When Dihkhuda published his poem Inshallah gurbah ast (“God willing, it's a cat”) in 1933, he created quite a stir in Iranian literary circles. The great scholar Muhammad Qazvini, for example, was inspired to call the poem “without a doubt one of the masterpieces of modern literature.” Even a poem of lesser quality, however, would have been the cause of some wonderment, for Dihkhuda's pen had been silent for nearly fifteen years. After transforming Persian prose during the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 with his column Charand parand (Chit-Chat), Dihkhuda gave up writing satirical social commentary in the tumult and disillusionment of the First World War. While sitting out the war in the mountains southwest of Isfahan, Dihkhuda occupied himself with the only book he had available—a Larousse French Dictionary.