Guide to the classics: death-haunted masterpiece The Blind Owl shadows the decline of modern Iran |
Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951) abandoned his training in dentistry and, later, engineering in France and Belgium, to study old Persian and Iranian mythology. He would become one of the first modernist fiction writers in Iran. He published stories, essays and plays, but The Blind Owl, a short enigmatic novel, has been celebrated as his masterpiece.
Heyadat was a nationalist who lived during one of the most turbulent periods of modern Iranian history. Major events in his lifetime included the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), which aimed to limit royal power and modernise the state; the rise of the moderniser and authoritarian Reza Shah (1925-1941); and the second world war, when Iran was occupied by British and Soviet forces (1941-1945).
Hedayat seemed burdened by Iran’s downfall from its glorious past and its decline into social inequality and political repression. He felt the tension between the nation’s transplanted modernity and its dogmatic traditions, which he mocked for being riddled with superstition and empty rituals.
The dire social and political landscape of his time contributed to the existential despair and pessimism that is prominent in his writing.
The Blind Owl unravels like a nightmare. It opens with one of the most famous lines in modern Persian literature: “There are wounds in life, that like leprosy, gnaw at the soul in solitude.”
The novel walks us through the hallucinations of a bedridden man who is plagued by paranoia and fear of death, and it culminates in a murder – or rather the lustful dream of a murder. Hedayat’s unnamed narrator is tired of the world and its people, whom he calls “scumbags”. He only writes for his “shadow”, afraid to die without getting to know himself.
The story starts with him speaking to his “shadow”. Through his confessions, we learn about his obsession with an “ether woman”, his sexual desires, the murders he commits, and his ambivalent attitude towards death. We also see him lust after his wife, who does not share his bed. He thinks she is unfaithful and pregnant with another man’s child.
Like most literary masterpieces, The Blind Owl does not lend itself to one simple interpretation. But central to the story are the concepts of death, shame and attaining self-awareness. The latter is expressed in the author’s dialogues with........