‘THE WIND IS ALIVE’!—A WORD OF HOPE TO THE WOMEN AND ALL PEOPLE OF IRAN FROM THEIR GREAT POET WHO LIVES IN HIS WORDS AND THEIR MEMORY
Professor Negar Bouban at Tivoli-Vredenburg 2021

‘THE WIND IS ALIVE’!—A WORD OF HOPE TO THE WOMEN AND ALL PEOPLE OF IRAN FROM THEIR GREAT POET WHO LIVES IN HIS WORDS AND THEIR MEMORY

My venerable doctoral dissertation director once expressed his satisfaction with my approach to historical research by likening me to one of those French pigs or basset hounds trained to root out truffles.?This was an apt simile, as I do tend to follow my nose, and to discover quite a lot that way. This is especially true of me when trying to get to know a culture and a people I have overlooked until now, e.g., the Iranian people and the cradle of civilization they call home.??My only personal point of reference up to his point was an unforgettable Iranian exchange student in my high school in the late 1960s whom I admired, alas, only from afar.?A great deal has changed since then, myself included. I am now trying to make up for lost time with the help of the great Iranian sisterhood and brotherhood represented here on LinkedIn.?

Already predisposed to appreciate the musical instrument known as the Oud, introduced to the Iberian Peninsula through the Moorish invasion and occupation of 'Al-Andalus,' and also toted back to Europe by the medieval Crusaders to become the Lute (German Laute, from the Arabic Al-Oud) and following my trusty musical nose, I ‘discovered’ a Kurdish-Iranian master of the instrument who not only plays but sings, and does both beautifully. That is a good thing, since Professor Dr. Negar Bouban[1] , architect and musician, is or at least was, professor of music at Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, before moving to Germnany permanently in 2016.?A master of the Santur, the Oud and the Barbat, Dr. Bouban did groundbreaking research in her doctoral dissertation on the relationship between the ‘weight,’ tonal stress, in both Persian classical and folk music and the Farsi language.?This scholar and musician has had a major influence on the performance of Persian music in Iran by serving as an architect and design consultant for the construction of new concert spaces adapted to this unique musical genre.?Initially, before becoming completely hooked on this artist, I enjoyed two YouTube video clips of hers. The first is a purely instrumental performance, probably recorded in Iran, in which Dr. Bouban is attired in the required hijab.[2] In the second performance I viewed, given at Tivoli-Vredenburg in Denmark, the hijab is not present and she not only plays but sings passionately and expressively, wth expert abandon.[3] ? This incredible performance in the Tivoli “Dancing Strings Oud Festival” two years ago, sderved up truffles within truffles. In two of her original musical compositions Negar Bouban sang the powerful words of Iran’s most beloved contemporary poet and late dissident, Ahmad Shamlou, a name of which you can be sure I had never heard before listening to her explanation and moving performance.[4]

The second Shamlou poem Dr. Bouban used in her set at Tivoli intrigued me at a couple of levels. Negar explained the basic thematic structure of the work as a struggle between two forces of nature, life and death no less, with only a strong wind able to make the difference in favor of life.?I have used this sort of opposition of natural forces device in at least one major poem of my own, and here was a Zoroastrian theme for sure, with that eternal struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, order and chaos, life and death, or so I thought.?

But the reference in Shamlou’s poem was not to Enuma Elish and the setting was not the fertile crescent of the ancient Near East, but rather the life and death struggle for political freedom in Iran today, one that began long before the Islamic revolution of 1979 with conflicting visions of democracy and the public good under the Pahlavi Dynasty. ?

Ahmad Shamlou had, in his youth, thrown in his lot with the Communist Party, at the time the social democratic Tudeh Party, seen by the monarchy as pro-Soviet, but today distinguishing itself from the Iranian People’s Fadee Guerillas. The young poet had paid the bitter price of imprisonment for that decision.?Hardly a good Marxist, who would see everything as 'political,' Shamlou was hardly all about politics.?Snooping around in what I could find of his works in English translation, I read what I believe to be absolutely some of the most beautiful love poetry I have ever heard in my heart, almost all of it written to a single woman, his third wife and great love of a marriage her parents feared would never last, the marriage itself being one of the great love stories of all time chronicled in verse. ?Iranian readers are nodding in agreement, I am sure.?

Did it take reaching the acute low point in Iranian human rights under a regime few wanted and almost no one now wants, or the danger of the US seeming to be always on the verge of war with the Islamic Republic to provoke such awareness??In my case that is exactly what it took.??In Shamlou’s words about a life and death struggle in Iran traceable from his day to the present, one can see a continuation of the repression he knew, much of it ‘Made in the USA.’?The great poet’s words seem, to this unlettered outsider at least, also to perfectly frame the savagery of an unhinged and incompetent theocracy and the infinite courage of the women of Iran and the men who stand with them.?

Under the red rose and thorns emblem of the progressive social democratic Tudeh Party of Iran,[5] an audio-visual chronicle of that struggle right up to the present is available with Ahmad Shamlou’s recitations as narration, giving human perspective where needed.[6] ?

No, the wind is not dead.

You, my dear adopted sisters and daughters of Iran, are the gathering strength of the wind that will finally bring a storm of change.?

The wind is not dead.

The wind is alive,

and you are that wind!


THE WIND IS DEAD! YOU SAID

Ahmad Shamlou, February 1975[7]

You said:

“The wind is dead!

Though having flowed on a river of blood,

It hasn’t lifted a single curtain

It hasn’t smashed the fortress of tyranny

It hasn’t brought down a single palace

The wind has died!”

You said:

“On the mountain ridges

With its blood-drenched body

Disheartened is the wind!”

Time and time again

You have been shamed by your life before the dead.

[I’ve sensed this as one senses a fever

— just like a fever that dries up the blood, I’ve felt it.]

When in despair and distress, you said:

“The wind has died!

On the mountain ridges

With its body soaked in blood

Woeful is the wind!”

Those who shared the air

Poniard On the Platter

With the warden

In the torture chambers

Said to you in reply:

“Alive!

Alive and well, is the wind!

Soaring is the wind!

The Final Tempest

That’s what the wind

— in the workshop of thunderous thoughts—

Is shaping!

How to bring

the heinous arrogance of a mountain of wrong

down to its knees

That’s what the wind is teaching!”

[Their conviction is a blend of blood and rocks and eagles]

They said:

“The wind is alive

Watchful in its deeds

Vigilant in its deeds is the wind!”

“Nay,” you avowed, “nay, the wind is dead!

The wind has received a mighty mortal wound from the

mountains!”

— Oh, you wretched soul,

Time and time again

You have been shamed by your life before the dead

I have sensed this

Like a fever that freezes the blood in my veins.

?

?

--Apart from the literary patrimony of Ahmad Shamlou (https://shamlou.org/ )

?Guy Christopher Carter, August 2023

?


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negar_Bouban (See also the documentary film by Amanda Saad featuring interviews in English with Negar Bouban, AL-OUD: Die K?nigin des Orients findet ihren Platz in Deutschland, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhhPYAvFolc&t=991s).

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Zn3_mriXM

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x3jIkoKfHQ

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shamlou | See also American-born Iranian poet and scholar, Niloufar Talebi’s TED TALK on her efforts to introduce Shamlou’s work to an American readership, https://www.niloufartalebi.com/ahmad-shamlou-translations-recitations .

[5] https://www.tudehpartyiran.org/en/home/

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frnz4_DRiLU&list=PL35CCEFD04A435167

[7] On The Oceanic Waves of Ahmad Shamlou’s Poetry

(A Selection of Poems)

Edited by A. Behrang

Published by the Iranian People’s Fadee Guerillas

(Iranian Communist Party) and posted on its website:

https://siah-kal.com/english/Oceanic-Waves-Ahmad-Shamlou.pdf



Guy Christopher Carter

Historical Theologian | Worker in Refugee Resettlement #WomanLifeFreedom

1 年

Thank you for reading, Victorita, Sash, Winnie, Greta, Katy and Raj. Do you know the poetry of Ahmad Shamlou? What is your experience with the Oud or the Lute? How do you interpret Shamlou's poem, THE WIND IS DEAD, THEY SAID?

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