My Country I Will Build You Again Poem
Simin Behbahani, Outspoken Iranian Poet, Dies at 87
Simin Behbahani, a prizewinning poet known every bit "the lioness of Iran" for using her verse every bit a means of mettlesome social protest, died on Tuesday in Tehran. She was 87.
Her expiry was announced past the Iranian Republic News agency, the country'south official information service.
Ms. Behbahani wrote more than 600 poems, collected in 20 books, on subjects as various as earthquakes, revolution, war, poverty, prostitution, liberty of speech and her own plastic surgery. In poems and public speeches, she confronted Iran's religious government, challenging them on practices like the stoning of women who commit adultery.
"She became the voice of the Iranian people," Farzaneh Milani, a Academy of Virginia professor who translated many of her poems into English, said in an interview on Th. "She was the elegant vocalism of dissent, of censor, of nonviolence, of refusal to be ideological."
In 2006, the Iranian authorities shut down an opposition newspaper for press one of her works. In 2010, when she was 82 and almost blind, she was barred from boarding a Paris-bound plane and interrogated through the night regarding poems she had written nearly Islamic republic of iran'south 2009 elections, which were considered fraudulent past authorities opponents.
"Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind," she wrote in "Cease Throwing My Land to the Wind." The verse form ended:
Y'all may wish to take me burned, or decide to rock me
But in your paw match or rock will lose their power to impairment me.
In a 2011 video message to the Iranian people in celebration of the Farsi New Year, President Obama said Ms. Behbahani's "words have moved the world" and quoted a poem she wrote in 1982, "My Country, I Volition Build Yous Over again": "Old I may be, but given the chance, I volition learn."
Fittingly, it was verse that brought her parents together.
Her mother, Fakhr-due east Ozma Arghun, had sent a verse form she wrote to a mag edited past Abbas Khalili, a translator and poet himself. He liked the verse form and was surprised to find it had been written by a woman. He said he wanted to marry the poet, whom he had non nevertheless met.
He did marry her, but three days after their wedding he was arrested and exiled for articles that offended the ruling Pahlavi dynasty. He did not see his daughter — born Siminbar Khalili on July 20, 1927, in Tehran — until she was 14 months old, and did non run across her once more until she was 11.
In the concurrently, the girl's parents divorced. Simin's mother raised her to beloved literature and, when Simin was 14, sent a poem Simin had written to a literary journal, which published information technology. In 1951, Ms. Behbahani published her beginning book of poems.
1 of her first innovations was with the ghazal, a sonnetlike Persian poetic class. It had traditionally been written from the perspective of a male lover admiring a adult female, but Ms. Behbahani made the woman the protagonist. She later used the ghazal form to write nigh all manner of subjects, including the Iran-Republic of iraq war. She also used her skill in writing well-nigh dear to compose lyrics for popular songs.
Ms. Behbahani studied to exist a midwife before pursuing a law degree, which she earned but never used. She taught loftier school — physics and chemistry, and so literature — for more than 20 years.
Among the many literary awards she won was, in 2013, the Janus Pannonius Poetry Prize from the Hungarian PEN Club, which carries a l,000-euro prize and is sometimes called the Nobel Prize for poetry. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Ms. Behbahani'due south first marriage, to Hassan Behbahani, ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to Manuchehr Koushyar, concluded with his decease in 1984. She is survived by her sons, Ali and Hossein Behbahani; her daughter, Omid Behbahani; and several grandchildren.
Jahan News, a hard-line Iranian website, in one case characterized Ms. Behbahani'southward writing as treasonous, saying, "Her poetry, with its slanderous and scandalous way of addressing Iranians, but serves to make Iran's enemies happy."
But Ms. Behbahani viewed herself every bit patriotic, insisting her impassioned writings and public statements were intended just to make Iran better. The poem President Obama quoted began:
My Country, I will build you over again,
If demand be, with bricks made from my life
I will build columns to support your roof
If need exist, with my bones.
hammondprarnethir1955.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/arts/international/simin-behbahani-outspoken-iranian-poet-dies-at-87.html
Post a Comment for "My Country I Will Build You Again Poem"