In her Author's Note following the body of Song of a Captive Bird, Jasmin Darznik explains how the meager amount of biographical material to be found on the groundbreaking Iranian feminist poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad “opened a space for invention” and prompted her to attempt to breathe life into the memory of this artist – banned under the current regime in Iran, mostly forgotten in the West – who deserves to be remembered. The information that Darznik is able to provide paints the picture of a remarkable and brave woman – someone who insisted on speaking her truths, no matter the costs – and I 100% agree that Forugh's story demands memorialising. Unfortunately, I don't think that Darznik was equal to the task of filling in the gaps and making a real person jump off the page; this book is interesting history, but weak fiction. (And as for the history, by writing in the Author's Note that she invented some characters and erased others for the sake of narrative flow, I am also left uncertain as to this book's biographical usefulness.)Oh sky, if one day I want to fly from this silent prison what should I say to my weeping child? “Forget about me, for I am a captive bird?” I'm that candle that illuminates the ruins with her burning heart. If I choose darkness I'll destroy everything around me.
~from “The Captive”
In writing about Forugh, I wanted to go beyond what was outwardly known about her – what could perhaps ever be known about her, given not just the reticence of those who'd been close to her but the fundamental inscrutability of the human personality. I wanted to imagine what it felt like to be the woman writing those astonishing poems. To be the woman who created herself by writing those poems. And to do this I embraced the unique power of fiction to illuminate the past.
Because I was a woman, they wanted to silence the screams on my lips and stifle the breath in my lungs. But I couldn't stay quiet. I couldn't pretend to be modest or pure or good. No. I was a woman and I couldn't speak with the voice of a man, because it was not my voice – not true and not my own. But there was more to it than that. By writing in a woman's voice I wanted to say that a woman, too, is a human being. To say that we, too, have the right to breathe, to cry out, and to sing.I'll take it as fact that Forugh Farrokhzad was born in 1935, grew up in Tehran as one of seven children of a strict Colonel from the Shah's Guard, and despite some official efforts at modernisation (Western-style dresses, the banning of veils, the introduction of electricity), Iranian society retained an iron grip on its girls and women. Forced to leave school younger than her brothers, a brutal virginity test, given away in marriage at sixteen: Forugh apparently had little agency in her father's house. I don't know if it really was an extramarital affair that led Forugh to write the poem “Sin”, but this is the verse – an expression of sexual desire from the point-of-view of a woman – that is said to have scandalised the local literary scene and led to the breakdown of Forugh's marriage. Now free to relocate back to Tehran from the hostile backwater of her husband's hometown, Forugh devoted herself to writing poems that would revolutionise the form within Iran and document both her personal experiences and the government brutalities that she witnessed.
I was fascinated by the idea of Forugh being committed to a mental asylum for her writing, and while Darznik's narrative of this time wasn't particularly evocative, I would love to know if Forugh actually found her file and the doctor's notes that state she “indulges delusions of pursuing a literary career and shows no insight into her present condition or the consequences of her actions for either herself or her family...The clinic has obtained copies of the patient's writings, and upon careful review these documents support the conclusion of a disordered mind.” When Forugh is eventually released, she meets the filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan (given the pseudonym Darius Golshiri in the book for some reason), and he becomes her lover and her mentor, freeing the poet to employ her artistic voice in a new medium, for which she won acclaim. Tragically, Forugh died in a car crash at 32 years old (an accident according to Wikipedia; painted as an event more sinister in Darznik's account).
Except for what I'd written in my poems, in the end no one knew the truth about my death and no one knew the truth about our lives.Despite her being a professor of literature and creative writing, I really wasn't impressed with Darznik's craftsmanship; the writing was dull and the additional background information she added amounted to little more than lists of foods, the passing view from a car window, and what dress Forugh wore to this or that party. I was neither immersed in the times nor in a singular mind; even Darznik's “new translations” of Forugh's poetry into English consisted of a few excerpts placed randomly into chapters where events may have inspired the verse. I am happy to now know something of Forugh Farrokhzad, but as a novel, this was just all right.
I sinned a sin full of pleasure,
In an embrace which was warm and fiery.
I sinned surrounded by arms
that were hot and avenging and iron.
In that dark and silent seclusion
I looked into his secret-full eyes.
my heart impatiently shook in my breast
In response to the request of his needful eyes.
In that dark and silent seclusion,
I sat dishevelled at his side.
his lips poured passion on my lips,
I escaped from the sorrow of my crazed heart.
I whispered in his ear the tale of love:
I want you, O life of mine,
I want you, O life-giving embrace,
O crazed lover of mine, you.
Desire sparked a flame in his eyes;
the red wine danced in the cup.
In the soft bed, my body
drunkenly quivered on his chest.
I sinned a sin full of pleasure,
next to a shaking, stupefied form.
O God, who knows what I did
In that dark and quiet seclusion.
~"Sin(gonah)"