Sadegh Hedayat


Sadegh Hedayat was an Iranian writer, translator, satirist, and poet. Best known for his novel The Blind Owl, he was one of the earliest Iranian writers to adopt literary modernism in their career. He is widely considered to be the father of the atheist movement in Iran.

Early life and education

Hedayat was born on 17 February 1903 in Tehran to a northern Iranian aristocratic family. His father was Hedayat-Qoli Khan and his mother was Zivar al-Moluk. He was the youngest son in the family, with two older brothers, Mahmoud and Issa, and three sisters.
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, Anvar al-Moluk, married Haj Ali Razmara, an army general and later Prime Minister of Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Another sister was the wife of Abdollah Hedayat, who also served as an army general. Another one of his sisters was the wife of Abdollah Hedayat who was also an army general.
Hedayat began his primary education at the Elmieh School in Tehran in 1908. In 1914, he started his secondary education at Dar ol-Fonoon, where he published a wall newspaper titled Nedaye Amvat. However, due to a severe eye ailment, he left Dar ol-Fonoon in 1916 and continued his studies at Collège Saint-Louis, a French Catholic school. It was here that he first became acquainted with world literature.
At Collège Saint-Louis, Hedayat developed a deep interest in occult sciences and metaphysics. During this period, he also began practicing vegetarianism and published his first book, Man and Animal, which focused on animal welfare, followed by The Benefits of Vegetarianism in 1927.
In 1925, he was among a select few students who traveled to Europe to continue their studies. Initially, he studied engineering in Belgium, but abandoned it after a year to pursue architecture and later dentistry in France. During this period, he became acquainted with Thérèse, a Parisian with whom he had a love affair. In 1927, Hedayat attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Marne but was rescued by a fishing boat. He finally returned to Iran in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree and held various short-term administrative jobs.

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 traveled and stayed in India from 1936 until late 1937. 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, a renowned scholar and philologist. Nadeem Akhtar's Hedayat in India 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".

Vegetarianism

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

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." He is widely remembered as "a major symbol of Iranian nationalism."
The English poet John Heath-Stubbs published an elegy, "A Cassida for Sadegh Hedayat", in A Charm Against the Toothache in 1954.

Censorship

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:
  • "City Report: Tehran" in Frieze, issue 86, October 2004, which examines Iranian censorship in general;
  • An article by Robert Tait in The Guardian, 17 November 2006;
  • an article published by Radio Free Europe — Radio Liberty on 26 November 2007.

Works

Films about Hedayat

Further references

  • Homa Katouzian, I.B. Tauris, 2000.
  • Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature, Ibex Publishers, 1996.
  • 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, 1984.
  • Sayers, Carol, The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1984.
  • Excerpt from "Sadegh Hadayat: Dar Tare Ankaboot", by M. F. Farzaneh, 2005.
  • Excerpt from M. F. Farzaneh's "Ashenayee ba Sadegh Hedayat", 2004.