The Blind Owl

Glenn Russell

Rating: really liked it



A friend once told me Sadegh Hedayat wanted the book itself to be the experience and not a book about an experience. I couldn’t agree more. So what was my Blind Owl experience? With every page I felt as if I was spiraling down through my subconscious and unconscious until I plunged into the collective unconscious. A female figure in a black cloak and a meeting of eyes, shinny, alluring, sensuous eyes – the anima? Another turn and there's an ancient old man with white hair and long white beard with the index finger of his left hand pressed against his lips – the wisdom archetype? And yet another turn and I was walking in a fantastic landscape of trees and hills of geometrical shapes: cylinders, perfect cones, truncated cones – a dream or hallucination? And there are the eyes again and the ancient old man with his index finger pressed against his lips – a dream or hallucination or a reading of The Blind Owl? I put the book down and walk outside and the landscape is fantastic: all the trees and hills are cylinders, perfect cones and truncated cones and I see up ahead a female figure in a cloak. I was warned by Porochista Khakpour in her preface to The Blind Owl. And now you’ve been warned.

Bill Kerwin

Rating: really liked it

This classic Iranian novella, darkly romantic and surrealist at its core, is flecked with unsettling realistic detail and structured in a fashion which heralds postmodernism, calling into question the meaning of its own narrative, and—by implication—the function of narrative itself. It is also the source of a folk belief: people are routinely warned against reading it because doing so may cause suicide. Taken together, what an extraordinary weight for this little book to carry!

Its author Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951), was a product of Catholic education, learning French from the Lazarist brothers in secondary school. At the age of twenty two, he traveled to Belgium for university, having promised his government to become a civil engineer, but he hated Belgian weather, hated civil engineering; soon he moved to Paris to study architecture, then dentistry, then literature. He immersed himself in Poe, Kafka, and Rilke, experimented with opium and alcohol, and fell headlong in love with a Parisian girl. When the affair ended, unhappily, he tried to drown himself in the Marne. About this time, he wrote the first draft of The Blind Owl.

After four years in France, he returned to Tehran, having failed to earn a degree. He worked as a bank clerk, and hated it; he lived in a country too conservative to permit the publication of his best creative work. Although he was socially and politically engaged--forming a literary circle, dabbling in left-wing politics--he continued to seek comfort and solace in opium and alcohol. In 1936, he traveled to India, where he first published The Blind Owl; four years later, when Reza Shah's fall ended strict censorship, he was finally able to publish the book in his native Iran.

It is an extremely unusual book. It tells two stories—or one story in two different forms, surreal and then realistic—involving a bitter young opium addict, a woman he loathes and loves, a cackling old man who wears a turban, and a sudden--perhaps violent--death. The surreal story, which comes first, is the more powerful, its bare-bones narrative rendered hypnotic through artful repetitions of evocative imagery, and it both enriches and undermines the realistic tale which comes after. Its narration reminds one of “The Tell-tale Heart,” its hopelessness of the parables of Kafka, but the only book I know that it actually resembles is James Hogg's 1824 novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Written by Himself: With a Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts and Other Evidence by the Editor--only here it is the later, more realistic story which calls the earlier narrative into question.

It is a gripping, memorable literary experience, and I would advise you to read it. And, no, I do not think it will compel you to commit suicide. It is true, though, that Hedayat did commit suicide, but his death followed years of addiction and disillusionment. After allocating money for his shroud and burial, after stopping up the gaps in his windows and doors, he turned on the gas in his tiny apartment in the heart of the great city of Paris, where years ago his book The Blind Owl had begun.

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
بوف کور = Boof-e koor = The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat

The Blind Owl (1936) is Sadegh Hedayat's magnum opus and a major literary work of 20th century Iran.

Written in Persian, it tells the story of an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish nightmares that "the presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life. If at times we come to a halt, we do so to hear the call of death... Throughout our lives, the finger of death points at us."

The narrator addresses his murderous confessions to the shadow on his wall resembling an owl.

His confessions do not follow a linear progression of events and often repeat and layer themselves thematically, thus lending to the open-ended nature of interpretation of the story.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش اول ماه سپتامبر سال 1969میلادی؛ تاریخ خوانش این نسخه: ماه سپتامبر سال 1971میلادی

عنوان: بوف کور؛ اثر: صادق هدایت؛ تهران، جاویدان، 1315، در 87ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، امیرکبیر، چاپ یازدهم 1344، در 88ص؛ چاپ سیزدهم، سال 1349، در 116ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایران - سده 20م

نمیدانم چندبار تجدید چاپ شده تا آنجا که جستم در سال 1383هجری خورشیدی، نشر مرکز در نسخه چاپی نوشته بود: چاپ هفتاد و پنج؛

هشدار: اگر کسی هنوز این کتاب را نخوانده، و میخواهد «بوف کور» را بخواند، ادامه ی خوانش ریویو، داستان را لو میدهد؛

کتاب «بوف کور» نخستین بار در سال 1315هجری خورشیدی (1937میلادی)، و در «بمبئی» چاپ شد؛ روانشاد «صادق هدایت»، نسخه ی دست‌نویس «بوف کور» را در حدود پنجاه نسخه، به صورت پلی‌ کپی چاپ کردند؛

کتاب با این جملات مشهور آغاز می‌شود: «در زندگی زخم‌هایی هست، که مثل خوره روح را آهسته و در انزوا می‌خورد، و می‌تراشد؛ این دردها را نمی‌شود به کسی اظهار کرد؛ چون عموماً عادت دارند، که این دردهای باورنکردنی را، جزء اتفاقات و پیش‌آمدهای نادر و عجیب بشمارند، و اگر کسی بگوید یا بنویسد، مردم بر سَبیل عقاید جاری، و عقاید خودشان سعی می‌کنند، آنرا با لبخند شکاک و تمسخرآمیز، تلقی بکنند؛ زیرا بشر هنوز چاره و دوایی برایش پیدا نکرده ...». پایان نقل

در بخش نخست؛ اول شخص - که ساکن خانه‌ ای در بیرون خندق در «شهر ری» است - به شرح یکی از دردهای خوره‌ وار می‌پردازد، که برای خودش روی داده است؛ وی که حرفه ی نقاشی روی قلمدان را اختیار کرده‌، هماره نقشی یکسان بر روی قلمدان، از دختری در لباس سیاه، میکشد، که شاخه‌ ای گل نیلوفر آبی، به پیرمردی که به حالت جوکیان «هند» چمباتمه زده، و زیر درخت سروی بنشسته، هدیه می‌دهد؛ میان دختر و پیرمرد، جوی آبی وجود دارد؛ ماجرا از آنجا آغاز می‌شود، که روزی راوی، از سوراخ رف پستوی خانه‌ اش - که گویا اصلاً چنین سوراخی وجود نداشته‌ است - منظره‌ ای را که همواره نقاشی می‌کرده‌، می‌بیند؛ و مفتون نگاه دختر (اثیری = فرشته) شده؛ زندگیش دگرگون می‌شود؛ هنگام غروب‌، دختر را نشسته در کنار در خانه‌ اش می‌یابد؛ دختر سپس در رخت‌خواب راوی، به طرز اسرارآمیزی جان می‌دهد؛ راوی چشم‌های دختر را نقاشی میکند، تا آنها را برای خود جاودانه کند؛ سپس دختر اثیری را قطعه قطعه کرده، داخل چمدانی میگذارد، و به گورستان می‌برد؛ گورکنی که گور دختر را می‌کـَنـَد، در گور گلدانی می‌یابد، که بعدا به رسم یادگاری، به راوی داده می‌شود؛ راوی پس از بازگشت به خانه، در کمال ناباوری درمی‌یابد؛ که بر روی گلدان، یک جفت چشم؛ درست همانند آن دو چشمی که همان شب کشیده‌ بود، نقاشی شده‌ است؛ سپس راوی تصمیم می‌گیرد، برای مرتب کردن افکارش، نقاشی خود، و نقاشی گلدان را، جلوی منقل تریاک، روبروی خود بگذارد، و تریاک بکشد؛ راوی با تریاک به حالت خلسه می‌رود، و در عالم رؤیا، به سده‌ های پیشین برمیگردد، و خود را در محیطی تازه می‌یابد؛ که علی‌رغم جدید بودن، برایش کاملاً آشناست؛

بخش دوم: ماجرای راوی، در دنیای تازه (چندین سده پیش) است؛ راوی مشغول نوشتن، و شرح ماجرا، برای سایه‌ اش می‌شود؛ که شکل جغد است، جغد هر آنچه را راوی می‌نویسد، می‌بلعد؛ راوی، جوانی بیمار و رنجور است، که زنش (راوی او را به نام اصلی نمی‌خواند بلکه وی را لکاته می‌نامد) از وی تمکین نمی‌کند، یعنی به همبستری با شوهرش راضی نیست؛ ولی لکاته، ده‌ ها فاسق دارد؛ ویژگی‌های ظاهری «لکاته»، درست همانند ویژگی‌های ظاهری «دختر اثیری»، در بخش نخست رمان است؛ راوی همچنین، به ماجرای آشنایی پدرش با مادر خویش (که یک رقاصهٔ «هندی» بوده‌ است) اشاره می‌کند، و اینکه از کودکی، نزد عمه‌ اش (مادر «لکاته»)، بزرگ شده‌ است؛ راوی در این بخش دوم رمان، به تقابل خود، و رجّاله‌ ها نیز اشاره می‌کند، و از آنها متنفر است؛ راوی باور دارد، که دنیای بیرونی، دنیای رجاله‌ هاست؛ رجّاله‌ ها از نظر او: «هریک دهانی هستند، با مشتی روده، که دائم دنبال پول و شهوت می‌دوند»؛ پرستار راوی، دایه ی پیر هموست، که دایه ی «لکاته» نیز بوده‌ است؛ و به طرز احمقانه ی خویش (از دید راوی)، به تسکین آلام راوی می‌پردازد؛ و برایش حکیم می‌آورد، و فال گوش می‌ایستد؛ و معجون‌های گوناگون، به وی می‌خوراند؛ روبروی خانه ی راوی، پیرمرد مرموزی (پیرمرد خِنزِرپِنزِری)، همواره بساط خویش را پهن کرده‌ است.؛ پیرمرد از نظر راوی، یکی از فاسق‌های لکاته است، و خود راوی اعتراف می‌کند، که جای دندان‌های پیرمرد را، بر گونه ی لکاته دیده‌ است.؛ راوی باور دارد، که پیرمرد با دیگران فرق دارد، و می‌توان گفت که یک نیمچه خدا محسوب می‌شود، و بساطی که جلوی او پهن شده، همچون بساط آفرینش است.؛ سرانجام راوی، تصمیم به قتل لکاته می‌گیرد؛ در هیئتی شبیه پیرمرد خنزرپنزری، وارد اتاق لکاته می‌شود، و گِزلیک استخوانی را، که از پیرمرد خریداری کرده، در چشم لکاته فروکرده، او را می‌کشد؛ از اتاق که بیرون می‌آید، به تصویر خود در آیینه می‌نگرد، می‌بیند که موهایش سفید، و قیافه‌ اش درست همانند پیرمرد خنزرپنزری، شده‌ است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 19/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Vit Babenco

Rating: really liked it
The Blind Owl boasts the surreal aura of The Arabian Nights and possesses the chilling atmosphere of macabre Gothic tales.
A lonely reclusive man envisions some mystical girl and he becomes enthralled…

Her air of mingled gaiety and sadness set her apart from ordinary mankind. Her beauty was extraordinary. She reminded me of a vision seen in an opium sleep. She aroused in me a heat of passion like that which is kindled by the mandrake root. It seemed to me as I gazed at her long, slender form, with its harmonious lines of shoulder, arms, breasts, waist, buttocks and legs, that she had been torn from her husband’s embrace, that she was like the female mandrake which has been plucked from the arms of its mate.

Is she an angel of light? Is she a demon of darkness?
He is elated and awed, and he feels a presence of death…

At that moment my thoughts were numbed. Within me I felt a new and singular form of life. My being was somehow connected with that of all the creatures that existed about me, with all the shadows that quivered around me. I was in intimate, inviolable communion with the outside world and with all created things, and a complex system of invisible conductors transmitted a restless flow of impulses between me and all the elements of nature. There was no conception, no notion which I felt to be foreign to me. I was capable of penetrating with ease the secrets of the painters of the past, the mysteries of abstruse philosophies, the ancient folly of ideas and species. At that moment I participated in the revolutions of earth and heaven, in the germination of plants and in the instinctive movements of animals. Past and future, far and near had joined together and fused in the life of my mind.

Is he a demon of wisdom? Is he an angel of madness?
Suddenly he discovers that he is an altogether different man but death is beckoning…

Before I went to sleep I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was ravaged, lifeless and indistinct, so indistinct that I did not recognise myself. I got into bed, pulled the quilt over my head, huddled myself up and, with eyes closed, pursued the course of my thoughts. I was conscious of the strands which had been woven by a dark, gloomy, fearful and delightful destiny; I moved in the regions where life and death fuse together and perverse images come into being and ancient, extinct desires, vague, strangled desires, again come to life and cry aloud for vengeance.

Everything is unhinged and shaky… Which things are imagined? Which things are real? Is insanity a cause? Is insanity an effect?

N

Rating: really liked it
The Blind Owl. Where do I start? Maybe with a quote. "It occurred to me that as long as the world and I have existed, a corpse - a cold corpse without motion or feeling has been with me in this dark room."

The Blind Owl is the account of a lonely man's descent into madness as told by himself to the owl-shaped shadow on the wall. It's a case study of alienation and obsessive paranoia with the words desire and despair becoming almost interchangeable.

The book has two distinct parts. The first one reads like a dream. I chose not to use the word nightmare because no matter how macabre this first part is, it has a peaceful almost tranquil quality to it. We witness how the narrator gives in to the darkness, accepts it as something that has been with him all his life, something that's part of him, something he can't escape from. It is this darkness that makes him unsuitable for this world. One second he has an object of desire in this girl, the next he kills her. He never actually decides to kill her, it just happens. It was the natural progression of his condition. He is not surprised, and by the time it happens, we are not either.

Then there is a break. The second part presents an alternative story fuelled by an opium pipe and even though this version of the story seems more realistic, we don't trust the narrator any more than we did the first time. He tells us about his complicated family history and about how he is in love with a woman who tricked and humiliated him.
This is a desperate, arrogant, and petty man who is not going down without first blaming others for his fate. He is dying because of them. Because of his mother, his father and uncle, the snake, his aunt, and ultimately, the subject of his desire, his wife, the whore. Make sure you, the reader, understand that this woman is a whore. How dare she not want him? The answer comes soon enough: "Her love, in essence, was at one with filth and death." It isn't his fault, her perverted desires are to blame.
He looks down on people around him, people who are part of "the rabble", he claims he is above that lifestyle. But is he?
One thing is sure, he is sick and he can't do anything about it. He is a man in an existential crisis, he is not who he wants to be, he is not in control of his life and slowly becomes consumed by sexual obsession, death, and decay. The contents of his mind are disturbing and deeply unpleasant, but lines like these make sure you know that deep down there is a deeply romantic man buried under it all, making witnessing his suffering even more painful and confusing:
"The night was slowly drifting away, tiptoe by tiptoe. Perhaps it had rested enough. Faint faraway sounds could be heard, maybe a hen or a passing bird was dreaming, maybe the plants were growing - the pale stars disappeared behind the cloud banks. I felt the soft breath of morning on my face as the cry of the rooster rose from the distance."

The constant recycling of motifs in the book pulls the reader even deeper into his mentally ill mind, full of obsessions, paranoia, and rumination. This is such an effective tool, that it's hard not to experience his madness yourself. You feel his shame every time a character breaks into a burst of convulsive laughter, and sense the proximity of an inevitable ending every time clotted blood or bruised morning glories are mentioned.

Much has been said about this book and its political meaning, however, I believe this novella takes us on a journey into Sadegh Hedayat's psyche first and foremost. Maybe it's an oversimplification, maybe it's pop psychology, but I can't separate this narrator from him and his life story.

(From Wikipedia: In 1925, he went to study engineering in Belgium, which he abandoned after a year to study architecture in France. There he gave up architecture in turn to pursue dentistry. In 1927 he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Marne but was rescued by a fishing boat. After four years in France, he finally surrendered his scholarship and returned home in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree. In Iran, he held various jobs for short periods.)

Clearly he was clinically depressed years before he wrote this book. He was a chronic underachiever as his many unsuccessful stints at college prove it. He has been deeply unhappy with his life and has been trying to rationalize his desire to kill himself for years. This book is the culmination of many lonely opium filled nights spent in delirium plotting the ultimate story. And you and me, we are the blind owl of this story.

"I have neither money that the court can swallow up, nor religion that the devil can take away, besides, what on this earth can have the least bit of value for me - that which was life I have lost, I let it and wanted it to slip away, and after I am gone, to hell with it, whether someone reads my scraps of writing, or whether they go unread for seventy black years - I only write for this need to write that has now become vital for me - I am in need, more than ever I am in need of connecting my thoughts to my imaginary being, my shadow - this sinister shadow that, in front of the light of the tallow-burner, is bent over on the wall, as if it is carefully reading and devouring that which I write - This shadow must surely understand more than I! I can only talk freely with my own shadow, it is he that induces me to talk, only he can know me, he surely must understand.... As I squeeze, drop by drop, the juice, nay, the bitter wine of my life into the parched throat of my shadow, I want to say to him, "This is my life!" "

In conclusion, The Blind Owl is a masterpiece and should be included on every "must-read" list. One little warning, if you are grieving or are in a fragile mental state, this book might not be for you.

Gregsamsa

Rating: really liked it

Is it just me, or does this look like something to be buried in?

A melancholic decorator of Persian pen cases (see above) experiences strange visions, dissolved boundaries between his art and reality, inexplicable longing, mysterious midnight visitors, gory hallucinatory chores, and horse-drawn hearse rides through gloomy star-lit mists, all embroidered with multiple threads of déjà vu and a dreamy sense of such enveloping accursedness that it would prompt Edgar Allen Poe himself to say "Whoa, dude, lighten up!" And yet this is just the beginning.

In the gaps between the clouds the stars gazed down at the earth like gleaming eyes emerging from a mass of coagulated blood.

That simile might seem strained, but in context it resonates with earlier images, as Hedayat's technique is accumulation through repetition. This gradually loads actions, utterances, and images with ever greater portentious density, thus a strange unity survives radical shifts in the narrative, abrupt changes of setting, and disjointed chronology. One gets a distinct sense that beneath the fragmented surface there is a dark logic operating through a few enigmatic motifs and incancatory phrases that resurface over and over.

The Blind Owl is distinctly gothic, decidedly "other" than Western, and clearly modernist, but this 3-way intersection of seemingly incompatible strands is braided as evenly as if it were entirely natural, while the atmosphere and psychology reside well within the opium-haze margins of the unnatural. The modernist disjunctions are no self-conscious experiments, but of the mode most suited to the troubled mind of a man desperate to tell his disturbing story:

...in order to explain my life to my stooping shadow, I am obliged to tell a story. Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!

But just after giving that reason--a rejection of other texts--he more firmly locates his inventions within a more shadowy subjective space:

The various phases of childhood and maturity are to me nothing but futile words. They mean something only to other people.... But my life has always known only one season and one state of being. It is as though it had been spent in some frigid zone and in eternal darkness while all the time within me burned a flame which consumed me as the flame consumes the candle.

The above romance of character is only so consistent in his metaphors, however; his sense of self and surrounding circumstances benefit from no such unchanging stability, troubled as they are by dreaming or being dreamed, writing or being written. At times he seems to waver between writing to cling to life and writing to seal his coffin.

This book is not difficult to read; although loaded with enigmatic symbolism and surreal dreamlike vignettes, on the sentence level the language is quite simple, almost childlike, but it is a deceptive simplicity as with Kafka or Borges and, like those writers, Hedayat knows that the otherworldly is often best rendered in very grounded language. Rarely does the madness go purple.

I don't know if this book has been described as misogynist, but I would be surprised if it had not. The narrator's relationships with women are troubled, to put it lightly, but his character is not admirable nor, strictly speaking, sane, so this makes it difficult to extricate the author's attitude toward women from this strange man's view and the world it took in. The closest any character gets to receiving a name is "The Bitch," the narrator's wife, which sounds terrible out of context but within the story characterizes him as much as her.

Please don't let my vagueness lead you to think this novella is as foggy as this review; I'm more reluctant than usual to spoil the strange happenings which occur on nearly every page in language quite lucid. The spoilage wouldn't be the sort where a whodunnit is undone or a thriller's twists are spilled. This book is special; I feel a reader's encounter with it should be as personal as possible. I'm lucky to have come to it without remembering why, without knowing the opinions of others, and utterly ignorant of its worldwide reputation. It has been banned in the author's home nation of Iran, purportedly because it has been connected to suicides (including the author's), but despite this censorship The Blind Owl retains its status as the modern Persian classic.

Mala

Rating: really liked it
"In Iran of the 1950's, at school, and at home, young people were advised to stay away from the works of Sadeq Hedayat, epecially his Blind Owl. A few young people had strayed from this rule and, reportedly, had committed suicide."*

A nightmare from beginning to end – and that's cause the cosmic drama of death & rebirth, the allegory of desire and its renunciation that Hedayat so masterfully crafts in the brief pages of a novella, are a nightmare in themselves.
If you thought that Invention of Morel and Pedro Paramo are studies in paranoia; then The Blind Owl takes claustrophobia to a different level!
Hedayat piles horror upon horror to such an extent that one needs occasional breaks from this morbid tale in order to breathe easy.

Not for everyone - it would require a certain sensibility – a sensibility like this:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...! in order to fully appreciate its complex artistry that carries variations on the same themes & motifs in an endless recursive loop but each time with accretions, come further depths in meaning & understanding – it's a way lot more than a surrealistic, opium dream!

India plays a substantial part in the narrative but there are factual inaccuracies – (view spoiler)[ The Devdasi system has been followed in the south of India. I've never heard of it being practised in the temples of northern India, least of all, in the Shiva temples of Benaras/Varanasi! (hide spoiler)]
Ironically, for all its violent imagery; for its structural framework & message, The Blind Owl draws heavily from Buddhist philosophy, especially from the Buddhacarita & The Tibetan Book of the Dead – philosophy of the interconnectedness of all life forms, the endless life cycles through which the soul is condemned to pass owing to the never-ending Taṇhā/tṛṣṇā i.e., thirst/desire that is the source of all sorrow - the desire that titilates and frustrates at the same time, leading the protagonist to lust & also to be disgusted by it, often in the space of a single sentence.

Still, it's to the credit of this Iranian modernist masterpiece that it simultaneously lends itself to multiple interpretations** which are often complementary in nature – from the obvious psycho-fictional narrative borrowing heavily from Freud and Jung, to a more comprehensive Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel by Michael Beard, another reading focussing solely on aesthetics ( the narrator being a painter-writer), to a reading examining it in the context of various religio-philosophical traditions - & through it all The Blind Owl still manages to retain its mystery!

I read the edition translated by Iraj Bashiri but I couldn't find it in the database here.

(*) The Blind Owl:A Personal Note by Iraj Bashiri
(**) http://www.academia.edu/4289965/Searc...

http://books.google.ae/books?id=yT98A...


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"Life, coolly and dispassionately, reveals to each person his own reflection, as if everyone carries several masks within him. Some, the thrifty, constantly use the same mask. Naturally this mask becomes dirty and wrinkled. Others save their masks for their children, and there are still others who constantly change their masks. It is only when they begin to age that they realize they have run out of masks. It is from behind that last mask that their real faces emerge."

Poe would applaud this:
“ In this damp bed smelling of sweat, when my eyelids grew heavy and I was about to surrender to nonexistence and eternal night, all my lost memories and forgotten fears came to life: fear that the feathers in the pillow might turn to blades of daggers, that the button on my bed-clothes might grow as big as a millstone, that the piece of bread which falls to the floor might shatter like a piece of glass. I was apprehensive that should I fall asleep, the oil in the tallow burner might spill over and cause the whole city to go up in flames. The compulsive thought that the paws of the dog in front of the butcher shop might echo like the sound of the hoofs of a horse. Nagging fear that the rag-and-bone dealer sitting at his display might suddenly begin to laugh, a laughter that he could no longer control. I was afraid that the worm in the footpath of our pond might become a serpent, and that my quilt might become a tombstone with hinges that would slide and lock its marble teeth and bury me alive. I was afraid that I might lose my voice and no matter how much I screamed, nobody would come to my help..”

K.D. Absolutely

Rating: really liked it
This book is dark, sad, funereal yet ethereal in its beautiful lyrical prose. Self-published in 1937 in Bombay, this "psycho-fiction" got published only in 1941 in Tehran, Iran by its author, Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) but it was subsequently banned. The reason: it caused many suicides in Iran after it came out. And well, if you must know, Hedayat also committed suicide 10 years after this book's Tehran publication. While in his apartment in France, Hedayat, at 48, gassed himself to his death.

So, my list of 1001 book authors who killed himself/herself is becoming longer: Silvia Plath (drug overdose), Ernest Hemingway (gunshot), Virginia Woolf (drowning), Yukio Mishima (disembowelment), Richard Brautigan (gunshot), and now Sadegh Hedayat (gassing himself). What is it with these authors whose works made money but for unknown reasons killed themselves?

Is there anything in their works? Why is this book The Blind Owl inspires people to kill themselves?

Sarah Vowell, American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator, wrote in her 2005 book Assassination Vacation that the reason why Virginia Woolf killed herself was that nobody could understand what she wanted to say in her magnum opus To The Lighthouse. I know that it was an exaggeration of sort (but really it was kinda hard to understand for an literary illiterate or untrained brain of mine) but if it were true, then that statement will be truer in the case of Hedayat's The Blind Owl.

Think of a dying bedridden man who is a drug (opium) addict and he is hallucinating from absence of drug. He is confined in an isolated room and 100% deprived of any drug. The room and the man reek with loneliness. Apart from the bed and probably a toilet bowl, there is a table lamp flickering at his bedside casting an owl-like shadow on the wall. The dying man is disillusioned and remembering his wife (who he calls "the bitch"), his Hindu dancer mother Bugam Dasi (the only named character in the story) and a series of dark shady characters.

In The Blind Owl Sadegh Hedayat is considered to have created the most famous Persian novel in Iran and the West (U.S. and Europe) and Hedayat is without argument the father of Persian modernist in fiction. Yet, in it, Hedayat's loneliness in real life (he is described to be asexual and living by himself during the time of his death), is very apparent. The prose in hauntingly powerful and the images that he creates in his readers' mind can really inspire us to venture our thoughts on what is there after our life in this earth. The pain that he has with his relationships with the people he knows (and probably loves) are so sour that can put trigger one's mind to evaluate his/her own relationships and probably do the same "with this problem and that, what else is there to live for?". While staring at the owl-like shadow he says:

"I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it." So he writes/talks to the shadow about his life."

This part is the most haunting for me:

It was dark, silent night like the night which had enveloped all my being, a night peopled with fearful shapes which grimaced at me from door and wall and curtain. At times my room became so narrow that I felt that I was lying in a coffin.... Death was murmuring his song in my ear like a stammering man who is obliged to repeat each word and who, when he has come to the end of a line, has to begin it afresh. His song penetrated my flesh like the while of a saw. He would raise his voice and suddenly fall silent.

In her intro to the book, Porochista Khakpour, ended her piece with a warning: "Given the usefulness of his (Hedayat's) tactics with respect to that (his literary prowess), I'll then pass on what got me to these pages (of the book): refrain, reader, from reading this book, whatever you do. You've been warned."

knig

Rating: really liked it
Owls, particularly screech owls, which is what the Blind Owl refers to, are harbingers of death the world over: no less so in Persian folklore. Considering the morose obsession with death within the novel, following which Hedayat committed suicide, it reads like a last will and testament with hindsight.

In its entirety, this is one spectacular hallucogenic trip triggered by opium, tempered with brief moments of withdrawal when the nameless narrator (none of the characters within are named, btw) experiences physical malaise (bodily decomposition, maggots, dismorphia, confusion, ...the lot). All of it predicated, I think, on serious mental health issues which generated the cycle to begin with.

How to explain this ride? Its an exquisite, labyrinthian unfolding of mental maps which double back in a concertina of repetitions, splinter outwards with a cornocupia of symbols which, themselves, take on new imprints so that homogeneity of substance is constantly morphed into a verisimilitude of form.

Heavily laden with metaphor, symbolism, existential angst and mental self-torture, this languid journey never becomes too abstract to follow: and opens up a dazzling kaleidoscope of the colour, emotion and visions of an addict.

Magical realism which is truly magical. A favourite.

Forrest

Rating: really liked it
What started out to be a slow book found its pace and took off about a quarter of the way in. Normally this sluggish start would knock a star off my rating for the book, but the remainder was so fantastic it made up for the beginning. At first, I found the narration fairly clean and clear, somewhat akin to Calvino's prose, but with too much treacle and self-absorbed whining. Before long, however, I learned that Hedayat was merely setting a baseline that led into the narrator's more winding, abstruse voice and his even more surreal perceptions of the people around him.

One is never quite sure if the narrator's opium dreams give him relief from his own unreality or whether it is because of his distorted perceptions and feelings about reality lead the narrator to escape into narcosis. Dreams, opiate-laden and "sober," are so interlaced with the narrator's version of reality that the work is phantasmagoric throughout.

Hedayat captures these fever-dream meanderings and conveys their feeling to the reader by effectively using a sort of literary call-and-response that revisits events and insights with very slight variations that simultaneously move the reader along and tie the book together. Note that I did not say "move the plot along". "Plot," in The Blind Owl is a slippery thing. Events come and go and come again in slightly different form and with one character's visage projected onto another's to the point that there is little in the way of linear plot. If you're a stickler for clear beginning, middle, and end, this book is not for you. If, however, you want to become lost in another world, this definitely is for you.

One example of this call-and-response is found in the narrator's journey in a horse-drawn hearse. As the driver sets off, the narrator reports:

The whip whistled through the air; the horses set off, breathing hard. The vapour could be seen through the drizzling rain, rising from their nostrils like a stream of smoke. They moved with high, smooth paces. Their thin legs, which made me think of the arms of a thief whose fingers have been cut off in accordance with the law and the stumps plunged into boiling oil, rose and fell slowly and made no sound as they touched the ground. The bells around their necks played a strange tune in the damp air.

After the hearse driver has dropped off his passenger, he leaves:

With surprising nimbleness he sprang up and took his place on the driver's seat. The whip whistled through the air, the horses set off, breathing hard. The bells around their necks played a strange tune in the damp air. Gradually they disappeared into the dense mist.

And again, a few pages later, he encounters the hearse driver again:

The old man sprang up with surprising nimbleness and took his place on the driver's seat . . . The whip whistled through the air; the horses set off, breathing hard. They moved with high, smooth paces. Their hoofs touched the ground gently and silently. The bells around their necks played a strange tune in the damp air. In the gaps between the clouds the stars gazed down at the earth like gleaming eyes emerging from a mass of coagulated blood. A wonderful sense of tranquility pervaded my whole being.

This layered referencing continues, in many guises, throughout the book, lending it that quality of dream that leaves one confused, upon waking, as to when certain events took place and in what context.

Hedayat also portrays a back-and-forth emotional state within the narrator himself. In one paragraph, he experiences "a kind of agreeable giddiness," while in the next, his "heart was filled with trepidation," with no change in circumstance other than that of the narrator's emotional state of mind.

One feeling that is consistent throughout, however, is the feeling of shame experienced by the narrator, along with a paranoid reaction to laughter, as if anyone who laughs is mocking him. In fact, one gets the sense that the narrator feels mocked by life, and death, itself. The Blind Owl is undergirded by a strange form of existentialism that embraces fear of, and hope for, the oblivion of death.

Throughout our life death is beckoning us. Has it not happened to everyone suddenly, without reason, to be plunged into thought and to remain immersed so deeply in it as to lose consciousness of time and place and the working of his own mind? At such times one has to make an effort in order to perceive and recognise again the phenomenal world in which men live. One has been listening to the voice of death.

Ten years after the serialized publication of the book, the author committed suicide. I am not privy to the author's internal struggles and am not familiar with his emotional landscape, but I can see the seed of his suicide in this work. In fact, the forward notes that many in Iran who read this work themselves committed suicide. Like so many other books, this is not for the emotionally unstable. This is not a happy book and, in fact, it might even be categorized as "horror" on par with Brian Evenson's dark literature. The seemingly unending river of nightmare sequences in The Blind Owl are reminiscent of scenes from a David Lynch or Brothers Quay film. Frankly, I'm surprised that they haven't tried to do a film version, as their style would be perfect for the dark ouvre of this book.

So now you have fair warning. If you really enjoy the first 30 pages or so of the book, stop. Don't go any further. But if you are intrigued by the grim promise that this book holds, please don't start 30 pages in. Give yourself a chance to draw in your breath and hold it through the rest of this suffocating work. You're going to need it.

Leslie Ray

Rating: really liked it
Originally published in Bombay, India, in 1936, this is by an Iranian author who tells a story where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. Whether this is due to his extensive opium use, or just the ramblings of someone who is so physically and mentally isolated, the lines overlap and there is no longer a linear timeline. Some of the reviews say the book is in two parts, but to me it seemed to be broken up into three parts. The first seemed to be a present-day meandering of thoughts and musings. This soon morphs into a tirade about his wife and how they met. His is not a happy marriage to say the least. The third part seems to be a total descent into madness with the effects of this on those around him.
A true story of despair and the descent into madness.

Sue

Rating: really liked it
Where to begin to describe this tale of love, madness, possibly hallucinogenic ramblings that circle back and forth and in and out upon themselves. oddly repeating certain phrases until you may be able to quote them without the page in front of you. This is a tale mostly of musings on death, with occasion side thoughts of murder and hatred. The author later committed suicide.

Some of the images presented in the book, especially the oddly geometric houses in which people can not live, seem almost schizophrenic to me, cut off from any reality. Of course, the entire book really has its own reality but what is it? Is it in any way related to the world Hedayat knew and lived in, the world I live in, the world opium users live in, the world madmen live in. I imagine there is no real answer for this.

I had marked several passages for possible inclusion in my review but as I write I realize that each passage probably is of another reality and therefore shows nothing ultimately.

I was somewhat caught on what to rate this very strange book. What in fact have I just read? But I decided that 4* reflects the degree to which it has made me think and react if not actually "like" it.

Addendum 4/20/14-While reading this book, another thought that came to mind which I forgot to include above was the possibility of this story as metaphor---for life in general, for life in Iran, for life under the Shah. Somehow this book being banned in Iran because it led to suicides seems like a rather slim excuse. I can see blasphemy or religious reasons being cited perhaps. But I don't know the times --- it was the 1940s, not the days of the Ayatollahs and fundamentalism.

Brian

Rating: really liked it

The fact of dying is a fearful thing in itself but the consciousness that one is dead would be far worse.

It doesn't really matter if Hedayat's protagonist in this story is drug-addled, woman-crazy or just plain insane; as the reader we are forced to inhabit this space alongside him, for the length of the story, come what may. The repitition of madness - and the seeing of the same demons, the same themes of death, in every person and at every turn - creates a haunting claustrophobic experience. We read and find ourselves asking, "Wait, didn't I just read this description, this passage, a page ago?"

Is this what it is like to be in a diseased mind?

Is not life from beginning to end a ludicrous story, an improbable stupid yarn? Am I not now writing my own personal piece of fiction?

Matt

Rating: really liked it
A book that, sadly, missed the mark— told by an unnamed and highly unreliable narrator, who appears, at first, as some sort of a crossover of Kafka and Poe to me in all their surrealistic glory, but in the progress develops traits that are, frankly spoken, too much for me too swallow or even digest— Insanity, Passion, Love, perhaps, but also a strange kind of death wish— that of himself but also of others— that made me cringe. Furthermore about two thirds of the text, a narration within a narration, is set in italics in this Kindle edition I read, and that made it a laborious read.
Maybe I'll give the German version a try one day to see if it is any better. I doubt it though. According to the translator, who wrote a long foreword, which is actually quite informative, this is the best translation there is.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Vanitha Narayan

Rating: really liked it
Wow!Wow!Wow!.

This is not a review,just my initial thoughts.It’s random,so bear with me.I don’t think I am qualified to write a review for this masterpiece. My head is reeling as I write.I am one of those people who has always had vivid dreams and I have always been very fascinated with them.So this book is totally my cup of tea.

An opium addict’s fever dream,a nightmare to be precise.An old man with a spine chilling laugh , a beautiful young woman with whom the narrator is madly in love ,bruised morning glory,black horses and an urn of poisoned wine are the elements in the nightmare. We see the same image over and over again,featuring these things which play different roles,become different people,it is a vicious cycle,terrifying!.There is a great deal of symbolism too.

In the very first line Hedayat had me by the throat and effortlessly pulled me into this nightmare.The prose is breathtaking,literally.It is beautiful ,vivid and haunting.The execution is simply brilliant.The writing has a certain urgency to it,(not sure if it is just me)it is impossible to put it down.I remember taking a lot of deep breaths and sighing a great deal.
The despair and mental degradation of the narrator is oppressing to say the least.I found it very hard to keep up with the narrator’s urgency ,complexity of thoughts and frenzy.To put it simply,he drove me mad!.

I don’t think I need to talk about the story,one has to experience this dark oppressing nightmare on his/her own,go in blindly and you will know what I am talking about.
Is it enjoyable?,that is an irrelevant question,let’s not ask that.Instead let’s ask ,is it a masterpiece?,is it worth reading?.YES and YES.
It is mind-blowing what this guy was able to achieve in 78 pages!!. Take a bow ,Hedayat,you are a genius(opium or not!) and I take my hat off for you!.