Life in Iran is split in halves: the half lived in the open and the half lived behind closed doors. And this duality goes deep: every man and woman in Iran leads two lives, an external life that conforms to the pressures and norms of the society and an internal life governed by the wants and needs of the person.

This is a continuation of the ways of traditional Iranian society, which has evolved into a modern, complex form of duality present at every level of social activity. At the core of the old Iranian way of living were houses that were split into andarouni (literally, “internal,” and commonly confused with harem, a section of an aristocrat’s castle), in which people relaxed far from public scrutiny — women were not obliged to wear hejab, and singing and dancing was allowed. Outside this safe haven, life changed — women were expected to be chador-clad and demure; men, formal and rigid.

The ritual of a domestic visit was a layered one; you would start at the door, which was the farthest that street vendors, gypsies, and fortune tellers could come. The next step was the hashti, an octagonal room filled with seats, where most visitors were greeted and entertained. If a person was to be allowed in further, a call was made inside the house, usually something like “Ya Allah,” still common today when a stranger enters a residence. The call meant that the home’s inner sanctum was about to be breached and everyone assumed the roles assigned to them by social norms; again women were clad in hejab and men became formal. The lucky guests who were allowed further than the hashti were guided to the panjdari or talar, a large room specifically designed for entertaining guests. But that was the furthest any outsider could penetrate the layers of the house; still further, behind closed doors, was the living room, centerpiece of the andarouni.

The whole piece is worth reading for one person’s insight into a central fact of Iranian culture, the necessity of leading a dual life under the current regime. The comments section is also worth reading./p

I didn’t do much to promote the book when it came out in April because my life simply did not permit it, but I will be starting to get the word out little by little. You can order the book from the publisher, Junction Press, and if you’re interested in my giving a reading/talk on my translation, you can contact me here. The Shahnameh is a book that would be of interest in the context of a wide range of artistic, scholarly, intellectual and even political concerns.

I’ve posted a little bit about the Shahnameh already. (Here, here and here.)

My life, in other words, is already plenty crowded enough. The problem is that my writing life is also crowded. There are at least five projects scattered in files around my office and on my hard drive, each of which deserves my attention. I am, for one, finally writing poems again; there are drafts of essays on writing that I’d like to complete; drafts of the essays I’ve been building from the Fragments of Evolving Manhood series I started posting a while back; the beginnings of a one man show based on my book of poems The Silence of Men that a director is interested in working on with me (I would perform the show, which would be very cool); there is the next book of translations, Ilahi Nama, by Farid al-Din Attar, which I have written about here, here and here; and there is the recent email I received from someone interested in turning my Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan, which is out of print, into an ebook. (This last project is not as simple as it sounds, since I do not own the copyright to the book and I would need to jump through a couple of hoops in order to make sure that the rights to the version that gets turned into an ebook are entirely mine.) The one thing that simplifies choosing which project to work on is the fact that I am eligible to apply for a sabbatical in the 2012–2013 academic year, and the most obviously sabbatical-worthy project among those I just mentioned is Ilahi Nama, primarily because a university press has expressed interest in seeing the manuscript once I am finished.

Because I would not have been able to take a sabbatical if I’d won the election, and the first draft of the application was due before the election results would be in, I handed in to the committee in my department which reviews and approves (or does not approve) sabbatical applications a very rough draft, comprised mostly of passages from both the last sabbatical application I submitted, which was for a different book of translations, and unsuccessful grant applications I submitted last year for funding my work on Ilahi Nama. Now that I’ve lost the election, I’ve gone back to look at my draft application to start figuring out how to revise it, and I’ve been pondering whether or not to follow a specific piece of my committee’s advice. They want me to cut entirely, or scale back significantly, the section I had to write the last time I applied explaining that the literary translation of poetry is often done by poets who are neither fluent nor literate in the source language–Ezra Pound, W. S. Merwin, and Adrienne Rich are three very well known examples. I wrote this section because the first time I submitted my previous sabbatical application it was rejected; the members of the college-wide Sabbatical Committee simply did not believe that I could produce the translations I said I was going to produce without being fluent and/or literate in Persian. (Interestingly, there were people from my own department on that committee who teach some of Ezra Pound’s translations from the Chinese in their literature classes and they did not know he made them based on someone else’s literal translations and notes.)

Reading over again the section I wrote to respond to that doubt and disbelief started me thinking about the reactions I’ve received from people in the Iranian community, literary and otherwise, and how they reveal the politics that are at stake in the work I’ve done–in terms both specific to the translation of classical Iranian poetry and to the project of translation in general. I’m going to list some of those reactions here, without comment, but there are a couple of things you should know before you read them. First, my wife is from Iran; second, while I am not literate in Persian, I understand the spoken language at what I would call an intermediate level and I can speak it as well, though not quite as well as I understand it.

• “Really,” she says after finding out that I’ve just published Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan, “you monolingual Westerners ought finally to get out of the way and let us bilingual Persians translate our own literature. Haven’t you done enough damage?”
• “Why do you call it Iranian literature?” he lectures me accusingly. “It’s written in Persian, and Persian literature was written in countries other than Iran, like India.”
• “Calling it Persian literature,” he wrote, “only perpetuates both British imperialism and its Orientalist perspective. The name of the country was and is Iran, and the Persian ethnic group in Iran is not the only one to produce Iranian literature. So  Iranian literature is what you should call it.”
• For two years, every time she introduced me to her friends at a conference or a reading, she would say, “…and this is Richard Jeffrey Newman, who translates Persian literature even though he does not speak Persian.”
• I am not suggesting he doesn’t belong on our panel,” he writes in a pre-conference email exchange, “but if he doesn’t know Persian is he really a translator? I mean, can we call translation what people like Richard and Coleman Barks do?”
• “Let me tell you why I trust your translations and why I use them in my class,” she says. “Because you’re honest about what you’re doing, that you’re not fluent in Persian, that this limits the kind of research you can do. Neither Coleman Barks nor a Daniel Ladinsky are up front like that.
• “I know Golestan-e Saadi by heart,” he says after a reading, referring to my Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan. “I learned it from my father and I’ve been studying it my whole life. It’s remarkable how close your translations are [to the original], and you’re not Iranian and you’re not fluent in Persian. How did you do that?”
• “You’ve done important work. No one will dispute that,” he says after I’ve given a talk about Saadi, “but if you’re not Iranian, you can’t really understand Saadi.”
• “I used to be suspicious,” she wrote in an email, “of your love of all things Persian [referring in part to the fact that my wife is Iranian], but now that I’ve read what you’ve done [as editor of an Iranian literature special issue of Arte East Quarterly Magazine], I see there’s nothing to be suspicious about.”
• He is reading the list of the literary organization’s advisory board members. My name is on it. He asks the executive director who I am, and when she reminds him that we’ve met, that I have translated Saadi, he says, “Him? He’s on your board? The one who gets translation help from his wife?”

Yet there are, of course, contexts in which art is always political and the the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of them. This video is of an experimental theater group called Naqsh is beautiful, I think, but what makes it especially poignant, interesting and political–in addition to its content, because just think about what it means in Iran to show even as much of the contours of the female body as is shown here–is the fact that the group can only perform in front of 10 or 15 person audiences in the home of the director Sahar Eftekharzade. (You can read the whole article over at Tehran Bureau.)

And just like the title says: It is, truly, an auspicious day officially to announce my new book of translations, The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, which has been published by Junction Press. I will be launching the book on Saturday, March 26th at Persian Arts Festival’s 5th Annual Arts Festival. The book is not yet up on the publisher’s website or Amazon, but you can order it from Small Press Distribution.

If you’d like to read a sample from the book, Ekleksographia published Zahhak: We’d Need to Hear his Mother’s Story; you can read an early version of the story of Kayumars and Hushang in the Iranian literature issue of Arte East Quarterly that I edited a few years ago; and you can read the story of Jamshid, which includes the origins of Norouz in the Norouz post I wrote last year.

We celebrated last night at my wife’s aunt’s house, which was lovely, and I actually thought I might be celebrating tonight at the United Nations. Last Friday, I actually received a personal invitation from the Iranian mission to the UN to attend an event that the woman to whom I spoke, Zahra, said would be taking place this evening. In 2009, the UN declared Norouz part of humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the event to which Zahra called to invite me, she said, would include representatives from all the countries that celebrate it. (The ones listed on the UN site are Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, though there might be more.) The invitation never arrived, and I have been wondering all week if perhaps Zahra changed her mind and decided not to invite me, though it’s also possible, since I cannot find the event on the UN’s calendar for today, that it was canceled. I am disappointed mostly for my son, for whom it would have been a very cool experience to celebrate Norouz at the UN.

Despite his youth, Sohrab is, like his father, a peerless warrior and when the Persians realize that none among them will be able to defeat him, they summon Rostam. Rostam does not know he has a son and, in what is the most puzzling aspect of the story, refuses to identify himself each of the several times that Sohrab asks who he is. The two warriors fight three times and, in the end, Rostam is victorious. As Sohrab lies dying, the true identities of the fighters are revealed and the story ends on a note of bitter sadness.

Matthew Arnold was so moved by this story, that he wrote his own version, “Sohrab and Rustum,” that is recognized by scholars to be an important turning point in his career as a poet. There are significant differences between Arnold’s version and the original, though, due largely to the fact that Arnold’s source was most like an inaccurate summary of the tale than an actual translation.

The prologue with which Ferdowsi frames the story of Sohrab and Rostam is a meditation on fate. The idea of the just nature of death comes from a form of Zoroastrianism which saw death as part of a realm that exists outside this world, that people do not have access to, and that contains all events that are inherent in time and cannot be avoided. Thus, since death comes to everyone, it always comes at the proper time and is, by definition, fair and just. This version of the prologue is from Clinton’s translation, which I mentioned above:

What if a wind springs up quite suddenly,
And casts a green unripened fruit to earth.
Shall we call this a tyrant’s act, or just?
Shall we consider it as right, or wrong?
If death is just, how can this not be so?
Why then lament and wail at what is just?
Your soul knows nothing of this mystery;
You cannot see what lies beyond this veil.
Though all descend to face that greedy door,
For none has it revealed its secrets twice.
Perhaps he’ll like the place he goes to better,
And in that other house he may find peace.
Death’s breath is like a fiercely raging fire
That has no fear of either young or old.
Here in this place of passing, not delay,
Should death cinch tight the saddle on its steed,
Know this, that it is just, and not unjust.
There’s no disputing justice when it comes.
Destruction knows both youth and age as one,
For nothing that exists will long endure.
If you can fill your heart with faith’s pure light,
Silence befits you best, since you’re His slave.
You do not understand God’s mysteries,
Unless your soul is partners with some div.
Strive here within the world as you pass through,
And in the end bear virtue in your heart.
Now I’ll relate the story of Sohrab,
And how he came to battle with his father.

Khamenei’s interest in poetry began at a young age and has been maintained till today. He spent long hours at the poetry association of Mashhad. He has written some poems. He is delighted when poets write poetry about him and expresses his satisfaction through gifts to the poets. Sabzevari and Ali Moallem, who are among the fawning Muslim poets, are constantly corresponding with him. It is through them that he is informed of the problems of artists affiliated with the regime. At the start of his Leadership, he received the poet Mir Shakak, who was a manic depressive, several times. Khamenei became very proud of himself when Mir Shakak upon saying goodbye would say, ‘Seyed zat ziad’ (Meaning ‘the honor is great’, which is a colloquial prayer). Khamenei invites poets to his Household several times a year so that they may recite poems in his presence.

At the beginning of his presidency, he asked Akhavan Saless, whom he knew very well, to write a flattering poem for the revolution. Akhavan Saless (NB Mehdi Akhavan Saless, also known as M. Omid) responded, ‘We artists are above the government, not with it.’ Khamenei was so incensed by this answer that he ordered that he stop being paid. (NB Akhavan Saless worked at the Academy of Artists and Writers). Akhavan Saless became unemployed after that. Gheysar Aminpour has referred to this event in his article on Akhavan.

Khamenei intensely disliked Shamlou (NB Ahmad Shamlou, one of the most prominent Iranian poets of the last century) and referred to him with hatred. But he never dared arrest and punish him, because he feared tainting his own name in history. He has read much about kings who mistreated poets. In his speeches, he has often cited Lenin’s phrase that if an ideology is not supported by art it will die. He loves poetry so much that if he had not become active in religion and politics, he would probably have turned to poetry and literature. However, because of his busy schedule, he sometimes makes glaring mistakes [in this regard]. Despite claiming to be knowledgeable about verse, when a young poet recited a poem in his presence, he asked him, ‘Is this poem by you?’ To which the poet responded, ‘No, it is by Sohrab Sepehri.’ (Any schoolchild knows Sepehri’s work).

When Abolqasem Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh in the 10th century, Iran had been under Muslim Arab rule for around 300 years. Arabic, not Persian, was the language of the court, of literature, of philosophy; and the Muslim belief that everything before the coming of Islam was historically, culturally, politically and of course theologically irrelevant had resulted over time in a growing acceptance among Muslim Iranians that it might be possible to redefine Iran’s history and culture in Islamic terms. A man named Tabari wrote a revisionist history along these lines, identifying specific characters in Iran’s culture with characters who inhabit the world of the Quran. Jamshid, for example, the fourth king in the Shahnameh, who is responsible for the emergence of what we would recognize as civilized society, is equated in Tabari’s book with King Solomon, while Kayumars, the Shahnameh’s first monarch, is said to be the same as Adam.

Not everyone accepted this assimilationist approach, especially Iran’s landed gentry, the dehqan, who saw themselves as responsible for preserving Iran’s history and culture. Ferdowsi was a dehqan and it was precisely to preserve Iran’s pre-Islamic history and culture that he wrote the Shahnameh. Yet Ferdowsi’s goal was neither revolutionary nor heretical. He was a devout Muslim who accepted completely the monarchy under which he lived. Rather, his goal was, as Sandra Mackey puts it in The Iranians, to express “the separate identity within Islam that Iranians [have always] felt.” For many, including some of his fellow poets, this goal was heretical. The poet Farrokhi, for example, a contemporary of Ferdowi’s, declared the Shahnameh “untruth from the beginning to the end.” Abd-al-Jalil Qazvini accused Ferdowsi of “reciting myths on the bravery and magnificance of Rostam and Kavus [two characters from the Shahnameh] in order [sinfully] to counter the heroism and splendour of [Imam] Ali.” Still another poet, Mo’ezzi, suggested that Ferdowsi would be punished in the next world because of the untruths he told in the Shahnameh. (These quotes are taken from A. Shapur Shahbazi’s Ferdowsi: A Critical Biography.)

The Islamic Republic of Iran was, from its very beginning, also threatened by the Shahnameh and its celebration of pre-Islamic Iranian history and culture. According to Sandra Mackey, for example, Ayatollah Khomeini “tried to eradicate vestiges of Iran’s pre-Islamic culture [by attacking] Ferdowsi, discourag[ing] the use of Persian first names, and hint[ing] at an end to the observance of No Ruz [the Persian New Year] by expressing the hope that in the future the only holiday celebrated would be the Prophet’s birthday.” Even as recently as 2009, the Islamic Republic’s behavior towards Ferdowsi would seem to indicate that it still feels this threat very keenly. According to an article posted on the website of the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS), all programs in Iran planned by the Ferdowsi Foundation to celebrate Ferdowsi’s millenium in 2009 had to be canceled because of a lack of cooperation from the relevant agencies of the Islamic Republic. The same article reports that on June 14, 2009–which is Ferdowsi’s commemoration day in Iran–the government of the Islamic Republic demolished, without providing any reason, the Foundation’s unfinished building in Iran. Also in 2009, the blogger Pedestrian reported that the Iranian journalist Bahman Ahmadi was sentenced to eight years in prison for publishing part of the Shahnameh during the protests against the contested elections that kept Mahmoud Ahmanidejad in power.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression, though. It’s not that the Shahnameh is banned in Iran, or that people can only talk about Ferdowsi or quote from his epic in whispers because the government would otherwise throw them in jail. The Shahnameh, however, clearly seems to resonate with the people of Iran in a way that their government finds threatening and so bringing into American English poetry the parts of the Shahnameh that I have translated resonates within me as a small declaration of solidarity, as I hope it will resonate with the people who read my translation when it comes out next month–or with those who read any of the translations that are available, from Dick Davis’ prose translation of the entire epic to Jerome Clinton’s verse translations of two of Rostam’s stories.

The story I am up to in my proofreading is the story of Tahmures, the third king of the Shahnameh, also known as “Demon Binder” because he bound Ahriman, the devil figure” and rode him around the earth like a horse. When the Black Demon led a force of demons and sorcerers against Tahmures for this insult to their leader, Tahmures so thoroughly defeated them that they only way he would agree to spare their lives was if they promised to teach him knowledge no one else possessed. What they taught him was how to write:

They taught Tahmures to shape each letter
and pronounce the sound it stood for,
and this new and profitable knowledge
lit a light in him like the sun.

Writing so often plays such an important role in the toppling of tyrants that I will leave you, simply, with the irony that, in the Shahnameh at least, it was the tyrants themselves who taught humanity how to do it.

A man whom other men of wisdom follow
tells the story of Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz,
who owned a ring in which was set a stone
no jeweler could properly assess.
At night, you’d swear it was a rising sun.
By day, it shone with a single pearl’s luster.
One year, by God’s decree, Aziz’s rule
was plagued by drought. He watched his people’s faces
wane from full moons to narrow crescents
and knew the royal comfort he enjoyed,
unshared, would undo his manhood in their eyes.
(When people are pouring poison down their throats,
who would dare drink sweet-water in their sight?)
He sold the stone for silver, giving it all
in just one week to orphans, strangers, the poor
and anybody else he saw in need.
The court gossips pounced, “You’ll never find
a precious stone like that again!” I’ve heard
that when he answered tears poured down his cheeks
like candle wax. “A prince who wears such jewels
in time of drought betrays his people’s trust.
This empty ring looks fine on me. Hunger’s
emptiness enhances no one’s looks.”
Happiness is in providing comfort
to those who need it, not in owning gems
to decorate your hands. Those who cherish
virtue don’t buy joy with others’ sorrow.

///

If the shah sleeps well upon his throne,
I doubt the poor sleep easily, but if
the shah lights up the night with watchful eyes,
those he rules will dream deeply, waking
soothed. Praise God! The Atabeg,
Abu Bakr ibn Sa’d, is such a ruler.
The only signs of trouble plaguing Pars
are the women whose lunar beauty turns our heads.

A verse from our last party caught my ear:
“I held my moon-faced lover while she slept
and wanted nothing more from life than that,
but the sight of her so fully lost in sleep
moved me. ‘Your slender grace shames the cypress.
Wash this sweet slumber from your narcissus–
eyes, let the rose of your smile bloom
and free the nightingale song of your voice!
Your beauty subverts us all. Wake yourself
and bring the ruby wine you poured last night!’
She opened one indignant eye, ‘You say
I am subversive, and still you choose to rouse me?’”
Under the rule of our enlightened king,
no other subversion dares to stir.