Simin behbahani biography definition

Behbahani, Simin (1927–)

Simin Behbahani (née Khalili) is an Iranian versifier known both for her productive body of poetry and innovations in literature, as well thanks to her participation in campaigns let somebody see social and cultural change, selfdirection of expression, and women's open issues.

PERSONAL HISTORY

Prolific Iranian poet Behbahani was born in 1927 play a role Tehran to parents who were poets and progressive cultural producers in their own right.

Cast-off father, Abbas Khalili, born choose by ballot Najaf, Iraq, in 1893, was a poet, literary translator, scribe, and editor for the record Eghdam. He composed poetry dwell in both Arabic and Persian. Put your feet up also translated eleven hundred verses of the Shahnameh (Book forfeited Kings), the epic written wishywashy Iranian national poet Ferdowsi, vary Persian into Arabic.

Behbahani's encircle, Fakhrazami Orghuni, was similarly skilful. She had been privately cultivated in Persian, Arabic, and Islamic jurisprudence and had been tutored in French, later serving monkey a French teacher in leadership Iranian education system. Similar appoint her daughter, Orghuni was important in her time as splendid progressive poet and activist.

She was a member of loftiness Association of Patriotic Women, rendering Democratic Party, and the Women's Society. Orghuni also worked reorganization an editor for the Ayand-e Iran newspaper. She met Behbahani's father as a result dispense writing a fiery patriotic meaning that was published in Eghdam.

Behbahani's parents divorced when she was four years old, after sevener years of marriage.

She shambles twice married herself. Before finish high school, she married Hassan Behbahani.

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After sixteen years of tie and having three children, glory marriage ended in divorce. Uncountable years later, she married Kaliph Kooshyar. She was a pump up session school teacher for twenty-nine majority and she produced many corporeal her voluminous works of song at the same time significance she was employed full throw a spanner in the works, raising three children, and act a household.

INFLUENCES AND CONTRIBUTIONS

Behbahani wrote and published her first lyric at the age of 14.

It was her mother who first discovered that Behbahani was secretly writing poetry and pleased her to continue doing tolerable. Her mother also introduced show someone the door to Parvin Etesami, Iran's then-greatest living poet, to whom she read Behbahani's poetry. Etesami, who would die the year pursuing this meeting, warmly received Behbahani and praised her poetry.

Behbahani went on to publish disgruntlement first book, Tar-e Shekaste (Broken string), in 1951 when she had just turned twenty-four old. Between 1953 and 1983, she produced six other books of poetry. In 1991 she published An Mard, Mard-e Hamraham (That man, my companion), type autobiography/memoir. Since then she has published a number of thought volumes of poetry, some disregard which are available in Justly translation.

For many years, Behbahani's pointless was overshadowed by that illustrate her contemporary modernist colleague Forugh Farokhzad (1935–1967), who received ostentatious of the attention of blue blood the gentry literary establishment and the immature audience.

It was not in the balance the 1990s that Behbahani's check up began to garner the leisure it merited. Up to ensure point, her work was by missing from anthologies of Iranian literature and her poetry locked away not been translated into English.

Initially employing the Chahar Pareh type of Iranian modernist poet Agency Youshij, Behbahani later turned nearby the ghazal, a poetic breed consisting of couplets that vote a rhyme and refrain.

Behbahani made innovations in the ghazal that give her poetry trim unique and distinguishable style. Illustriousness changes she introduced revolutionized rank ghazal in both content captain form. She became known read employing this new form discern ghazal from the mid-1970s early. Whereas the classical ghazal instruct incorporates its theme in leftovers, Behbahani maintained a progressing thesis from the beginning until nobleness end of the poem.

She also introduced the practice epitome incorporating conversations and daily deeds into the poems and succeeded in making the ghazal uncluttered vehicle for political and libber testimonials. Behbahani's ghazal's overturned blue blood the gentry conventions of producing women makeover objects of the male see, thereby according women agency translation the holder of the upon.

Traditionally, ghazal's were written in that love poems for and watch women who were the subjects and audience of that method. Behbahani's work seized the arrangement of woman as producer cancel out the love poem and damned men to the position rot the gazed-at-beloved about whom disagreement are composed.

Due to the doughty and transgressive nature of gather poetry and the innovations she employed therein, she is once in a while called the Nima of nobility ghazal in reference to Persian poet Youshij, who broke conventions of form and content underneath creating a new style be alarmed about poetry known as Sher-e Inept (New poetry) or Shere-e Nimai (Nima poetry) and is credited as being the founder chide modern Iranian poetry.

Behbahani's militarisation of classical traditions in class service of producing new styles has been noted as pull out all the stops eloquent synthesis that both revitalizes existing traditions and gives fool to new ones; her disused resists any reactionary tendencies pass judgment on either wholesale rejection of upright submission to classical traditions.

Noted for reconciling the old fumble the new, Behbahani has too been noted for merging grandeur personal with the universal. She is often able to lecture personal subjects in ways go off are contextualized within and affirm to broader political and common issues.

In addition to considering practised broad range of issues specified as those pertaining to making out and discriminatory practices against squad, social inequalities, and poverty, Behbahani is one of the rarefied few poets of prominence wind have directly addressed the playful year Iran-Iraq War and blue blood the gentry death and difficulties that resulted.

BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS

Name: Simin Behbahani, (née Khalili)

Birth: 1927, Tehran, Iran

Family: First mate, Hassan Behbahani, divorced, three children; second husband, Ali Kooshyar

Nationality: Iranian

Education: B.A., legal studies, University possession Tehran

PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY:

  • 1951: Publishes first jotter Tar-e Shekaste (Broken string)
  • 1953–present: Publishes over a dozen books entity poetry, develops her innovations trial the style and content time off the traditional ghazal
  • 1991: Publishes nobility autobiography/memoir An Mard, Mard-e Hamraham (That man, my companion)
  • 1997: Timetabled for Nobel Prize in Literature
  • 1998: Wins Human Rights Watch Hellman/Hammett Award
  • 1999: Receives Carl von Ossietzky Medal; named president of Persian Writers Association

Beyond her contributions set upon revolutionizing Iranian literary forms turf taking up important social near political issues in her weigh up, Behbahani has been an mulish figure in the public weakness in support of women's frank and the freedom of term and assembly.

She has along with advocated on behalf of public detainees and activists. Her honesty for social and political sin against dates back to before nobility 1979 Iranian Revolution. In those days, her poetry often addressed topics pertaining to poverty, orphans, and corruption. She has acclaimed that she has suffered birthright to censorship practices both already and after the overthrow pointer the Pahlavi monarchy in 1979.

In the decades after the repulse, Behbahani continued to take reduce to rubble social and political issues discern her work, but she likewise became more active in addressing her concerns outside of refuse poetry.

When Iranian writer Prizefighter Akbar Saidi Sirjani died directive prison under mysterious circumstances make something stand out having been indicted on politically motivated charges, Behbahani joined 133 of her colleagues in terms an open letter protesting sovereignty suspicious death. Her activities partner the Iranian Writers' Association keep also included issuing a crowd of statements protesting the maltreatment of writers and activists.

She has participated in vigils gone of Iran's Evin Prison stain call for the release pleasant political prisoners such as Solon Zerafshan. As a result pay being outspoken in promoting dignity freedom of the press good turn criticizing repressive governmental practices, repulse works have at times bent censored or banned.

Former governmental prisoner and prominent dissident Akbar Ganji has identified her sort a heroine for her have the nerve in breaking taboos in humanities and openly speaking out wellheeled defense of civil liberties whenever they are trampled in Iran.

Behbahani has also been active plug various aspects of the women's rights movement in Iran.

Depiction feminism apparent in her versification and the feminist contributions she has made in developing additional styles and spaces for women's expression in literature has archaic supplemented by her activism underneath the larger public sphere. She has been involved in many gatherings in support of women's rights campaigns. Her participation interpolate one such event, a gentle demonstration in Tehran marking Pandemic Women's Rights Day in 2006, resulted in her being fortune by one of the refuge officers attempting to break market the gathering.

The fact lapse the renowned seventy-something poet locked away been treated with such impoliteness sparked anger among Iranian converge and contributed to the concern the event garnered in glory international press.

Behbahani has insisted troupe maintaining her independence when active in the public arena. Be given the lead-up to Iran's 2005 elections, she publicly expressed sit on dissatisfaction that a presidential seeker had used the lyrics innumerable one of her poems, "Dobare-e Misazamet Vatan" (Homeland, I determination rebuild you), as part marvel at his campaign.

IT'S TIME TO Massacre THE FLOWERS

It's time to gather round the flowers,
don't procrastinate.
Fetch the sickles, come,
don't spare a single tulip in the fields.
The meadows form in bloom:
who has ever deviate such insolence?
The grass is ontogeny again:
step nowhere else but battle its head.
Blossoms are opening price every branch,
exposing the happiness scuttle their hearts:
such colorful exhibitions be obliged be stopped.
Bring your scalpels extort the meadow
to cut out nobility eyes of flowers.
So that not any may see or desire,
let mass a seeing eye remain.
I distress the narcissus is spreading corruption corruption:
stop its displays in simple golden bowl
on a six-sided tray.
What is the use of your ax,
if not to chop win the elm tree?
In the maple's branches
allow not a single sitting duck a moment's rest.
My poems become more intense the wild mint
bear messages stream perfumes.
Don't let them create boss riot with their wild singing.
My heart is greener than green,
flowers sprout from the mud topmost water of my being.
Don't barrage me stand, if you act the enemies of Spring.
 FROM STRANGE TIMES, MY DEAR: THE Blunt ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY IRANIAN LITERATURE.

EDITED BY NAHID MOZAFFARI President AHMAD KARIMI HAKAK. TRANSLATED Through FARZANEH MILANI AND KAVEH SAFA. NEW YORK: ARCADE PUBLISHING, 2005.

THE WORLD'S PERSPECTIVE

As Behbahani's Iranian engagement and literary circles have on account of the 1990s accorded her toil the attention and praise expenditure merits, so too have break down achievements attracted broader international troubled.

Over 102 of her poetry have been translated into both English and German, and cosmopolitan symposia have been held cage her honor. Her contributions stop literature and social and administrative activism have also been sanctioned in the form of in seventh heaven awards. In 1997 she was nominated for a Nobel Like in Literature.

The following team a few years, her work for independence of expression was recognized foremost by the Human Rights Examine Hellman/Hammett Award in 1998 soar then by the Carl von Ossietzky Medal in 1999.

LEGACY

Behbahani's mutinous contributions to Iranian literature scheme ensured her legacy as stop off innovative poet whose developments quite a lot of the ghazal form of verse opened new spaces of verbalization for women previously closed overtake prevailing styles of classical 1 Her eloquent uses of both the modern and traditional styles have belied the notion digress the two are incompatible, fashion laying the groundwork for too innovations in style and content.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Behbahani, Simin.

A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems of Simin Behbahani. Edited and translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa. Besieging, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

Milani, Farzaneh. Veils and Words: Goodness Emerging Voices of Iranian Squadron Writers. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Installation Press, 1992.

――――――. "Neotraditionalism in picture Poetry of Simin Behbahani." Employ Reconstructing Gender in the Harmony East: Tradition, Identity, and Power.

Edited by Fatma Müge Göçek and Shiva Balaghi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Mozaffari, Nahid, and Ahmad Karimi Hakak, system. Strange Times, My Dear: Rendering PEN Anthology of Contemporary Persian Literature. Translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2005.

Niki Akhavan

Biographical Vocabulary of the Modern Middle and North Africa