The Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue
The Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue
Mostafa Abedinifard
Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature and Culture, UBC
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
Instructional Professor of Persian, University of Chicago
I. Iraj Pezeshkzad’s Revolutions: The Humourist’s Serious Legacy
Mostafa Abedinifard[1]
A highly prolific author and by far the most renowned Iranian satirist of the past several decades, Iraj Pezeshkzad has been recognized, not only among the public but also by some scholars, through one of his most famous works: the part-farcical, part-satirical novel Da’i Jan Napelon (My Uncle Napoleon). Ironically, when asked which of his works he favoured most, it was Adab-i mard bih zi dawlat-i ūst taḥrīr shud (Manners, Not Riches, Maketh Man), a Faustian comedy of sorts with a plot twist. Understandably, Pezeshkzad was known to have felt upset when his fans reduced the entirety of his literary creativity merely to a single work, and even more often, indeed, to the film adaptation of it. That said, he would always humbly express his gratitude toward director Naser Taghvai whose TV series adaptation of Da’i Jan, Pezeshkzad admitted, had immortalized the already bestseller book among Iranians. Being unenthusiastic about interviews, Pezeshkzad would notoriously avoid them until 2013 when the persistent Nazanin Motamedi of BBC managed to gain his permission for a documentary based on his life and work.[2] Pezeshkzad proposed the title of the documentary, amusingly threatening he would feel offended if it were not titled Iraj Pezeshkzad and His Da’i Jan. We are fortunate that he agreed to more public appearances in the few years that followed, leaving us with many precious recorded moments of his friendly company, sweet storytelling, exemplary witticism, and sharp memory, all as he approached and entered the ninth decade of his life.
Pezeshkzad’s humorous works span a wide range of genres and formats, from novel, short story, and theatrical comedy to humour column, serial publication, historical novel, and time travel fiction.[3] Any attempt at providing even an overview of Pezeshkzad’s sizeable body of humorous literature—let alone the unexplored place of his works within, and their impact on, modern Iranian literature and culture—is well beyond the scope of this introduction. Long overdue, such an endeavour is well-suited for a PhD dissertation. The necessity of conducting such research becomes clear when we notice the extent to which Pezeshkzad’s works remain understudied even among scholars of Persian and Iranian humour. It is a shame, for instance, that the only extant book on Iranian political satirists mentions Pezeshkzad only a few times, and fleetingly at that.[4]
Here, instead, we would like to briefly draw our readers’ attention to yet another under-recognized aspect of Pezeshkzad’s writing legacy. Much less known than his humorous body of works, or his scholarship on humour and satire, are a few serious books on history to which Pezeshkzad dedicated himself as an émigré after the revolution, and in most of which he explicitly mentioned “the youth” as his intended primary audience. Written in plain language, four of these books concern political movements and revolutions, both in Iran and elsewhere. To many, this may appear as an anomaly in the satirist’s otherwise humorous oeuvre. It is not. A leading and exceptionally versatile satirist in modern Iran, Pezeshkzad was a well-read author who would constantly keep himself informed of and draw upon politics and history as the primary force and subject matter of his satire. Emphasizing this under-acknowledged aspect of Pezeshkzad’s significant career is quite timely, as we are currently in the midst of an ongoing revolutionary movement among Iranians, both within and outside Iran: that of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
Pezeshkzad grew up in a highly politicized milieu and one of prompt changes, both locally and globally, witnessing some turning-point events in modern Iranian history. Born twenty years after the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, and only two years after the abolition of the Qajar dynasty and the crowning of Reza Shah Pahlavi, Pezeshkzad grew up to live through the 1953 coup as well as the events of June 1963. Years later, he would witness also the unfolding of the 1979 Revolution, the aftermath of which—including the dismissal from employment by the newly established theocratic government and a ban on the publication of his books—left him no choice other than undesired self-exile to Paris. There, he befriended the ousted Shah’s last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, with whom Pezeshkzad shared a passion of “fighting for democracy” and “an interest in Hafez’s poetry.”[5] For years, he edited the journal Qiyām-i Iran (Iran’s Uprising) at the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance, founded and led by Bakhtiar.
Two of Pezeshkzad’s revolutionary books concerned the French and the Russian Revolutions, both published in 2004 in Tehran, although one mentions the date of the completion of the manuscript as 1991 Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Farānsih (A Review of the History of the French Revolution) and Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyah (A Review of the History of the Russian Revolution). In another book, which was published in Los Angeles, California in 1993, Pezeshkzad took up the apparently hackneyed case of the June 1963 events involving Ayatollah Khomeini (Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād-i Chihil ū Dū va Qānūn-i Maṣūnīyat-i Niẓāmiyān-i Amrīkāyī [A Review of the June 1963 Events and the US Military Personnel’s Diplomatic Immunity]). The last of these four books is concerned with the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911 (Murūr’ī dar Inqilāb-i Mashrūṭīyat-i Iran [A Review of the History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution]) and was published in Frankfurt in 2006, i.e., the centenary of the revolution.[6]
To the curious reader, the absence of the 1979 Revolution in the above list seems peculiar. Not so much, however, if we consider that in almost all of Pezeshkzad’s post-revolutionary writings, the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath is either explicitly present or is an “absent presence,” elements of it serving as subject matter for most of his satirical writings. One might argue, indeed, that Pezeshkzad’s post-revolutionary writings were essentially the artistic translations of his persistent and hopeful dissent against many of the revolution’s outcomes. “Whatever I’ve written is political,” Pezeshkzad says in the BBC documentary, “even my works on history, I’ve meant [them to be] slightly political.”[7]
The “Women, Life, Freedom” movement has now entered its fourth month, already proving to be an unprecedented event, not only locally, but also globally, especially due to the remarkable and creative participation and leadership of the women in it. So far, primarily constituting of the youth—i.e., Pezeshkzad’s targeted audience in his serious books—the protesters, while not yet agreeing on any alternative form of government, have nevertheless made it clear that their ultimate aim is the collapse of the current theocratic government. The Ayatollahs, they adamantly believe, must go:
Ākhūnd bāyad gom bishih! (“Clergymen must get lost!”)
Tā ākhūnd kafan nashavad, Īn vaṭan vaṭan nashavad! (“Only when all mullas die, we may call this country our homeland!”)
Nah shaykh mīkhvāīm, nah mullāh; la‘nat bih āyātūllah! (Neither sheikhs, nor mullas we want; and damn to all ayatollahs!)[8]
These are only a few of the subversive slogans which have been shouted by many of the grandchildren and children of numerous Iranians who, a few decades ago, would regard Ayatollah Khomeini, the founding father and the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, no less than a saint, deeming him as “Imam,” and going so far as to deem true their pareidolic perception of the Ayatollah’s visage in the Moon. A review of Pezeshkzad’s postrevolutionary writings demonstrates his determined and tenacious struggle as an intellectual dissident to eradicate any remaining delusions in his fellow-countrymen and women regarding the post-revolutionary political-religious order in Iran. Pezeshkzad, it can be assumed, would approve of these slogans.
It is in this capacity that Pezeshkzad, with the perception of a shrewd historian—even though he was not officially trained as one—appears to have considered it imperative for the Iranian youth to familiarize themselves with revolutions and political movements within and outside Iran for a better understanding of the present, a more conscious move toward the future, and in the hopes of avoiding past mistakes. While Pezeshkzad’s postrevolutionary satire is witness to his long-standing agreement with the “Women, Life, Freedom” protesters’ unanimous call for the Ayatollahs to go—his serious historical reviews on Iran, France, and Russia were an invitation to his audience for essential retrospective reflections on Iran’s past, as painful as they may seem, and for contemplation on how the Ayatollahs were welcomed and in fact gained political power in Iran in the first place.
In one of the above books, therefore, he takes us back further before the 1979 Revolution, to a frequently discussed albeit controversial event that preceded the revolution by more than a decade. This event has at least two names, depending on which historiography one chooses to rely on: the “spontaneous” and “bloody uprising of 15 Khordad” and the origin of the “Islamic Revolution of 1979,” according to the Islamic Republic-endorsed narratives;[9] and “the June of 1963 seditions” which involved “the looting, pillaging, and incendiary agitation committed by thugs, who were stirred by an unknown clergyman named Ayatollah Khomeini,” based on the Pahlavi-favoured version of the events.[10] Pezeshkzad’s concern with a more objective view of the circumstances motivated him to explore this historical event. Referring to the narrative espoused by the Islamic Republic, for instance, he warns:
If the youth were to ask us, “What uprising was this? Who rose up and for what purpose? And why did the uprising get bloody?,” all they will be hearing is: “It was an uprising by the followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, and during it, due to the intervention of the state military forces, some people were killed.”[11]
The June 1963 events, Pezeshkzad reminds us, are important to study for yet another reason. Regardless of the two official narratives previously mentioned, Pezeshkzad notes, “we cannot deny the fact that this event is the origin of the appearance of Ayatollah Khomeini [on the modern Iranian political scene], who years later, through leading a revolutionary movement, would overthrow the [Shah’s] established and apparently stable monarchial regime.”[12]
Pezeshkzad then does an acceptable job of juxtaposing both official narratives, while evaluating them and simultaneously complementing them by adding further missing primary sources in order to answer an essential question asked by many after the 1979 Revolution: How did Ayatollah Khomeini gain a favourable view not only among the religious but also among the non-religious Iranian protestors? Pezeshkzad intriguingly concludes that when exiled, Ayatollah Khomeini left Iran for Turkey and later Iraq, amidst an emotional milieu whose most conspicuous feature was his relentless defense for the sovereignty and glory of Iran and Iranians. This picture, Pezeshkzad argues, was strikingly oppositional not only to Ayatollah Khomeini’s previously stated viewpoints in his other sermons (for instance, Khomeini’s opposition to women’s suffrage),[13] but also to the clergyman’s prohibited published and forthcoming works in Iran. For many Iranians, Pezeshkzad suggests, all of the Ayatollah’s reactionary views were then overshadowed by his pre-exile misjudged gesture of nationalism.
Unlike his book on the events of June 1963, Pezeshkzad’s Review of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution does not contain any arguments by him; however, it similarly renders a readable and concise account of the events during the 1906-1911 Revolution years, based on several renowned historiographies. Revealing yet again his care for his hoped-for young Iranian readers, Pezeshkzad remarks, “Today, more than any other time, our youth need to learn about this greatest national movement of their era.”[14]
Unlike the above two books, which Pezeshkzad published outside Iran, the books in which he reviewed the French and the Russian revolutions were published inside Iran. Perhaps this is why none of the latter books contain any direct references to how these books may benefit Pezeshkzad’s intended Iranian audiences.[15] Still, he seems to be attempting at communicating a message, similar to the aforementioned one, to his young readers when, for instance, he comments on the Russian revolution in the introduction to his book on it. His aim, he maintains, is to provide his Iranian readers with an account of the Russian Revolution that goes beyond that offered by “Tudeh Party Publications, which were rarely anything beyond the translation of the USSR’s official historiography.”[16] He then poses some thoughtful questions about the Russian Revolution, many of which are intriguingly applicable to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and/or the Iranian 1979 Revolution for the curious reader with a concern for Iran. Some of the questions Pezeshkzad asks include:
Why did the Provisional Government, which replaced the monarchy after the 1917 February Revolution, gradually lose power? What factors caused the liberal [Russian] Republic to not last beyond eight months or be incapable of protecting the government from the Bolshevik encroachments? Why did the liberal Provisional Government, which was the result of the war and the societal yearning for reforms, and in which the socialists played such an important role, dissolve so easily? Is Russia a country incapable of achieving democratic reforms, and one in which transformations have to occur always through revolutions, slaughterous systems, with no regard for public will and support? Should we admit that the homeland of [such literary figures as] Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy would not deserve having a democracy? Despite the weak social support and the adverse economic conditions in Russia, how could the Bolshevik Party—which managed to impose itself over the country amidst the chaotic situation in Russia during Feb-Oct 1917—survive?[17]
Pezeshkzad follows these and more questions immediately by a statement, which strengthens an implied reference to Iranian history: “Our aim, in mentioning these questions, is to show, generally speaking, how all-embracing these questions could be.”[18] And if readers had any doubts about any implied connections so far, Pezeshkzad then proceeds to open the main body of his book, out of all possible options, by citing the full text of a telegram read in a 1907 session of the First Majlis of Iran (1906-1908) by the parliamentary chairman Morteza Khan Sani‘ al-Dowleh. He had received the telegram from the Imperial Duma in Saint Petersburg, he told the parliament members, in response to a congratulatory telegram the Iranian Majlis had previously sent to the Duma on the occasion of the opening of the Imperial Duma.
We will never know how Pezeshkzad would have fared had he been allowed to remain in Iran, or return to it, after the Revolution. Yet we know that he longed for Iran all the while he was in exile. Returning to Iran was his only wish.[19] Upon entering his small apartment in Paris, the BBC director Motamedi observed, “He has lived almost forty years here in Paris, yet every inch of his house is filled with things that reveal he does not belong here.”[20] Of these, the camera shows us, Pezeshkzad’s numerous walled calligraphies of select Persian poetry that glorifies Iran are most conspicuous. Still, he would return only if “they do not harass or interrogate me, claiming that I have offended such and such Ayatollah.” He would obviously desire a different Iran, one which he had imagined for decades. As his aforementioned revolutionary books reveal, the old humourist could not have been more serious about the importance of Iranian youth’s reflecting back on the history of the major events and transformations in their own and others’ lands. The gained insights would be inevitable for any different Iran that were to come.
II. The Special Issue: Iraj Pezeshkzad’s Satire
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
This issue of Iran Namag is a tribute to the late, much renowned and contemporary writer, Iraj Pezeshkzad (1928-2022). Pezeshkzad was born in Tehran and educated in both Iran and France where he received a law degree. He served as a judge in Iran for five years and then joined the Iranian Foreign Service, serving as a diplomat until 1979. In that very year, he moved to France where he lived for over forty years—in fact, his first translation was a play by Molière (L’avare) until his passing in Los Angeles in 2022. He later chose Alif Pih Āshinā (I. P. Familiar) as a penname for his articles in journals and newspapers of the time, some of which were later published as collected essays in a single book, Āsimūn Rīsmūn (1963). Pezeshkzad was one of the most prolific contemporary authors of Iran, and continued writing after leaving his home and residing in Paris for the next several decades. Thus, this special issue of Iran Namag is not only a testament and a tribute to Pezeshkzad’s invaluable writing and observations about 20th and 21st century Iran, but also a testament to Pezeshkzad’s status as a writer of world literature, worthy of global renown and attention.
Pezeshkzad began his writing career with short stories that were published in such periodicals as Ferdowsi and such collections as Nimūnah’hā-yi Ṭanz-i Muʻāṣir (Examples of contemporary satire). In the late 1950s, he also translated a number of classics from French into Persian, mainly works by French authors like Voltaire and Molière. As discussed by several authors in this special issue, these and other European and English authors had a great influence on his subsequent works; these include seventeen novels and more than a dozen scholarly books and articles on Persian literature and history (some of which are mentioned in the bibliography at the end of this introduction).
Pezeshkzad is best known in Iran and around the world, of course, for his satirical novel, Da’i Jan Napelon (Dear Uncle Napoleon), first published in 1973, which became the basis for a popular television series in Iran. The novel was translated into English by Dick Davis (a contributor in this special issue) as My Uncle Napoleon (Mage Publishers, 1996). In 2006 My Uncle Napoleon was reprinted by Modern Library, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group. Da’i Jan Napelon has also been translated into French (Sorour Kasmai, the French translator, also has an article in this issue), Russian, and German. Pezeshkzad’s Ḥāfiẓ-i nāshanīdah pand (Hafez heedless of advice), first published in 2004, has also been translated into English. Entitled Hafez in Love and translated by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Patricia J. Higgins (Syracuse University Press, 2021), this is a humorous historical novel based on Hafez’s poetry. It is interesting to note that Davis’s translation won the first Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize in 2000 and Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins’s translation won the most recent Prize in 2021. Rather shockingly, twenty-one years passed between these two translations of Pezeshkzad’s work into English. It is our hope that by paying tribute to Pezeshkzad in this special issue, more translations will soon find their way into English, but also French, German, Russian and many other languages as well.
This issue of Iran Namag includes seven articles, five in English and two in Persian, and many are written by translators of Pezeshkzad’s novels and other works. Having engaged with his texts closely, these translators offer their insights and personal observations about not only Pezeshkzad’s most significant works, but also his writing style, his literary influences, and the many—often equally humorous and troubling—political issues through which he lived. Other articles in this issue, written by experts in contemporary Persian literature and twentieth-century history who are well acquainted with English and other world literatures, argue for Pezeshkzad’s works as undoubtedly worthy as essential contributions to world literature.
Our first piece in English, entitled, “Da’i Jan Napelon as a Comic Masterpiece,” is written by Dick Davis who gives an account of his translation of Da’i Jan Napelon and what he calls his “virtually non-existent relationship with its author.” Throughout the article, Davis draws comparisons with English comedies to support his points about the significance of My Uncle Napoleon in depicting Iranian society and culture. Significantly, Davis puts My Uncle Napoleon on par with the works of great English authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fielding, and Austen, and compares the characters in My Uncle Napoleon with characters in other world masterpieces. To Davis, Pezeshkzad’s having translated great works of European fiction, including those of the Czech author Jaroslav Hasek, had a major influence on his novels and the creation of his characters. In particular, Davis discusses the similarities between Hasek’s hero, Schweik, and Pezeshkzad’s Mash Qasem in My Uncle Napoleon. Both characters are trusting, naïve, good-hearted simpletons, and both are servants to vainglorious, swaggering military officers. Davis also compares My Uncle Napoleon with Simin Daneshvar’s Savūshūn, both of which are set in the second World War in Iran, though the former is humorous and satirical and the latter quite serious. In the last section of the article, Davis shares with readers the professional and friendly relationship he established with Pezeshkzad by asking the author’s input when choosing the closest equivalents to certain Persian expressions which carry semantic and cultural weight that needed to be considered and re-created in the English translation. This brief, intimate depiction between writer and translator provides a rare and generous glimpse into the importance of such relationships and the unsurprising care and good humour of Pezeshkzad.
The second article in this issue, “Iraj Pezeshkzad as a Social Critic: A Look at the Satirical Aspects of My Uncle Napoleon and Āsimūn Rīsmūn,” is authored by M. R. Ghanoonparvar. Ghanoonparvar examines Pezeshkzad as a social critic and argues how the catch phrase, “It is a British conspiracy,” used repeatedly in My Uncle Napoleon, provided a tool through which Iranians blamed the British for various social, political, and even personal misfortunes. Like Davis, Ghanoonparvar analyzes various characters in My Uncle Napoleon as well as those in other satirical works of Pezeshkzad’s, including Āsimūn Rīsmūn (1963), linking them to caricatures of people in Iranian society of a certain class and era. He also offers a brief translation drawn from Āsimūn Rīsmūn. In addition, he compares Pezeshkzad’s satire with that of other modern Iranian writers who tried their hand at writing satire, such as Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, Sadeq Hedayat, Mahshid Amirshahi, Khosrow Shahani, and Ebrahim Nabavi.
Another article in this special issue that deals with the idea of British conspiracy is “My Uncle Napoleon and the Iranian Anglophobia” by Homa Katouzian. Katouzian discusses conspiracy theory as an instrument of political analysis in this novel as well as other novels of the time, like those by Mahmud Mahmud, Hossein Makki, and others. To illustrate his point, the author gives examples of some of those conspiracy theories as well as some of the anti-conspiracy theories of the time, including the writings of Khalil Maleki. In fact, Katouzian emphasizes how adherence to such theories is an Iranian epidemic “disease” which was by no means limited to the Pahlavi era. Throughout the article, Katouzian skillfully provides examples from characters’ conspiracy theories in the novel, while drawing deft comparisons of those theories with their historical versions. In Katouzian’s hands, Pezeshkazad’s great wit, humour, and political insight in his novel are burnished to a hilarious and compelling luster.
The fourth article in this issue, Alireza Korangy’s “Prosecuting an Author: A Short Story of Iraj Pezeshkzad: A Translation and Short Commentary,” showcases a fantastic translation of one of Pezeshkzad’s short stories, “Muḥākamah-yi Nivīsandah (Prosecuting the author).” Following an overview of Pezeshkzad, his works, and his style of writing—particularly Pezeshkzad’s affinity with the comic opportunities of hypocrisy and self-mockery. In Pezeshkzad’s writings, no one is safe: not even himself—Korangy argues that in this story, the judge and the defendant (i.e., the accused) are both Pezeshkzad himself. Korangy also asserts that readers will see, even if they are not writers, a bit of themselves in the narrator’s self-description as the judge, jury, accused, and executioner. Another compelling point highlighted in this article is the romanticization of the works of writers of fiction—and their self-aggrandizement—as well as the fetishization of the works of writers in the West and the influence of these in Iran. Following this humorous and insightful commentary, the article ends with the translation of the short story, “Muḥākamah-yi Nivīsandah (Prosecuting the author),” a truly excellent “buffooning of the human condition.”
“Iraj Pezeshkzad and his Hafez: A Note on Hafez in Love,” written by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Patricia Higgins who translated Ḥāfiẓ-i nāshanīdah pand (Hafez heedless of advice), provides the fifth and last English article in this issue. Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins share their experience translating this work and their quite intimate and often surprising correspondences with Pezeshkzad from the completion of their translation in 2018 to its publication in 2021. Given that most of the scholarly articles and reviews of Pezeshkzad’s work focus on My Uncle Napoleon, this article provides a timely compliment and rounding off to these previous works and invites scholars and translators to study not only Ḥāfiẓ-i nāshanīdah pand, but his many other works as well. After providing an overview of the book, Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins present the reception of Hafez in Love through the reviews written about it since its publication. These include examples from the original and translated text, revealing Pezeshkzad’s exceptional mastery as a writer, his breath of knowledge of Iranian history and literature, and his command of Persian classical poetry. Importantly, they also discuss Pezeshkzad’s work in relation to translation theory like that of Susan Bassnett, for example, who “argues that novels based on classic books are translations of a sort because they are a kind of interpretation of the classic texts, and they wouldn’t have existed if those classic works hadn’t existed already.” As Dominic Brookshaw writes in his foreword to Hafez in Love, in Ḥāfiẓ-i nāshanīdah pand, Iraj Pezeshkzad “has managed to humanise a figure that for so many remains unapproachably sublime” (Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, in Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins, 2021, x). Indeed, between the original work of Pezeshkzad and the translation work of Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins, we are offered a moment in which Hafez comes to us in a more earthly form, increasing our appreciation of the poet and his poetry and offering us necessary reflections on our own human condition—our heartaches, our buffoonery, and our everyday triumphs.
In the first Persian article in this issue, “Rumān-i Dā’ī Jān Nāpil’ūn va Sunnat-i Adabī-yi Āqā-Khddmatkār [The Da’i Jan Napelon novel and the literary tradition of master-servant],” Sorour Kasmai, the French translator of Da’i Jan Napelon, argues that, while rooted in Western literary traditions, the novel possesses innovative indigenous content. This is a characteristic that Pezeshkzad’s work shares with that of Sadeq Hedayat who also employed Western literary traditions in the background of the Iranian content of his works. To illustrate her claim, Kasmai focuses on the master-servant dichotomy in My Uncle Napoleon, which is one of the most important and long-lasting literary traditions in Western literature. She gives an overview of how this dichotomy has changed since the seventeenth century and how some servant characters in the literature have gradually gained importance. Kasmai sees the nineteenth century as the apex of European novel writing and also a period in which women servants replaced men servants in European novels. Following these observations, Kasmai concentrates her argument in particular on the Mash Qasem-Da’i Jan dichotomy. She concludes that Da’i Jan Napelon was influenced the most by two major European novels, Don Quixote and Don Juan, and, like Davis, Kasmai argues that Pezeshkzad was also importantly influenced by the Czech writer Hasek and his hero, Schweik. Kasmai reminds us, again, how the wealth of multiple and cross-directional influences of Pezeshkzad’s works, drawing from and speaking to Iranian and world literatures, remains an important area of further consideration, study, and scholarship.
In the second Persian article “Khandah bih Khvud dar Ayīnah-yi Ās̲ār-i Iraj Pezeshkzad [Self-teasing as reflected in the mirror of Pezeshkzad’s works],” Roya Sadr argues that the most important trait of Pezeshkzad’s works and writing is his use of archetypes, through which Pezeshkzad molds different types of personalities of different social strata into his characters. Sadr elucidates this point in two of Pezeshkzad’s works, Adab-i mard bih zi dawlat-i ūst taḥrīr shud (Manners, Not Riches, Maketh Man) and Da’i Jan Napelon through several examples of self-deprecating humor used by the characters in these works. Sadr especially argues that in Da’i Jan Napelon, this self-deprecation becomes both intensely critical and profound. Another attribute of Pezeshkzad’s satire as highlighted by Sadr is the escape of the characters from their societal problems by means of psychological projections. She differentiates the satire in Adab-i mard bih zi dawlat-i ūst taḥrīr shud from Da’i Jan Napelon in that, in the former, self-deprecation is a means to decrease psychological tensions in the main character whereas, in the latter, self-deprecation goes beyond the individual and reveals the depth of personal, social, and political behaviors of the population at large. Similarly argued as Korangy does earlier in this collection, Sadr advances the important observation that readers of these works are able to see themselves in different characters throughout these stories precisely because of Pezeshkzad’s mastery of archetypes and the astute deployment of self-deprecation.
Included among the common topics addressed in this issue are the prominence of conspiracy theories, Pezeshkzad’s mastery of satire, and his command of both Western and Persian literatures. Each article, however, takes a unique approach to the study of Pezeshkzad’s works and examines them through a particular lens, providing us with a variety of alternatingly witty, moving, and instructive insights worthy of Pezeshkzad’s oeuvre.
It almost goes without saying that, of all genres, satire is one of the most difficult literary forms to translate. Due to its underlying linguistic, cultural, and allusive qualities, the translation of satire requires the translator to not only be bilingual but to also be bicultural. Still, there will be some images, expressions, or references that do not exist in the target language, hence making the translation task impossible at times. Perhaps that is why, despite the numerous works of Pezeshkzad, only a few have been translated into English: to our knowledge, My Uncle Napoleon and Hafez in Love are the only novels of Pezeshkzad’s that have been so far given an English translation. Thus, in addition to this collection’s celebration of Pezeshkzad’s writing and important literary influence, we also hope that this issue of Iran Namag will be an invitation to translators and scholars of modern Persian literature. We invite such writers and translators to embark on the incredibly rich, no matter how challenging, task of translating more works of this masterful writer of contemporary Iran in order that they may become accessible to more readers around the world, and help to situate Pezeshkzad and his works among the masterpieces of world literature.
Major Works by Iraj Pezeshkzad
Satire and Fiction
Hāj Hāj Mam Ja‘far dar Pāris [Haj Mam-Jafar in Paris] (Memoir, 1954)
Māshāʼallāh Khān dar Bārgāh-i Hārūn al-Rashīd [Mashallah Khan in Harun-ol-rashid’s Court] (Novel, 1958)
Būbūl [Bubul] (Social Satire, 1959)
Āsimūn Rīsmūn [Balderdash] (Literary Satire, 1963)
Da’i Jan Napelon [Dear Uncle Napoleon] (Novel, 1970; translated into English as My Uncle Napoleon)
Adab-i mard bih zi dawlat-i ūst taḥrīr shud [Manners, Not Riches, Maketh Man] (Play, 1973)
Intirnāsyūnal-i Bachchah Pur’rū’hā [The international of the audacious] (Political Satire, 1984)
Shahr-i Farang az Hamah Rang [Foreign countries in every color] (Social and Political Satire, 1992)
Khānahvādah-yi Nīk’Akhtar [The Nik-Akhtar family] (Novel, 2001)
Rustam-i Ṣawlatān [The Rostam of awe] (Social Satire, 2005)
Gulgasht-i khāṭirāt [Journey in memories] (Social Satire, 2007)
Pisar-i Ḥājī Bābā’jān [Haji-Baba’s son] (Play, 2008)
Bih yād-i yār va diyār [In memory of the beloved and homeland] (Memoir, 2012)
Ṣandūq-i laʻnat [The box of doom] (2015)
History and Literature
Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyah [A Review of the History of the Russian Revolution] (History, 1991)
Mosaddiq Bāz’maṣlūb: Chand Maqālah-yi Siyasī [Mosaddeq re-crucified: A few political articles] (Political Articles, 1993)
Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Farānsih [A Review of the History of the French Revolution] (History, 2002)
Ṭanz-i Fākhir-ii Saʻdī [The elegant satire of Sa‘di](Critique and Commentary, 2002)
Ḥāfiẓ-i nāshanīdah pand [Hafez heedless of advice] (Historical Novel, 2004; translated into English as Hafez in Love)
Murūr’ī dar Inqilāb-i Mashrūṭīyat-i Iran [A Review of the History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution] (History, 2005)
Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād-i Chihil u dū va Qānūn-i Maṣūnīyat-i Niẓāmiyān-i Āmrīkāyī [A Review of the June 1963 Events and the US Military Personnel’s Diplomatic Immunity] (History, 2008)
Translations into Persian (from the original French or French translations from other languages)
L’Avavre (Molière)
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Molière)
Nanine (Voltaire)
Alzire ou les Américains (Voltaire)
Roosevelt (Sara Delano Roosevelt, 1947)
“Satan refuse du monde,” etc. (Maurice Dekobra, 1952)
Désirée (Annemarie Selinko, 1956)
The Two Destinies (William Wilkie Collins, 1966)
The Good Soldier Schweik (Jaroslav Hasek, 1985)
Mostafa Abedinifard is an assistant professor of modern Persian literature and culture at the University of British Columbia. He is a co-editor of Persian Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2021) and the author of several refereed articles, published in journals such as Iran Namag, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, HUMOR, and Social Semiotics.
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is instructional professor of Persian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Some of her publications include The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation (2022), Island of Bewilderment (Syracuse University Press 2022), The Eight Books: A Complete English Translation (Brill 2021), Hafez in Love (Syracuse University Press 2021), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020), The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics (2018), The Thousand Families: Commentary on Leading Political Figures of Nineteenth Century Iran (Peter Lang 2018), Processing Compound Verbs in Persian (Leiden and University of Chicago Press 2014), and Translation Metacognitive Strategies (VDM Verlag 2009).
[1] All translations from Persian, unless otherwise stated, are mine.
[2] BBC Persian. “Guft ū gū bā Īraj Pizishkzād, Khāliq-i Dā’ī Jān Nāpil’ūn [Conversation with Iraj Pezeshkzad, the Creator of My Uncle Napoleon],” December 22, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy3uy2cpNDk.
[3] Following Michael Billig, I take the humorous as descriptive of any text created with, among other things, the aim of eliciting a degree of laughter from its audience, whether this purpose is fulfilled or not. “Humour,” Billig shrewdly observes, “cannot be defined purely as that which elicits the response of laughter. Humour might involve the attempt to produce laughter in its recipients but it must be recognizable as humour even if it fails in its end” (Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour [SAGE Publications Ltd, 2005], 179). This is important because we will otherwise exclude from the domain of humour studies any humourous text that does not produce laughter in all audiences or even produces unlaughter in some. Examples, in our time, include sexist, racist, or homophobic humour. Coined by Billig, unlaughter is different from merely not laughing; unlaughter signifies “a display of not laughing when laughter might otherwise be expected, hoped for or demanded” (Billig, Laughter and Ridicule 192).
[4] Mahmud Farjami, Iranian Political Satirists: Experience and Motivation in the Contemporary Era, 1st ed. (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017).
[5] Iraj Pezeshkzad, “Irāj Pezeshkzād: Bakhtīār va shi‘r va adabiyāt-i Irān [Bakhtiar and the Iranian Poetry and Literature],” n.d. https://www.melliun.org/didgah/d11/08/06pezeshkzad.htm.
[6] For the above-mentioned books, see Iraj Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Farānsih [A Review of the History of the French Revolution] (Tehran: Nashr-e Qatreh, 1383/2004); Iraj Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyahh [A Review of the History of the Russian Revolution] (Tehran: Nashr-e Qatreh, 1383/2004); Iraj Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād-i Chihil ū Dū va Qānūn-i Maṣūnīyat-i Niẓāmiyān-i Amrīkāyī [A Review of the June 1963 Events and the US Military Personnel’s Diplomatic Immunity], 3rd ed. (Los Angeles, CA: Ketab Corp., 2008); Iraj Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Inqilāb-i Mashrūṭīyat-i Iran [A Review of the History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution], 2nd print (Frankfurt, Germany: Alborz Verlag, 1385/2006).
[7] BBC Persian, “Murūr’ī bar zindigī-yi Īraj pizishkzād, Khāliq-i Dāstān Dā’ī Jān Nāpil’ūn [An Overview of the Life of Iraj Pezeshkzad, the Creator of My Uncle Napoleon],” January 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpg6zA8wlPI, 07:39-07:45.
[8] Wikipedia contributors, “Shu’ār’hā-yi khīzish-i 1401 Īrān [The 1401/2022 Iranian Uprising’s Slogans],” October 3, 2022, https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/شعارهای_خیزش_۱۴%DB%B0۱_ایران, accessed January 26, 2023.
[9] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 4.
[10] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 4.
[11] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 1.
[12] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 4-5.
[13] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 111-112.
[14] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Vāqi‘ah-i Pānzdah-i Khurdād, 7.
[15] Few of Pezeshkzad’s books were published in postrevolutionary Iran, a restriction that became neutralized as digital copies of his works, even though illegally, became increasingly widespread via the Internet.
[16] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyah, 15.
[17] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyah, 14-15.
[18] Pezeshkzad, Murūr’ī dar Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i Rūsīyah, 15.
[19] BBC Persian, Murūr’ī bar zindigī-yi Īraj pizishkzād, Khāliq-i Dāstān Dā’ī Jān Nāpil’ūn,” 09:16-09:23.
[20] BBC Persian, Murūr’ī bar zindigī-yi Īraj pizishkzād, Khāliq-i Dāstān Dā’ī Jān Nāpil’ūn,” 00:30-00:39.
