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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Though Simin Behbahani's poems differ in their command of language, versatility of themes, and originality of images, they are unified from beginning to end by common traits. This poet has consistently been an advocate of individual rights, regardless of gender, class, religion, political affiliation, or ethnicity. She has transformed a conventional and mainly masculine poetic form—the ghazal. With her skillful mastery of poetic devices and techniques, she has integrated a classical genre with a modern vision, blending the old and the new, the masculine and the feminine. She has brought together the discourses of modernity and tradition, which, rather than competing in her work, complement, restructure and reconstruct each other. Hers is high art with popular appeal. This is all the more remarkable because Behbahani's adherence to the prosodic rules of the classical ghazal, her multifaceted outlook, her repeated allusions to prophets, philosophers, writers, literary characters, make great demands on her readers.
1 See the poem titled, “The Old Eve,” published in Iran Nameh XXIII (2006), 3.
2 Simin Behbahani was born in Tehran in 1927, fittingly, to two writers who first became acquainted with each other through poetry. Fakhr-e Ozma Arghun, Behbahani's mother, had written a patriotic poem, which was published in a journal named Eqdam. Her father, Abbas Khalili, was the founder and editor of this journal, as well as a prolific novelist. Upon its submission, Khalili was so moved by Arghun's poem that he proposed to her. Soon enough, they were married.
Behbahani was the first and only child of this “poetic” union, which quickly ended in divorce. She was raised by her mother, who had a great impact on her life and work. “Whatever I have,” says the poet, “had its original motivation from my mother.” Her mother was, according to Behbahani, “an example of the wonders of her day. In an era in which reading and writing were considered to be sinful pursuits for a woman, she benefited from many of the fields of knowledge of her time. She learned Persian literature, Islamic jurisprudence, Arabic, astronomy, philosophy, logic, history, and geography under the tutelage of masters of the time who were also her two brothers' teachers. She learned French from a Swiss woman who lived as a teacher with her family's household.” Fakhr-e Ozma Arghun wrote poetry and short stories; she translated from French; she played the Tar. She was one of the founding members of The Association of Patriotic Women and an active member of the Women's Society of Iran, both leading women's groups in Iran during the first part of the twentieth-century. In 1935, she founded a journal, Women's Letter. It was under the loving care of such an exemplary mother that Behbahani grew up in Tehran.
3 Many contemporary women writers in Iran have had their lives cut short or touched by tragic circumstances. Tahereh Quoratol-‘Ayn was executed for heresy at the age of thirty-six; Taj-ol- Saltaneh attempted suicide three times. Parvin E'tessami died at the age of thirty-four from a mysterious fever; Zand Dokht Shirazi died at the age of forty-three, overworked and depressed; Fatemeh Sayyah suffered a heart attack at the age of forty-three; Forugh Farrokhzad attempted suicide repeatedly and died when she was thirty-two from head injuries sustained in a car crash; and Ghazaleh Alizadeh hanged herself on a beautiful spring day with a colorful silk rope at the height of her creativity.
4 Behbahani, Simin, Sha'eran Emruz Faranseh, trans. Boisdeffre, Pierre de (Tehran, 1994)Google Scholar.
5 Before finishing high school, Behbahani married Hassan Behbahani, a high school teacher. Though this marriage interrupted her higher education, she went on to earn a law degree from Tehran University. Equipped with this degree, she could have pursued a career as either an attorney or a judge, but instead she chose teaching as a profession.
After twenty-three years, however, her marriage ended in divorce. Only a sense of obligation to her children had held it together for so long. In Behbahani's own words, “While my children needed to have a father around, I ignored all problems. When the children grew up and became independent, I no longer needed to feign. I was finally able to acknowledge the incompatibilities that had always been there, covered by pretense. My first husband and I were never compatible. Although distanced from each other, for many years we lived under the same roof so that the children would have calm and quiet.” After her divorce, Behbahani forged a very different relationship with Manuchehr Kushiar, who had been a fellow law student, a relationship characterized by “compatibility and harmony.” The happy memories of this second union, with a man who devoted himself to her and her literary career, are the themes of an autobiographical book titled That Man, My Male Companion of the Road.
6 It was followed by Jay-e Pa [Footprints] 1956; Chelcheraq [The Lamp of Many Lights] 1957; Marmar [Marble] 1963; Rastakhiz [Resurrection] 1973; Khati ze Sor'at-o az Atash [A Trajectory of Speed and Fire] 1981; Dasht-e Arzan [The Plain of Arzan] 1983; Kaqazin Jame [Paper-thin Vestment] 1989; An mard mard hamraham [That Man, My Companion of the Road] 1990; Kowli va name va eshq [The Gypsy, the Letter, and Love] 1994; Asheqtar az hamishe bekhan [Sing More Lovingly than Ever] 1994; Yek dariche-ye azadi [A Window to Freedom] 1995; Ba qalb-e khod che kharidam? [What Did I Buy With My Heart?] 1996; Az salhay-e ab-o-sarab [On Years of Mirage] 1998; Neghare-ye golgun [Blood-colored Designs] 1998; Jay-e pa ta azadi [Footprints to Freedom] 1998; Yad ba'zi nafarat [A Few Persons Remembered] 1999; Yeki, masalan inke [For Instance] 2000; Kelid-o-khanjar [Key and Dagger] 2000; Ey diyar rowshanam [O, My Luminous Land] 2006; and Divan-e ash'ar Simin Behbahani [Simin Behbahani's Poetry Collection] 2006.
7 Past recipients of the Carl Von Ossietzky award include the Nobel prize-winning German authors Guenter Grass (1966) and Heinrich Böll (1974); the German/American psychologist, Erich Fromm (1986); and the Turkish humorist and author, Aziz Nesin (1992).
8 Past recipients of this award include Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Israeli novelist Amos Oz, and Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka.
9 A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems, trans. Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani (Syracuse, 1999), 52.
10 Soheila Assemi, “An Interview with Simin Behbahani,” Gozaar, https://www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=271; retrieved 3 Nov. 2006.
11 Behbahani, Simin, Yek Dariche-ye Azadi [A Window to Freedom] (Tehran, 1995), 175Google Scholar.
12 Simin Behbahani, “Gypsiesque 13,” A Cup of Sin, 75.
13 The speech was first published in Rouzegar-e Now, 16, no. 9 (Oct.-Nov. 1997): 52–6.
14 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 75.
15 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 89.
16 Behbahani, Simin, Neghare-ye Golgun [Blood-colored Designs] (Los Angeles, 1998), 19Google Scholar.
17 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 86.
18 Behbahani, Simin, Khati ze Sor'at-o az Atash [A Trajectory of Speed and Fire] (Tehran, 1981), 123Google Scholar.
19 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 26.
20 Behbahani, A Trajectory of Speed and Fire, 123.
21 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 28.
22 Behbahani, A Trajectory of Speed and Fire, 142.
23 Gypsies are also portrayed in the works of prominent Iranian women writers such as Forugh Farrokhzad, Jaleh Esfahani, Simin Daneshvar, and Moniru Ravanipour. Portrayed as figures of defiance, their disregard for boundaries and their adventurous leap into the forbidden arena of public space have wide-ranging aesthetic, political, and literary significance for them. Moving from one city to another, from one country to another, crossing borders, the Gypsy embodies motion in a physical and metaphorical sense. To many Iranian women writers, this freedom to roam about at will is liberating. It is freedom from confinement.
24 Behbahani, A Cup of Sin, 77.
25 See Ebadi, Shirin with Moaveni, Azadeh, Iran Awakening (New York, 2006), 172Google Scholar.