Table Of ContentA History of Persian Literature
Volume XI
Volumes of A History of Persian Literature
I General Introduction to Persian Literature
II Persian Poetry in the Classical Era, 800–1500
Panegyrics (qaside), Short Lyrics (ghazal); Quatrains (robâ’i)
III Persian Poetry in the Classical Era, 800–1500
Narrative Poems in Couplet Form (mathnavis); Strophic Poems; Occasional
Poems (qat’e); Satirical and Invective Poetry; shahrâshub
IV Heroic Epic
The Shahnameh and its Legacy
V Persian Prose
VI Religious and Mystical Literature
VII Persian Poetry, 1500–1900
From the Safavids to the Dawn of the Constitutional Movement
VIII Persian Poetry from Outside Iran
The Indian Subcontinent, Anatolia, Central Asia after Timur
IX Persian Prose from Outside Iran
The Indian Subcontinent, Anatolia, Central Asia after Timur
X Persian Historiography
XI Literature of the Early Twentieth Century
From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah
XII Modern Persian Poetry, 1940 to the Present
Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan
XIII Modern Fiction and Drama
XIV Biographies of the Poets and Writers of the Classical Period
XV Biographies of the Poets and Writers of the Modern Period; Literary
Terms
XVI General Index
Companion Volumes to A History of Persian Literature:
XVII Companion Volume I: The Literature of Pre- Islamic Iran
XVIII Companion Volume II: Oral Literature of Iranian Languages
Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic, Persian and Tajik
Anthologies:
XIX Anthology I: A Selection of Persian Poems in English Translation
XX Anthology II: A Selection of Persian Prose in English Translation
A HISTORY OF PERSIAN LITERATURE
General Editor—Ehsan Yarshater
Volume XI
Literature of the Early
Twentieth Century
From the Constitutional Period
to Reza Shah
Edited by
Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab
Sponsored by
Persian Heritage Foundation (New York)
&
Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University
Published in 2015 by
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada
Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2015 The Persian Heritage Foundation
The right of The Persian Heritage Foundation to be identified as the originators
of this work has been asserted by The Persian Heritage Foundation
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A History of Persian Literature: XI
ISBN: 978 1 84511 912 6
eISBN: 978 0 85773 916 2
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
from camera-ready copy edited and supplied
by The Persian Heritage Foundation
Layout and typesetting: Claudius Naumann
A History of Persian Literature
Editorial Board
Mohsen Ashtiany
J. T. P. de Bruijn (Vice- Chairman)
Dick Davis
William Hanaway, Jr.
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak
Franklin Lewis
Paul Losensky
Heshmat Moayyad
Ehsan Yarshater (Chairman)
Late Member: Annemarie Schimmel
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
CHAPTER ONE: THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
BACKGROUND OF THE LITERATURE OF
THE PERIOD (1900–1940) (Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab) . . . . . . 1
1. A Historical Sketch of the Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. The Constitutional Revolution (1905–11) . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Persia and the First World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4. The Ascension of Reza Khan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5. The Rise of Pahlavi Dynasty and Reza Shah’s Reforms . . . 17
6. The Clergy’s Role in the Political Events . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
CHAPTER TWO: POETRY AS AWAKENING:
SINGING MODERNITY (Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab) . . . . . . 30
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2. Farewell to Classical Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3. The Language of Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4. Themes and Topics of the Revolutionary Poetry . . . . . . 42
5. New Gender Relations, and Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6. Nationalistic Tendencies in Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
7. Pro-German and Anti-British and Anti-Russian Sentiments 90
8. Poetic Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9. The Ghazal as a Political Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10. Singing Freedom, the Persian Ballad (Tasnif) . . . . . . . . 103
11. New Poetic Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
12. Folk Poetry in a Constitutional Setting . . . . . . . . . . . 114
13. Poetry and Newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
14. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vii
LITERATURE OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
CHAPTER THREE: MODERN PERSIAN PROSE
AND FICTION BETWEEN 1900 AND 1940
(Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
2. Persian Political Treatises and Travelogues . . . . . . . . . . 134
3. Translations from European Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
4. The Role of Politicians in Reforming the Language and
Introducing New Genres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5. The Prelude to the Constitutional Revolution . . . . . . . . . 145
6. The Early Pahlavi Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
CHAPTER FOUR: SATIRE IN PERSIAN LITERATURE,
1900–1940 (Homa Katouzian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
2. The Constitutional Revolution and After . . . . . . . . . . . 164
3. The Nationalist Poets Âref of Qazvin (1882–1934) and
Mohammad-Rezâ Mirzâde Eshqi (1893–1924) . . . . . 174
4. Jalâl-al-Mamâlek Iraj Mirzâ (1874–1926) . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5. Mohammad-Taqi Bahâr (1886–1951) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6. Mohammad-Ali Jamâlzâde (1892–1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
7. Sâdeq Hedâyat (1903–1951) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
‘The Islamic Mission to European Countries’ . . . . . . . 225
Alaviye Khânom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Talab-e Âmorzesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Vagh-vagh Sâhâb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
The Patriot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Ridicule of the Contemporary Literary Studies . . . . . . 235
Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
CHAPTER FIVE: WOMEN POETS
(Dominic Parviz Brookshaw) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
2. Fasl-e Bahâr Khânom, ‘Jannat’ (1878–1940) . . . . . . . . . . 243
3. Esmat Khânom Tehrâni, ‘Tâyere’ (1871–1911) . . . . . . . . . 247
4. Shams Kasmâ’i (1883–1961) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
5. Fakhr-e Ozmâ Arghun, ‘Fakhri’ (1899–1966) . . . . . . . . . 266
6. Zanddokht Shirâzi (1909–1952) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
7. Âlam-tâj Qâ’em-Maqâmi, ‘Zhâle’ (1883–1946) . . . . . . . . 284
8. Parvin E’tesâmi (1907–1941) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
9. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
viii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER SIX: TRANSLATIONS OF EUROPEAN
POETRY AND THEIR RECEPTION (Parvin Loloi) . . . . . . . 311
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
2. The Role of the Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
3. The Literary Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
4. Political and Patriotic Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
5. Poetry and Women’s Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
6. Domestication of the Foreign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
CHAPTER SEVEN: A HISTORY OF IRANIAN DRAMA
(1850–1941) (Saeed Talajooy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
2. Indigenous Performing and Carnival Traditions in Iran . . . 354
3. The Rise of European-Style Drama in Iran (1850–1875) . . . 360
4. The Court and Western-Style Drama and Performances
in Iran (1875–1890) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
5. Religious Minorities, Socio-Political Transformation, and
Revolutionary Modernity: The Expansion
of Western-Style Performances (1890–1918) . . . . . . 372
6. The Plays and the Playwrights (1890–1918) . . . . . . . . . . 379
Mortezâ-Qoli Fekri (1870–1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Ahmad Mahmudi (1875–1930) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
7. Authoritative Modernity, Archaist Nationalism and
Censorship: Iranian Drama and Theater between
1918 and 1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
8. The Plays and the Playwrights (1918–1941) . . . . . . . . . . 392
Mohammad-Rezâ Mirzâde Eshqi (1893–1924) . . . . . . . 392
Hasan Moqaddam (1897–1925) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Rezâ Kamâl (Shahrzâd) (1898–1937) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Gerigor Yaqikian (1880–1951) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Sayyed Ali Nasr (1893–1962) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Arbâb Aflâtun Keykhosrow Shâhrokh (1875–1940) . . . . 403
Mir Seyf-al-Din Kermânshâhi (1876–1932) . . . . . . . . . 404
Sa’id Nafisi (1895–1966) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Zabih Behruz (1890–1971) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Sâdeq Hedâyat (1903–1951) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Other Playwrights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
9. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
ix
