A Persian Mystic Poet on the Front Cover

Cultural products are loaded with political significance; poetry in modern Iran is no exception. In contemporary Iran, poetics and politics are so intertwined that knowing politics can lead to a deeper appreciation of poetics. Translating an American poet in Iran is a case in point. A closer look at how Whitman is depicted in the Iranian cultural arena can contribute to a better appreciation of poetry, politics and the relationship between the two in contemporary Iran. This chapter elaborates on the dynamics of translating Whitman in contemporary Iran to investigate the intricate relationship between poetry and politics along with the interactions between the opposing discourses in modern Iran. It seeks to offer a fresh and critical perspective on the power relations in the post-2009 cultural arena.

The case this chapter studies is Ey Nākhudā Nākhudā-yi Man [O Capitan my Capitan] (1389/2010), the second book-length translation of Whitman's work published in Iran. It is translated into Persian by Farid Ghadami (1985–), a young Iranian writer, literary translator and critic. This monolingual edition contains fifteen poems. The volume belongs to a series called “Literature of Protest”. It has 101 pages and provides the reader with a brief preface by the publisher on “the crisis in the West” and “literature of protest” followed by a substantial biographical and critical introduction by the translator which calls Whitman “the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over.” After this introduction come the poems. The book ends with Emerson's famous letter to Whitman and a chronology of Whitman's life.

As discussed in chapter eight, the front cover of Ghadami's translation presents Whitman as a Persian mystic poet. The post-1979 poetic discourse, propagating the image of a poet as a mystic – which has a rich history in Persian poetic tradition – along with the transcendentalist qualities of Whitman and the post-2009 tendency towards mystical poetry played a significant role in depicting this image of a Persian Whitman. The post-1979 political system propagated the image of the poet which it found less harmful. For obvious reasons, the cultural policy of the new system sidelined the image of the oppositional poet and preferred the image of the poet as a mystic or a “laughing philosopher,” a thinker who seeks satisfaction from within himself and is often indifferent to the immediate situation.