Forugh Farrokhzad, from a letter to Ebrahim Golestan featured in “Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad,” tr. by Sholeh Wolpé.

Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

Forugh Farrokhzad, tr. by Hasan Javadi & Susan Sallée, from Another Birth: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad; “Couple”

[Text ID: “and two hearts / and two solitudes”]

Railings Around the Crib by Farzaneh Ghavami (tr. Alireza Abiz)

The Blind Owl by Sedegh Hedayat

Our Tears Are Sweet by Simin Behbahani

Our tears are sweet, our laughter venomous. We’re pleased when sad, and sad when pleased. We wash one hand in blood, the other we wash the blood off. We cry as we laugh at the futility of both these acts. Eight years have passed, we haven’t discovered their meaning. We have been like children, beyond any account or accounting. We have broken every stalk, like a wild wind in the garden. We have picked clean the vine’s candelabra. And if we found a tree, still standing, defiantly, we cut its branches, we pulled it by the roots. We wished for a war, it brought us misery, now, repentant, we wish for peace. We pulled wings and heads from bodies, now, seeking a cure, we are busy grafting.   Will it come to life, will it fly, the head we attach, the wing we stitch?       (From A Cup Of Sin: Selected Poems by Simin Behbahani, Translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa, University of Syracuse Press, 1999)

Poet Forugh Farrokhzad on the cover of issue 804 of Ferdowsi magazine, 1967

(via Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi)

The author, Azar Nafisi, and several of her girl students who formed the clandestine book discussion group to explore some of the forbidden classics in the Revolutionary Islamic Iran were relating themselves to Lolita where there was a Humbert in their lives in one form or another, restricting the freedom of their lives in some way and taking control over them in a manner that was loathed by them all.

The Humbert could take any form, from the uncle of one of the girls who tried to molest her in her childhood to the ‘Philosopher-King’ Ayatollah himself who, according to the author, endeavoured to build his dream kingdom by imposing the most stringent regulations and restricting the freedom of the subjects, particularly women. In a country ravaged by the so-called revolution and warfare with the neighbouring country, the sole means these women could find to live the lives of their dreams was to turn to fiction, because they believed that their lives of freedom could exist only in their minds, in the realm of imagination. This book Reading Lolita in Tehran endeavours to speak to us about the power of imagination and fiction. As the group of women crazy for fiction delves into the fictional classics by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Austen, and James, we realize how their true lives are intertwined with the narratives they discuss. The book is part memoir and part literary crit... (Read full text on booksperience.org)

"No soy nada cuando no amo. Hoy en día, la gente no es nadie cuando no odia. La época lo quiere así. Estoy fuera de época".

Victoria Ocampo- Carta a Albert Camus, 7 de septiembre de 1951.

My initial reaction after finishing The Blind Owl - 

The award for the most unreliable narrator I have ever encountered goes to Sadegh Hedayat’s nameless opium-addicted lunatic. 

“Khi nhìn gương mặt nàng, tôi trải qua cơn choáng váng làm quên đi mọi gương mặt khác. Ngắm nàng, tôi bắt đầu run rẩy toàn thân và chồn gối chân. Trong thăm thẳm từ đôi mắt mênh mang của nàng, tôi đã thấy trong một khoảnh khắc tất cả sự sa đọa đời mình. Đôi mắt nàng ướt và lóng lánh như hai viên kim cương đen đẫm lệ. Trong đôi mắt nàng, trong đôi mắt đen của nàng, tôi tìm ra bóng đêm vĩnh hằng, bóng tối dày đặc mà tôi đamg kiếm tìm, rồi bị nhận chìm vào trong cái bóng tối rù quến đáng sợ của vực thẳm ấy. Như thể nàng đang hút tinh lực ra khỏi tôi. Mặt đất đong đưa dưới chân tôi và nếu như có ngã xuống, hẳn tôi đã trải qua một cơn khoái cảm không thể tả.”

— Con Cú Mù, Sadegh Hedayat

Forugh Farrokhzad, from “Another Birth: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad; ‘Let us believe in the beginning of a cold season’”, tr. Hasan Javadi and Susan Sallée.

"Even after letting go of the last bird, I hesitate. There is something in this empty cage that never gets released."

— Garous Abdolmalekain, Lean Against This Late Hour

Forugh Farrokhzad, tr. by Hasan Javadi & Susan Sallée, from Another Birth: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad; "The sun shines"

[Text ID: “I burned in the stars / I was filled with feverish stars”]

Railings Around the Crib by Farzaneh Ghavami (tr. Alireza Abiz)

Natalie Shaw’s illustrated book cover for Abdi Nazemian’s The Chandler Legacies.