Postrevolutionary Persian Literature: Creativity and Resistance (original) (raw)

Abstract

Persian literature after the 1979 revolution has been inspiring, entertaining, and even cathartic and it has, as it did in the prerevolutionary period, both influenced events and been influenced by societal changes. This body of contemporary literary works can help us understand how postrevolutionary events unfolded, how those events affected lives, and how the Iranian Revolution influenced the way in which art and ideology are produced and consumed. In the years immediately following the revolution, Persian poetry declined, both in terms of volume and of reception. Committed leftist revolutionary poets such as Ahmad Shamlu, Hamid Mosadeq, Siyavosh Kasrai, or Mehdi Akhvan Sales, who had inspired social change among students and ordinary people in the decades prior to the revolution, lost their key motivation after the fall of the Shah. In addition, a number of these poets also either lost their lives (e.g., Said Soltanpur) or went into exile (e.g., Esmail Khoi), or they simply changed their method of social and cultural participation (e.g., Shamlu). A few, such as Simin Behbahani, continued to be productive in poetic endeavors, but even she espoused new approaches and became an advocate of women's rights and civil society in her literary and social activities. Several years later, poetry regained some of its past glory and many poets such as Qaysar Aminpur, Shams Langrudi, Mohamd Mokhtari, Sayed Ali Salehi, and Hasan Hosayni began focusing their aesthetic efforts on cultural, social, and political issues of their day. The poetry of some of the members of the older generations, such as Forugh Farrokhzad, posthumously gained a new significance due to the rise of

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References (5)

1. For information about the rise of feminist literary discourse, see Kamran Talattof, The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
2. Mahmud Dowlatabadi, Kalidar (Tehran: Farhang-i Mu'asir, 1979).
3. Examples of the reprints of the works of women novelists that have been on the top of best-seller lists include Bamdad-e Khomar by Fataneh Hajsayed Javadi (thirty-eight times), Cheragh-ha ra Man Khamush Mikonam by Zoya Pirzad (twenty-two times), and Dalan-e Behesht by Naazi Safavi (twenty-two times).
4. The Iran-Iraq war was a devastating event, but its direct impact on literature has thus far been an increase in the number of works written in support of the defense against the invaders and in praise of state ideology.
5. The letter was widely circulated in many journals. For a translation of its text, see "We Are the Writers: A Statement by 134 Iranian Writers," trans. Hammed Shahidian, Iranian Studies 30 (1997): 291 -93.