#Simin Behbahani

[majestativa]

Mad, really mad, a stranger to herself and others, oblivious to the world, […] around her neck a necklace of curses and tears.

— Simin Behbahani, A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems, transl by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa, (1999)

[cherrychevellet]

خواهم نشست روبروی تو، سطر به سطر، و تو را می‌نویسم، واژه به واژه. تا صفحه پر شود، از تمام آنچه نمی‌توانم بگویم.

I will sit across from you,

line by line, and write you,

word by word.

Until the page is filled,

with all that I cannot say.

Simin Behbahani

[fullruinsprince]

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)

[whileiamdying]

Iranian Women you Should Know: Simin Behbahani

Simin Behbahani was a poet, writer, human rights and women rights activist, and a founder of the Iranian Writers' Association, an affiliate of International PEN. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1999 and 2002. In 2009, Behbahani received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Freedom on behalf of women's rights campaigners in Iran.

Among her many admirers, Behbahani, who died in August 2014, was known as the “lioness of Iran.”

The Iranian Writers’ Association started its activities in 1968 under Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty and was the first professional association for writers in Iran. While writers did not have an easy time under the Shah, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, members of the association have faced harassment, prison, torture, exile and, of course, censorship. Over a 10-year period, from 1988-1998, intellectuals were targeted in a series of extrajudicial killings that became known as “Chain Murders.” Two of the writers’ association members, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, were murdered, and there were attempts on the lives of a number of others.

Simin Behbahani was born in June 1927 to a literary family. Her father, Abbas Khalili, was a poet, writer and newspaper editor. Her mother, Fakhr Ozma Arghun, was a poet and a member of the progressive Association of Patriotic Women between 1925 and 1929.

Behbahani started writing poetry at 12 and published her first collection when she was 14.

In 1958, she began studying law at Tehran University, but after graduation, she preferred teaching over practicing law.

Before the revolution, Behbahani also wrote lyrics for popular Iranian singers, and she sat on the Iranian National Radio and TV’s Music Council. Themes of patriotism, poverty, freedom of expression and women’s rights run through her lyrics and poetry.

In the summer of 1988, when the Islamic Republic executed countless number of political prisoners without returning their bodies to their families or informing them where they were buried, Simin Behbahani published a poem dedicated to the victims’ mothers.

When police forces gunned down a young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, during the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election, Behbahani dedicated a poem in Soltan’s memory: “Dead you are not, dead you will not be/Always you will live, live with eternal life/You embody the people’s call [Neda].”

On March 20, 2011, to mark the Iranian new year, US President Barak Obama issued a message to the people of Iran, quoting Simin Behbahani: “Old, I may be, but, given the chance, I will learn. I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny. I will recite the Hadith of love of country with such fervor as to make each word bear life.” Obama called Behbahani “a woman who has been banned from traveling beyond Iran, even though her words have moved the world.”

Behbahani’s protests were not limited to her poetry. She participated in rallies supporting causes important to her. Once security agents beat her during a protest staged by women in Daneshjou Park. And when women staged a sit-in in front of parliament to protest against legislation that they believed trampled on their rights, she joined them despite her advanced years.

Behbahani received several awards for her activities in support of human rights, including the 1998 Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammet Grant and the 2006 Norwegian Authors' Union Freedom of Expression Prize.

In March 2010, she planned to travel to Paris for necessary medical treatment and to deliver an address on the occasion of International Women’s Day. As she was about to board the plane for Paris, she was detained and interrogated throughout the night, although she was in her eighties and nearly blind. Her passport was seized and she was banned from traveling abroad.

Behbahani died at the age of 87 on August 19, 2014 after spending 13 days in a coma. Literary figures and many young fans of her poetry attended her funeral, and social media websites were flooded with praise for her and celebration of her work. Official Islamic Republic radio and television did not even report her death, which was not unexpected, given that she was not a favorite of the Islamic Republic regime, especially among hardliners. Jahan News, a hardline Iranian website, once characterized Behbahani’s writing as treasonous: “Her poetry, with its slanderous and scandalous way of addressing Iranians, only serves to make Iran’s enemies happy.”

But as long as she was alive, Behbahani did not stop defending the undefended and standing up against injustice.

For millions of Iranians inside the country and abroad, Simin Behbahani was the “eloquent voice of conscience,” according to Farzaneh Milani, a scholar of Persian literature at the University of Virginia. “She was the elegant voice of dissent, of conscience, of non-violence, of the refusal to be ideological.”

Realated articles:

A Poet Who Stayed, A Nation’s Conscience

[carmenvicinanza]

Simin Behbahāni

https://www.unadonnalgiorno.it/simin-behbahani/

E lei, purché il suo lamento non aumenti il dolore, ha sofferto in segreto e si è cucita la bocca. E lei, come una candela dalla fiamma di rammarico, ballando davanti a tutti, ha bruciato la notte.

Simin Behbahāni, detta “la leonessa dell’Iran“, è stata un’importante poeta e attivista persiana che ha scritto oltre 600 poesie.

Nata il 20 luglio 1927 a Teheran, era figlia di Abbās Khalili, direttore del quotidiano “Eqdām” e Fakhr-e Azamā Arghun, scrittrice e traduttrice colta e all’avanguardia che aveva contribuito a fondare l’associazione “delle donne patriottiche” per fornire educazione e istruzione alle iraniane meno fortunate.

Simin Behbahāni, ispirata da cotanta genitrice, a dodici anni già scriveva versi e ha pubblicato la sua prima poesia su un giornale quando ne aveva solo quattordici.

Dopo uno scontro con la preside che l’accusava di aver scritto in un giornale un anonimo rapporto sulle condizioni sgradevoli del collegio in cui studiava, venne costretta lasciare la scuola.

Da quell’episodio la sua poesia è stata una lunga battaglia contro le ingiustizie.

Sposata a diciassette anni, ebbe tre figli e riprese gli studi fino a laurearsi in giurisprudenza col secondo marito, Manouchehr Koushiyār, morto dopo quattordici anni di matrimonio. A lui ha dedicato il libro Quell’uomo, il mio compagno di strada.

Ha partecipato a conferenze e programmi internazionali su donne e letteratura.

Le sue poesie parlano di condizioni sociali e delle conseguenti ripercussioni nella sfera delle emozioni individuali. Opere di raffinata bellezza caratterizzate da una potente combinazione di passione e impegno sociale.

Ha affrontato temi tabù nella società iraniana, come l’amore, la sessualità e le disuguaglianze di genere, sfidando apertamente le norme culturali e sociali.

La sua arte è stata il riflesso della sua forte personalità e dello spirito indomito.

Figura di rilievo nell’ambiente culturale iraniano, era apprezzata per la capacità di esprimere sentimenti universali con un linguaggio semplice e accessibile.

Durante il regime dell’Ayatollah Khomeini, Simin Behbahāni è stata sottoposta a censura e intimidazioni davanti alle quali non si è mai arrestata e ha continuato a diffondere il suo pensiero attraverso le sue opere e la sua lotta, restando un faro di speranza e resistenza.

La sua voce potente e l’impegno per la libertà e l’uguaglianza sono stati di grande ispirazione per diverse generazioni.

Ha ricevuto numerosi premi e riconoscimenti nazionali e internazionali per il suo contributo alla letteratura e alla lotta per i diritti umani.

È morta a Teheran, il 19 agosto 2014.

[aftaabmagazine]

Poetry and Remembering the lyrics of Simin Behbahani

[alredered]

Alredered Remembers Simin Behbahani, Iranian poet, lyricist and activist, known as the lioness of Iran, on her birthday.

"Old I may be, but, given the chance, I will learn." - Simin Behbahani.

[anotherwaytosay]

I am so excited to be presenting the readers for our next event at Molasses Books at 8 PM on Friday March 24th. 

Greg Nissan, a poet and translator and former poetry editor of SAND: Berlin's English Literary Journal, will be reading from their NEA Grant translation project: Ann Cotten's Banned! An Epic Poem, a plot-line with "[...] gryphon-like creatures and women who take over the island from men to run utopian small presses." Sara Khalili, whose body of translation/articles for Words Without Borders is something I highly recommend perusing, will be reading from selections from Iranian author and journalist Shahriar Mandanipour's Seasons of Purgatory. And you will certainly know Sam Bett, one of the best co-hosts of Us&Them, who has translated and co-translated several shimmery/dark modern/contemporary voices from Japanese: Yukio Mishima, Fuminori Nakamura, Osamu Dazai, Mieko Kawakami, more still, reading selections from Izumi Suzuki's Hit Parade of Tears forthcoming from Verso Press. 

(Also highly recommended: This lovely reflection on bathhouses as a yearnful third place by Tatsushi Fujihara for Circumference.) 

Read on for translator bios, and on and on for a list of local translation events happening elsewhere throughout March and early April. You can also find us on Instagram @anotherwaytosay

Greg Nissan is a poet and translator living in New York. They are the author of The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press) and the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books, forthcoming September 2023). They are the recipient of Fulbright and NEA fellowships for translation.   Sara Khalili is an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her translations include Seasons of Purgatory, Moon Brow, and Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, Kissing the Sword by Shahrnush Parsipur, and Rituals of Restlessness by Yaghoub Yadali. She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. Her short story translations have appeared in AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, EPOCH, GRANTA, Words Without Borders, The Literary Review, and PEN America, among others. 

Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he has worked on translations shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. His versions of Izumi Suzuki include the short story "Night Picnic" published in Terminal Boredom and the stories "My Guy" and "Trial Witch," both collected in Hit Parade of Tears. This coming May, Soho Crime will publish his translation of The Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura, a torqued detective novel that looks into the underworld of Japanese shibari bondage. ELSEWHERE:

Saturday March 25th at Poetry Society of America, Nightboat Books presents Stéphane Bouquet's Common Life with the translator Lindsey Turner and Peter Gizzi 

March 30th at Book Culture 112th, the Hellenic Studies Program in the Classics Department at Columbia University celebrates the bilingual publication of ΑΛΛΩΝΩΝ/LIFTED with Karen Van Dyck and Eleni Bourou. Also joining in conversation: Maureen Freely, Toby Lee, Mark Mazower, Jennifer Van Dyck, and Lawrence Venuti

As part of McNally Jackson's Translation Conversation Series, Brazillian author Stênio Gardel and the translator Bruna Dantas Lobato will discuss his debut novel The Words That Remain on Friday March 31st at McNally Jackson's Seaport location

Jennifer Croft and Argentinian author Sebastián Martínez Daniell will be presenting Croft's translation of his novel Two Sherpas, a book that tackles themes of "mountaineering, colonialism, obligation" at Community Bookstore on April 19th ***xxoo. poetry.

[morethancarpets]

I have a thousand hopes and each of them is you The beginning of joy and the end of waiting is you

- Simin Behbahani [contemporary Persian poet]

[pressedwallflower]

It's time to mow the flowers

It's time to mow the flowers,

don't procrastinate.

Fetch the sickles, come,

don't spare a single tulip in the fields.

The meadows are in bloom:

who has ever seen such insolence?

The grass is growing again:

step nowhere else but on its head.

Blossoms are opening on every branch,

exposing the happiness in their hearts:

such colorful exhibitions must be stopped.

Bring your scalpels to the meadow

to cut out the eyes of flowers.

So that none may see or desire,

let not a seeing eye remain.

I fear the narcissus is spreading its corruption:

stop its displays in a golden bowl

on a six-sided tray.

What is the use of your ax,

if not to chop down the elm tree?

In the maple's branches

allow not a single bird a moment's rest.

My poems and the wild mint

bear messages and perfumes.

Don't let them create a riot with their wild singing.

My heart is greener than green,

flowers sprout from the mud and water of my being.

Don't let me stand, if you are the enemies of Spring.

—Simin Behbahani (translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa)

[majestativa]

A lily, like a black snake, coiled around the moon, snatched it away, in its poisonous mouth.

— Simin Behbahani, A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems, transl by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa, (1999)

[honeyandelixir]

من دختر ترنج و پریزادم I, a girl from bergamot trees         and fairy lands.

Simin Behbahani

[moodyinapinkbow]

Moodboard: Name - Valerie.

Requested by: Anonymous.

“I, a girl from bergamot trees
and fairy lands.”

[forsoothsayer]

Ancient Eve by Simin Behbahani

Love at Eighty?

Admit it: it’s bizarre.

Ancient Eve is, once again

offering apples:

red lips and golden tresses.

Beautiful,

but not divine.

If my face has color

it’s just makeup, a deceit.

But in my chest a heart

beats its wings wild with desire,

every seventy of its heartbeats

multiplied by two.

Love and shame and my body

warm with lust. I burn

with fever, a fever

past any physician’s cure.

But at my side is bliss,

my lover

kind and faithful

and as long as he is here

I dwell in heaven.

I can’t breathe a word;

my mouth’s sealed

shut with your kisses,

their tongues of flame.

Oh, my thirsty lover!

Look at my happy fortune:

You, I, us tonight.

with a wine so delightful

where’s the room for restraint?

Adam! Come see the spectacle.

Leave behind your denial and conceits

and watch as the Eve of eighty

rivals the twenty-year-old she.

[mayolfederico]

venti giugno

Jean Dieuzaide, Lisbon, Portugal 1954

  Il matrimonio misto

Mio padre era un bracciante. Lasciò la scuola a otto o nove anni E prese roncola e zappa per dissodare La terra che mai avrebbe posseduto.

Mia madre era la maestra, Il mondo di Castore e Polluce. Aveva appunto due gemelli in classe Che non riusciva mai a distinguere.

Lei aveva letto un libro di Proust, Lui sapeva curare la…

[aftaabmagazine]

آسمان خالی‌ست The Skies are Empty

آسمان خالی‌ست

The Skies are Empty

احمد ظاهر

Ahmad Zahir

Translated from the Farsi by Farhad Azad

آسمان خالی‌ست، خالی، روشنانش را که بُرد؟

The skies are empty, who took away its light?

تاج ماهش، سینه‌ریز کهکشانش را که بُرد؟

The moon's crown, the galaxy's jewels, who took them?

باغبان تنهاست، تنها، گرد او جز خار نیست

The gardener is alone, abandoned, surrounded by thorns

بیدمشکش را، گلش را، ارغوانش را که بُرد؟

His willow, his flowers, his judas-tree, who took them?

May 1979, Kabul

At a private event, Ahmad Zahir recorded this song two weeks before his death. He composed it in protest against the totalitarian Khalq government. The Khalqis killed him and framed it as a car accident.

The lyrics are from famed Iranian poet Simin Behbahani سیمین بهبهانی.