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Power, Prudence, and Print: Censorship and Simin Danashvar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Farzaneh Milani
Farzaneh Milani*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

Censorship has been as much a part of Iran's literary history as betrayed love, bewitched lovers, and broken love affairs. In other words, it began long before the establishment of the "Imperial Printing Office" during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (ruled 1848-1896).

In earlier times some dissident writers were forced to lick off the ink from pages of their writings. Others had their mouths filled with gold or silver. Some were thrown in dungeons or seas. Others were exiled or executed.

Modern rulers have been no less adamant or imaginative in their methods of silencing opposition artists. "Mohammad 'Ali Shah had the two writers and orators, Malek-ol-Motakallamin and Sur-e Esrafil, hanged in the Bagh-e Shah Garrison, while he himself sat on the balcony facing the gallows and ate an entire plateful of rice and kabob as he watched." Farrokhi Yazdi (1889-1939) had his lips sewn together.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2-4: Sociology of the Iranian Writer , Spring Autumn 1985 , pp. 325 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1985

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Footnotes

To Faridoun Milani, Kaveh Safa, and Amin Banani goes my gratitude for their thorough and sensitive comments.

References

Notes

1. Baraheni, Reza, P.E.N. Country Report No. 2 (New York: P.E.N. American Center, March 1978), p. 11Google Scholar, also reviews the fate of pre-20th century Iranian literary artists.

2. International Solidarity Front for the Defense of the Iranian Peoples' Democratic Rights, The Crimes of Khomeini's Regime (n.p.: n.p., May 1982), p. 68.

3. E.g., 'Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, Loghatnameh 4 (Tehran: University of Tehran Press, April-May 1969), p. 204.

4. Roget's International Thesaurus, 4th ed., rev. Robert Chapman (New York: Crowell, 1979).

5. Sa'idi Sirjani, "Ab-e Kam Ju...," Cheragh. No. 5 (1984), 103.

6. Golshiri, Hushang, "Jedal-e Naqsh ba Naqqash" [The Struggle of Painting with the Painter], Naqd-e Agah (Tehran: Agah Publishing, 1984), p. 164Google Scholar. Golshiri's is the most detailed discussion to date of Daneshvar's fiction.

7. For further biographical material on Daneshvar see: "Sepas az Ostad" [Praise of the Master], Survey and Excavation: Journal of the Institute and Department of Archaelogy 3 (1980): 1-3; Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Sangi bar Guri [A Tombstone on a Tomb] (Tehran: Ravaq, 1981); Farzaneh Milani, "Pa-ye Sohbat-e Simin Daneshvar" [An Audience with Simin Daneshvar], Alefba, No. 4, new series (Fall 1983), pp. 147-57; and Michael Hillmann, "Cultural Dilemmas of an Iranian Intellectual," Lost in the Crowd, by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, trans. John Green et al. (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1985), pp. i-xxvi.

8. Daneshvar, Simin, "Women Must Educate the Masses," The Iranian 1, No. 17 (October 24, 1979), 8Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 11.

10. Stegner, Wallace and Scowcroft, Richard, eds., Stanford Short Stories (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954), p. 170Google Scholar.

11. Simin Daneshvar, Atash-e Khamush (Tehran: n.p., 1948), p. 12.

12. Only three translations of Daneshvar's 36 short stories have been published in America: "Narges," The Pacific Spectator 8, No. 2 (Spring 1954), reprinted in Stanford Short Stories (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954); "A Letter Home," The Pacific Spectator 8, No. 1 (Winter 1954), reprinted in Stanford Short Stories: "A Land Like Paradise," Modern Persian Short Stories, trans. Minoo Southgate (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1980). Hassan Javadi has translated or edited twelve short stories in a forthcoming collection.

13. See Dah Shab-e She'r: Kanun-e Nevisandegan-e Iran (Rome: Babak, 1978).

14. In contrast to the rarity of autobiographies, a rather large number of memoirs and travelogues has been written. Although both subgenres, in their views of people and events, can be as much a projection of the author's self as that of the autobiography, the primary focus of the memoirs and travelogues that have appeared seems directed more toward historical or sociogeographical recounting than an examination of the narrating self. Even 'Abdollah Mostofi's Sharh-e Zendegani-ye Man [An Account of My Life] (Tehran: Zavvr, 1962), is a portrayal of external events mingled with some details of daily life. The book actually covers the whole reign of the Qajar dynasty. Characteristically, the author writes in the introduction: "An account of my life offers nothing worth reading. My main intention is to describe the social situation and particularly to shed light on governmental and administrative operations in the course of the 60 or 70 years of my life."

15. Even in women's "confessional" autobiographies, the sense of the self is totally overwhelmed by a commitment to an image. Banu Mahvash's Raz-e Kamyabi-ye Jensi [The Secret: of Sexual Fulfillment] (Tehran: n.p., 1957) and Malekeh E'tezadi's E'terafat-e Man [My Confessions] (Tehran: n.p., 1956), among others, and the amazingly large number of short life-histories published in women's journals not only quixotically confuse life with literature but focus around a tediously-stereotyped plot. "Deceived" in one way or another by men—most of these authors reveal hostility toward men—either implicit or outright. Although the manifest intention of these avowals seems to be the education of other "innocent" women, their main function proves to be a need for explanation and self-justification.

16. This reluctance to portray the self or to talk about it freely is neither confined to literary figures nor solely a manifestation of self-censorship. A multitude of reasons and inhibitions cause it, and a wide array of individuals from different walks of life practice it. V. S. Naipaul, in Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 55, relays his frustrated attempt to get Sadeq Khalkhali to "show a little more than his official side":

"I had been hoping to get him to talk about his life. I would have liked to enter his mind, to see the world as he saw it....He could be probed into no narrative, no story of struggle or rise. He had simply lived; experience wasn't something be had reflected on. And, vain as he was ('I am very clever, very intelligent'), the questions about his past didn't interest him."

17. Hedayat, Sadeq has recorded the sang-e sabur folk tale in Neveshteha-ye Parakandeh (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1965), pp. 131-138Google Scholar; translated in Literature East and West 20 (1976): 45-49.

18. For a discussion of the basic differences and distinctions between "I-Thou" and "I-it," see Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: I & I Clark, 1958).

19. Milani, "An Audience with Daneshvar," p. 155.

20. Small wonder that one of the first seven students sent abroad by 'Abbas Mirza in 1815 was to study locksmithing. See Mojtaba Minovi, "Avvalin Karvan-e Ma'refat" [The First Caravan of Learning], Yaghma 6, No. 5 (1953): 181-185.

21. There is no exact Persian equivalent of the English use of the word "intimacy." Although intimacy can be translated by a series of Persian words, from "closeness" and "sincerity" to "illicit affair," none alone conveys the whole range of relatedness that the word expresses in English.

22. Simin Daneshvar, Savushun (Tehran: Kharazmi, 1969), p. 130.

23. Ibid.

24. Milani, "An Audience with Daneshvar," p. 154.

25. "I believe 'Sutra' is the best story I've ever written....It is executed with a great deal of expertise." Daneshvar, ibid., p. 151.

26. Ibid.

27. If Abdul cannot air his grievances openly or express his ideals directly, the medium of spirits will allow him the privilege. Though expression of his interests and dreams in the face of social constraint, normal modes of discourse, and codes of moral propriety is impossible, his trance is an approved cultural outlet.

28. Though possession by an intrusive spirit is undoubtedly traumatic initially, in "Sutra," however, Abdul is not only unscathed by the experience, he also emerges from it strengthened and vitalized.

29. While Abdul's ecstatic state is an outlet to express his outraged feelings and frustrations, for those around him it is an institutionalized means to discard and disregard (and by implication control) his openly-aired desires. Besides allowing him partial relief and resolution, it also provides him with a means of coping with his otherwise intolerable situation without further alienating him from the society.

30. Daneshvar, Simin, Whom Should I Salute? (Tehran: Kharazmi, 1980), p. 290Google Scholar.

31. Hingley, Ronald, Nightingale Fever (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), p. 214.Google Scholar