| Ahmad Shamlou | |
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| Born | December 12, 1925 Tehran, Iran |
| Died | July 24, 2000 (aged 74) Karaj, Iran |
| Occupation | Poet, Encyclopedist and Journalist |
| Period | 1947–2000 |
| Literary movement | Modern literature |
| Notable work(s) |
The Book of Alley |
| Notable award(s) |
Stig Dagerman Award
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www.shamlou.org |
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Ahmad Shamlou (Persian: احمد شاملو, Ahmad Šāmlū Persian pronunciation: [æhˈmæd(-e) ʃˈɒːmluː] also known under his nom de plume A. Bamdad (Persian: ا. بامداد) (December 12, 1925 — July 24, 2000) was a Persian poet, writer, and journalist. Shamlou is arguably the most influential poet of modern Iran.[2] His poetry was initially very much influenced by and was in the tradition of Nima Youshij. Shamlou's poetry is complex, yet his imagery, which contributes significantly to the intensity of his poems, is simple. As the base, he uses the traditional imagery familiar to his Iranian audience through the works of Persian masters like Hafiz and Omar Khayyám. For infrastructure and impact, he uses a kind of everyday imagery in which personified oxymoronic elements are spiked with an unreal combination of the abstract and the concrete thus far unprecedented in Persian poetry, which distressed some of the admirers of more traditional poetry .
Shamlou has translated extensively from French to Persian and his own works are also translated into a number of languages. He has also written a number of plays, edited the works of major classical Persian poets, especially Hafiz. His thirteen-volume Ketab-e Koucheh (The Book of Alley) is a major contribution in understanding the Iranian folklore beliefs and language. He also writes fiction and Screenplays, contributing to children’s literature, and journalism.
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Ahmad Shamlou was born to Haydar Shamlou and Kowkab Araqi on December 12, 1925 in Tehran to an army family. Ahmad was the second child and the only son in a family of six children. His father Haydar was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and during his childhood he moved to Tehran with family. Kowkab also came from an immigrant family. In the manner of many children who grow up in families with military parents, he received his early education in various towns, including Khash and Zahedan in the southeast of Iran, and Mashhad in the northeast, and Rasht in the north. Shamlou's childhood and adolescent were neither privileged nor easy and home was not an environment that could foster his sensitivities and he often found solace in solitude.[3] Moving with his family from one town to the next proved a hurdle to shamlou's education. By 1941, his high school education still incomplete, he left Birjand for Tehran. He intended to attend the German-established Tehran Technical School, one of the best secondary schools of that period and learn the German language. He was admitted to this school on the condition that he be demoted two years. Soon in 1942, he and the rest of the family once again left Tehran to move for Gorgan. In 1945, he made a final attempt at completing his high school degree in Urumieh, but he failed. At age 29, following the fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, Shamlu was arrested for being a member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran and imprisoned for more than one year.
I, an Iranian poet, first learned poetry from the Spanish Lorca, the frenchman Éluard, the German Rilke, the Russian Mayakovsky [...] and the American Langston Hughes; and only later, with this education I turned to the poems of my mother tongue to see and to know, say, the grandeur of Hafiz from a fresh perspective.
Shamlou's debut work, Forgotten Songs (Persian: آهنگهای فراموش شده), was a collection of classical and modern poetry which was published in 1947 with an introduction of Ebrahim Dilmaghanian. In 1948, he started to write in a literary monthly called Sokhan-no. Two years later his first short story The Woman Behind the Brass Door (Persian: زن پشت در مفرغی) was published. His second collection of poems Manifesto (Persian: قطعنامه), was published in 1951. He showed inclinations toward Socialist ideology. He rose to fame from his third volume of poetry, Fresh Air (Persian: هوای تازه), published in 1957. Zia Movahed, poet and philosopher commented that "Anyone who reads Fresh Air today can see that this language, this texture, is different from anything else. In contemporary poetry, few have accomplished this kind of rhythm as Shamlu has. Fresh Air was the greatest event in our poetry – after Hafez".[4]
Shamlou was married three times. In 1947, he married Ashraf Isslamiya (d. 1978) and together they had three sons and a daughter: Siavash Shamlou, (1948–2009),[5] Sirous Shamlou, Saman Shamlou, Saghi Shamlou. They divorced in 1957 after several years of conflict and long separation. His second marriage to Tusi Hayeri Mazandarani (d. 1992) who was fourteen years older than Shamlou, ended in divorce in 1963 after four years of marriage. He met Aida Sarkisian in the spring of 1962 and they were married two years later in 1964. Aida came from an Armenian-Iranian family who lived in the same neighborhood as Shamlou. Her Christian family objected to the marriage on the basis of the Islamic background of Shamlou's family. Moreover, Shamlou was older, and had been divorced twice.[6] She became an instrumental figure in Shamlou's life and they remained together until his death in 2000. Her name appears in many of his later poems. She currently lives in Karaj.
Suffering from several illness at the same time, Shamlou's physical condition deteriorated in 1996. He underwent several operations and in 1997 his right foot was amputated due to severe diabetic problems. He died on Sunday July 23, 2000 at 9 p.m. at his home in Dehkadeh in Karaj due to complications from his diabetes.[7] On July 27, thousands took part in Ahmad Shamlou's funeral.[8][9] He was buried in Emamzadeh Taher, Karaj.[10]
You can find recording of his poetry, in his own voice, in almost every Iranian home. He had turned into a myth years ago. His words have had the charisma and magic of a prophet. He did not lead by decree. He just lived and his life and words scattered through the minds and hearts of several generations of Iranian humanists and liberals, giving them hope, faith and aspiration.
Ahmad Shamlou has published more than seventy books: 16 volumes of poetry; 5 anthologies of poetry; 5 volumes including novels, short stories & screenplays; 9 volumes of children's literature; 9 translations of poetry into Persian; 21 novels translated into Persian; 5 collections of essays, lectures and interviews; 10 volumes (to date) of The Book Of Alley.
Ahmad Shamlou's poetic vision accords with both western Modernist concepts and the modern transformation of classical Persian poetry. The Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, the African American poet Langston Hughes, the French thinker and writer, Louis Aragon, and Nima Youshij are among the figures who influenced him. One of the disciple of Nima Youshij, Shamlou, standing among the generation who adopted his techniques, constantly sought untried ways, new poetic realms. He quickly became the flag bearer of young Iranian poets and writers that included Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Mehdi Akhavan Sales, Yadollah Roya’i, Nosrat Rahmani, and Nader Naderpour.
Shamlou is known for employing the style and words of the everyman. He developed a simple, free poetic style, known in Iran as Sepid Persian Poetry (literally meaning white), which is a kind of free verse that departs from the tightly balanced rhythm and rhymes of classical Persian poetry. The themes in his poetry range from political issues, mostly freedom, to human condition.
Shamlou is a humanist and a socially minded intellectual who has woven personal love and affection together with his social attitudes. He was a major force in the intellectual movement opposed to the former Shah of Iran before the 1979 revolution. In 1976, he left his country as a form of protest against censorship and the suffocating political atmosphere. In 1977, one year before the collapse of Shah's Regime, he signed an open letter which supported the rights of gathering for members of The Writers Association of Iran.[11] New Islamic regime wasn't favorable to him, considering him as an anti-Islamist nationalist element, a traitor and a Westernised writer.[12] However, with a view to his popularity, the ruling clerics could not arrest him, but at the same time didn't allow publication of his works for many years. Since the early 1990s his poems have appeared in many literary journals.[12] Shamlou standing has been reinstated under Iran's moderate president, Mohammad Khatami. Khatami's liberal Culture Minister, Ataollah Mohajerani, openly expressed his grief over Shamlou's death.[12]