Sadegh Hedayat

Sadegh (or Sadeq) Hedayat (in Persian: صادق هدایت; February 17, 1903 – 9 April, 1951) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories.

Life

He was born to an aristocratic family and was educated at the Lycée Français (French high school) in Tehran. In 1925, he was among a select few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially pursued dentistry before giving this up for engineering. After four years in France and Belgium, Hedayat returned to Iran where he held various jobs for short periods.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka 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 Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values.

In his latter years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran’s decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, specially by his peers, Hedayat’s last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression.

Hedayat's most enduring work is the short novel The Blind Owl (1937). It has been called "one of the most important literary works in [the] Persian language" (S.A. Quidsu).

He ended his life by gassing himself and is buried in the Père Lachaise.

Current censorship

His work is coming under increasing attack in Europe from political Islamists, and many of his novels - such as Haji Aqa in particular - are no longer stocked in French bookshops and libraries. The novels Blind Owl and Haji Aqa were banned from the 18th Tehran International Book Fair in 2005. In Haji Aqa his characters explore the lack of meritocracy in Iran...

"In order for the people to be kept in line, they must be kept hungry, needy, illiterate, and superstitious. If the grocer's child becomes literate, he not only will criticise my speech, but he will also utter words that neither you nor I will understand ... What would happen if the forage-seller's child turns out intelligent and capable - and mine, the son of a Haji, turns out lazy and foolish?"

Works

• Fiction
  • 1930 Zindeh be-gur (Buried Alive). A collection of 8 short stories.
  • 1931 Sayeh-ye Mughul (Mongol Shadow)
  • 1932 Seh qatreh khun (Three Drops of Blood)
  • 1933 Sayeh Rushan (Chiaroscuro)
    Alaviyeh Khanum (Madame `Alaviyeh)
    Vagh Vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow)
  • 1937 Buf-e Kur (The Blind Owl)
  • 1942 Sag-e Velgard (The Stray Dog)
  • 1944 Velengari (Tittle-tattle)
    Ab-e Zendegi (The Elixir of Life)
  • 1945 Haji Aqa (Mr. Haji)
  • 1946 Farda (Tomorrow)
  • 1947 Tup-e Murvari (The Pearl Cannon)

• Drama (1930-1946)
  • Parvin dokhtar-e Sasan (Parvin, Sassan's Daughter)
  • Maziyar
  • Afsaneh-ye Afarinesh (The Fable of Creation)

• Travelogues
  • Esfahan nesf-e Jahan (Isfahan: Half the World)
  • Ru-ye Jadeh-ye Namnak (On the Wet Road), unpublished, written in 1935.

• Studies, Criticism and Miscellanea
  • Rubaiyat-e Hakim Umar-e Khayyam (Khayyam's Quatrains) 1923
  • Ensan va Hayvan (Man and Animal) 1924
  • Marg (Death) 1927
  • Favayed-e Giyahkhari (The Advantages of Vegetarianism) 1957
  • Hekayat-e Ba Natijeh (The Story with a Moral) 1932
  • Taranehha-ye Khayyam (The Melodies of Khayyam) 1934
  • Chaykuvski (Tchaikovsky) 1940
  • Dar Piramun-e Lughat-e Furs-e Asadi (About Asadi's Persian Dictionary) 1940
  • Shiveh-ye Novin dar Tahqiq-e Adabi (A New Method of Literary Research) 1940
  • Dastan-e Naz (The Story of Naz) 1941
  • Shivehha-ye Novin Dar She'r-e Parsi (New Trends in Persian Poetry) 1941
  • A review of the film "Mulla Nasru'd Din" 1944
  • A literary criticism on the Persian translation of Gogol's The Government Inspector 1944
  • Chand Nukteh Dar Bar-ye Vis va Ramin (Some Notes on Vis and Ramin) 1945
  • Payam-e Kafka (The Message of Kafka) 1948
  • al-Be`thatu-Islamiya Ellal-Belad'l Afranjiya (An Islamic Mission in the European Lands), undated.

Sources

• List of Sadeq Hedayat's Works
• Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature ISBN 0-936347-72-4

See also

• Intellectual Movements in Iran
• Persian literature
• Persian philosophy

External links

• Sadeq Hedayat's Life by Iraj Bashiri
• Sadeq Hedayat's Corner, further articles and English translations by Iraj Bashiri
• Persian Language & Literature — Sadeq Hedayat
• Hedayat Page (in French)
• Sadegh Hedayat Site (in Persian)
• Sokhan — online literary magazine (in Persian)
• Adabkade (in Persian)
• Hedayat's art work
• Iran Project - Hedayat and the Experience of Modernity
• Sadegh Hedayat's Photo & Gravesite

Further references

• Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: Life and legend of an Iranian writer, I.B. Tauris, 2000. ISBN 1-86064-413-9
• Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature, Ibex Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-936347-72-4
• Michael C. Hillmann, Hedayat's "The Blind Owl" Forty Years After, Middle East Monograph No. 4, Univ of Texas Press, 1978.
• Iraj Bashiri, Hedayat's Ivory Tower: Structural Analysis of The Blind Owl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1975.
• Iraj Bashiri, The Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat, Mazda Publishers, 1984.
• Sayers, Carol, The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1984.