuntary emigration is the factor that makes the relationship with the second language undesired and coerced.  Yet its force is indirect, and it is the immigrant who, for whatever reasons or expectations, approaches it and puts herself to its grasp.  So the involvement is somewhat mutual, though the strength and intensity of one partner eclipse the other’s role. When I state, “English has raped me,” I do not mean to conceal my surrender and passivity or, for that matter, my actions. This is why I emphasize that I am not complaining of a crime, but confessing an event.  Yet this does not reduce the intensity, painfulness, and forcefulness of the latter.  Having intercourse with ESL, in the case of a typical immigrant without any particular sensitivity to language in general, may stop at the stage of a long-term, difficult challenge – sometimes a debilitating one with a profound psychological impact and unforeseen consequences.  In the context of my deep devotion to Farsi (Persian language), this interaction becomes an invasion of the privacy of a mind in love with a native language.  A woman sees herself in bed with somebody who pushed back her former beloved, wrenched away from a lovely sexual intercourse in order to yield herself to a forceful one.  The painful wound of this shift also involves the tragic essence of an involuntary betrayal.  While the first love makes all its efforts to flourish as before, the rival’s vigour is so great that any resistance is pushed away.  In the meantime, the image and presence of the beloved are undeniable and the lover has a burning desire to return to him and to his bed.

            The claim that there is a conflict between second language and first language derives from a particular attitude to language.  One may say that language is a tool for communication.  Or you may accept that language is a fundamental part of culture, even that it is the index of culture.  From an extreme perspective, one could say that mind depends on language. Needless to say, the difference between language as a basis for mind and language as a tool of social communication is significant.  Likewise, language users are significantly different in how they use the different aspects of language as well as how their minds consort with the layers of language.  A love for a  particular language is based on understanding mind and language to be inseparable. In this case the language user claims, “Language is what comes to me and stays with me; what comes inside me and comes out of me.  Language is what happens to me and passes with me; what happens inside me and passes through me.”  Given this, a mind free of language, in a human context, is impossible.  Further, a language free of the impact and effects of complicated mental functions, as well as emotional ups and downs, is hardly more than a set of limited codes unsuitable as anything more than a tool.  From this perspective, language, first and foremost, reflects the inner self rather than expresses the content of one’s mind to someone else.  So, whatever is and happens in the mind, in its scope covering both the external and internal worlds of a single individual, can only be reflected in a mirror, a language being the unique manifestation of a certain mind. I do not mean to deny the presence of dreams and other non-verbal elements. I do mean that anything in the unconscious, in order to make itself recognized by the mind, has to be manifested in the language of that mind.  For example, a garden that suddenly appears in the dream cannot be recognized unless it receives the linguistic sign “garden.”  At the very moment it appears, it is labeled “garden.”  The more language users are aware of the presence and influence of language, the more mind and language merge.  In this case, the interaction between mind and language is more complex and subtler, for they both flourish side by side and each helps the other to become extended.

            It goes without saying that non-English speaking immigrants are overtly and covertly discriminated against once in a while by native speakers. This, along with other effects and consequences of the global position of English, gives English a violent quality. Yet, from my perspective, the unfair force of English consists in mercilessly depriving me of having my privacy with my ideal language.  In fact, English thrusts other languages into the remote part of non-English speakers’ minds so barbarically that the fear of the death of “mother tongues”, and particularly the fear of losing my own mother tongue turns my dreams to nightmares and compels me to constantly hear the whisper,  “English has raped me.”

            Yet this is not the whole story, for it lacks the last installment of the confession.  As a matter of fact, it is a special episode.  Having given English a human image, I have to endow it with duality and thus the dark and light sides of its face.  In this way, English’s identity does not lend itself to dissection and division into foreign language and second language.  A language appears at the mental threshold with all its weight, volume, colour, and scent and looks for a way to enter.  This language, regardless of its individual characteristics, shares general features with all languages. It conveys human things.  I see a stranger at my door who desires not to be a stranger, who provokes in me a desire to know him – an unwanted guest asks to be admitted. This is a language wishing to be your pet.  This temptation is there to let it become one.  Sometimes, as before, I catch myself enjoying English, without minding its foreignness, without being overwhelmed by its names and labels, and without being obsessed by my situation as an immigrant.  In these moments, I naturally do not like to remember the dark side and aggressive spirit of a violating stranger. Instead, I’d like to lend my soul and mind to the smooth and inclusive flow of the language that approaches towards me and happens to me.  The joy of the intercourse between mind and the other language is momentary, though, since it does not lead to full intercourse and ultimate pleasure. There is the unfamiliarity, for one thing; for another, the looming shadow of the first beloved.          

            This last installment of reluctant confession is only part of an overwhelming whole imposed upon my mind.  Seen like this, English is not a second language gradually forcing the first language back, but is another language, relying on general features of all languages, and supported by its positive characteristics, draws my attention to itself, attracts me, and makes me fascinated by its peculiar virtues.  I return to the story of Dr. Faust and notice, as many times in the past, that in the interaction between him and Satan determinism and will are both involved, though they may be unequal.

            To sum up, while I was in love with my “home” and my “light”, the circumstances appeared to me as in the image of Mephistopheles and revealed the magic power of English to me, assigning it as the only code of my survival.  In order to survive I’ve grabbed a rope whose other end is in the hands of Satan, and I’ve paid the price.  Nevertheless, I do not conceal that I’ve grabbed the rope in order not to fall. I do not conceal that I may be unable to protect the light of my home and the home of my light from the harms of time.  Yes, English has raped me, yet …

 

 

First published in Speaking in Tongues [anthology of essays], 2005

[Originally written in Persian; translated by author]