The notion of authenticity in literary discourse implies a state of objective purity untainted by such extra-literary forces as commerce, ideology, or foreign otherness. While designations of “authentic” or “inauthentic” literature lend themselves easily to deconstructive exercises, demonstrating the conceptual limitations of the terms in itself does not explain the allure of authenticity in wide-ranging literary traditions. Our panel investigates intellectual preoccupations with authenticity among Persian poets, novelists, and critics. We consider how and why authenticity reappears as a fundamental criterion for appraisal throughout Persian literature and literary history/historiography. The panel investigates historically disparate writings to ask if, on the one hand, we can trace a coherent tradition of critics who directly or implicitly imagine a category of “pure,” authentic literature or, on the other hand, whether preoccupations with national, aesthetic, cultural or political authenticity reflect the particular socio-historical circumstances that they inhabit. In exploring such questions, our panel seeks to illuminate the rhetorical frameworks that have shaped Persian critical discourses and continue to frame discussions today.
Our first paper examines how autobiographical strains and self-aware language in 11th-century poet Nasir-i Khusraw’s works established a literary-historical precedent for Sufi poets to pursue a particular language reflective of the authentic self. Our second paper investigates the divergencies and varying emphases among the earliest proponents of literature’s “return” to the Iranian homeland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The paper questions the assumption that notions of authentically Persian poetry, particularly in contrast to the Indian style, underlay the movement’s germination. Our third paper analyzes national and cultural identity in Simin Daneshvar’s 20th century novel, Savushun. The paper situates the novel’s thematic development in modern Iranian discourses of authenticity and reflects upon paradoxes inherent to the defense of a particular national authenticity while writing in a presumably imported form, i.e. the novel. Our final paper presents a critical reading of Sa‘id Soltanpur’s poetry in order to question its aesthetic inauthenticity. The paper asks why, despite his popularity and seemingly serious aesthetic engagement, critics charged Soltanpur with sloganeering and why his writings have therefore been excluded from the Persian canon.
Of course, notions of authenticity are not unique to the Persian tradition and we hope our panel will open a larger discussion on how rhetoric of the authentic has framed other literatures and discourses in the Middle East and beyond.
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Mr. Daniel Rafinejad
The title for this paper is inspired by Wladimir Ivanow’s "Problems in Nasir-i Khusraw’s Biography," a 1948 monograph that explores the mystique surrounding the eleventh century traveler/poet/philosopher’s persona and biography, a mystique propagated by his supporters, his detractors, and, most notably, by himself. This paper examines the extraordinary autobiographical element of N??ir-i Khusraw’s poetry in comparison and contrast to autobiographical verses by his major literary antecedents, contemporaries, and successors. While many of the odes in N??ir-i Khusraw’s divan can be categorized within the genres of tarjuma-yi ??l (autobiographical poetry, literally the “translation” of a poet’s life or present circumstances into verse) or ?absiy?t (prison poetry), they are exceptional in their apparent aims and audience, as well as in the self-consciousness of their diction, genre, and tone. Specifically, this paper argues that N??ir-i Khusraw is the first major figure in Persian poetry preoccupied with articulating his life story and beliefs in a self-aware, “authentic” poetic language. Where other poets seek to commemorate themselves in the tradition of fakhr (boasting) or, in the case of the ?absiy?t, to remind patrons of their continuing existences as poets, N??ir-i Khusraw composes his divan with the purpose of providing posterity with an apologia that is necessarily both didactic and articulated in an unequivocal language. In that light, this paper also considers the autobiographical strains in the poetry of N??ir’s successors, namely the great Persian Sufi poets: is the intimate, emotional tenor of Persian Sufi poetry a direct extension of the innovations in poetic voice and persona that N??ir-i Khusraw poetry introduced? Is the Sufis’ crucial anxiety over signs and temporality a recapitulation or a corruption of N??ir’s belief in the absolute authenticity of his language and of his claim to be composing poetry simultaneously earthbound and sublime— in his words, “caught beneath the sky?” Part of a larger project on the philosophical poetry of N??ir-i Khusraw, this paper will attempt to situate N??ir’s understanding of autobiography and the poetry within the history and development of classical Persian poetic diction.
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Mr. Kevin Schwartz
Assessments of the Bâzgasht-i Adabî (Literary Return) movement and its construction as a literary category are infused with notions of authentic and inauthentic Persian poetry, particularly through its juxtaposition with the stylistic category of sabk-i Hindî (Indian Style), the often maligned style of poetry on account of which Bâzgasht-i Adabî is presumed to have emerged as a response. While the historiographical debates concerning Bâzgasht-i Adabî will form the backdrop of this paper, its focus will be on some of the early figures and sources deemed to be crucial to the emergence of the movement itself. By returning to the early sources and authors associated with Bâzgasht-i Adabî, this paper will highlight the extra-literary and contextual aspects of the movement, at times overlooked in understandings and constructions of Bâzgasht-i Adabî as a category in narrative literary histories. Through an exploration of poets’ self-perceptions and their attitudes toward and relationships with their contemporaries in the context of late 18th and 19th century Iran, particularly those concerning the triumvirate of Âzar (d. 1781), Hâtif (d. 1783) and Sabâhî (d. ca. 1803), this paper will present the germination of the “movement” at its earliest stages. Attention will also be given to several prominent tazkirahs (biographical anthologies) composed at different points in 19th century Qajar Iran, which begin to chart and record the earliest perceptions and attributes of the movement. This paper will argue that the picture that emerges among the attitudes and works of those considered the founders of the Bâzgasht-i Adabî movement in the late 18th and early 19th century contains some important divergences and varying emphases as compared to later descriptions and analyses of the movement, both those appearing later in the 19th century itself and in subsequent literary history.
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Simin Daneshvar’s Savushun (1969), the first Persian novel penned by a woman, foregrounds Iran’s loss of political autonomy during the Second World War and the country’s occupation by the Allies. The plot of the novel maps the occupation onto the life of a land-owning family in Shiraz confronted with the difficult choice of meeting the British forces’ demand for provisions to the detriment of the local towns and villages. As the female protagonist of the novel, Zari, watches her husband, Yusof, resist the dictates of the occupiers, she resolves to keep her focus exclusively on her family, sidestepping the domain of politics. But the presence of the British affects all aspects of life, blurring the demarcation between the insider and the outsider. Some Iranians, even members of Yusof’s family, adapt and succumb to the exigencies of occupation, becoming indifferent not only to nation’s political autonomy but also its cultural authenticity. Through the perspective of the main characters, Yusof and Zari, the novel critiques the apparent ease with which some residents of the city and levels of government conform to the new political, social, and cultural order. The characters that resist the authority of the occupying forces see conformity as part of larger threat to the very core of the nation.
In this presentation I will analyze the novel’s thematic focus on the need to defend and preserve Iranian national identity. My analysis will situate Savushun in the modern Iranian discourses of authenticity and will pay particular attention to the absence of any reflection on the use of the novel as a genre not native to the Persian literary tradition. My aim is to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of Simin Daneshvar’s contribution to debates and anxieties about authenticity in modern Persian literature.
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Mr. Samad J. Alavi
The poet and playwright Sa‘id Soltanpur (1940-1981) achieved popular success among at least some segments of Iranian society in his lifetime, even as his poetry received scathing criticism from older, more-established poets and critics of the day. In fact, while Soltanpur’s poetry readings would attract large and often impassioned audiences, critics like Reza Baraheni rejected Soltanpur’s writings entirely and refused even to acknowledge the lines as poetry. Instead, these critics accused Soltanpur of composing mere slogans (sho‘âr) and not true poetry (she‘r). In this paper, I ask how Soltanpur’s detractors--Baraheni and poet Ahmad Shamlu perhaps most prominent among them--defined authentic poetry. Then I consider whether Soltanpur’s poetry indeed falls short of their notions of authenticity. Such questions might begin to elucidate Soltanpur’s almost total exclusion from the modern Persian canon, a condition that persists today.
To locate the writings’ presumably “inauthentic” qualities, the paper will consider both Soltanpur’s poetry and his essays on literature and art. Soltanpur in fact composed poems with echoes of classical Persian forms and diction and his theoretical writings likewise suggest the poet’s serious engagement with aesthetic concerns. At the same time, his Marxist political activities, imprisonment, and execution all attest to Soltanpur’s unwavering political commitment. Thus the question remains: why did critics--even some self-proclaimed “committed” critics--vehemently and absolutely dismiss Soltanpur as an unserious sloganeer in a period when, as several Persian literary historians report, the rhetoric of “committed” literature dominated Persian poetics? In other words, how and why does Soltanpur’s poetry, even as it seems to embody the dominant radicalism of pre-revolutionary Iranian poetics, fail to fulfill what might be called the “mainstream” critical demand for authentic poetry? Finally, by engaging Soltanpur’s writing on its own terms, this paper addresses a void in English scholarship and continues the critical work of poet Saeed Yousef in his untranslated 1987 study of Soltanpur and the Iranian “guerilla poetry” of the 1970s , Now‘i az Naqd bar Now‘i az She‘r (A Type of Criticism of a Type of Poetry).
