Shamlu was a founder of the Iranian Writers Association. It the thirty intervening years he has not ceased defending its ideals. As he put it to an interviewer “The Iranian Writers Association is alive because its thought is alive in each and every one of us. That means every one of us cultural workers who remains true to its shining ideals is individually an association”.
Numerous are those from this tribe of the pen who in this republic of terror gave their life in defence of the pen and its honour: Hossein Eghdami, Piruz Davani, Hamid Haji-Zadeh, Ghaffar Hosseini, Mohammad Mokhtari, Ahmad Miralai’, Mohammad-Ja’far Puyandeh, Hamid Rezvan, Said Soltanpur, Saidi Sirjani, Majid Sharif, Ahmand Taffazoli, Ebrahim Zalzadeh.
The documentary “Shamlu, master poet of liberty” paints a life that is both passionate and rational, the purpose of which is the quest for liberation. And it is through this battle for liberation of people like him that liberty is conceived in the perspective of humanity and humanism.
Shamlu’s achievement go beyond poetry. He has written stories and film scenarios. He has made an important contribution to children’s literature. He has been one of the most amazing journalistic talents in the last few decades. It is through his name and his presence that many of the most successful and lasting publications of our time have achieved their success.
Shamlu is also a translator. Not only is his colourful language unforgettable in his translations of stories and prose, but many poems in foreign languages have been so transformed by Shamlu’s extraordinary word-painting as to seem not so much a translation, as the most beautiful contemporary Farsi poetry.
In an interview Mohammad Mohammad Ali lists 65 works by Shamlu (Ghatreh 1993): anthologies, translations, novels, plays, collected essays and articles. Shamlu adds a further five works. These include speeches political writings, commentaries on Hafez [1], a free translation of a new anthology by Margot Beikel and a rewriting of Graham Green’s book The Power and the Glory under the title of Another Jesus, Another Judas.
A pride of place should be reserved for his Ketab-e Kucheh (alley book) [2]. Here he expounds the aural, the colloquial language, following the footsteps taken earlier by Dehkhoda and Sadegh Hedayat. This is a gigantic undertaking. There are to be about 100 volumes, over 30 of which are ready, though most are unpublished.
Shamlu’s position in the firmament of Iranian literature is a vivid mirror of what is happening to the pen and to culture in Iran. Shamlu is rightly considered the most significant figure in contemporary Iranian poetry. The pulse of literature in Iran and among the people beats with what is in his poetry and thought. For the Islamic Republic to deny this undeniable fact is futile. Shamlu’s influence on poetry is a feature of contemporary Iran. But his influence undoubtedly goes beyond poetry. He has influenced the whole direction of Iranian literature.
The fact that a poet or writer influences a whole period of literary and cultural life to such a degree is not without precedence in other languages and cultures. The recognition of such moments in any putative literature can be very helpful. Yet Shamlu’s inspiration on the Iranian literary scene is not confined to the purely literary. What makes Shamlu’s literary creations in their totality, and his poetry specifically, so influential is his world view of humans, and what can, and must, direct the noble future of humanity.
In his poetry humans stand on the equator of poetry and poetry on the equator of humanity. He has a grasp of his time and his epoch. He is contemporary, understands all the anxieties of the current miseries and yet believes in the ability of humankind to resist and not capitulate.
This is how he put it in an interview: “what makes up my poetry, in its totality and essentials? I can simply say that for some time my life can be reduced to anxiety and apprehension. All my life the nightmare of my waking hours was seeing poverty, injustice and lack of culture. I have nothing more to add to this. Everything else is incidental and marginal. Justice is my permanent anxiety, and perhaps this is why injustice is always around to take revenge on me in some way. This terrifying animal circles me and with its steps weaves a spell round me so that I can never ignore its presence…”
Let us see what the Islamic Republic does to such a poet: a mirror of what befalls any intellectual that has not bowed to the ruling power. Shamlu puts it thus in an interview some years ago: “… for ten years I have been eliminated from the arena of culture in my country. Of course I have continued my work, and if something was in my head I have put it down on paper…”
In this sentence is encapsulated on the one side the repression of the Islamic Republic on our culture makers and people, and on the other, the enduring resistance of the culture makers and people against this repression.
Shamlu today symbolises the free poets of this world. And the liberated of this world. In a world dominated by profit and capital, anyone speaking of freedom, justice, rationality, and kindness is a free individual who demands freedom for all humanity as the shared identity of citizenship, whatever corner they inhabit. And if this were to come about, then humans will break every bond and boundary to a promised land without confines. In that sense the world is a city, and he who shouts out the liberty of humankind is a citizen of the world.
If you look well Shamlu is a citizen of the world from the now to the yet.
This is an abridged version of a talk given by Dr Berelian, a member of the Iranian Writers Association in Exile. The talk was given before the showing of the film: Shamlu, master poet of liberty in London in April.
Fotnotes (tr)
1. Shamlu’s edition of the great Iranian classic poet is itself a classic.
2. This is gargantuan research on language as used in everyday speech, and encompasses all the richness of the Farsi language spoken by a nation of such diversity.
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