(Photo: Mehdi Mousavi)
by Amir
Khadem
Generally known as the leading
figure of the most radical poetic movement in contemporary Iran, Mehdi Mousavi
is a prolific poet, with five collections of poetry and a large number of
scattered poems that are mostly published in cyber space, including his own
personal weblog (Postmodern
Ghazal and . . .). The movement, usually called “The Postmodern Ghazal,”
tries to revive the classic style of Persian poetry while making it more
relevant to the contemporary social and political issues in Iran. The most
conspicuous feature of these poems, which is evident in this selection, is a
dark sense of humor fused with a pure rejection of the current religious and
ideological dogma in the country. The poems of this movement are not only in
dialogue with classical poetry of Iran, but are also in direct response to many
innovators of ghazal in the past generations. In his article,
“An Essay about Today’s Ghazal,” Mousavi has named poets of his
preceding generation, like Hossein Monzavi, Simin Behbahani, and Mohammad Ali
Bahmani as precursors of the Postmodern Ghazal. All three of these
poets are known as modernizers of classic poetic genres in Persian literature.
Still, what the figures of the movement perceive as their own achievements in ghazal is
not restricted to adopting prior innovations and upgrading them to a certain
level.
Sudden shifts between decorous and
colloquial language, playing with the formal framework of classic poetry, and
constant integration of worldly themes with transcendental ones, are all
features that the movement inherited directly from Persian modern poetry, but
the extension of these features to an extreme limit, plus their simultaneous
admiration and mockery of classical standards of Persian poetry, gives the
Postmodern Ghazal a unique voice. Mousavi’s justification of
the name of the movement reveals an intricate and distinctive attitude toward
the classic heritage:
In the phrase “Postmodern Ghazal,”
the term ghazal is a synecdoche for all the formal styles of
classic poetry. Thus, all of our argument can be applied to styles like Masnavi, Qasida,
[….] Using ghazal instead of “classic poetry” is mostly due to
the fact that if, for instance, we say “Postmodern classic poetry” the twisted
paradox will imply a claim over the philosophy and worldview of the classic
world, instead of just classic formal styles. (“Indications” n.pag.)
The poems of this movement are
filled with a mixture of rage and despair, and mostly deal with unrequited love
affairs, personal misfortunes, or sad but humorous observations of unfortunate
social conditions. They are intentionally paradoxical and incongruous, and tend
to approach issues that are normally held as sacred in a profane and sarcastic
fashion.
Most of the works by this movement
faced severe censorship by the Iranian officials. Due to the unorthodox diction
and ideological nonconformity, almost all of these works were banned in Iran.
Therefore, they were mostly distributed underground. The whole movement owes
much of its success to its timely use of internet and social networks. In the
past few years, especially after the 2009 post-electoral turmoil in Iran, the
Postmodern Ghazal attracted a substantial number of audiences
despite its public restrictions, which led to the formation of several
underground poetry festivals , a number of cyber-workshops (such as Kargah-e Majazi and She’r-e Yek), and more than fifty active
blogs (e.g. blogs by: Fatemeh
Ekhtesari, Mohammad
Hosseini-Moghadam, Mohsen Aasi,
and Ali Karimi Kolayeh).
Still, since the movement is fully
underground, it is not appreciated by an academic readership, neither
domestically nor internationally. No critical study has yet been published on
it (apart from a few web-based self-published essays and weblog entries), and
apparently many scholars of Persian poetry are not even aware of the rich and
challenging works of this movement. Familiarity with this movement not only
benefits the specialized reader, but can open a new window for those who like
to know more about the contemporary social conditions in Iran, and the
representation of those conditions in literature.
Mousavi started his poetic
practice in the late 1990s, and self-published his first poetry collection in
2002 (which was later published as an e-book by Maniha). His poetic voice is highly original; his
constant allusions to classic Persian poetry are coupled with defamiliarization
of conventional literary images. This leads to oxymoronic pictures, loaded with
an obvious disdain toward ideological values and decrepit social standards.
Moreover, he refers to domestic features of Iranian everyday culture in his
poems that not only makes the poems hard to translate, but also, by juxtaposing
a lofty picture with a down-to-earth one, directs his reader to a personal
world where the old values have lost their importance and new ones are insipid
and unsatisfactory. In the poems selected here, one can find several examples
of this technique – some of which are explained in footnotes. For instance, in
the third poem, line 7 directly refers to a common traditional toast: “To the
Honor, the Friend, and the Homeland!” Here, the poet takes this sentence from
popular culture, and by de-contextualizing it, transforms it into a personal
lamentation, which is then attached to a more elegiac and private account:
“Even they trash me now: my own lines of verse.”
While a dark social perspective
colors his poetry, his sense of humor gives them a tinge of brightness, and
sometimes enhances the generated absurdity. He usually create a series of
loosely related narrative images, which are then broken by an incongruous
rupture in the discourse that makes the poem in its entirety a paradoxical
chain of self-references, disrupting their own logical structure. This is one
of the reasons that some lines of his poems appear to be connected to each
other, but their connectedness does not seem to convey any resulting
significance. The first two lines of the second poem in this selection are fine
examples of this technique.
The first two poems in this
selection are taken from his first book, The Angels Have Committed
Suicide (2002). The third one is an excerpt from a longer poem in the
collection called The Little Bird Was Neither a Bird nor Little (2010),
and the last one is from I Only Publish These for You (2005).
1
اجازه هست که اسم ترا صدا بزنم
به عشق قبلي يک مرد پشت پا بزنم؟
اجازه هست که عاشق شوم، که روحم را
ميان دست عرق کرده تو تا بزنم
دوباره بچه شوم بي بهانه گريه کنم
دوباره سنگ به جمع پرنده ها بزنم
دوباره کنج اتاقم نشسته شعر شوم
و يا نه! يک تلفن به خود شما بزنم
نشسته اي و لباس عروسيت خيس است
هنوز منتظري تا که زنگ را بزنم
براي تو که در آغاز زندگي هستي
چگونه حرف ز پايان ماجرا بزنم؟!
دوباره آمده اي تا که عاشقت باشم
و من اجازه ندارم عزيز جا بزنم!
1
Will you allow me to call your
name?
To slough off the previous passions
of a man?
Allow me, will you, to love, to
lift my soul
And fold it inside your sweaty
palms?
To be a child again, crying with
no excuse,
Again, to throw stones at a flock
of birds.
To become a poem again, in my
room’s sad corner,
Or, no! To give you a call over
the phone.
Sitting there with your wedding
gown all wet,
Still waiting for me to make the
call.
For you, in the first chapters of
your life,
How shall I speak of the end of
this tale?
You have returned again, for me to
love you,
And I, my dear, have no right to
chicken out!
2
کنار پنجره يک مرد داشت جان مي داد
غرور، قدرت خود را به من نشان مي داد
کسوف بود؟ نه! خورشيد دلگرفته ظهر
پيام تسليتش را به آسمان مي داد
دلم براي خودم لااقل کمي مي سوخت
اگر که پوچي دنيايتان امان مي داد
زمان هميشه مرا زيرخويش له مي کرد
هميشه فرصت من را به ديگران مي داد
پسر گرفت سر تيغ را، رگش را زد
پدر به کودک قصه هنوز نان مي داد
و بعد زلزله شد، چشم را که وا کردم
ميان خواب کسي هي مرا تکان مي داد!!
2
By the window, a man watched his
life fade away.
Pride was showing me his dominion.
Eclipse, was it? No! The midday
sun, desolate,
Was sending her condolences to the
sky.
I would have pitied myself a bit,
only if
The absurdity of your world gave
me a chance.
Time has always crushed me under
his boots,
Always has forfeited my turn to
others.
The boy picked up the blade, slit
his wrist,
The father was still feeding the
imaginary child.1
Then came the earthquake, my eyes
opened
To see someone shaking me amidst a
sleep.
3
ديروز مثل سنگ شدم تا که نشکنم
امروز ميبرند مرا جرثقيل ها
چيزي که نيست را به خدايي که نيستيم
اثبات مي کنند تمام دليل ها
در حسرتِ گذشته ي بر باد رفته اي
آينده ي کپي شده اي از فسيل ها!
ناموسم و رفيق و وطن فحش مي دهند
دارند بيت هام به من فحش مي دهند
پرونده اي رها شده در بايگاني ام
از لايه هاي متن بيا تا بخواني ام
باران نبود، امشب اگر گونه ام تر است
بر پشت من نه بار امانت، که خنجر است!
از نام ها نپرس، از اين بازي زبان!
قابيل هم عزيز من! اسمش برادر است
از کودکيت، اکثر اوقات درد بود
تنها رفيق آن دل تنهات درد بود
شاعر شدي به خاطر يک مشت گاو و خر
شاعر شدي ولي ادبيات، درد بود!
3
To defy shattering I petrified
like a rock.
Now the cranes lift me away.
To a deity that we are not being,
All the reasons are proving what
is not.
Deploring a wasted bygone, we wait
For a future modeled after the
fossils.
My honor trashes me; my friends
and my land, too;
Even they trash me now: my own
lines of verse.
A forsaken file in an archive I
am;
Come read me out of this layered
text.
It was not rain, if my face looks
wet.
Not a burden of ordain, but a
dagger is in my back.2
Stop asking for names, this futile
word play!
Cain too, my friend, bore the name
of “brother.”
From infancy onwards, Pain by your
side.
Your one and only friend, Pain by
your side.
You turned into a poet, for a herd
of hogs.
Turned into a poet, but poetry was
just pain.
4
از شعرها فرشتهی الهام من پريد
دختر پرنده ای شد و از بام من پريد
گنجشك ، پر [پرنده ی تو ، پر] كلاغ ، پر
انگشت های يخ زده با نام من پريد
گنجشك پر گشود و هيولای غصه ها
چون كركسی به لانه ی اوهام من پريد
اين شعر ، درد دوری و عشق تو بود كه
از لای بسته های ديازپام من پريد
چون مرده بود نامه رسان (كفتر سپيد)
هر واژه پر شد و خود پيغام من پريد
4
Flew away my muse from the face of
this verse;
The girl grew wings and flew from
my house.
Sparrows flew, [your birds flew],
and crows flew;3
Flew all the frozen fingers when
my name was called.
The sparrow flew away and the
monster of sorrows
Invaded the nest of my dreams like
a vulture.
This melody is the malady of
missing you that
Popped out from my pack of Valium.4
Since the mailman (the white dove)
was long dead,
Words turned into wings and my
message flew away.
Works
Cited
Aasi, Mohsen. Mikh-cubism;Mohsen
Aasi’s Personal Weblog. n.p. n.d. Web. 10 June 2012.
Ekhtesari, Fatemeh. Dancing
on the Barbed Wire; Fatemeh Ekhtesari’s Personal Weblog. n.p. n.d. Web. 10 June 2012.
Hosseini Moghadam, Mohammad. It
was just Tomorrow; Mohammad Hosseini Moghadam’s Personal Weblog. n.p. n.d.Web. 10 June 2012.
Literature Cyber-Worshop (Kargah-e Majazi-ye Adabiat). n.p. n.d. Web. 8 June 2012.
Karimi Kolayeh, Ali. Venash:
Ali Karimi Kolayeh’s Personal Weblog. n.p. n.d. Web. 10 June 2012.
Mousavi, Mehdi. The Angels
Have Committed Suicide (Fereshte-ha Khodkoshi Kardand). Tehran: Maniha,
2003. Web.
---. “Indications of Postmodern Ghazal”
(“Shenasehaye Ghazal-e Postmodern”). Mehdi Mousavi’s Official Website.
n.p. n.d.Web. 25 April 2012.
---. I Only Publish These
for You (In-ha Ra Faghat Be Khatere Shoma Chaap Mikonam). Mashad:
Sokhangostar, 2005. Print.
---. The Little Bird Was
Neither Little Nor a Bird (Parandeye Kuchulu Na Parande Bud Na
Kuchulu). Mashad: Sokhangostar, 2010. Print.
---. Postmodern Ghazal and
. . . ; Mehdi Mousavi’s Personal Weblog n.p. n.d. Web. 20 Apr 2012.
Postmodern Ghazal
Cyber-Workshop. She’r-e Yek. n.d. Web. 10 June 2012.
Amir Khadem is currently a doctoral
student in Comparative Literature at University of Alberta. He has acquired his
M.A. in English Literature from University of Tehran, and his B.S. in
Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. His main
research interests are postcolonial studies, World literature, globalization,
and terrorism.
Notes
1. The first simple sentences that
Elementary School children in Iran learn to write are “baba naan daad” and
“baba aab daad,” which translate as “dad brought bread” and “dad brought
water”. The poet is invoking this image to portray the imbalance between the
harsh and brutal reality and its naïve representation. There is also a
sarcastic attack toward the simple-mindedness of previous generations in facing
today’s realities.
2. This line is a direct reference
to both a poem by Hafez and a line in Qur’an, where the Man is stated to be
held responsible for the heavenly burden that has been delivered to him (Qur’an 33:
72). Hafez has used the vague suggestion of the burden in a mystical metaphor
to recapitulate the line of Qur’an, but in Mousavi’s poem the burden is
replaced with a dagger in the back, a sign of treachery.
3. A reference to an Iranian
traditional indoor game played by groups of small children. In every turn, one
player calls out the name of an animal, while the rest put their forefingers on
the ground, and if the name called is that of a bird, they all have to lift up
their fingers and say “Fly!” Anyone who doesn’t lift her finger when a bird is
called, or lifts it after hearing a non-bird by mistake, loses the game and has
to stay out. The poet here is mixing a childish image with a dejected memory of
an ill-fated love affair.
4. Overdose of Valium (and similar
drugs) is a very common method of suicide among the youth in Iran. Here, the
poet’s reference to Valium has a suicidal implication.
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