by Unknown
Common to many women poets is a sense of being socially constrained not to act as erotic desire dictates (women have to be sexually modest), all the while experiencing an overwhelming need to do so: the Roman poet Sulpicia, for example, says in one poem that she hates conforming to convention and putting on a public face, yet we know she does this because in another poem she tells us that she regrets nothing more than that “I left you alone last night, wanting to hide the ardor I felt.”* Similarly, the erotic isolation of the French poet Louise Labé, and the need to “live discreetly,” torments her:
I am always unhappy, living discreetly,
and I can find no contentment
if I do not sometimes make some kind of foray out of myself.*
Parallels to Sulpicia’s and Louise Labé’s complaints are not hard to find in pre-modern Persian poems written by women. Sometimes tropes used by women poets turn up in more than one culture: the poet’s thoughts being as “tangled” as her hair on the morning after a lover has left is a metaphor that appears in both Persian and Japanese poetry by women, for example. The contempt expressed by the fourteenth-/fifteenth-century Persian poet Mehri for her husband’s impotence finds a coincidental echo in the words of the sixteenth-century Chinese woman poet Huang O:
You’ve made me all wet and slippery
but no matter how hard you try
nothing happens.*
And the poem by an unnamed Persian female entertainer lamenting that those she likes aren’t interested in her while those she doesn’t like are (see this page) finds a parallel in the words of a Japanese geisha, also unnamed:
When it’s the man I love
he goes by and doesn’t come in
but men I hate—
a hundred times a day.*
One of the most noticeable similarities in pre-modern women’s poetry is how in many cultures women poets have come from society’s extremes in terms of their wealth and social prestige; they were either members of royal or aristocratic families, or paid entertainers and women of the town available for hire: courtiers or courtesans, princesses or prostitutes.
The major uniting factors in much women’s poetry from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been the struggle for women’s emancipation and the specifics of a woman’s, as opposed to a man’s, life. It is also true that many women poets over the past fifty years or so have turned their backs on the whole notion of “women’s poetry,” seeing it as a covertly demeaning category, and insisting that their verse be read simply as poetry, outside of any considerations of the poet’s gender. However, it is also true that, for much of the pre-modern period, women in general, and certainly women in Persian-speaking countries, tended to have quite separate life-experiences from those of most men in the societies in which they lived, and that the limits of these experiences were prescribed largely by men rather than by women themselves. The specifics of their lives were in many ways different from those of men’s lives, and these specifics were in at least some sense not of their own choosing. Different lives, with a different sense of what is allowed and who is doing the allowing, produce different types of literature, and it therefore seems legitimate to consider women’s literature, and so women’s poetry, as a distinct category. While it is obviously one that overlaps very largely with that of poetry by men, it has nevertheless its own specifics and centers of interest that are sometimes separate from those of men’s poetry. That women’s poetry often echoes the values and presuppositions of men’s poetry, even when these seem to run counter to women’s own interests, can easily be accounted for: as Joanna Woods-Marsden has written, in discussing the “masculinist ideology” of some paintings by the sixteenth-century Italian female artist Sofonisba Anguissola: “Although the ideology is transparently patriarchal to the twentieth century, it would surely not have been seen in these terms by an individual living at the time. Ideology veils overt power relations by making them seem part of natural law to all, including those victimized by it.”*
Translator’s Note
It is a great privilege to work as a scholar, in however humble a capacity, in the field of a poetry that is not written in one’s own first language, and to try to produce adequate translations of that poetry. I am very sensible of this, as I am of the responsibility of offering such translations to a wider audience, especially, in the case of this book, as only a few of these poems, particularly the pre-modern ones, have been translated before, certainly into English or even, to the best of my knowledge, into any language. Each language has of course its own specificity, tone, atmosphere, “weight”—something that is usually very difficult to define but which becomes more and more palpable the longer someone who is not a native speaker studies the language and lives with it. In translating these poems, I have frequently found myself thinking of a quatrain by the great Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, given here in Alastair Reid’s beautiful translation:
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.*
A Note on the Sources
For poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries I have mostly translated from published collections of their works and, in the case of some contemporary poets, from websites that include their poems. The poetry of a small number of women poets writing in Persian before the twentieth century (such as Jahan Khatun and Tahereh/Qorrat al-Ayn) has been published in volumes devoted to their work, and I have used these where they are available. For all other poets writing before the twentieth century I have in the main used the following anthologies (none of which are easy to find, and I am gratefully indebted to friends who procured me copies, as books, photocopies, or electronically):
Az Rabe’eh ta Parvin (“From Rabe’eh to Parvin”), ed. Kesharvarz Sadr (Tehran: n.d. [1950s]), 282 pp.
Az Rabe’eh ta Parvin (“From Rabe’eh to Parvin”), ed. Parvin Shakiba (Champaign, IL: 1998), 210 pp.
Four Eminent Poetesses of Iran: With a Brief Summary of Iranian and Indian Poetesses of New-Persian, ed. M. Ishaque (Calcutta: 1950), 100 pp.
Noql-e Majles (“Confection of the Assembly”), ed. Mohammad Reza Nasiri and Nadereh Jalali (Tehran: 2006), 69 pp.
Zanan-e Sokhanvar (“Eloquent Women”), ed. Ali Akbar Moshir Salimi, 2 vols. (Tehran: 1335/1956), 789 pp.
Zanan-e Sokhanvar o Namvar-e Afghanistan (“Eloquent and Famous Women of Afghanistan”), ed. Mohammad Halim Tanvir (Peshawar: 2001), 290 pp.
Although there is considerable overlap between these anthologies, so that frequently the same poets are cited and the same poems quoted (often in slightly different versions), each has its own usefulness. Zanan-e Sokhanvar, edited by Ali Akbar Moshir Salimi, is by far the most comprehensive of the group, with the largest number of poets and poems, and with a commentary on each poet where relevant information is available (virtually nothing, apart from their names, and sometimes not even that much, is known about a number of poets included in the book).
Kesharvarz Sadr’s book, Az Rabe’eh ta Parvin, is similar to Salimi’s. While it is considerably shorter and contains the works of fewer poets, its commentary on the poets it does contain is often more scholarly, extensive, and reliable than Salimi’s.
Despite sharing the same title, Parvin Shakiba’s Az Rabe’eh ta Parvin is a quite different work from Sadr’s (although it reproduces one or two biographical passages from Sadr’s book almost word for word). Shakiba discusses the poets included in a much more historically informed fashion than either Sadr or Salimi does, and is also concerned to point out the qualities that can distinguish poetry in Persian written by women from that written by men. Much of the book has, justifiably, a somewhat polemical tone; where relevant it emphasizes the moments when women poets complain about both their circumscribed social situations and thei
r often reprehensible treatment by men.
Zanan-e Sokhanvar o Namvar-e Afghanistan, edited by Mohammad Halim Tanvir, is a rather peculiar book. Despite its title’s claim to be specifically about Afghan women poets, it is, like the other collections mentioned here, an anthology of Persian-language women poets in general, and includes poets from Iran, India, and central Asia, as well as from Afghanistan. Its commentary is often politically quite tendentious, and it is by and large more of a patriotic publication than a scholarly one. However, it does include a number of genuine Afghan women poets, and examples of their poems, that are absent from the other anthologies listed here.
The poets who are the chief subjects of Four Eminent Poetesses of Iran: With a Brief Summary of Iranian and Indian Poetesses of New-Persian are Rabe’eh (tenth century), Mahsati (twelfth century), Tahereh/Qorrat al-Ayn (nineteenth century), and Parvin Etesami (twentieth century), all of whose work is available elsewhere. The “summary” mentioned in the subtitle is quite extensive and useful, and includes some poets not mentioned in other sources. The book is in English, with the poems in the book’s main section given in Persian followed by generally reliable, if rather Victorian-sounding, English translations. Four poems by Mahsati, which the editor describes as “being grossly obscene,” are given only in Persian. Two of the four deal with sex (one is the poem “The judge’s wife was pregnant . . .” on this page) and the other two are scatological. By present-day standards none of these four poems would be considered “grossly obscene.” The poems included as an appendix (the “brief summary” of the book’s subtitle) are given only in Persian. The Indian compiler of the book, M. Ishaque, traveled to Iran in order to meet and if possible interview Parvin Etesami, but she declined to see him.
Noql-e Majles is a relatively short early nineteenth-century collection of brief lives of women poets, together with examples of their poetry, compiled by Mahmud Mirza, a son of the Qajar monarch Fath Ali Shah. Most of the poets included were members of the Qajar family (and so relatives of the compiler), although a number of earlier poets were also included.
The poem by Zinat Amin on this page is to be found in: Zanan-e Iran dar Jonbesh-e Mashruteh (“Iranian Women in the Constitutional Movement”), ed. Abdol Hossein Nahid (Tabriz: 1360/1981), p. 98.
Acknowledgments
It would have been impossible for me to produce this anthology without considerable help from a number of other people, for which I am extremely grateful. I am indebted especially to the writings of Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak on contemporary Persian poetry and to the writings of Sunil Sharma on Persian poetry in India, particularly but not exclusively during the period of the Moghul empire, and to both of them for conversations on poetry and related subjects over a number of years.
I am also personally indebted and grateful to the following colleagues and friends who have assisted me in a number of ways: Ehsan Yarshater, Asghar Seyed-Ghorab, Mandana Zandian, Azar Nafisi, Saeed Honarmand, Farzaneh Milani, Franklin Lewis, Ebrahim Paydar, Farshad Zahiri, Margaret Mills, Hasan Javadi, Ida Mirzai, Javad Ashrafi, and Mohammad and Najmieh Batmanglij. I must thank especially Fatemeh Shams, who has been indefatigably generous in the help she has given me over the section on contemporary poets and their poetry. My chief debt, as always in my translations of Persian poetry, is to my wife, Afkham Darbandi; I might have produced some kind of an anthology without the help of others I’ve thanked here, but without Afkham’s continuous and unstinting assistance and support it is doubtful whether this anthology would exist at all.
A Note on Iranian Dynasties
Below are the dynasties mentioned in this book, arranged in approximate chronological order.
Sasanian. The Sasanians were the last pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty; they ruled Iran from 224 ce to 651 ce.
Seljuk. Originally Oghuz Turks from central Asia who invaded Iran in the first half of the eleventh century, the Seljuks ruled Iran in the second half of the eleventh and throughout most of the twelfth century.
Mongol. The Mongol conquest of Iran began with Genghis Khan, who conquered much of northern Iran in 1220 and 1221, a process continued by his grandson Hulagu between 1256 and 1258. Genghis Khan’s conquest was undertaken for the purpose of plunder, but Hulagu settled in Iran and established an empire there. Hulagu remained culturally a Mongol until his death, and he died a Buddhist (his wife was a Christian). His descendants became Persianized, converted to Islam, intermarried with local ruling families, and were gradually absorbed into the general population.
Inju. A relatively short-lived minor dynasty of Mongol origin; the Injus ruled Shiraz and Esfahan during the fourteenth century.
Chupanid. Rivals of the Injus and, like them, a minor dynasty of Mongol origin, the Chupanids ruled parts of Iran in the fourteenth century.
Timurid. Descendants of Timur the Lame (Tamburlaine) who ruled much of Iran, Afghanistan, and southern central Asia from the mid-fourteenth to the late fifteenth century.
Safavid. Ruling Iran from 1501 to 1736, the Safavids declared Shi’ism to be the country’s official religion. For most of their reign their capital was Esfahan, which they made into one of the most beautiful cities in the Middle East.
Ottoman. The dynasty that ruled Turkey and the Ottoman empire from 1299 to 1924.
Moghul. Founded in 1526 by the emperor Babur, who claimed descent from both Timur the Lame (Tamburlaine) and Genghis Khan. The Moghuls ruled northern India and much of the rest of the country until the last Moghul emperor, whose power was by this time largely titular, was deposed by the British in 1857.
Qajar. The dynasty that ruled Iran from 1789 to 1925. The last thirty years or so of the Qajar reign were marked by the struggles for representative government and political and economic independence from outside interference and control.
Pahlavi. The dynasty that ruled Iran from 1925 until the second Pahlavi king, Mohammad Reza Shah, was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979; since the Revolution, Iran has been governed as a theocratic republic.
The Medieval Period
Rabe’eh
Tenth century
Rabe’eh’s family claimed descent from Arabs who had entered Iran during or after the seventh-century conquest of the country. By the time Rabe’eh was born, her father had become ruler of Balkh in what is now northern Afghanistan. Almost no information about her life has come down to us, although the lurid story of her demise is well known: after her father died she is said to have carried on a secret love-affair with a slave or servant at what was now the court of her brother, Hareth. The liaison was discovered, and Hareth cut her throat and left her in a bath-house where she bled to death; her lover then killed Hareth and committed suicide.*
*
The garden shows so many flowers, as though
Mani had painted their resplendent glow
Dawn’s breezes never bore Tibetan musk,
How is the world so musky when they blow?
Are Majnun’s eyes within the clouds, that they
Shed Layli’s cheeks’ hue on each rose below?
Like wine within an agate glass, his tears
Have filled each tulip with their crimson glow
Raise up the wine bowl, raise it generously
Since bad luck dogs deniers who say “No”
Narcissi glow with silver and with gold
It’s Kasra’s crown their shining petals show
Like nuns in purple cowls the violets bloom
Do they turn into Christians as they grow?1
*
My hope’s that God will make you fall in love
With someone cold and callous just like you
And that you’ll realize my true value when
You’re twisting in the torments I’ve been through.
*
His love has caught me once again—
I’ve struggled fiercely, but in vain.
(Well
, sobersides, explain to me
Just who can swim love’s shoreless sea!
To reach love’s goal you must accept
All you instinctively reject—
See ugliness as beauty, eat
Foul poison up and call it sweet.)
I jerked my head to work it loose,
Not knowing all this would produce
Was further tightenings of the noose.
*
I’m drunk with love to know my love is here tonight
And that I’m freed from sorrow and from fear tonight;
I sit beside my love, and earnestly I say,
“God, make the key to morning disappear tonight!”
Mahsati
c.1089–1159