Hedayat and Experience of Modernity

Ramin Jahanbegloo

 

“. . . human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them to give birth to themselves.”
--Gabriel García Márquez

At the crossroads between tradition and modernity in the modern history of the Middle East stand generations of intellectuals, diverse in their backgrounds and views, who seek to mediate the transition from traditionalism to modern mode of thinking. Almost always these intellectuals are characterized by a consciousness that oscillate furiously between recognizing the peril of being overcome by modernity and the impossible imperative of overcoming it. To many of these intellectuals this experience of modernity comes as a “shock” followed by a pattern of “individualization” rather than by the linear pattern of a monolithic progress. This “individualization” is characterized by a sense of maturity, a process which in turn causes a critical thinking and a disintegration of the enchantment aura. Therefore, each experience of modernity for each intellectual contains its own distinctive dilemmas. This is crucial to bear in mind when discussing experience of modernity pursued within the framework of each intellectual life. Iranian intellectuals began to face these dilemmas for the first time in late 19th century. Throughout a period of 150 years (1840- 1990) utopian thinking played a central role in the life and works of Iranian intellectuals and in the dilemmas they were involved within the process of modernization. This utopian thinking emerged as more or less coherent expression of different traditions of thought rooted in particular visions of the past and the future. During this period of time, questions regarding historical inevitability, teleological vision and logical harmony of values in a monistic system of social relations were at the center of intellectual debates. If we distinguish four generations of Iranian intellectuals starting with the pre-Constitutional period and ending with the post-revolutionary period of the 1990s, we can say that in all of these generations (except maybe the last one) the predominant intellectual type has been the utopian variant whose ascendancy came with different levels of modernization and rationalization of Iranian social life. Yet maybe only one Iranian intellectual appears as an outcast among these generations of intellectuals, because of his critical awareness of reality and his sceptical attitude toward ideologies, and that is Sadeq Hedayat.

An outstanding feature of Hedayat’s modernism is his secular criticism in regard of the Iranian society. Hedayat thus established a critical approach that was almost unique in the period between the two World Wars in Iran. His modern search for truth avoided any romantic glorification of ideology and a bitter realism of underprivileged and ignorant characters inside the Iranian society. Much of this was carried out by Hedayat in a universal style and tone. Maybe this is the main reason why Hedayat can be considered as a universal writer and not simply as an Iranian writer. His work belongs to what Goethe described as the “Weltliteratur” in the last decade of his life as a reaction to Romantic literary criticism’s breaking through of the traditional limits of Occidental literature by re-evaluating the literatures of the Middle Ages and of the Orient. For Goethe world literature was not a hierarchically structured thesaurus, but as an element contemporaneous to him. In a letter to Adolph Friedrich Carl Streckfuss on January 27 1827 he compares his situation to that of “a sorcerer’s apprentice with the world literature  streaming towards him as if to engulf him”. Goethe echoes Herder in stressing that literature is the common property of mankind, and that it emerges in all places and at all times. “National literature does not mean much at present, affirms Goethe in his conversation with Eckermann on January 31 1827, it is time for an era of world literature, and everybody must endeavour to accelerate this epoch”. Erich Auerbach has the same idea in mind when he writes: “World literature refers not simply to what is common and human as such, but rather to this as the mutual fertilisation of the manifold. It presupposes the felix culpa of mankind’s division into host of cultures”. Edward Said also reminds us of the relevance of the idea brought forward by Goethe and Auerbach: “The main requirement for the kind of philological understanding Auerbach and his predecessors were talking about and tried to practise, notes Said, was one that sympathetically and subjectively entered into the life of a written text as seen from the perspective of its time and its author. Rather than alienation and hostility to another time and a different culture, philology as applied to Weltliteratur involved a profound humanistic spirit deployed with generosity and, if I may use the word, hospitality. Thus the interpreter's mind actively makes a place in it for a foreign "other". And this creative making of a place for works that are otherwise alien and distant is the most important facet of the interpreter's mission.”

It is precisely this aptitude of “making place for the other” that provides Hedayat with a unique position among the Iranian writers of his time. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values. Maybe this was the main reason why Hedayat refused to engage in political activism alongside with his communist friends. One can say by reading Hedayat’s work and observing his biography that for him being modern was a “flanerie” in the existential texture of modernity. Hedayat is the “Iranian flaneur” of modernity who sees the rapid change of the world and folds this change into an experiment of the present. With Hedayat the lived instant (Erlebnis) of modernity fused into a narratable experience (Erfahrung). In Hedayat’s writings, the experience of modernity became a lived moment and a citable experience. In other words, Hedayat not only saw modernity, but he was seen by it. Modernity represented a new home for him, not as a place of dwelling, but as a point of transition from the old to the new.

Paris offered a great deal to a modern writer like Hedayat as it had been an urban texture of thought to writers like Benjamin and Hemingway. As Homa Katouzian mentions clearly, “There was plenty (for Hedayat) to read and see, the city lights were much brighter than Tehran’s, and the cafes offered him a marvellous meeting point with friends”. Hedayat’s role as a “flaneur” brought him not only a sense of social criticism, but also a melancholic mood and a venomous pessimism. All these aspects created in him a witty satire and a sharp cynicism that one can find very often in his literary work. According to Katouzian, “Hedayat displays no particular sympathy for the subjects of his writing…. He writes about the lives of the ordinary people, but not for them. If anything, there are frequent hints of disapproval, a lot of which falls on their religious views and superstitious practices”. This sense of despair is quite understandable in a writer like Hedayat who was contemptuous of intellectuals as well as ordinary Iranians of his time. His refusal of the Iranian established literary and political groups was completed by a resentful feeling towards the whole of the Iranian society. We find this attitude in two of Hedayat’s letters. In the first letter to the Czech specialist of  Persian literature, he says, “Everyone tries to make a living by some sort of trade. For example, somebody draws the arc of the [Arabic letter] nun, well, another memorizes classical verse, and somebody else writes flattering letters, and till the end of their days they enjoy a living from what they do”. As for the second letter, it is sent by Hedayat to his friend Mojtaba Minovi in February 1937 and once again describes Hedayat’s unhappiness with the traditionalism and religious obscurantism of the Iranian middle class. “The thoughts of returning to the country of Mashdi taqi and Mashdi Naqi, says Hedayat, gives me the creeps and brings a kind of stale degout[sic] up to my throat”. By reading these letters one can certainly not get to the conclusion that Hedayat’s modernism is hopeful and future- oriented as that of many his contemporaries like Taqizadeh and Furughi. The hope and goal of Furughi was to create suitable conditions for the implementation of modern and liberal principles in Iran, by concentrating his efforts on “reforms from above”. In order to achieve these goals Furughi attempted to influence not only the political actions of Reza Shah (1921-1942), by involving himself in the different branches of government, but also by introducing modern philosophical, economic and political ideas to Iranians through translations, speeches and writings. The reign of Reza Shah was marked by a series of cataclysmic changes in Iran. The western influences that had been filtering into ran through the Qajar political and cultural elites finally gained ascendancy in the efforts of men like Furughi. These efforts were of sufficient magnitude to be qualified as revolutionary changes. The ideal underlying these revolutionary ideals was complete dedication to the principle of modernity through a breakdown of the holistic power of religion and a rapid adoption of instrumental rationality. Yet Furughi’s acceptance of the modern values was accompanied by a deep belief in the cultural and spiritual values of Iran. His aim was to create a strong, centralized government able to resist foreign domination and to modernize Iranian society without using violence. Like most of the modernist intellectuals of his generation, Furughi considered Reza Shah as the charismatic leader who would put an end to the chaotic situation of post-World War I Iran. To realize such an aim, Furughi supported the extensive program of reform instituted by Reza Shah during his two premierships. Yet Furughi’s political career started many years before Reza Shah’s rise to power, with the foundation in 1908 of the first official Freemason’s lodge in Iran, called “Le Reveil de l’Iran”, where he held the rank of Grand Master. For Furughi as for Mirza Malkum Khan before him freemasonry was an institution dedicated to striving to spread ideals of modernity in Iran through universalization and promotion of western principles of freedom, education and secularism. In other words, Furughi’s main goal was to introduce the Iranian youth to modern rationality and to make them think about their own peripheral destiny. In fact, it seems that intellectuals such as Furughi hoped to bring about the necessary reforms in Iran by educating Iranian youth to the philosophical outlook of modernity founded on a wide range of knowledge on politics, economics, science and culture. Furughi knew perfectly that modernity began with the emphasis on reason and the philosophical self-assertion of the subject. His translation of Descartes and his emphasis on Descartes' famous dictum “cogito ergo sum” was a way for him to bring the concepts of reason and rationality to the centre-stage of Iranian society, to such a degree that anything beyond the reach of reason be declared irrelevant. Furughi’s faith in modern values and scientific rationality was absolute. Yet, he was one of the rare Iranian intellectuals of his time who worked openly to gain satisfactory balance between Iranian nationalism and modern humanism.

As for Hedayat, he was far from approving Reza Shah’s policies, while he tried in his way to find an individual balance between his Persianate sensibilities and his secular modernism. There is certainly no doubt that Hedayat’s secular modernism is followed by a clear hostility towards any form of nationalism and illiberalism in Iranian and Western politics. As early as 1937, he was fully conscious and critical of the authoritarian psychology of dictators like Hitler and Goebbels and he wrote to Minovi, “ You’re talking just like everyone else, that just because Goebbels describes Hitler as the genius of all times, everybody should believe it and praise Hitler. But I say, they should spit on the face of Goebbels and Hitler both”. Hedayat’s natural degout of ideologies, but also his critical attitude vis-à-vis the false figures of modern rationality in the Iranian society (exemplified by the Tudeh Party) discouraged him to become a political activist. As a result, he became the exilic figure of modern Iranian intelligentsia, falling out with all forms of ideology and authority and emerging as a solitary “flaneur” and an abandoned outcast among his contemporaries who were either sympathizers of Stalin and the Soviet Union or followers of Reza Shah. Hedayat’s exilic attitude emerges as a homelessness but also as a border-crosser who occupies a liminal space that mediates between different cultures. Hedayat’s secular modernism and exilic “flanerie” is very often echoed in his literary works. These are mainly explicit in his novel The Blind Owl where he paints the personality traits of his contemporaries in Iran described by him as “the rabble” (rajjalehha). This passage, as it is developed bellow, is an example of Hedayat’s enterprise of exilic experience that deploys a form of poetics of criticism. “I felt, says Hedayat’s character, as if this world was not made for the likes of me. It was made for a bunch of beggarly, shameless, brazen, pedantic, thuggish and insatiable people [that is] for the insiders who were made to fit in this world, and who flattered and begged the mighty of the earth and the heavens just like a hungry dog which wags its tail for a piece of bone in front of the butcher shop….”. Far from having existentialist beliefs as it has been suggested in different occasions by Iranian literary critics, this passage of Hedayat’s work confirms two important aspects concerning his critical modernist and secular pessimist attitudes. On the one hand, one can conclude by reading Hedayat that he is a not only a non-ideological writer, but mainly an anti-teleological thinker. In this sense, Hedayat resembles Kafka. By choosing Kafka as his favourite modern writer, Hedayat openly differentiates himself from the communist intellectuals in Iran, who generally consider Kafka as a non-revolutionary and decadent writer. In other words, Headyat’s philosophy of existence is formulated in a Kafkaean style more than in existentialist terms. By writing “The Message of Kafka” in 1948 (his last published work), Hedayat  elaborates his philosophy of man and life as a kind of secular pessimism, “a world were there is no room for God- a world of nothingness”.According to Hedayat, Kafka is an original writer with a novel idea: “There are few writers who create a novel idea, theme or approach, and, in particular, suggest a whole new approach to the problem of existence which has not been thought of before. Kafka is the best of such writers”. On the other hand, Hedayat’s critical modernism is the strongest reason behind his satirical rejection of the fake Iranian Europeanism. Unlike many of the modern Iranian writers of his time, Hedayat is an anti-populist writer without being necessarily a conservative. As Katouzian shows adequately, “His [Hedayat’s] own social class was familiar, at least, and was on the whole the most sophisticated of all established social groups, even though it took a large share of Hedayat’s  disdain and disapproval. But an ordinary bazaar merchant represented almost everything which was offensive to his social, cultural and intellectual consciousness; that is, a mainly traditional class of professional money-makers who knew little about literature, lacked modernist and nationalist finesse, and looked and behaved in the old traditionalist ways and manners”.

In fact, Hedayat expresses his critical vision of the social and cultural attitudes of Iran (as symbolized in the character of a traditional merchant) in one of his most acclaimed works, Haji Aqa, “Even if you build a Wall of China around yourself, you’ll find that the world is changing too fast for you… All you’re concerned about is the loo, the kitchen and the bad…. Never in your life have you owned or beheld anything beautiful, and even if you had you would not have appreciated it. No beautiful scenery has gripped you, no fine painting or inspiring music has never made a powerful impression on you… You’re nothing but a prisoner of your belly and what lies below it. Your life has less meaning for the world than that of a pig, or the plague bug. Any day would be a festive day for you when you manage to steal another three or four thousand tomans”. As we can see, Hedayat is clearly aware of his experience of modernity as a lived instant in opposition to that of the Iranian traditions which he criticizes ferociously. In other words, Hedayat sought to combine his personal experience of the modern with a critical attitude vis-a- vis the tradition. This is to suggest that Hedayat’s personal comprehension of modern experience is different from the experience undergone by the pre- World War II and post- World War II generations of Iranian intellectuals. Unlike the experience of the technocratic and vanguardist intellectuals, Hedayat’s experience of modernity is a non-utopian exploration of the ambiguities of the modern experience. Once gain, it is Kafka who according to Hedayat through his dialectical imagination expresses in the best way the ambiguities of modernity, “What brings tension in reading Kafka is not the fact that he can be interpreted in different ways. It is because on every issue there is a coded probability of the negative as well as the positive…’Knowledge is at once the step which leads to eternal life and barrier against it’ This is also true of his own works: everything is a barrier, but it could also be regarded as a step”.

This last step in Hedayat’s experience of modernity should be understood in terms of his attitude toward death. Through his suicide, Hedayat extended the limits of experience as it was treated in modernity to the point where the concept of modernity itself is jeopardized. Hedayat’s literary experience of modernity is not just an elaboration of anxiety and sadness, it is the expression of the mood of a heroic actor who lives through modernity by giving it a weight of experience. By pushing his secular pessimism to its limits, Hedayat allowed his experience of modernity to suspend itself between our past and our future.