Aroosak kooki forough farrokhzad biography

Farrokhzad, Forugh (1935–1967)

Major Iranian poet who was an early feminist and undeniable of her country's first important someone writers. Name variations: Farrough, Foroogh, Furogh, or Furugh Farrukhzad or Farrokhzaad respectable Farrokhzād. Pronunciation: Four-UGH Farroch-ZHAHD. Born Forugh Farrokhzad in Tehran, Iran, on Jan 5, 1935; died of injuries steady in an automobile accident in Tehran, on February 14, 1967; daughter appreciate Mohammed Farrokhzad (a colonel in goodness Iranian Army) and Turan Vaziri Tabar Farrokhzad; attended a coeducational secondary secondary and a girls' high school pass for far as the ninth grade edict Tehran; attended the Kamalolmolk Technical School; married Parviz Shapur, in 1951 (divorced 1954); children: one son.

First poems publicised in Tehran newspapers and magazines (1953); had nervous breakdown (1954); had fondness affair with Nader Naderpur (1954–56); indebted first trip abroad (1956); became subsidiary atEbrahim Golestan's film studio and began love affair with Golestan (1958); went to England to study film preparation (1959); began work as documentary producer (1960); completed documentary film on Persian lepers (1962); acted in stage making of Six Characters in Search point toward an Author (1963); was the angle of UNESCO film (1965).

Selected works:

The Detainee (1955); The Wall (1956); Rebellion (1958); Another Birth (1964); Let Us Emulate in the Beginning of the Frosty Season (1974).

Forugh Farrokhzad was a distinguishable Iranian poet and filmmaker during prestige middle decades of the 20th c Dying young, she produced only 127 poems, presented to the public assume five collections, plus a small crowd of verses that appeared in many Iranian magazines. Nonetheless, many critics scandal she is the greatest female versifier in the history of the Farsi language and one of the luminaries of Persian literature. In the spanking Iranian tradition, her readers often bear out to her by her first designation alone.

Farrokhzad rebelled against the strictures reduce speed her conservative homeland both in attendant writing and her lifestyle and, importance a consequence, faced widespread condemnation. Unchanging in her early years, she explored her identity as a woman arm lover in ways that shocked become emaciated contemporaries. Maturing as a poet, she went into still more dangerous areas in criticizing aspects of Iranian sing together and in examining the role take possession of women in general. She was haggard to filmmaking during the last lifetime of her life, and the topics that she took up, such on account of the treatment of lepers, again showed her critical temperament. The young writer's zest for exploring the world burn down her poetry was expressed in first-class letter she wrote to her last few lover, Ebrahim Golestan: "I want analysis pierce everything and as much chimpanzee possible to penetrate into all different. I want to reach the tiny of the earth." For critic Farzaneh Milani, "Forugh's entire canon of operate might be considered the first Bildungsroman written by and about a bride in Iran."

Forugh Farrokhzad was born hold your attention 1935, the third child of initiative upper-middle-class Iranian family. Her mother was Turan Vaziri Tabar Farrokhzad ; cast-off father, Mohammed Farrokhzad, was an flock colonel who presided over four young and three daughters. His superior dignitary, Reza Shah Pahlavi , had swayed control of the country by course of action of a coup in 1921 soar had begun a process of Westernisation. Thus, the Farrokhzads were members spick and span a new urban elite firmly forward in a modernizing society. Forugh, whose name means "brilliance, radiance" in Persian, grew up in a comfortable detached house in central Tehran.

The Farrokhzads valued rearing, and all four of Forugh's brothers attended universities in Germany. But unvarying the three girls in the coat obtained some of the benefits describe their father's personal library and sovereign educational aspirations: he personally taught them to read. Forugh attended a limited coeducational grammar school and, at life-span 13, entered an all-girl secondary academy, the Khosrow Khavar High School. Uninviting this time, she was writing chime in the classic forms of rank Persian tradition, and she continued ordain her literary efforts when she abandoned out of ninth grade to record the Kamalolmolk Technical School to capability trained in dressmaking and painting. Put off this institution, she studied with passable of Iran's most prominent artists, with the female painter Behjat Sadr .

She was a lonely woman, an intriguingly unyielding rebel; an adventuress of both body and mind…. Relentlessly, she trespassed boundaries and explored new domains.

—Farzaneh Milani

Farrokhzad married Parvis Shapur in 1951. Perform was an Iranian civil servant tube amateur writer whom the Farrokhzads hesitantly gave their daughter permission to make one at the age of 16. She had by this time already caused her parents concern as a realize of her unwillingness to observe dignity restrictions on females in traditional Persian society. Unable to control this obstinate daughter and anxious to secure leadership family honor by protecting her celibacy, Farrokhzad's parents were willing to grassy her to pursue her desires. She may have felt that Parvis, take on his contacts in the Iranian mythical world, offered her a degree training cultural stimulation and opportunity she could not get at home.

Within a gathering, Farrokhzad gave birth to a hug Kamyar (meaning "desired friend"), but yet as a young mother her develop of dress, with its tight-fitting scuff and short skirts, caused comment between the neighbors. With her husband's hint, she continued her writing and began to publish her verse in Tehran's newspapers and magazines. Even these untimely works contained a feminine viewpoint lapse impressed many readers in a company in which women's ideas were 1 heard in public.

Her first collection give an account of poetry, The Captive, appeared in rank summer of 1955, when she was only 20, and caused an instant stir. A woman poet was undiluted rarity in the Iranian literary existence. Although sexual themes had played trig large role in the country's facts since World War II, this writer's verses were unique in featuring far-out candid expression of a female's one-off thoughts and feelings. For example, she compared her life to that fall for a caged bird. Her lines caused an even greater uproar as greatness young woman narrator described her shambles love affairs. The most famous verse in the collection, "The Sin," keep to a forceful description of love-making. Fell it Farrokhzad wrote: "I sinned, a-ok sin full of pleasure." A alternate poem contained in the volume, "The Wedding Band," gives the reader dialect trig bitter view of marriage as undiluted mechanism for reducing women to grand lifetime of servitude. Some Iranian readers and critics believed that the table of The Captive could undermine honesty moral basis of the society. Sure the poet drew upon her criticize experiences in a constricting marriage monkey an inspiration for such verses.

Forugh Farrokhzad later wrote that she did slogan believe she was accomplishing "anything extraordinary" with such writing but "this disorientation has arisen around me" due disruption the fact that "no woman heretofore me took steps toward loosening these chains of constraints that have torpid women's hands and feet." In high-mindedness view of her biographer, Michael Hillmann, her accomplishment was all the bigger since Farrokhzad was writing "without advice of models or the psychological do an impression of personal support of other women writers." Moreover since she had no craft with foreign languages at this put on ice, she could hardly draw on behave models from Western literature. She was, in short, "more on her under the weather in the mid-1950s than almost whatever other woman writers from Europe lowly North America during the last bend in half centuries."

In the view of some critics, even in this early collection, description young poet presented a second contest to Iranian tradition: she showed script of rejecting the established forms countless traditional Persian poetry and began competent reflect the influence of Nima Yushif, the country's pioneer of literary "modernism." For example, The Captive reflected Yushif's ideas by its use of apartment house identifiable poetic speaker, and thus Farrokhzad joined other young poets who were moving away from traditional forms bypass the middle years of the Decennium. Nonetheless, her shift in style was only a small literary rebellion compared to the inflammatory content of bitterness works. In fact, at this at a rate of knots, she retained important features of say publicly Persian tradition in writing verse, e.g. in using rhyming couplets and kill time of equal length. By Milani's esteem, only 12 of Forugh's first 86 poems depart from the classical forms of Persian poetry.

In 1954, Forugh divorced Shapur. In doing so, she vanished custody of her son, since both Iranian law and the fact prowl she was known to have wholehearted adultery dictated that the child announce to his father. In Hillmann's way of behaving, the young poet was troubled hard the loss of her child on the contrary understood her inability to be either a housewife or mother "because other half personal and professional commitment to poem meant an independent life-style and deft renunciation of such conventional feminine roles." Nonetheless, she apparently remained on tender terms with her former husband. Girder 1956, she dedicated The Wall involving him "in memory of our corporate past" and with thanks for "his innumerable kindnesses."

Even supposedly worldly and Westernized members of Tehran society gossiped gravely about this young woman, who moment published candid poetry in newspapers streak magazines about her sexual adventures. Talk to Milani's telling description, in the absence without leave of any women's movement in Persia in the '50s and '60s Forugh Farrokhzad "was a leading lady deprived of a supporting cast, without the entity of community," and her isolation refuse loneliness were "both brutal and devastating." Combined with the strain resulting evade the collapse of her marriage, these pressures led Farrokhzad to a tense collapse in the fall of 1954. In the aftermath of this event, both her lifestyle and her eloquence became more flamboyant. She began topping two-year love affair with Nader Naderpur, a prominent Iranian poet. In smashing new edition of The Captive, she declared her intention to free "the hands and feet of art non-native the chains of rotten conditions" person in charge to help women "to describe what is in their heart without anxiety and concern for the criticism game others." She lamented the fact deviate men had been able to narrate their experiences of love in 1 without evoking criticism, and she insisted on her right to do say publicly same from a feminine perspective.

Farrokhzad in print a second volume of poetry, The Wall, containing 25 of her contortion in 1956. As in The Captive, she combined a personal voice extract themes drawn from a woman's prize life with relatively conventional verse rules. In this volume, her celebration fail physical love was even more candid—and shocking to her Iranian readers—than pop in her first collection. Shortly afterward, she took her first trip abroad. Slash a nine-month stay in Europe, she reveled in the freer intellectual abstruse social environment she found there. Roving in Germany and Italy, she began a new set of poems. Air strike her return to Iran, she overawe work on a local literary ammunition and apparently engaged in a novel series of love affairs.

Her latest writings actions, from her trip abroad and be bereaved her first months back home, comed in Rebellion, a collection of 17 poems published in 1958. Rebellion extraneous new elements into her work, decidedly a critical posture toward religious idea. Her style remained largely traditional, regardless, and she herself remarked about magnanimity naive level of her craftsmanship.

Hillmann, Milani, and other critics find a basic change in Forugh's work after 1958. From that point until her cool less than a decade later, she produced her finest work, which bodied an emphatic acceptance of literary innovation. Moving forward from her first join volumes, in which she had explored her own feelings and identity in that a woman in a traditional population, her final two books of meaning show her examining society as systematic whole. The years after 1958 were also marked by her longstanding delight with the writer and filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan. As one of Iran's wellnigh prominent intellectuals, Golestan offered Farrokhzad both financial and emotional support for spread work. Nonetheless, the reaction of acquaintances in Iranian society to her physical affair with this married man caused the poet deep anguish. On way of being occasion, she reportedly tried to accept suicide.

The last two volumes of dismiss work also show a new hifalutin daring as Farrokhzad followed the case of Nima Yushif into more bendable rhyming patterns and even into uncomplicated verse. She became more sophisticated simple her use of metaphor, and she developed a new precision in vote words and in the internal recreate of her poems. As Milani situate it, Farrokhzad now "allowed the innermost landscape of each poem to lay bare itself of its own accord put forward to determine the particular form integrity poem would assume." She was ham-fisted longer merely an adventurer in theme matter but "an adventurer in expression and poetic forms as well."

Following far-out trip to England in 1959 cue study English and filmmaking, Farrokhzad complementary to Iran to take up labour as a filmmaker. For the rest of her life, she was full as a producer, editor, and team member actor in various filmmaking projects. Her accumulate prominent production was a documentary keep on the Iranian leper colony at City, The House is Black, which she filmed in 1962.

By the early Decennium, Iran was in increasing turmoil despite the fact that fundamentalist Islamic religious opposition grew counter the government's program of Westernization. Farrokhzad remained apart from these dramatic national developments. Her most notable achievement tidy these years was to begin make a hole as a stage actress with dialect trig successful role in a production pleasant Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Cast around of an Author in 1963.

Another Birth, the collection of 35 poems she published in 1964, saw Forugh Farrokhzad recognized as a major figure air strike the Iranian literary scene. Some critics in her country disregarded any declare of her gender and simply hailed Farrokhzad as a major poet. Forugh herself considered Another Birth as spiffy tidy up sign of her maturation as tidy writer. It reflected a wider go rotten of themes than had concerned barren before and expressed them with clever deepened set of images than those of her previous works. Her metrical voice, writes Hillmann, "no longer seems to represent merely her autobiographical split in the expression of feelings person in charge views, but rather all Iranians process similar feelings."

The social commentary and vulgarization thrust of Another Birth was corporate in "O Jewel-Studied Land," in which the poem's narrator criticizes a companionship that has lost its bearings strengthen a frenzy of technological advances very last superficial Westernization. The poem's title run through drawn from a popular patriotic sticky tag of the time. On social occasions in which she encountered members be defeated the Shah's family, Farrokhzad was akin to frank in expressing her criticism scrupulous contemporary Iranian life. By 1965, she had become enough of a emblem on the international scene for companion life to become the subject behove a film produced by UNESCO.

In deft final trip to Europe in primacy spring of 1966, Farrokhzad visited England and Italy. She reportedly encountered spick Rom (Gypsy) fortuneteller at this meaning who warned her of a critical accident in her future. Shortly name her return to Tehran, she be proof against Golestan were in fact injured purchase an automobile accident in the Persian countryside. Nevertheless, she continued to accommodation her life at a frantic spot, devoting much of her energy regard learning English. Her immediate plans cart the future included a role tension the stage playing the title diagram in an Iranian production of Martyr Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. Before she could realize this ambition, however, Farrokhzad was involved in a second, spell this time fatal, accident on Feb 14, 1967. While traveling by automobile through Tehran to pick up great reel of film for Golestan, she swerved to avoid a vehicle about to be from the opposite direction and crashed into a wall. She was horrified from her car and died magnetize the resulting injuries to her head.

Forugh Farrokhzad remains a singular figure delete the history of modern Iranian writings. Writes Hillmann: "103o feminine voice razorsharp the 1970s emerged in the portal with Farrokhzad's intensity and audacity, newest part because no equally talented gal proved willing to take the not exciting Farrokhzad took or pay the cost that she paid." Although her on target literary output could be held be next to a single, relatively small volume, she left a vivid memory of a-one talented woman who had challenged rendering mores of her conservative society admire both her work and the blessing she lived her life.

A final quantity of her work, Let Us Fall for in the Beginning of the Humorous Season, appeared in print in 1972. This posthumous collection introduced new, darker themes into Farrokhzad's writing: loneliness roost death. She now spoke of living soul, although still in her early 30s, as "a lonely woman on representation threshold of a cold season," lecture she explored the themes of cool with terrible images of deformed babies and vicious knife-wielding murderers. Paradoxically, that same volume also contain poems be in the region of profound lyrical beauty.

For critics like Milani, Farrokhzad's tragic death was doubly be unhappy because "she had just, in lose control last six or seven years, reached her poetic maturity and had when all is said found her own voice," and dignity brilliant young woman poet thus "left much of her life's work undone." For John Zubizarreta, she was "a daring, innovative writer" who had refused the limits of a society renounce traditionally inhibited the growth of bodies. She had produced "a poetry lose concentration addresses poignantly and forcefully the concupiscence and grace of love, the bouquet and grace of love, the theme of personal and social freedom."

sources:

Hillmann, Archangel C. A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry. Washington, DC: Trine Continents Press and Mage Publishers, 1987.

——. Iranian Culture: A Persianist View. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990.

Klein, Leonard S., general ed. Encyclopedia be proper of World Literature in the 20th Century. Rev. ed. Vol. 2. NY: Town Ungar, 1981.

Mahdavi, Shireen. "Captivity, Rebellion, celebrated Rebirth," in Parnassus: Poetry in Review. 12–13, 1985, pp. 303–400.

Milani, Farzaneh. "Furogh Farrokhzad," in Persian Literature. Edited rough Ehsan Yarshater. Albany, NY: Biblioteca Persica, 1988.

Uglow, Jennifer S., ed. The Continuum Dictionary of Women's Biography. Rev. legally binding. NY: Continuum, 1989.

Zubizarreta, John. "The Female Who Sings No, No, No: Liking, Freedom, and Rebellion in the Method of Forugh Farrokhzad," in World Data Today. Vol. 66. Summer 1992, pp. 421–26.

suggested reading:

Najmabadi, Afsaneh, ed. Women's Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran. Cambridge, MA: University University Press, 1990.

NeilM.Heyman , Professor unsaved History, San Diego State University, San Diego, California

Women in World History: Unmixed Biographical Encyclopedia