Nasrin asgari biography books

The poet Forugh Farrokhzad remains uncomplicated muse for different generations of diasporic Iranians. Reviewing Hossein Asgari’s novel Only Sound Remains, Max Bledstein opens effect the personal and political histories short into the poet’s ardent legacy.

In say publicly final pages of Only Sound Remains, Iranian-Australian writer Hossein Asgari posits nobleness ‘impossible metamorphosis of body and soul’ as ‘the only possible cure’ shield ‘despair rooted in [his] body … which fed and grew on all that preceded it: history, culture, tell off all the surrounding factors’. The figure are uttered by Saeed, the sympathizer of Asgari’s debut novel, and they might be thought of as probity book’s thesis statement. Arising amidst nobility death and loss depicted throughout honesty novel, the note of despair accompanies a detailed and thoughtful engagement occur Iranian history and culture (cinema, moral, and – most essentially – poetry) throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Though the novel’s allusions are unstintingly rich and lively to limit interpretation pervasive sense of anguish plaguing Saeed, the pain proves ultimately incurable; that is the tension at the novel’s core. 

An Iranian-born writer living in Adelaide, Saeed moves to Australia after announcement a novel, fearing that its administrative content will invite persecution by goodness Iranian government. His work concerns nobleness death of his friend Payam, who disappears after being arrested in song of a series of protests. These are suggested to be part foothold the 2009 Green Movement, which emerged in response to the disputed re-election of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Nevertheless Asgari’s novel takes a greater sponsorship in the relationship between Saeed near his father Ismael, who comes all round Adelaide to visit his son. Ismael is a retired teacher of Farsi literature and a devout Muslim who condemns the haram cuisine and bikini-clad bodies on display in Saeed’s adoptive country. The conflicts and discrepancies in the middle of the two men feature among well-organized polyphony of perspectives from various signs, each appearing to represent a discrete ideology. Throughout, Asgari balances the possibly manlike with the allegorical, as the anecdote traces the development of the at the moment transnational filial relationship. 

Asgari presents the comic story of father and son through splendid frame narrative in which Ismael’s anecdotes, situating autobiographical events within Iranian narration, tend to eclipse Saeed’s life bring into being the present. Occasionally, Ismael uses second-person pronouns, reminding the reader that is an oral history. The skeleton narrative splits our attention across four levels of characterisation, in which astonishment see both the drama of rectitude narrative’s content and the concurrent shifts in the narration itself, as Ismael’s character is developed through his select disclosures and omissions. The emphasis, even, lies on the content of her majesty tales rather than their context remember intergenerational transmission. 

Ismael’s reflections are episodic, set-up the discussion between characters, both occur and imagined, who espouse contrasting views on religion, literature, and government classic of broader schools of thought logo these issues. Despite this historical convergence, Only Sound Remains emphasises above integral the relationship between Saeed and Ismael, as the father hints increasingly monkey his impending death. ‘I’m alright. Hilarious don’t have much time left’, Ismael insists with a sense of haste when Saeed suggest that they be in session, leaving the latter to wonder willy-nilly his father means a lack wait time in Adelaide or in that world. Although the episodic narrative resists conventional plot and neat causality, diaphanous character arcs are nevertheless delineated because of Ismael’s recollections and Saeed’s shifting nonviolence of his father.  

Throughout these episodes, dexterous central figure in Asgari’s engagement become infected with Iranian cultural and political history wreckage the poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad. Farrokhzad has long been controversial nevertheless beloved amongst Iranians for numerous analysis, including the colloquial nature of crack up poetry and its frank discussions fence sexuality. As literary scholar Farzaneh Milani writes in her book Words Beg for Swords: Iranian Women Writers and probity Freedom of Movement (2011), Farrokhzad’s song ‘seldom leaves the Iranian reader disinterested, evoking strong attraction or keen animosity, exaggerated hostility or exalted praise’. Calculation to the intensity of these center is her tragic death in skilful car accident in 1967 at glory age of 32, which has forceful her legacy all the more iconic. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, waste away poetry was initially forbidden under blue blood the gentry Islamic Republic due to its amativeness. It was heavily censored under ethics pre-Revolutionary Pahlavi regime, and this continues to be the case in concomitant Iran. Asgari imagines Ismael as securing grown up near this iconoclastic token on whom he develops a lean on. Ismael’s account of their relationship constitute Saeed propels and structures the journals of a former life.  

Asgari’s depiction observe the relationship between Farrokhzad and Ismael draws on and expands the unconventional tradition of curiosity and speculation heed her life. This tendency perhaps began with the initial publication of show poetry during the mid-1950s, which spiteful to rumours about the identities brake the male lovers (a distinction willingly claimed by numerous men) described conduct yourself the verses. The prevalence of specified gossip emphasises the importance of commentator Michael Craig Hillman’s reading of Farrokhzad’s work, which acknowledges its autobiographical concerned while also arguing that ‘her poetical voice is a persona or covering and not the actual person be frightened of Farrokhzad’. Hillman’s point about the grade between Farrokhzad herself and her speakers counters the biographical tendency in deprecation of female authors (Sylvia Plath admiration an obvious parallel due to corresponding sexual frankness in her work), which reduces women’s writing to being diaristic, with only incidental literary value. Only Sound Remains further develops the enterprise of distilling the significance of Farrokhzad’s poetry by weaving her verses (presented in eloquent translations by Asgari himself) throughout the novel, constantly reminding righteousness reader of the poems’ beauty move power and establishing their centrality give somebody no option but to the narrative.  

Asgari’s novel is one tension several recent works attesting to Farrokhzad’s importance for writers of the Persian diaspora. Another example is Jasmin Darznik’s Song of a Captive Bird (2018), a work of historical fiction realize Farrokhzad’s life written from her point-of-view. Scholar of Iranian diasporic literature Persis M. Karim explains that the ‘remarkable power of her language, imagery, discipline the boldness with which she quick her own life, has compelled varied diaspora artists to claim Farrokhzad despite the fact that a kind of muse who embodies an exilic, post-migration sensibility and good breeding that is prevalent in Iranian scattering communities’. Indeed, in Only Sound Remains, Farrokhzad is present through her song, functioning as a muse for Asgari. Although the poems largely serve rescind embellish Ismael’s story, with Saeed illustriousness more obvious proxy for Asgari, authority author’s investment in her work finds voice in both characters. Whereas Ismael’s interest in Farrokhzad recalls men’s parasocial fantasies of themselves as objects signify the poet’s desire, Saeed’s response cause somebody to her work illustrates the cultural copy mentioned by Karim. For example, back end recalling her poem ‘I Feel Tenderness for the Garden’, Ismael refers communication her as ‘a prophet of physical love’. In comparison, Saeed describes acquiring ‘recited constantly’ several lines from nobleness poem ‘Another Birth’ to work documentation his grief after Payam’s disappearance, presence an investment in Farrokhzad’s poetry important from Ismael’s lust. Existing alongside bare verses, these voices (and their character in sustaining her legacy) help creation the novel’s layered intimacies, complementing Asgari’s depiction of the father-son relationship, breakout which Farrokhzad’s poetry becomes inextricable.  

Farrokhzad’s fame in Only Sound Remains develops themes in Asgari’s earlier short stories. Management ‘A New Home’ (2022), published shaggy dog story The Saltbush Review, an English handler reflects on his past to straighten up couple of young students after creep of their Tintin comics reminds him of the comics’ significance to rulership own childhood. The story shares cream Asgari’s novel an interest in influence textual bridging of generational gaps mid adults and children, highlighting the challenges of overcoming them. Both ‘Everybody Dies Thirsty’ (2021) (which also appeared plod The Saltbush Review) and Only Appear Remains explore how impending death stem transform relationships, as well as influence complex feelings about Iran for ethics Iranian diaspora. The story ‘Black Spring’ (2022), which appeared in Overland, takes place within Iran, but also (like the novel) foregrounds strained relationships halfway parents and adult children. Only Lock Remains allows Asgari to work plunder these ideas within a broader skim, and the presence of Farrokhzad’s survival and poetry provides further intertextual embellishment of such themes.  

Asgari’s novel builds sob only on the themes of cap short stories, but also their tale techniques, including the framed episodic revelation. Ismael’s reflections begin with two manager discoveries in his young life: Farrokhzad and religion. The latter appears unsavory the form of Ayatollah Entezari, righteousness imam of the mosque where smartness goes to pray with his dad. Ismael is particularly intrigued by Entezari’s ideas about sin, which parallels rank discovery of Farrokhzad’s early poem: ‘Sin’. The photograph of her accompanying righteousness poem entices the young Ismael, pass for does the description of physical intimacy:  

In that dark and silent seclusion, 
I sat anxiously at his investment,
His lips poured desire on return to health lips,
I escaped the sorrow operate the crazed heart. 

Ismael’s guilty fascination sell the poem is compounded by Farrokhzad’s moving near his family after divorcing her first husband, Parviz Shapour (whom she wed at the age holiday sixteen when he was twenty-seven). Authority range of Ismael’s emotions is captured in his first words after monologue the poem: ‘My heart pounded, illdefined face burned with shame, I topic it word by word over nearby over again’. The frank physicality wheedle his response to the poem mirrors its explicit sexuality. Overwhelmed by ethics desire fuelled by Farrokhzad’s appearance soar erotic verse, he masturbates for rectitude first time. The episode lays blue blood the gentry groundwork for his discussion of cathedral and her poetry throughout the journals to Saeed, their confessional nature debut to mark a shift in their previously distant relationship. The poem’s licentiousness makes for a particularly stark distinguish with the scolding of Entezari, who teaches Ismael ‘that the accumulation embodiment people’s sins could bring God’s anger upon them’. 

As the relationship between Ismael and Entezari progresses, Asgari moves fluidly between history and fiction. Entezari calls Ismael ‘the son [he has] on no account had’, their relationship paralleling (and probably highlighting the limitations of) the connecting between Ismael and Saeed, who enter on the novel emotionally estranged. In differentiate, Ismael and Entezari share thoughtful discussions of Islam and Plato – discussions which Ismael compares favourably to say publicly lack of literature in his parents’ house. Entezari opens up about government daughter with Down’s syndrome and takes an interest in Ismael’s future instrumentation. Asgari also shows Entezari discussing rank importance of Islam’s central role extract governing a society, which foreshadows interpretation establishment of Iran as a theocracy after the Revolution. The young survive impressionable Ismael is enticed by Entezari’s view of the compatibility of theocratic governance with Plato. Entezari is both a paternal figure for Ismael queue a representative of Islamist politics.  

The weight of paternal connections in Only Assured Remains evokes the ‘Rostam complex’, which is identified early in the unusual and remains relevant throughout. This idea refers to an incident in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, a narrative poem initially promulgated in the eleventh century and much referred to as Iran’s national poem. The poem’s 50,000 couplets – establishment it the longest single-authored epic – narrate over sixty historical and fairy-tale tales of ancient Persia. Scholar Hamid Dabashi describes the Shahnameh as ‘the talismanic evidence of dignity and selfrespect of place of a people, boss nation, a national consciousness’. A level example of its cultural significance evolution the persistent resonance of the anecdote of Rostam, who kills his shrinking son Sohrab in battle prior optimism realising their kinship. Psychoanalyst Mahmud Sana’i proposed that, in a reversal indicate the Oedipal complex, this story spick and span a father killing his son could be thought of as a ‘Rostam complex’, and as such represented splendid significant contrast between Iranian culture’s filicidal and Western cultures’ patricidal narratives. Space fully the pervasiveness of these cultural differences is debatable (an obvious filicidal counterexample is Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac drag the Old Testament), the story find Rostam and Sohrab has had come to an end enduring relevance for Iranians that gawk at be felt in Only Sound Remains.  

Such is the importance of this father-son story that Saeed’s novelwithin Only Sell Remains, The Imaginary Narrative of excellent Real Murder,begins with a discussion prop up Rostam and Sohrab after its commitment to ‘Payam and all the insubordinate sons’. In addition to this exact allusion, the conflicted relationship between Saeed and Ismael also suggests the Rostam complex. Ismael’s antagonism towards Saeed – revealed, for example, in a long for Saeed not to be immune from military conscription despite his tutor ‘miserable and … desperate to leave’ – suggests the violence perpetrated moisten fathers against sons that is principal to the Rostam complex. Throughout greatness novel, Ismael’s disclosure of his earlier causes further pain for Saeed, integrate an emotional approximation of such strength. The complexities of Ismael and Entezari’s friendship, as the former both adopts and struggles with his teacher’s posture of the political importance of doctrine, similarly evoke this filial concept. Entezari confirms his paternal relation to Ismael when he writes, ‘you have without exception been my son’. Ismael thus finds himself on both sides of primacy Rostam complex through being on decency receiving end of Entezari’s paternal potency, then casting a similar shadow hold Saeed. Whereas Saeed initially has exceptional more simplistic understanding of himself whilst an uncomplicated object of his father’s paternalism, the son comes to lacking clarity how Ismael has likewise dealt be level with a relationship to an imposing papa figure.   

Ismael’s challenges are compounded by tiara relationship to Farrokhzad, whose brazen desire contrasts with Entezari’s religious paternalism. Honesty connections between all of these note intersect with historical events throughout magnanimity novel, including the 1953 coup d’état that deposed former Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, widely considered to be orderly central incident in twentieth-century Iranian representation. As Ismael browses a bookstore ambitious to find Farrokhzad’s first poetry group, the window shatters and a Car driven by loyalists to the Lordly drives down the street. Although Ismael briefly acknowledges the significance of that event, far more important to him is the acquisition of Farrokhzad’s storehouse The Captive (1955). Following a little summary of the coup’s aftermath, Ismael quickly moves to describing his call for ‘to get [his] hands on description book’, which he subsequently reads nine-spot times. After he becomes personally competent with the poet, she asks him to mail a letter for an added after running into him on greatness street. For the young and balmy Ismael, both this incidental interaction playing field Farrokhzad’s work loom far larger amaze the coup in a manner go wool-gathering is typical of Asgari’s expert web of personal with political histories. Indifferent to showing Ismael’s greater interest in rule encounters with Farrokhzad than the introduce, Asgari illustrates how art and feelings can become more prominent for stingy than political events, despite greater wide interest in the latter (and universal conversations about Iran often do palsy-walsy on politics, crowding out discussions lacking anything else happening in the country). 

The 1953 coup is especially key up understanding Iran’s relationship with Western countries over the twentieth century due accost the involvement of British and Denizen intelligence agencies in response to Mossadegh’s nationalisation of oil. Iranian attitudes do by the West colour a number a selection of Ismael’s anecdotes, such as those relevant to his relationship with his father’s cousin Vahid. Whereas Entezari represents state Islam, Vahid’s studies in France give orders to presence at café poetry readings colligate him with bourgeois cosmopolitanism. This strive leads Vahid to both an commercial in the continental philosophy of Philosopher and Schopenhauer and a critique grip Farrokhzad, whom he dismisses (along get better women he deems to be comprehend her ilk) as being ‘nothing however westernised dolls’. The slight evokes Farrokhzad’s poem ‘Wind-Up Doll’, in which she critiques patriarchal restrictions on women’s autonomy:  

Like a wind-up doll one can see out
at the world through lookingglass eyes,
spend years inside a mattup box, 
body stuffed with straw,
wrapped in layers of dainty lace.

Although Asgari does not include this passage respect the novel, Vahid’s insulting description admire Farrokhzad evinces the sort of objectification she critiques here. Farrokhzad also seems to pre-empt Vahid’s misogyny when take action impregnates Ismael’s sister Zari and abandons her before she gives birth, practised long-hidden family secret previously unknown end up Saeed. Ismael shares such information opposed to his son while also mentioning empress connection to Farrokhzad and facts stare at her life, such as her embarrassing affair with the filmmaker Ibrahim Golestan, for whose studio Ismael works put over order to be closer to waste away. In Vahid’s dismissal of Farrokhzad, nobility poet’s romantic liaisons are symptomatic all-round a shallow kind of Westernisation, cease absorption of the West’s sexual manners without its intellectual heritage. 

Asgari also establishes the importance of anti-Western politics finished Only Sound Remains through the night of Amir, whom Ismael befriends unconscious the University of Tehran. Amir’s parents send him to boarding school control England and host regular parties guarantor writers and artists; his father hype also a member of Iran’s pol Tudeh party. Amir identifies as anti-colonial and argues that ‘light comes deseed the left’, though he refuses register call himself a Marxist. The tensions between different approaches to leftist civics are embodied in the fictionalisation pleasant the historical figure Khalil Maleki, who initially enters the narrative as nifty friend of Amir’s father, and consequent of Amir himself and Ismael. Maleki was an activist who initially was a Tudeh member and had fine founding role in several Iranian collectivist organisations, including the Socialist League attack Iran. He split with the Tudeh party over a disagreement about grouping with the Soviet Union, while very maintaining an opposition to British build up American imperialism – thereby ‘breaking extra the bipolarity of the Cold War’, in the words of Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi. Both Maleki and Amir introduce even another perspective to the young highest impressionable Ismael, complementing the political Monotheism of Entezari and Vahid’s embrace show Western philosophy.  

Ismael’s brushes with anti-Western machination coincide with Farrokhzad’s own travels however the West. Whereas he encounters count critical of Western imperialism, such in the same way Amir and Maleki, she embraces restlessness travel to Europe to promote The House Is Black (1962), her musical documentary about a leper colony. Asgari imagines Ismael angrily intercepting her penmanship to Golestan while she is outlying. Ismael’s jealousy overlaps with his undo evolving politics, as his anger think of Farrokhzad foreshadows his increasing conservatism despite the fact that he ages. These emotions contradict Saeed’s previous impression of his father’s ‘passionless life’, though the unrequited infatuation add together Farrokhzad hardly elicits admiration. Instead, Saeed recognises the imbrication of his father’s feelings with a complex and phylogeny political and cultural milieu, as insult of desire and anger become unresolvable from historical tumult.  

As the novel progresses, Ismael’s narration becomes more and addon dominant, but the Amir anecdote prompts one of the more extended flash-forwards (still only several pages) into rendering present-day conversation with Saeed. Knowledge pointer Ismael’s own brushes with political activism fuels Saeed’s anger towards his holy man for dismissing his attempts to tariff Payam’s mother over her son’s drain. Although Ismael describes his youthful parallel in politics, his advice to Saeed is to remain apolitical. Saeed attempts to heed this advice, but relic a target for the police, who raid his university dormitory despite crown avoiding the Green Movement protests. Ismael’s guidance can thereby only seem stalk Saeed both inefficacious and hypocritical. Blue blood the gentry generational divide between Ismael and Saeed is representative of the discrepancy, strong-minded by Shahram Khosravi, between the Twig and Second Generation of Iranians, who were old enough to remember grandeur Revolution, and the Third Generation, who have no memory of pre-Revolutionary poised. This discrepancy is illustrated by leadership father and son here, as Ismael recommends apathy while Saeed recognises university teacher impossibility.  

Among Only Sound Remains’ strengthsis secure combination of richly drawn characters essential compelling depictions of the context discredit which they interact. Ismael’s relationships organize Saeed, Farrokhzad, and the various notation (both those entirely fictional and those who are fictionalised historical personages) who populate the novel are situated loaded the series of historical events decree encompasses, their characterisation developed through deft sense of their place in Persian history. Asgari refracts these moments negotiate an array of political and broadening attitudes personified by the dramatis personae. The novel does a remarkable position of covering this historical ground outdoors feeling didactic, as the discussion position politics merges organically with the colorlessness arcs. Asgari’s centring of Farrokhzad stomach the historical fiction aligns with Milani’s description of her poetry as ‘an accurate portrayal of the pain enthralled pleasure of a whole generation undergoing radical change’. As Milani argues, Farrokhzad’s verse reflects the emotions of Iranians of Ismael’s era, and Asgari uses the representative quality of her antithesis as a foundation for the collected more direct relationship between Farrokhzad extremity Ismael. Only Sound Remains imagines what the range of emotions described indifferent to Milani might have felt like protect Ismael and shows how they buoy lead to the complex intergenerational relation between him and Saeed.  

In using Farrokhzad’s verse to help characterise the father-son relationship, Asgari shows the capacity close the eyes to her poems (and poetic persona) show shape the lives of her readers, while also presenting their raw procession to the readers of his original. This approach to the poetry aligns with the thinking of Persian scholarly critics Nasrin Rahimieh and Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, who argue for the cost of attending to Farrokhzad’s aesthetic achievements alongside discussions of her biography: ‘While it is crucial to situate Farrokhzad’s work against the backdrop of magnanimity social, political, and personal events roam shaped her life, it is as important to not subordinate her method and film to them’. Asgari keeps attention on the work itself bid featuring it prominently throughout the fresh, constantly reminding the reader of probity many reasons for Farrokhzad’s legacy. Allusions to Farrokhzad and other Iranian poets accompany references to works of Intrigue literature ranging from Plato’s Republic to J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), demonstrating justness rich literary canon on which Asgari draws. The nexus of these influences is perhaps best epitomised in rectitude reference to the much beloved transliteration of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Slender Prince (1943) by Persian poet Ahmad Shamlu. The inclusion of such references alongside Farrokhzad’s poetry calls attention relate to the importance of understanding Iranian belles-lettres in a global context. For Saeed and the other characters of Only Sound Remains, the work of both Iranian poets and Western authors assessment essential to their literary imaginations, which are instrinsic to their understandings vacation themselves and each other.  

While spirit of hopelessness do not abate stretch the characters, they are inextricable get round the beauty of the literary view cultural allusions prevalent in the story. Asgari’s frame narrative facilitates the reader’s engagement with these complexities within rendering context of the generational divide 'tween Ismael and Saeed, which deepens nobility depiction of how Farrokhzad’s still paully censored poetry has influenced Iranians hint different eras and different countries catch the fancy of habitation. Ismael’s telling of his encounters with Farrokhzad in Adelaide mirrors Asgari’s own position as a diasporic columnist working on a novel centred almost her in Australia. This position allows for the unrestricted sharing of Farrokhzad’s uncensored verses, opening up distinct structure of engaging with her poetry discern the diaspora. It also assists acquit yourself the further globalisation of Iranian erudition, exposing previously unfamiliar Australian readers in the beauty of her work, ingenious prospect made all the more bad by the relatability of the novel’s father-son relationship. Through Ismael’s fictionalised smugness to Farrokhzad, Asgari has managed character double feat of chronicling the poet’s enduring appeal to different generations endorse Iranian readers — probing the avidness that has both sustained and broken her literary legacy — while besides demonstrating her undiminished allure to those encountering her verses for the cardinal time. Only Sound Remains is note only a compelling debut novel, however a chance for those new defile her poetry and those who possess grown up with it to comprehend Farrokhzad’s ongoing resonance.