Gabriel Torres
“I have sinned a rapturous sin.” Forugh Farrokhzad was a poet during the 1950s in Iran. Her poetry proves how personal reflective poetry is political when one’s own identity is controversial and politicized. Some argue that Farrokhzad’s poetry is deliberately provocative so as to evoke political outrage and make statements; however, one can quickly see how her poems are also simple statements about her life and identity as a woman. Unfortunately, for many marginalized and otherwise oppressed people, the personal is political- the privilege of disassociation is unavailable. Thus, for Farrokhzad, each pensive line she wrote was alienating to some and seen as rebellious, even revolutionary because social norms denied her those pleasures which she desired.
Forugh Farrokhzad was born in 1935. She grew up in coastal Noshahr before moving to Tehran in the tumult of World War II. Her mother was an extremely harsh disciplinarian, all in the name of loving protection. Her father was a military man whose preference for his sons was made very clear. She had six siblings. At sixteen, she fell in love with and married a much older relative, with whom she had a child. He supported her literary endeavours, and by the time she was nineteen, Farrokhzad’s first poem was published. Not only did her poetry bring her fame, but it also raised controversy, eliciting accusations of sexual infidelity which spread like wildfire. She split with her husband soon after and in the end lost all custody and visitation rights to her son.
In Iran, sexual politics and gender relations were at the forefront of society. The separation of the sexes and the division of society by gender were accepted. At best, the concept of female sexuality was completely ignored and at worst it was condemned and demonised. Ludicrously, the accepted Persian words referring to intercourse meant “to do” as a man and “to give” as a woman. This linguistic function serves as evidence for the prevailing attitude toward intimacy and relationships in Farrokhzad’s environment.
Farrokhzad’s poetry is unapologetically sexual and feminine. Freedom from shame permits mobility. She writes explicitly about intimacy, religion, relationships, and society. For her as a poet, this is all profoundly reflective literature- an honest memoir.
For the rest of the world as spectators, her poetry is political. This essay claims that whatever her intentions were while writing, the outcome was political as it so often is for artists whose identities are subject to the law. Both in Farrokhzad’s lifetime and today, no matter what one’s gender is in Iran, their actions and abilities are dictated by said gender as a function of social norms. For women, these restrictions are far more prohibitive. Thus, for Farrokhzad as a sexual and independent woman, any reflection she published publicly became inherently political. Many of her poems are raw in diction and use blatant symbolism to pass on a message. Farrokhzad, in a poem about marriage, writes, “this band— / so lustrous and aglow— / is the clamp of bondage, of slavery”. The fierce poem was part of a collection she published in 1955 called Asir [captive]. The 1955 social standard for women around the world, not just in Iran, was to get married and be primarily a homemaker. Single women had fewer rights than married women, yet, as a twenty-year-old, she was bold enough to say that marriage, symbolized by
“the ring,” was “bondage…slavery.” In the same collection of poetry, she has a more melancholic lament about the pains and duties of motherhood while trapped in a marriage. She knows that in Iran in 1955, if she leaves her husband, she will not be able to keep her son, and this torment is the subject of the poem titled “Captive.” She painfully asks and pleads, “should I one day break out and flee, / what could I say to this crying child? / Dear sky, leave me, let me be, / for I’m a bird cooped in a cage”
Farrokhzad is, in the first person, publicly agonizing about something deeply personal and painful that many may find shameful. Iranian novelist Shahrnush Parsipur describes Iran as a place where “people whisper even behind tall walls”. Farrokhzad publicizing her inner turmoil on something as delicate as leaving a child is powerfully personal for her and at the same time, profoundly political. It demonstrates that the hardship all people go through is not something that needs to be hidden away or seen as a cause of shame. No matter how difficult or hurtful, Farrokhzad managed to share something with people which could liberate them from their own repression. She proclaims plainly that she feels like a captive. She attacked accepted norms in Iran through her open reflections on the gender relations that affected her ability to be a mother and a wife.
On a different but related topic, she welcomed anyone who read her poetry into her bedroom. Her poems told stories of sexual encounters and romantic endeavours in elegant and refined, yet deeply sensual ways. In 1964 she published “Red Rose,” in which she writes, “He took me to the garden of red rose. / In the dark, hung a red rose on my wild hair then, / made love to me on the petal of a red rose”. This poem alludes to the revolutionary ideology present among many young artists and intellectuals. The red rose is the symbol of the socialist revolution. In “On Loving,” she writes, “My fevered, raving poem / shamed by its desires, / hurls itself once again into fire, / the flames’ relentless craving”. Not only does she write about these desires and encounters with other partners, but she also alludes to masturbation, a forbidden and deviant act in twentieth-century religious societies, writing, “Aroused, parched, and fevered, the water’s lips / rippled trembling kisses on my thighs, / and we suddenly collapsed, intoxicated, gratified, / both sinners, my body and the spring’s soul”. In a culture where sexual explicitness is unacceptable, using poetry and other intellectual mediums to discuss sex is akin to rejecting the status quo and therefore, is political.
Forugh Farrokhzad also reflects on her relationship with religion. In “Rebellious God,” she puts herself in God’s shoes as if she were Them and says, “tired of being a prude, I’d seek Satan’s bed at midnight / and find refuge in the declivity of breaking laws. / I’d happily exchange the golden crown of divinity / for the dark, aching embrace of a sin”. In Iran, politics and religion have always been connected. By turning God into something more human sinful, and imperfect, she rejects the accepted narratives. In the verses, she fetishizes breaking laws and expectations, which strives to disturb the strict social order in her home. She also alludes to Adam and Eve, saying what they did was not wrong and that she has done the same.
In “Inaugurating the Garden,” she writes, “everyone knows. / Everyone knows you and I / have seen the garden through that cold, / grim window and have plucked the apple / from that far, flirtatious branch”. The story of Adam and Eve is fundamental to the cosmology of Abrahamic faiths, but she downplays its importance and makes light of its warnings when she confesses to her and her partner’s similar transgressions. The open discussion of sinful activity in her poetry antagonizes the pervasive politics of repression.
Furthermore, her reflections offer a more tender variety of masculinity, unlike the accepted forms. In one such poem, she discusses a former partner who found joy in simple, everyday things. She reminisces how “he loves earnestly— / an alley in a village grove, / a tree, / a bowl of ice cream, / a clothesline. / In this land of sinister wonders, / my lover is a simple man”. Her idyllic description romanticizes men who are gentle and take pleasure in simple things, which is divergent from the rhetoric of the ideal of strongmen and martyrs. Her reminiscent verse, purposely or not, calls for society to allow broader ranges of masculinity.
Farrokhzad’s poetry received mixed reviews. Many found her inspiring and exciting, but others thought she went too far. Pre-revolutionary Iran was a place of new ideas and hope for progress. Farrokhzad embodied the rejection of the status quo. Many of her critics accused her of being too “western” and claimed her poetry and ideology were empty at best and harmful at worst. Her poetry gave a voice to so-called “Westoxication” and westernized women who disturbed the social order and upset “natural sexuality.”
Many revolutionary thinkers blamed the ills of society on female promiscuity and its relationship with capitalist consumer culture. Her poetry, which recorded her own stories and truths, discussed female sexuality as something positive; even extra- shameful acts such as masturbation or sex out of wedlock were admired in her writing. Her attitude of positivity toward female sexuality threatened the imposed patriarchy.
This essay has so far established that Farrokhzad’s poetry was reflective in a unique way, particularly for women in Iran in this pre-revolution era. She wrote about the hardships of motherhood and wifehood, her enjoyment of sex and masturbation, and her rejection of traditional
assumptions of religion and religious beliefs. These topics were all too political in a culture reliant on patriarchy and rejection of women’s total liberation
for stability. After the Revolutionary period in the late 1970s, when the new Islamic Republic came to power, her poems were banned. When one of her publishers refused to cease and desist printing, his premises were lit ablaze by the government. The conservative, religious government’s ruling on her poetry, long after her death, is proof of the solid political spirit that existed in her poetry. Her honest and open reflections in verse threatened the regime long after her voice fell silent. When identities are legislated on and repressed, the poetry produced by subjects of said legislation is political, even if they are simply poems about past lovers or difficult moments.
Farrokhzad, Forugh. Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. 2007. tr. Sholeh Wolpé. University of Arkansas Press. Fayetteville. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/ book/sin/id498221140.
Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society. 1975. Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge. Revised ed., 2003. Milani, Farzaneh. Veils and Words: the Emerging voices of Iranian Women Writers. 1992. I. B. Taurus & Co, London. pp 127-152.
Parsipur, Shahrnush. Sag va Zemestan-e Boland [The Dog and the Long Winter]. Tehran: Sepehr, 1976. pp 98. Quoted in Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words, 127.