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64. Blind Owl.
I had thought about death and the decomposition of all the particles in my
body many times—to the extent that it didn’t frighten me—in fact, my true wish
was to be completely annihilated. The only thing that frightened me was that
the atoms in my body would mix with the atoms in the bodies of the vulgar.
This was an insufferable thought. Sometimes I wished that after death I would
have long arms and extended fingers with which I could gather all my own atoms
and hold them with both hands so that the atoms that belong to me would not
enter the bodies of the vulgar.
Sadeq Hedayat’s novel Blind Owl is brief, curious, and often disquieting.
It tells the tale of a man who paints pen-case covers, who paints the same
image again and again—and old man sitting beneath a cypress tree, an alluring
young woman offering him a water lily, a stream running between them. And he
is haunted by this image, and especially by the woman in this image—who may
also be his wife, his cousin, his mother? The setting of the novel keeps
shifting, the props in the novel keep reappearing, and the characters all seem
like hazy echoes of the two figures in the painting. Chris and Suzanne try to
stay grounded as they discuss this marvellous gem of Iranian modernism.
Content warning: The book contains some potentially disturbing imagery, and
so does our discussion.
Thank you to Michael Collins for helping us edit this episode.
Show Notes.
Next: Sadeq Hedayat: Blind Owl.
[Bookshop.] (We read the
translation by Sassan Tabatabai.)
Not enough of Hedayat’s other work is available in English, but see also
Three Drops of Blood (a collection of short
stories) and The Fable of Creation (a play).
Previous episodes that we mention: Invisible
Man.
Persepolis.
Symposium.
Paradiso.
Frankenstein.
An example of a nineteenth-century painted pen case from
Iran.
Lingam
puja.
Edgar Allan Poe: Berenice.
Junji Ito: Frankenstein and The Enigma of Amigara
Fault.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thank
you.
View all episodes
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma
4.8
3030 ratings
I had thought about death and the decomposition of all the particles in my
body many times—to the extent that it didn’t frighten me—in fact, my true wish
was to be completely annihilated. The only thing that frightened me was that
the atoms in my body would mix with the atoms in the bodies of the vulgar.
This was an insufferable thought. Sometimes I wished that after death I would
have long arms and extended fingers with which I could gather all my own atoms
and hold them with both hands so that the atoms that belong to me would not
enter the bodies of the vulgar.
Sadeq Hedayat’s novel Blind Owl is brief, curious, and often disquieting.
It tells the tale of a man who paints pen-case covers, who paints the same
image again and again—and old man sitting beneath a cypress tree, an alluring
young woman offering him a water lily, a stream running between them. And he
is haunted by this image, and especially by the woman in this image—who may
also be his wife, his cousin, his mother? The setting of the novel keeps
shifting, the props in the novel keep reappearing, and the characters all seem
like hazy echoes of the two figures in the painting. Chris and Suzanne try to
stay grounded as they discuss this marvellous gem of Iranian modernism.
Content warning: The book contains some potentially disturbing imagery, and
so does our discussion.
Thank you to Michael Collins for helping us edit this episode.
Show Notes.
Next: Sadeq Hedayat: Blind Owl.
[Bookshop.] (We read the
translation by Sassan Tabatabai.)
Not enough of Hedayat’s other work is available in English, but see also
Three Drops of Blood (a collection of short
stories) and The Fable of Creation (a play).
Previous episodes that we mention: Invisible
Man.
Persepolis.
Symposium.
Paradiso.
Frankenstein.
An example of a nineteenth-century painted pen case from
Iran.
Lingam
puja.
Edgar Allan Poe: Berenice.
Junji Ito: Frankenstein and The Enigma of Amigara
Fault.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thank
you.
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