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Poet and Revolution: The Impact of Iran's Constitutional Revolution on the Social and Literary Outlook of the Poets of the Time: Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sorour Soroudi
Sorour Soroudi*
Affiliation:
Department of Iranian and Armenian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Extract

Mirza Muhammad Farrokhi Yazdi suffered a long series of persecutions, imprisonments, and exile during his rather short life (1889-1939). At the age of 16, two years before the Constitutional Revolution, Farrokhi showed his national and Islamic zeal by writing poems against the authorities of the British missionary school at Yazd, where he was a student. Following the circulation of one of these poems, in which he had defended the cause of Islam against the “devilish designs” of the Christians, the headmaster expelled him from school and thereby ended his formal education. This was the first and by far the lightest punishment the poet was to suffer for his beliefs.

As he himself proudly testifies, Farrokhi was a dehqān-zādeh, a peasant's son. When he was forced out of school, the peasant's son became a laborer. His family background and his own experience as a laborer greatly influenced the direction of his thought in later years.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3-4 , Summer-Autumn 1979 , pp. 239 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1979

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Footnotes

This is the concluding section of a two-part article, Part I of which appeared in Volume XII, Nos. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 1979) of this Journal.

References

Notes

1. Farrokhi Yazdi, Divān, edited with an introduction by Hosein Makki, fourth printing (Tehran: Elmi 1332/1953), p. 93; unless otherwise indicated, biographical details about the poet are taken from Makki's introduction.

2. Ibid., p. 58.

3. Ibid., p. 80; Tus is a legendary hero and Afridun (Fereidun) is the king who ascended the throne following a popular uprising against the tyrant Zahhak.

4. Ibid., p. 11.

5. Ibid., pp. 41-42.

6. Ibid., p. 43.

7. Ibid., p. 51; see also pp. 112, 133.

8. Ibid., pp. 90-91.

9. See Setāreh-ye Ṣolḥ, No. 2 (Aban, 1329/1950), p. 82; I am thankful to Prof. Ervand Abrahamian for drawing my attention to this source. Farrokhi had opposed Reza Khan from the beginning; see Divān, pp. 36, 46, 76, 103, 123.

10. For instance, Farrokhi, Divān, pp. 82-85, 87-89.

11. Ibid., pp. 32-33; mashshāṭeh is a woman hairdresser. Poems of this sort abound in his divan.

12. Biographical details on Lahuti's life are, if not otherwise indicated, taken from Yahya Ariyanpur, Az Ṣabā tā Nimā, Vol. II, pp. 168-171, 381-383.

13. Lahuti, Abolqasem, La'āli-ye Lāhuti (Istanbul: Shams, n.d.), p. 49Google Scholar; see also pp. 48-56.

14. Donyā, VIII, No. 3 (Fall 1346/1967), p. 107.

15. Lahuti, Abolqasem, Divān-e Ashᶜār, edited and annotated by Muhammad ᶜAbbasi (Tabriz: Helal-e Naseri, 1320/1941), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 38; for more examples of atheistic, anti-religious, and anti-clerical poems see pp. 15, 17, 29, 35-36.

17. Bahar, Muhammad Taqi, Tārikh-e Mokhtaṣar-e Aḥzāb-e Siyāsi (Tehran, 1323/1944), Vol. I, pp. 169–170.Google Scholar

18. Becka, Jiri, “Tajik Literature from the 16th Century to the Present,” in Rypka and others, History of Iranian Literature (Dortrecht, 1968), p. 564.Google Scholar

19. Lahuti, Divān, p. 22.

20. Bahar, Tārikh-e Aḥzāb, p. 178; Bahar's account is based on the notes of an ex-officer of the gendarmerie.

21. Lahuti, Divān, p. 2.

22. See for instance Bahar, Divān, Vol. I, pp. 370-372, 561-566, 648-649.

23. Lahuti, Divān, pp. 3-4; for a later example see pp. 69-71.

24. For examples, see respectively ibid., pp. 54-56; his translation from Maxim Gorki in his Sorudhā-ye Āzādi va Ṣolḥ (Moscow, 1954), pp. 157–169Google Scholar; and the syllabic poem “Partizan,” ibid., pp. 136-144.

25. Sorudhā, pp. 347-348.

26. Abolqasem ᶜAref, Divān, edited by A. Seif-Azad, with introduction by Rezazadeh Shafaq, fifth printing (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1347/1968), p. 64; biographical accounts about ᶜAref are taken from his own autobiography, ibid., pp. 62-167, unless otherwise indicated.

27. Ibid., p. 200; see also p. 341.

28. See for instance, Ruhollah Khaleqi, “ᶜAref, Shāᶜer va Naghmeh-pardāz,” Majalleh-ye Musiqi, Vol. III, No. 70 (1341/1962), pp. 4-12.

29. ᶜAref, Divān, p. 359.

30. Ibid., p. 384; see also p. 427. On his sentiments against Turks and Arabs see also pp. 293-296, 367, 443.

31. Ibid., p. 443.

32. Ibid., p. 530.

33. Ibid., pp. 225, 475.

34. Ibid., p. 392; see also pp. 282-284, 416-417, 434, 436.

35. Ibid., pp. 518-519; in an earlier poem ᶜAref had denounced Reza Shah at the beginning of his reign, without mentioning his name; ibid., pp. 474-475.

36. Ibid., p. 300.

37. Ibid., p. 206; see also p. 312.

38. Ibid., pp. 425-426; the term āzar (fire) here and in other lines of the poem not translated apparently alludes to Azerbaijan's principal position in the Zoroastrian religion and the location of famous fire temples in this area. The rule of the Turkomans refers, of course, to the Qajars and the contemporary Ahmad Shah.

39. Ibid., pp. 365-366; see also pp. 380-382.

40. Ibid., respectively pp. 348-349, 362-364, and 340-342, 365-366.

41. Mirzadeh ᶜEshqi, Kolliyāt-e Moṣavvar, edited with an introduction by ᶜAli Akbar Moshir Salimi, fourth printing (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1342/1963), pp. 432, 475; biographical details are taken from Salimi's introduction.

42. Ibid., p. 235.

43. Ibid., pp. 218, 211.

44. Ibid., p. 240; the poet was presented with two silver vases by the Parsees of India as a token of their gratitude for having composed this musical play.

45. Ibid., p. 239.

46. Ibid., pp. 201-218.

47. Ibid., pp. 275-278; see also pp. 279-297 for his other poems on the republican movement. It is ironic, however, that one of these poems, “Jomhuri-Nameh” (ibid., pp. 284-292) was from the pen of Bahar.

48. Ibid., p. 380.

49. Ibid., p. 417.

50. Ibid., pp. 311, 334-335, 370.

51. Ibid., pp. 121-139; see also pp. 192-193.

52. Ibid., p. 259; see also the poem on p. 271 which he considers a testimony to his classical ability.

53. Ibid., pp. 259; 204-205, 261, 266.

54. Ibid., pp. 269, lines 2-3; 393, line 12; for a similar experiment before Eshqi, see Jaᶜfar Khameneh'i's poem in E. G. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, p. 298.

55. See for instance the long poem “Kafan-e Siyah,” in particular its preamble, Eshqi, Kolliyāt, p. 201.

56. Ibid., p. 174.

57. Ibid., p. 179.

58. For a few examples see ibid., pp. 177, first stroph; 205, line 5; 211, first and second strophes; 263, first and last strophes; 337, last line.

59. Pur-Davud, Ebrahim, Purāndokht-Nāmeh, edited with an English translation by Irani, Dinshah J. (Bombay, 1927), p. 20Google Scholar; biographical details are based mainly on Pur-Davud's own autobiography, pp. 7-15.

60. Ibid., p. 83; see also pp. 90-94.

61. Ibid., pp. 45, 74, 86, 94.

62. Ibid., p. 39.

63. Ibid., pp. 34-36.

64. Ibid., pp. 59-61, 89-90. It is interesting to compare Pur-Davud!s approach with that of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, in his book on the White Revolution; the shah provides references for each principle from Zoroastrian and other ancient Iranian traditions, although he balances them by presenting evidence from Islamic sources as well. See for instance pp. 32-34, 36-37, 120-121, 123, of his Enqelāb-e Sefid (Tehran, 1345/1966).

65. Purāndokht-Nāmeh, pp. 16-17. Fifty years later (1976), Pur-Davud's basic suggestion was adopted by the Iranian government to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pahlavi dynasty. The government, however, chose the year 559, the beginning of Cyrus's rule, as the basis of the new calendar.

66. Ibid., p. 88.

67. Browne, Press and Poetry, p. 293. For examples of his puristic poems see Purāndokht-Nāmeh, pp. 21, 62, 68-75.

68. Purāndokht-Nāmeh, p. 16.

69. Ibid., p. 25; see also p. 289.

70. Ibid., p. 81; the English translation is based on Dinshah Irani's; Malkoshān (angels) equal Noah's deluge; they have once destroyed the Earth and will do so again in relation to the coming of the Zoroastrian Messiah. On Pur-Davud's messianic hopes see also pp. 38, 75.

71. Ishaque, M., Sukhanvarān-i Iran dar Aṣr-i Ḥāẕer (Delhi: Jamia Press, 1937), Vol. I, p. 52Google Scholar; Hafez, Divān, edited by M. Qazvini and Q. Ghani (Tehran: Zavvar, 1320/1941), p. 45.

72. See for instance Purāndokht-Nāmeh, pp. 29-31, 40-42, 47-48, 86-88.

73. Ibid., p. 33; Rakhsh is the famous horse of the national hero Rostam.

74. Ibid., p. 14.