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Sadeq Hedayat
Sadeq Hedayat
	Sadeq Hedayat
Birth name	Sādeq Hedāyat
Born	17 February 1903; Tehran, Iran
Died	4 April 1951 (aged 48); Paris, France
Nationality	Iranian
Field	Writer of prose fiction and short stories
Works	Būf-e Kūr (The Blind Owl); Zendé be Gūr (Buried Alive); Sé qatré khūn (Three Drops of Blood)

Sadeq (or Sadegh) Hedayat (in Persian: صادق هدایت; February 17, 1903, Tehran — 4 April 1951, Paris, France) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories.

[edit] Life

He was born to an aristocratic family and was educated at Dar ol-Fonoon (1914-1916) and the Lycée Français (French high school) in Tehran. In 1925, he was among a select few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially pursued dentistry before giving this up for engineering. After four years in France and Belgium, where he befriended Sartre, who was to remain a lifelong friend, Hedayat returned to Iran where he held various jobs for short periods, before returning to Paris.

Tomb of Sadegh Hedayat, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka intrigued him the most. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values.

In his later years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran’s decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, especially by his peers, Hedayat’s last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression.

Hedayat's most enduring work is the short novel The Blind Owl of 1937. It has been called "one of the most important literary works in the Persian language" (S. A. Qudsi).^{[citation needed]}

He ended his life by gassing himself and is buried in the Père Lachaise. Hedayat's last day and night was adapted into the short film, The Sacred and The Absurd, which was featured in the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004.

[edit] Current censorship

His work is coming under increasing attack in Europe from political Islamists, and many of his novels (Haji Aqa in particular) are no longer stocked in some French bookshops and libraries. The novels The Blind Owl and Haji Aqa were banned from the 18th Tehran International Book Fair in 2005. The Blind Owl contains a great deal of Buddhist and Hindu imagery. In Haji Aqa his characters explore the lack of meritocracy in Iran:

In order for the people to be kept in line, they must be kept hungry, needy, illiterate, and superstitious. If the grocer's child becomes literate, he not only will criticise my speech, but he will also utter words that neither you nor I will understand.... What would happen if the forage-seller's child turns out intelligent and capable—and mine, the son of a Haji, turns out lazy and foolish?

In November 2006, republication of Hedayat's work in uncensored form was banned in Iran, as part of a sweeping purge. However, surveillance of book-stalls is limited and it is apparently still possible to purchase the originals second-hand. The official website is also still online. Some material discussing the issue of censorship include:

Item in The Guardian from November 2006
"City Report: Tehran" from Frieze, issue 86, October 2004, discussing Iranian censorship in general
Article by Radio Free Europe — Radio Liberty from November 2007

[edit] Works

Fiction
- 1930 Zendé be Gūr (Buried Alive). A collection of 9 short stories.
- 1931 Sāye-ye Moghol (Mongol Shadow)
- 1932 Sé qatré khūn (Three Drops of Blood)
- 1933 Sāyé Roshan (Chiaroscuro)
  Alaviyeh Khanum (Madame `Alaviyeh)
  Vagh Vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow)
- 1937 Būf-e Kūr (The Blind Owl)
- 1942 Sag-e Velgard (The Stray Dog)
- 1944 Velengārī (Tittle-tattle)
  Ab-e Zendegi (The Elixir of Life)
- 1945 Hājī Āqā (Mr. Haji)
- 1946 Fardā (Tomorrow)
- 1947 Tupp-e Morvari (The Pearl Cannon)

Drama (1930-1946)
- Parvin dokhtar-e Sāsān (Parvin, Sassan's Daughter)
- Māzīyār
- Afsāne-ye Āfarīnesh (The Fable of Creation)

Travelogues
- Esfahān Nesfe Jahān (Isfahan: Half the World)
- Rū-ye Jādeh-ye Namnak (On the Wet Road), unpublished, written in 1935.

Studies, Criticism and Miscellanea
- Rubaiyat-e Hakim Umar-e Khayyam (Khayyam's Quatrains) 1923
- Ensan va Hayvan (Man and Animal) 1924
- Marg (Death) 1927
- Favayed-e Giyahkhari (The Advantages of Vegetarianism) 1927
- Hekayat-e Ba Natijeh (The Story with a Moral) 1932
- Taranehha-ye Khayyam (The Melodies of Khayyam) 1934
- Chaykuvski (Tchaikovsky) 1940
- Dar Piramun-e Lughat-e Fārs-e Asadi (About Asadi's Persian Dictionary) 1940
- Shiveh-ye Novin dar Tahqiq-e Adabi (A New Method of Literary Research) 1940
- Dāstan-e Naz (The Story of Naz) 1941
- Shivehha-ye Novin Dar She'r-e Parsi (New Trends in Persian Poetry) 1941
- A review of the film "Mulla Nasru'd Din" 1944
- A literary criticism on the Persian translation of Gogol's The Government Inspector 1944
- Chand Nukteh Dar Bar-ye Vis va Ramin (Some Notes on Vis and Ramin) 1945
- Payam-e Kafka (The Message of Kafka) 1948
- al-Be`thatu-Islamiya Ellal-Belad'l Afranjiya (An Islamic Mission in the European Lands), undated.

Translations
- 1950 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (along with Hasan Ghaemian)
- 1931 Gooseberries by Anton Tchekhov
- Pahlavi language translations:
  - 1943 Karname Ardashir-e-Papakan
  - 1940 Gojaste Abalish
  - 1945 Amadan-e Shah Bahram-e Varjavand (Return of King Bahram Varjavand)
  - 1944 Zand va Homan Yasn

[edit] Sources

Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature ISBN 0-936347-72-4
Acquaintance with Sadegh Hedayat, by Mostafa Farzaneh, Publisher: Markaz, Tehran, 2008.
Sadeq Hedayat, the foremost short story writer of Iran
The Sacred and the Absurd, a film about Hedayat's death

[edit] Further references

Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: Life and legend of an Iranian writer, I.B. Tauris, 2000. ISBN 1-86064-413-9
Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature, Ibex Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-936347-72-4
Michael C. Hillmann, Hedayat's "The Blind Owl" Forty Years After, Middle East Monograph No. 4, Univ of Texas Press, 1978.
Iraj Bashiri, Hedayat's Ivory Tower: Structural Analysis of The Blind Owl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1975.
Iraj Bashiri, The Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat, ‎‎1984.
Sayers, Carol, The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1984.
What is left for me from Sadegh Hedayat? Excerpt from "Sadegh Hadayat: Dar Tare Ankaboot" (In the Spider’s Web), by M. F. Farzaneh, 2005.
Hedayat’s last night out in Paris Excerpt from M. F. Farzaneh's "Ashenayee ba Sadegh Hedayat" (Knowning Sadegh Hedayat), 2004.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Official Website of Sadeq Hedayat (in Persian or in English).
Note: Many of Sadeq Hedayat's full texts can be legally downloaded from here: Mat'n-e Kāmel-e Dāstān-hā.
Photo Gallery (highly recommended).
Sadeq Hedayat's Life by Iraj Bashiri.
Sadeq Hedayat's Corner, further articles and English translations by Iraj Bashiri.
Persian Language & Literature — Sadeq Hedayat.
A Tribute to Sadeq Hedayat.
Hedayat Page (in French).
Sokhan — online literary magazine (in Persian).
Hedayat's art work
Sadegh Hedayat's Photo & Gravesite.
Audiobooks (Ketab-e Gooya).
Tup-e Morvari by Sadeq Hedayat (in Persian), (PDF), (The Iranian).
Hedayat Family History (in English).
• Sadeq Hedayat's Heritage, Jadid Online, 17 July 2008 (in English).
• A Museum That Was Not To Be, by Mahtāj Rasuli, Jadid Online, 20 June 2008 (in Persian).
• An audio slideshow (with English subtitles) by Shokā Sahrāi, with Mr Jahāngir Hedayat (son of General Isā Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat's brother) speaking. (6 min 28 sec).

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