Sadegh Hedayat

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Sadegh Hedayat
Hedayat113.jpeg
The last photograph he posted from Paris to his relatives in Tehran. (1951)
Born(1903-02-17)17 February 1903
Died4 April 1951(1951-04-04) (aged 48)
Paris, France
Resting place Père Lachaise Cemetery
Alma mater Dar ul-Funun
St. Louis School
University of Tehran
Known forWriter of prose fiction and short stories
Notable work The Blind Owl (Bufe kur)
Buried Alive (Zende be gur)
The Stray Dog (Sage velgard)
Three Drops of Blood (Seh ghatreh khoon)
Signature
Sadeq Hedayat signature.svg

Sadegh Hedayat (Persian : صادق هدایتPersian pronunciation: [ˈsɑːdɛqɛhɛdɑːˈjæt] listen ; 17 February 1903 – 9 April 1951) was an Iranian writer and translator. Best known for his novel The Blind Owl , he was one of the earliest Iranian writers to adopt literary modernism in their career.

Contents

Early life and education

Young Sadegh Hedayat Sadegh hedayat.jpg
Young Sadegh Hedayat

Hedayat was born to a northern Iranian aristocratic family in Tehran. His great-grandfather Reza-Qoli Khan Hedayat Tabarestani was a well-respected writer and worked in the government, as did other relatives. Hedayat's sister married Haj Ali Razmara who was an army general and among the prime ministers of Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. [1] Another one of his sisters was the wife of Abdollah Hedayat who was also an army general. [2]

Hedayat was educated at Collège Saint-Louis (French catholic school) and Dar ol-Fonoon (1914–1916). In 1925, he was among a select few students who traveled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially went on to study engineering in Belgium, which he abandoned after a year to study architecture in France. There he gave up architecture in turn to pursue dentistry. In this period he became acquainted with Thérèse, a Parisian with whom he had a love affair[ citation needed ]. In 1927 Hedayat attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Marne but was rescued by a fishing boat. After four years in France, he finally surrendered his scholarship and returned home in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree. In Iran, he held various jobs for short periods.[ citation needed ]

Career

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, and Guy de Maupassant intrigued him the most. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought the Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing.

Hedayat's corpse in Paris, following his 9 April 1951 suicide Hedayatdeadbody.jpg
Hedayat's corpse in Paris, following his 9 April 1951 suicide

Hedayat traveled and stayed in India from 1936 until late 1937 (the mansion he stayed in during his visit to Bombay was identified in 2014). Hedayet spent time in Bombay learning the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) language from the Parsi Zoroastrian community of India. He was taught by Bahramgore Tahmuras Anklesaria (also spelled as Behramgore Tehmurasp Anklesaria), a renowned scholar and philologist. [3] [4] Nadeem Akhtar's Hedayat in India [5] provides details of Hedayat's sojourn in India. In Bombay Hedayat completed and published his most enduring work, The Blind Owl , which he had started writing, in Paris, as early as 1930. The book was praised by Henry Miller, André Breton, and others, and Kamran Sharareh has called it "one of the most important literary works in the Persian language". [6]

Vegetarianism

Hedayat was a vegetarian from his youth and authored the treatise The Benefits of Vegetarianism whilst in Berlin in 1927. [7]

Death and legacy

In 1951, overwhelmed by despair, Hedayat left Tehrān and traveled to Paris, where he rented an apartment. A few days before his death, Hedayat tore up all of his unpublished work. On 9 April 1951, he plugged all the doors and windows of his rented apartment with cotton, then turned on the gas valve, committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Two days later, his body was found by police, with a note left behind for his friends and companions that read, "I left and broke your heart. That is all." [8] [9] He is widely remembered as "a major symbol of Iranian nationalism." [10]

The English poet John Heath-Stubbs published an elegy, "A Cassida for Sadegh Hedayat", in A Charm Against the Toothache in 1954.

Censorship

Tomb of Sadegh Hedayat, Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Sadegh-hedayat-grave.jpg
Tomb of Sadegh Hedayat, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

In November 2006, republication of Hedayat's work in uncensored form was banned in Iran, as part of a sweeping purge. However, surveillance of bookstalls is limited and it is still possible to purchase the originals second-hand. The official website is also still online. The issue of censorship is discussed in:

Quotations

The Blind Owl

Works

Films about Hedayat

Sadegh Hedayat and Rozbeh, son of Sadeq Chubak Hedayatroozbeh.jpg
Sadegh Hedayat and Rozbeh, son of Sadeq Chubak

See also

Sources

Further references

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. Fariborz Mokhtari (2016). "Review: Iran's 1953 Coup: Revisiting Mosaddeq". The Middle East Book Review. 7 (2): 118. doi:10.5325/bustan.7.2.0113. S2CID   185086482.
  2. Homa Katouzian (2007). Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous World. London; New York: Routledge. p. 19. ISBN   978-1-134-07935-3.
  3. Azadibougar, Omid (2020-02-01). World Literature and Hedayat's Poetics of Modernity. Springer Nature. ISBN   978-981-15-1691-7.
  4. Beard, Michael (2014-07-14). Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel. Princeton University Press. p. 34. ISBN   978-1-4008-6132-3.
  5. electricpulp.com. "HEDAYAT, SADEQ v. Hedayat in India – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2015-09-03.
  6. "From Persia to Tehr Angeles: A Contemporary Guide to Understanding and Appreciating Ancient Persian Culture", p. 126, by Kamran Sharareh
  7. Sollars, Michael; Jennings, Arbolina Llamas. (2008). The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel 1900 to the Present. Facts On File. p. 347. ISBN ISBN   978-1438108360
  8. Dohni, Niloufar (April 13, 2013). "A Man Out Of Place". Majalla. Archived from the original on June 27, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  9. Kuiper, Kathleen (ed.). "Sadeq Hedayat: Iranian author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on July 19, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
  10. Amiri, Cyrus; Govah, Mahdiyeh (2021-09-22). "Hedayat's rebellious child: multicultural rewriting of The Blind Owl in Porochista Khakpour's Sons and Other Flammable Objects". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 50 (2): 436–449. doi:10.1080/13530194.2021.1978279. ISSN   1353-0194. S2CID   240547754.
  11. "Frieze Magazine | Archive | Tehran". Frieze.com. Archived from the original on 2013-10-01. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  12. Robert Tait in Tehran (2006-11-17). "Bestsellers banned in new Iranian censorship purge | World news". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  13. "Iran: Book Censorship The Rule, Not The Exception". Rferl.org. 2007-11-26. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  14. "Excerpted from Trafic no. 18 (Spring 1996) Translation Rouge 2004".