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Generic Experimentation and Social Content in Nader Ebrahim's Ten Short Stories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Extract
In modernist Persian literature there are at least two important features shared by the majority of contemporary Iranian poets and writers, namely, experimentation with form and social commitment in content. Experimentation with novelistic technique, narrative voice, and colloquial and literary language characterizes the works of such authors as Sadeq Chubak, Ebrahim Golestan, and Hushang Golshiri in fiction; and a continuing search for new means of poetic expression pervades the poetry of Ahmad Shamlu, Yadollah Ro'ya'i, and Ahmad Reza Ahmadi, among others. Furthermore, the content of this literature is almost always implicitly and often explicitly engagé, with engagement or social commitment broadly defined to include the author's choice of subject matter and conscious or subconscious treatment of the shortcomings of society and of the hardships of the individual or the masses.
Nader Ebrahimi (b. 1936), one of the most prolific yet least studied writers of the 1960s and 1970s, is by no means an exception in this regard.
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Notes
1. Ebrahimi's major fictional works include: Khaneh'i bara-ye Shab [A House for the Night] (1962/63); Arash dar Qalamrow-e Tardid [Arash in the Realm of Doubt] (1963); Pasokhnapazir [The Unanswerable] (1963); Masaba va Ro'ya-ye Gajerat [Masaba and the Dream of Gajerat] (1964/65); Makanha-ye ‘Omumi [Public Places] (1966); Bar-e Digar Shahri keh Dust Midashtam [Once Again, the City I Loved] (1967); Dar Sarzamin-e Kuchek-e Man [In My Small Land] (1968); Tazadha-ye Daruni [Internal Conflicts] (1971); Ensan, Jenayat va Ehtemal [Humankind, Crime, and Probability] (1972); Runevesht, bedun-e Asl [A Copy without the Original] (1977). He has also published several plays and numerous collections of children's stories.
Translations of his work in English include: “The Wind of Mehregan,” tr. Ghanoonparvar, Mohammad R. and Wilcox, Diane L., in Hillman, Michael C., ed., Major Voices in Contemporary Persian Literature, Literature East and West 20 (1976): 218–239Google Scholar; and “Why Do They Go Back?” tr. Southgate, Minoo, Modern Persian Short Stories (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1980), pp. 104–113.Google Scholar
For critical evaluations of Ebrahimi's work see: Sepanlu, Mohammad ‘Ali, comp. and ed., Baz ‘Afarini-ye Vaqe'iyat: 11 Dastan az 11 Nevisandeh-ye. Mo'aser [Recreation of Reality: 11 Stories of 11 Contemporary Writers] (Tehran: Zaman, 1970/71), p. 126Google Scholar; Michael C. Hillmann's bibliographical introduction to “The Wind of Mehregan” in Major Voices (cited above); Aryanpur, Manoochehr, “Retrospect and Progress: A Short View of Modern Persian Literature,” World Literature Today 46 (1972): 200–210.Google Scholar
2. Sepanlu, Re-creation of Reality, p. 126. Sepanlu's view on Ebrahimi's work is cited by Hillman in Major Voices, p. 218.
3. See, for instance, “Bad, Bad-e Mehregan” [The Wind of Mehregan] and “Aya Ettefaqi Khahad Oftad?” [Will Something Happen?] in Hezarpa-ye Siyah va Qessehha-ye Sahra [The Black Centipede and the Tales of the Desert], 2nd ed.. (Tehran: Iran Ketab, 1976), pp. 7–50 and 97-108Google Scholar; and “Kar-e Marg” [The Business of Death] in Runevesht, bedun-e Asl[A Copy without the Original] (Tehran: Ruzbahan, 1977), pp. 23–45.Google Scholar
Workaholic is a rather humorous autobiography in which Ebrahimi makes a case for being an engagé writer. See especially pp. 93-96. Even here, in his autobiography, Ebrahimi deviates from the conventional forms, referring to himself, for example, in the third person or frequently as a fictional character, Ebn-e Mashghaleh.
4. Ebrahimi, Nader, Dah Dastan-e Kutah: Ghazal-Dastanha-ye Sal-e Bad (Tehran: Entesharat-e Ruz, 1972).Google Scholar All translations from Persian are mine.
5. Successful modernist authors in Iran, as elsewhere, such as Forugh Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlu, continually break away from the conventions set at any given time both by others and by themselves. The misunderstanding of critics who appear to endorse modernist literature but are unwilling to accept the ever-changing forms and ideas of new writers or the avant-garde lies perhaps in the fact that they have accepted change in literature not as a continuous reality but as a onetime phenomenon. In this respect, they are not all that different from traditionalists who also dogmatically conform to a given set of conventions.
6. Such terms as “poetry,” “story,” and “short story” are used in this discussion with some reservation, for various genres are taken perhaps in an overly broad and general sense and without any deep theoretical or polemical implications. To incorporate any comprehensive discussion to distinguish the nature of such genres, were it possible, would be beyond the scope of the present essay. The arbitrary terms used only help to focus attention on genre mixture in the work.
7. N. H. Pearson, “Literary Forms and Types…,” English Institute Annual, 1940 (1941): 59ff.
8. Wellek, René and Warren, Austin, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Harvest, 1970), p. 235.Google Scholar
9. ‘Alavi, Bozorg, “From Modern Persian Literature,” Yadname-ye Jan Rypka (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1967), pp. 167–172Google Scholar, summarizes and interprets “The Blind Knot.” For the published translation of “The Wind of Mehregan,” see note 1, above.
10. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 97.Google Scholar
11. As Rosalie Colie notes in The Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), pp. 4-5:
“In the last fifty years, we have learnt a good deal about our perceptions of anything at all, notably, that these perceptions are mediated by forms, collections, collocations, associations; we have learnt, even, that we learn so naturally by forms and formulae that we often entirely fail to recognize them for what they are.”
Thus, learning by classification, in terms of kinds, in all strata of human life is an important factor in acquiring knowledge. More specifically in literature the recognition of genre should help in understanding a work of art. But generic classification in literature is not a clear-cut matter since theoreticians, from Aristotle to contemporary critics, use various and diverse criteria as bases for the categorization of literary works. Among such criteria, one could name subject matter, structure (verse), form, magnitude, emotional tone, Weltanschauung, audience, and intention. (The categories are taken primarily from Wellek and Warren, pp. 226-237 [see note 8, above]; and Ulrich Weisstein, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, tr. William Riggan [Bloomington: Indiana University, 1973], pp. 99-123.) In theory, one must be able to decide the generic nature of a work by the application of some or all of the above features. In practice, however, when one is faced with a work such as Ebrahimi's Ten Short Stories, which is a collection and a mixture of various “established” or “known” conventional genres, categorization of the work as a whole becomes an uncertain task. But, the study of the component features of this work, which might not enable us to place the book on the right library shelf, can prove fruitful in understanding it through the identification and, in a sense, classification of those parts.
12. It would be presumptuous to conclude that Ebrahimi is not fully aware of the established conventions of the short story and other genres. See his polemical article “Mafhum-e Qesseh az Didgah-e Man [What I Mean by Story] in his Khaneh'i bara-ye Shab (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1976/77), pp. 9-34. Originally written in 1962/63, the article clearly demonstrates Ebrahimi's understanding of conventional literary kinds. See also Ebrahimi's, Ebn-e Mashghaleh [Workaholic] (Tehran: Iran Ketab, 1975/76), p. 74Google Scholar, wherein he mentions being a graduate of Tehran University's English Department and being a student of Reza Baraheni, whose Qessehnevisi [Storywriting] (Tehran: Ashrafi, 1969)Google Scholar is one of the most important sources on the art of fiction in Persian.
13. See Baraheni, Reza, “Nima Yushij: Chahar Resalat, Chahar Mas'uliyat [Nima Yushij: Four Missions, Four Responsibilities],” Tala dar Mes: Dar She'r va Sha'eri [Gold in Copper: On Poetry and Poetics], 3rd ed. (Tehran: Zaman, 1979/80), pp. 211–218.Google Scholar This does not mean to suggest that the notion of the beloved has disappeared entirely in modernist Persian poetry; but the role, the characterization, and the function of the beloved have changed.
14. Ebrahimi uses the term ghazal-dastan not only in Ten Short Stories but also in Pasokhnapazir [unanswerable], 4th ed. (Tehran: Agah, 1976), pp. 94–98.Google Scholar The title of this work is mistransliterated and mistranslated in the bibliographical note on Ebrahimi in Major Voices, pp. 218-219.
15. Generally, a ghazal is a lyrical poem consisting of from five to fifteen, sometimes as many as eighteen, bayts or couplets each of which often expresses a single thought, or a separate incident or mood; but, the whole poem is often unified either formally, thematically, or structurally. A ghazal can be composed in any meter with a common rhyme shared between the verses (mesra’) of the opening couplet and the second verses of subsequent couplets; and the last couplet of the ghazal usually contains the takhallos or poet's nom de plume. In addition to the speaker's expression of love sentiments, mystical love and philosophy have also been used as subject matter in ghazals. See Dehkhoda, ‘Ali Akbar et al., “Ghazal,” Loghatnameh GH (Tehran: Tehran University, 1961): 207–210Google Scholar; also see Hillmann, Michael C., Unity in the Ghazals of Hafez (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976), especially pp. 8, 9, and 12.Google Scholar
Although terms such as qesseh, hekayat, and qaziyyeh in Persian traditionally denote stories or tales, the dastan-e kutah is generally used to designate modern short stories.
16. Culler, Jonathan, structuralist Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1975), p. 95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17. Ibid., p. 147.
18. A famous prison in Tehran in which political prisoners have been held.
19. Sepanlu, Re-creation of Reality, p. 126.
20. For instance, the “Nimaic tradition,” which advocates for modern Persian poetry adherence to the principles set by Nima Yushij (1895-1960), has become a touchstone by which many of the innovators in modernist Persian poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g., the poets of the “New Wave” such as Ahmad Reza Ahmadi, Bizhan ‘Elahi, and Parviz Eslampur, have been judged negatively.
21. Wellek and Warren, Theory of Literature, p. 235.
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