In the Western debate over whether Islam is by nature oppressive, what’s clear is how much Islamic oppression falls on its women.
Against that oppression has emerged the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, translated into vivid English by Sholeh Wolpe, who has added a biographical essay in “Sin.” Born in Iran in 1935, Farrokhzad died there in an automobile accident in 1967.
In Iran, women were subservient; her family was typical. Her father was a rigid patriarch who disciplined harshly, while her mother dwelled in her own imagination, bullying the children, denying them autonomy. Both favored their sons. The child Forugh defied their conventions.
Always beautiful, Farrokhzad’s poetry voiced rebellion as she confronted cruelty, suffered, endured and matured. From “Grief,” an early poem:
Like the disheveled locks of a womanthe Karun river spreads itself on the naked shoulders of the shore.
The metaphor is rich and precise, its content forbidden. For her sexual freedoms and her free expression of them, she suffered condemnation immediately, which she must have anticipated. From where comes such courage? Her courage was her talent. In the same poem, she evokes passion:
On the river’s skin, palm shadows tremble at the sensual touch of the breeze.
This is Eve in the Garden, delighting in life; and, indeed, this poem recounts banishment. Farrokhzad speaks of “a million brilliant bloodshot eyes” that “spy on beds of innocent lovers,” a shrieking bird and moonbeams rushing “to see what fear has driven it to such despair.” That fear is of sin, the book’s title; this sin is from the eponymous poem:
I have sinned a rapturous sin beside a body quivering and spent.I do not know what I did O God in that quiet vacant dark.
But her poetry demanded the true nature of that sin, because sexuality in Farrokhzad was creative power, and her creative powers were cries for life fulfilled.
In that time, the Shah constrained clerical powers. Perhaps she felt safe. She went to Europe, returned to Iran, made films, took lovers, married; but civil and clerical powers took her son from her on grounds of immorality. She became Akhmatova’s sister, as here from “The Return”:
My eyes questioned ‘In which corner should I seek him?’ But I quickly saw my room was empty of his childish clamor.
In 1964, Farrokhzad published her most popular book, “Reborn,” much of which is included in “Sin.” Still loving sound and image, she developed a canny worldliness. New powers appeared of satire, observation and sabotage. In “Wind- Up Doll,” she writes from her pain to her countrywomen.
One can spend a lifetime kneeling
head bowed
before the cold altar of the Imams,
find God inside an anonymous grave
Farrokhzad developed an inspiring poetry of politics. She claims in “The Wind Will Blow Us Away” that she “watches this prosperity through alien eyes,” implying the affluence of the elect under the Shah, confessing, “I am addicted to my despair.” She was becoming a prophet.
Farrokhzad internalized the agonies of her age and sang them. The Shah was in part an instrument of the West, armed and provided with a brutal secret service. To appease discontents, he initiated a liberalizing White Revolution. Political opposition responded, but Farrokhzad felt the limitation of “independence” that was “permitted” by power, invoking it in extraordinary tropes. In “Insight,” she rendered a microcosm of free but alienated consciousness.
Light was exhausting itself
inside the small bubble.
Night suddenly flooded the window
with darkness, brimming vacant voices.
Night, infecting with venomous breaths.
Incisively lyrical, this is the most persuasive political verse, precisely because it’s personal. She heard voices and judged them, based on the truth of her experience. They were duplicitous. She knew the venom in those breaths, and she conceived all of this pondering a bubble!
Robert Covelli of Santa Fe has published poems, stories and excerpts.
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Poetry
Sin, by Forugh Farrokhzad; translated by Sholeh Wolpe, $22.95
