HED?YAT, S?deq

Nationality: Iranian. Born: Teheran, 17 February 1903. Education: Missionary school, graduated 1925; studied dentistry and engineering in France, 1926. Career: Scholar of ancient Iranian texts, and Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist philosophy; studied and traveled in Belgium and France, 1926-30; civil service worker, 1930-36: Bank Melli, Office of Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and State Construction Company; traveled in India, 1936-37; founder and co-editor, Majalle-ye mus?q?, government magazine; journalist, 1941-47. Moved to Paris, 1950. Member: First Iranian Writers Congress. Died: 8 or 9 April 1951 (suicide).

Publications

Collections

Anthology, edited by Ehsan Yarshater. 1979.

Short Stories

Zende be-g? r [Buried Alive]. 1930; expanded edition, 1952.

Seh qatreh kh?n [Three Drops of Blood]. 1932.

S?yeh rowshan [Twilight]. 1933.

Sag velgard [The Stray Dog]. 1942.

Veleng?r? [Tittle-tattle]. 1944; expanded edition, 1954.

Omnibus. 1972(?).

An Introduction (stories), edited by Deborah Miller Mostaghel. 1976.

The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, edited by Carol L. Sayers and Russel P. Christenson. 1984.

Novels

'Alaviyeh Kh? nom [Madame "Al-viye]. 1933.

B?f-e k?r. 1937; as The Blind Owl, 1957; as The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, edited by Carol L. Sayers and Russel P. Christenson, 1984.

H?ji ?q? 1945; as H?ji ? gh?, the Portrait of an Iranian Confidence Man. 1979.

T?p-e morv?ri [The Pearl Cannon]. 1979.

Plays

Parv?n dokhtar-e s?s?n [Parvin, Daughter of Sassan]. 1930.

M?ziy?r, with Mojteba Minovi. 1933.

Afs?neh-ye ?fer?nesh [Legend of the Creation]. 1946.

Other

Fav? 'ed-e g?y?huhw?r? [The Merits of Vegetarianism] (es-says). 1930.

Esfah?n Nesf-e Jah?n [Isfahan, Half-of-the-World] (travelogue). 1932.

Ows?neh [The Legend]. 1933.

Nayrangest?n [Persian Folklore]. 1933.

Vagh Vagh Sah?b [Mr. Bow Wow], with Mas'ud Farz?d. 1933.

Majmu'eh-ye neveshteh-h?-ye par?kandeh [Collection of Scattered Writings] (includes stories). 1955; revised edition, edited by Hasan Qa'emyan, 1963-64.

Also translator of stories by Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, ArthurSchnitzler, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others.

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Bibliography:

in Modern Persian Prose Literature by Hassan Kamshad, 1966.

Critical Studies:

Hed?yat's Ivory Tower by Iraj Bashiri, 1974; Hed?yat's "The Blind Owl" Forty Years After (includes translations of the stories "Buried Alive" and "Three Drops of Blood") edited by M.C. Hillman, 1978; in Persian Literature edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 1988; Hed?yat's "Blind Owl" as a Western Novel by Michael Beard, 1990; Hed? yat by Homa Kutouzian, 1991. Heda

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Arguably the most influential writer in twentieth-century Iranian letters, S?deq Hed?yat introduced modernity into Persian fiction. He drew upon three major sources for his creative inspiration: Iran's lush literary tradition, especially folk literature; French and German fiction, notably the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Franz Kafka, a number of whose short stories he translated into Persian; and Hindu and Buddhist thinking, which he absorbed during a stay in India.

The eight stories from his first collection, Zende be-g?r (Buried Alive), were written while Hed?yat was studying first dentistry and then engineering in France and Belgium. In the title story, "Buried Alive," a middle-class eccentric nonchalantly speaks of his various efforts to kill himself with cyanide and opium, among other things, none of which is effective. For him living is death; death for him would mean freedom. This story is the first of a number of works in which the characters, overwhelmed by acute existential angst, contemplate or actually commit suicide.

"The Mongol's Shadow" appeared in the collection Non-Iran (1931; featuring works by Hed?yat and two other writers) and shows another of his other major literary concerns: Iran's past glories. The warrior Shahrukh, seriously wounded from fighting Mongol enemies, rests in the hollow of a tree. He bitterly recalls how his fiancée was raped and cut to pieces by a Mongol. He also thinks back to happier times when the two of them walked in the rice fields holding hands and when his dying father gave him a special sword with which to fight the Mongols. Gradually, life ebbs out of his body, and he dies with a horrific smile on his face, one similar to that of the Mongol who killed his fiancée. Years later two peasants spot the warrior's smiling skeleton in the tree trunk and run off in terror, ironically calling it "the shadow of the Mongol." An especially violent story filled with racial slurs, it shows how badly backward invaders (both Mongol and Arab) treated Iranians, but it also suggests that for Iranians to respond in kind was not only futile but degrading.

In "Three Drops of Blood" (1932), the title story from Hed?yat's second collection, Seh qatreh Kh?n, the central image is three drops of blood, a metaphor for the love triangle involving the mental-patient narrator, Khan; his best friend; and Khan's fiancée. An unreliable narrator, Khan disjointedly and inconsistently tells their story, the truth value of which is highly suspect. The reader is left to reconstruct what has really happened and to speculate as to why Khan is now in an asylum. It is likely that he went insane because his friend and his fiancée became lovers. Their sexuality, transmuted into the mating frenzy of cats, is described by the friend in an elaborate narrative presented through the filter of Khan's soliloquy. Khan's illness is projected upon the friend, supposedly the result of being jilted by the fiancée's cousin. Complex and intricate, the story is notable both for its pathos and accurate portrayal of aspects of mental illness.

"The Man Who Killed His Passion," from the same collection, is another psychological study of betrayal. The main character is the studious young teacher Ali, who strives to lead the ascetic life of a Sufi mystic. Under the tutelage of an older colleague, an Arabic teacher, Ali eats little, sleeps on a straw bed, avoids women, and studies mystical texts. When he learns that his mentor is, in fact, a fraud, Ali is despondent, for he senses that his pursuit of mystical enlightenment is senseless. As a result life holds no meaning for him. He wanders to a cafe where a prostitute plies him with wine, which is strictly forbidden in Islam, and then she seduces him. Two days later a newspaper notice tersely states that he has committed suicide. Critic H. Kamshad has noted that traditionally Sufism has been a way among Iranians to sidestep perversions of Islam by zealots who ignore that religion's democratic and egalitarian teachings. In this story, then, "not even this solace exists in modern Iran: he [Hed?yat] is describing the debasement, not only of formal religion, but of what might have been a satisfactory substitute for it." Or, as Sartre might have put it: there's no way out.

In "The Stray Dog," the title story from Hed?yat's final collection, published in 1942, a Scottish setter forages for food in the village square. He experiences the culturally sanctioned animosity Middle Easterners hold towards dogs: that they are lowly and unclean, therefore worthy of mistreatment. Resting in a ditch, he remembers, as if in a dream, earlier and happier times when, as Pat, he received love from both his mother and his master. One day Pat had run away briefly from his master to copulate with a bitch in heat. When he returned the master had gone, and Pat was left to fend for himself in this hostile environment. What he misses most was being loved. After Pat awakens from his reverie a kind stranger feeds him and then speeds off in a car, after which Pat desperately chases. Exhausted, he limps to the side of the road, where slowly he is overtaken by death. Pat is presented in his awareness and needs as very human: he reacts to kindness and affection with joy, and he suffers abandonment and ill treatment with the same despair as any human might. That he would run himself to death chasing after love is no surprise. Interpreted politically, this story is thought to be an accurate description of the common Iranian's life during the tyrannical reign of Reza Shah (1925-41). The story could only be told metaphorically because of stern censorship and political repression.

Read in conjunction with Hed?yat's harrowing short novel B?f-e k?r (The Blind Owl), these works present a grim, alienated world where people, obsessed with isolation, seek some kind of meaning to their existence and invariably find none. Instead they encounter only dead ends, barriers, walls, prisons, asylums, and thoughts of self-destruction. This last, given Hed?yat's own suicide, is both prophetic and poignant.

—Carlo Coppola