The Authenticity of Forugh Farrokhzad - Mammad Aidani
Her poetry, desire and poetics of
body and self
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‘…in my poetry I’m not searching for anything. But in
my poetry I’m searching I’m searching for myself’
- Forugh
My
lover
with his unashamed naked body
at its unbreakable branches
stood there like death.
The carved and restless lines
following his restless body
in the circular shape.
My lover
seems to have passed
through the forgotten generations.
*
* *
There is a city near the bank of a turbulent river
With dens palm trees and lighted nights
There is a city near the bank of the river
Where my captive heart is imprisoned to a
pride lover.
There is a city near the bank of its
river for years we open our embraces to each other
On the sands near the palm trees
Where he steals kisses from my lips
and eyes.
Forugh Farrokhzad,
modern Persian woman poet (1933–1967), left a great treasure of poetic
works that she created during her very short life, and they changed us
forever. Her moods, her deep understanding of her body, her inner and
authentic depths for expressing herself through her writing without
hesitation or fear, is a great testimony of a liberated woman who,
despite all odds, advocates authenticity even from the depths of her
solitude. It can unarguably be said that her poems have surpassed the
works of any poet in Middle Eastern societies.
Forugh was the product of a repressive society which had closed all
the doors to voices that she tried to promote: moderation, inclusion,
freedom of speech, and freedom itself. She was the child of war, of
what she had lived through and experienced under the Western
occupation, and the Pahlavi’s regime. It was a regime that did not
know much except blind subjugation to the worst values of Western
culture, and fear of Iranian people. This led it to create a garrison
in which for decades bright minds were isolated, imprisoned or simply
murdered, and millions lived in abject poverty. As a result this
turned Iran into an ideologically fertile ground for the extreme left
and fundamentalism, two forces that did not have a clear understating
of democracy and collective inclusion, or respect for differences in a
complex society such as Iran. That was one of the main reasons why
Iranians largely took part in the 1979 revolution to overthrow the old
regime. The negative sentiment was mostly the result of massive anger
toward the Shah’s regime which the West supported since the coup
d’etat in 1954.
An agenda of modernisation and westernisation was imposed upon an
ancient culture and people, at the expense of freedom and freedom of
expression. The massive industrialisation of Iran during the oil boom
of the 50s, 60s and 70s were forced upon young Iranian people during
those years. They were expected to act like Westerners, but without
the right to examine their past identity. This occurred in a stagnant
and patriarchal environment; therefore it backfired. The system did
not change anything for the poor, marginalised, intellectuals,
educated people, artists, or women in particular. They could not enjoy
life by freely expressing themselves.
Many artists and thinkers became involved with the extreme left or
fundamentalist views of liberation. They propagated their views from
either underground, prison, abroad or they went to opium houses to
hide. People felt abounded by the voices of hope. There were some
voices that spoke of the inclusion of all, and writing was their
medium.
*
In Iranian culture, it is a tradition for ordinary people to believe
that when the authentic poets speaks, their voices are those of angels
talking for freedom, or at least that they are the voices which
soothes their collective hurts in hard times. In our modern poetry the
instigator of this poetic hope was Nima Yushij who came from a small
village called Yush in the province of Mazandaran near the Caspian Sea
(1895–1960).
Nima’s voice was unique for he changed the style of Persian classical
poetry and the romantic and nostalgic voice of traditional poets that,
with the exception of Omar Khayyam and Hafiz, for thousands of years
did not challenge anything. When he established the modernist movement
in Iran he was aware of the great need for a distinctive way of
releasing the voice of the poet in his society. He urged others to
challenge the fantastic and convoluted language of past poetry into
the Iranian poets’ world of reality.
His works were denied and attacked by traditionalists and he was
systematically isolated from the institutions; both the religious
establishment and the regime which wanted to maintain the status quo
under any circumstances. They tried as sternly as they could to
suppress this new approach to poetic expression during and after the
first and second world wars. The Western occupation of Iran and the
beginning of the cold war created an absolutist regime which blindly
ruled through fear and paranoia. It unconditionally subjected itself
to the West’s interests by systematically ignoring Iranian people and
accusing any progressive voice as the voice of communism, as a traitor
or an ingrate.
In this climate, however, the poor could not talk. So the children of
the rich and middle class started to talk. They were children of
modernisation and they looked extremely modern, but despite the fact
that they were living with a newly imposed look, nothing had really
changed inside their psyche. Those who were privileged and had a
chance to gain an education were forced to keep this false modernity
at any cost, without causing any challenge to it. And this was a
recipe for disaster, which took place later. Most of the youth who
came from this privileged background began to question the patriarchal
and one-dimensional tradition of the social structures they were
living in, either in their private homes or in the wider society where
they were forced to live comfortably. They needed more democracy and
freedom of expression in that closed society. For they experienced it
first hand in their comfortable, modern lifestyle. They were told that
they were free to follow this golden age of Iranian prosperity and
happiness whilst the strict and traditional behaviours of a rigid
feudalistic and patriarchal attitudes were dictated to most of them at
home.
Some of these individuals realised that this modernity was just a
tragic joke. They wanted to find a space to truly live their lives as
they wished. They did not want to have anything to do with either the
hypocrisy of traditionalists who hid under religious indoctrination,
or the absolutist system which advocated modernity for its own sake.
They wanted a new space where they could authentically, individually,
and without fear communicate with all people through their arts. They
dreamt for a pluralistic and open society for all Iranians, to
overcome centuries of their shortcomings.
*
Forugh was one of these thinkers who experienced this suppression
within her modern family life and society. The climate in which most
of these individuals had lived provided a solid ground for some
outstanding poets, filmmakers, writers, painters and playwrights to
adopt a democratic modernism, and created some important works. In
this great gathering of artists Forugh’s voice stands out. She as an
individual and poet captures the repression of women and people,
without slogans. Her politics was her body and her experience as a
woman, and her message was against traditional society, which was in a
macabre dance with modernity. Her struggle was to expose all hypocrisy
regardless of their names and isms. Her poetry runs against the social
and ancient norms and attitudes of a male society, which prevented her
from being herself.
From the time she began writing, she searched for the space of
selfhood. She started from the simplicity of a young and inexperienced
poet and insisted to become an experienced poet and woman, in order
to declare herself to the world. This is explicit in her last work.
She changed herself and the world around her in the course of ten
years, and sat to enjoy the freedom that she worked so hard and paid
so gravely for. Yet the world is full of paradoxes, and a tragic
accident took her young life, leaving her works behind for us to learn
from. What would have happened to her if she had lived and witnessed
the revolution of 1979?
*
The Pahlavi’s regime created an environment that was fixated on
Western culture and greed. This divided Iranian thinkers and artists
alike. Some took to isolation and lived in the world of nothingness,
most compromised themselves, and others turned their works into
ideological formats. All of these groups had further alienated the
masses of people and amidst this desperate environment Forugh’s voice
and a few others were the voices of hope.
She and a few poets and artists declared their displeasure about the
hypocrisy of men’s traditional thinking in so-called modern society
and fought for the authenticity of the poet and artist as the voice of
herself/himself. The poets attacked anything to do with ideology and
committed themselves to the search for absolute and immediate
experiences. ‘No to ideology’, they said. ‘We escape from the
lies of ideology and the business of commitment’, they declared. As
far as responsibility was concerned, the poet is only responsible for
his or her own works and their inner lives, which is revolutionary and
awake.
In Iranian culture Forugh was, is, and will be a unique woman for many
reasons. And one of them is that she was, is, and will be a great poet
who left a legacy. This needs to be considered in order to understand
her complex personality, Iranian women poetry, and women in general.
Her life was her poetry and her poems were her body, which embodied
centuries of repression.
Tragically in the West the women in Iran are seen as slavish,
submissive and prisoners of a veiled society. To be a poet of high
quality in the Persian language and culture is a great honour to be
bestowed with. And to be a unique female voice who wrote freely about
what she felt and experienced is a revolution. Forugh’s poetry shook
the dominant male culture in Iran which, for thousands of years, like
most places, dominated women.
Forugh’s life was just like her work. She never separated her inner
turbulence and needs from her external life. She was, and the poetry
she left behind is a great testimony to her authentic self. Her direct
expressions of her sensuality, the desire for her lover, and her lust
for life are legendary.
In terms of her poetic and innovative style in Persian language, her
poetry has influenced the poetic voice of the Iranian tradition
forever. Her poignant and simple writing is a forceful example of a
woman who knows what she has to do to express her immediate needs and
her personal and social freedom. The expressions in her poetry are the
uncompromising cries of a woman who is deeply searching for her
identity in a repressive world. Her struggle was initially against a
society that forced her to inherit centuries of denial as a solitary
woman. It was a society which had denied her freedom of an intimate
relationship with the man she chose to be with, rather than the one
who was chosen for her. She knew the fear of speaking of her true
feelings in such a rigid and closed society, but she chose to say it.
I want you, and I know
That I can never take you in my arms:
You are like that clear, bright sky,
And I am a captive bird in this cage
(‘The Captive’, Selected Poems, 1955)
*
Her poetic journey started when she was nineteen and in the course of
three years she published three of her major works which were titled
‘Captive’ (Asir 1955), ‘The Wall’ (Divar 1957), and ‘Rebellion’ (Osyan
1958). ‘The Captive’ was published when she was only twenty years old,
and in the depths of her unhappiness. She knew that she had to find
her freedom and was aware that she had many things to say about it.
I must say something
I must say something
In the shivering moment at daybreak
When space blends with something strange
Like the portents of puberty
I want
To surrender to some revolt
I want
To pour down out of that vast cloud
I want
To say no no no.
She dared to leave an unhappy marriage when she is only twenty-one,
after three years of life with a man who she did not love and had
nothing in common with. In captivity she boldly expressed her needs as
a young woman and poet. In this book she pours her heart out about the
lover she wishes to be with. This kind of expression in any shape or
form was unheard of by any woman in Persian culture and poetry. It was
always the man who had the freedom to express these feelings of
longing for a lover, and no woman in Persian history dared to do the
same. But Forugh was uninhibited and fearless, and made a conscious
decision to let go. The publication of ‘The Captive’ was a real shock
to Iran’s tyrannical family structure amidst its authoritarian and
patriarchal society.
Her works have become the only format from which young women in Iran
could learn about this unique woman who was born from within their
language and culture, a voice which spoke for them not long ago, one
which envisaged a new birth. ‘I don’t know where I want to go – I
don’t know what I’m searching for night and day. What my tired gaze is
searching. Why this heart of mine is burning within itself.’ Or ‘O,
hey, man who has burned my lips with the sparkling flames of kisses’.
She comes out and rebels against the social conventions which forces
woman to hide their passion.
They have said that that woman is a mad woman
Who gives kisses freely from her lips:
Yes, but kisses from her lips.
Bestow life on my dead lips.
May the thought of reputation never be in my head.
This is I who seeks you for satisfaction in this way.
I crave solitude and your embrace’,
I carve solitude and the lips of the cup.
She persists to
make herself clear by using ‘I’ often, and by communicating honestly
to her readers. At this stage she is a captive of her domestic life.
She sees it and searches for a solution to free her soul and body. She
moans, ‘Not I need strength I’m in this thought and I know that I will
never be able to help myself to free myself from this prison which is
kept by the man’. She is nineteen when she asks herself these
questions and she knows that she is the answer. She is restless but
she needs time to answer these questions by taking action and she
will.
And for that she had endured great pain, but her desire was to free
herself and not be captive to the old ways. She needed her inner
strength in such a hostile place, which had all the power to enslave
her to its fixed definitions of her gender and her art. She knew that
she had to rebel in order to free herself from dilemmas she was
facing, and at a great cost.
In the silence of the temple of desire
I am lying beside your passionate body
My kisses have left their marks on your shoulders
Like fiery bites of a snake.
(‘The Song of Beauty’)
I with the cold lips of the mooring breeze
Write a melody for you
I’m that shinning star
Which journey in the sky for you.
You are in me and you are separate from me
You are with me and your gaze is elsewhere.
After leaving her married life her greatest hope lay in looking for a
lover who appreciated her as a free woman and as a poet. Someone who
she could be with and to whom she could share her inner self without
being caged again and forced to obey the rules which told her she
could express the realities of her desire. She is fearful.
I ponder, but I know
I will never escape this cage
For even if the jailer let me go
I have no strength to fly.
There is something here about Forugh that needs to be taken note of;
the historical context from which she writes needs to be understood.
It is the time during which Pahlavi’s power is at its peak. The
decadence of false modernity and fear of any opposing view is so
intense that Iran is in absolute darkness. The forces of so called
modernity is operating on the one hand, and the fundamentalist forces
are on the other. In the midst of this is the Left, which is entangled
within itself and trying to find a way to propagate its agenda; it
ends up sending confused messages to the masses, who are desperate for
fresh air to breathe. The confused leadership leaves people
disillusioned.
In this situation people were looking to poets who expressed
themselves rather than chanting slogans. People were looking for a new
language to find a place to feel their sense of dignity, which was
crushed by dictatorial policies of the regime. Alongside great
modernist poets Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamloo, Sohrab Sepehri and others,
Forugh seems to be the only one who directly talks about and rebels
against traditions. She tackled the subject matters that were
impossible to talk about. Her courageous language directly expressed
the hidden desires of Iranian women; the emotions and feelings of
women who are neglected not only from their physical needs but also
their civil human rights.
But she was her own subject matter and her desire was to express her
freedom; she did not just chant slogans. She insisted on talking about
how she felt and whom she wanted to share her body, life, and freedom
with. And amidst the suffocating atmosphere she was always fighting
with shadows (there are many of them on the road to freedom). It is
not surprising that she has become the voice of liberation of women in
Iran and the Middle East. In ‘The Wall’ she lives in the world of
shadows and youthfulness.
At night on the damp road
How often have I said to myself?
I race down the road of endless questions
This was written at
a crucial time, when she was beginning to feel at ease with herself
and her body, even though she was still in pain after feeling the
guilt leaving her husband and her son, who she was not allowed to see.
However, painfully and tragically she followed her path to find her
new birth and her poetry where she could express her poetic and
artistic voice. Of the deserted home, she says:
I know that now a child is crying
Full of sorrow of separation from his mother
But wounded at heart and distressed
I’m on the path of my desire
My friend and beloved is poetry
And I go to find it
This was, in her creative and personal life, the moment when she
discovers her beloved, both physically and poetically. And it is here
that she stopped writing the cries of an unhappy woman who was
despised by society.
Forugh also maintained friendships with both male and female poets who
were extremely erudite and understanding of her needs; they gave her
the space to be herself. They helped her find her poetic vision and
from here she began to understand society rather than standing against
it; she was beginning to grow up and understand its complexities. Her
later works were still preoccupied with the same themes, but they were
dealt with more maturely. She came to say, ‘Yes, now I know I’m an
individual and my poetry is for all humankind’. She felt that she
arrived at her maturity as a woman and as the people’s poet with not
many shadows in the time of writing ‘Born Again’.
The clock flew away
The curtain went away with the wind
I had squeezed him
In the halo of fire
I wanted to speak
But, ohh!
His dense shady eyelashes
Like the fringes of a silk curtain
Flowed from the depth of darkness
Along the quiver, that deadly quivers,
Down the lost end of mine
I felt I was being freed,
I felt I was being freed,
I felt my skin burst in the expansion of love
I felt my fiery mass melt slowly,
And then it trickled
Trickled,
Trickled
Down into the moon, the sunken, agitated dark moon
(‘Union, Born Again’)
Forugh triggered the newness of modern Persian poetry and dissolved
the fear of tradition. Her poetry is about authenticity, mutual love
between lovers, and the need for freedom. And she knew it when she
said:
From love love love
This exiled island
From the revolution of ocean
And the explosion of the moment
I have freed a passenger
To go through with
To finish this brief insight on a great woman who lived such a short
life but left us such a great legacy it is worthwhile to quote one of
Iranian important critic Mohammad Hoghughi who effectively explained
her life and personality:
‘Forugh Farrokhzad has one face with two profiles, the first profile
is the mirror of the poet who wrote “The Captive”, “The Wall” and
“Rebellion” and the second profile is the face of the poet who wrote
“Born Again” and let us believe in the beginning of the cold season
published 1975 posthumously. Both profiles represent the originality
and authentically of the poets two stages. The first mirror represents
a woman alone in captive in the walls of the home, alone and
struggling with tradition and her female and motherly emotions and
desire for a lover. And the second mirror of this profile is
representative of an infinite world where the woman is lonely in the
universe but free to express her new birth.’
Now more than ever it must be stressed that Forugh’s compelling poetic
and personal voice needs greater attention in order to better
understand the situation of modernity, gender relations, the ignorance
of the West about the complexities of Iranian people, and the path
towards greater democracy in society such as Iran and other Middle
Eastern countries.
Mammad Aidani
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