4 - Stark Realisms, Allusive Imaginaries: Short Fiction and Rebellion

Summary

The glow-worm said: Comrade rabbit I always try to illuminate the lightless gatherings of others, illuminate the jungle, although some animals ridicule me and say, ‘ … you try in vain to illuminate the jungle with your meagre light.’ The rabbit said: these are older folks’ words. We say, ‘every light, however small, is still radiance.’

Samad Behrangi, ‘Olduz and the Speaking Doll’ (1967)

Death can easily descend upon me right at this moment. As long as I live, I should not be inviting death. Of course, when I face death at some point, and I will, it doesn't matter. What matters is what effect my life and death will have upon the lives of others.

Samad Behrangi, The Little Black Fish (1968)

Modern Persian poetry and fiction emerged contemporaneously, capturing the revolutionary-literary Zeitgeist of early twentieth-century Iran. Several contemporaries of Yushij – namely, Sadeq Hedayat (1903–51), Sadeq Chubak (1916–98) and Bozorg Alavi (1904–97) – founded modern fiction, although it originates with Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (1892–1997) and his Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time, 1921). As mentioned, Yushij was intrigued by the advent of modern fiction – a literary movement he found braided with his New Poetry. In a letter, he posthumously praised Hedayat, the author of The Blind Owl (India, 1937; Iran, 1941), a rare, compelling and surrealist oeuvre and the hallmark of the modern Persian novel, ‘the one who isn't alive now’, as ‘the exceptional virtuoso [borumandtarin] I have seen in the realm of writing … among all my friends’ (Yushij, as quoted in Ariyanpour 1995: 599).

The ‘guerrilla period’ in Iran was short-lived – from 1971 until 1976 (with the death of Ashraf ). The PFG and other militants experienced the same flow and ebb between the pincers of these two turning points. After 1976, the urban guerrilla movement proved unsustainable by the activists who had hoped their zealous dedication would ignite the pent-up ire of the populace into a mass uprising. The student movement, the backbone of militant resistance, also pragmatically shifted towards long-term democratic methods (Vahabzadeh 2010: 56).