Publication
Amsterdam Uitgeverij Jurgen Maas 2017
ISBN
9789491921391
Language
Collections
Description
A new English translation of arguably the most famous twentieth-century Persian novel A Penguin Classic A new English translation of one of the most important, controversial Iranian novels of the twentieth century A Penguin Classic Written by one of the greatest Iranian writers of the twentieth century, Blind Owl tells a two-part story of an isolated narrator with a fragile relationship with time and reality. In first person, the narrator offers a string of hazy, dreamlike recollections fueled by opium and alcohol. He spends time painting the exact same scene on the covers of pen cases- an old man wearing a cape and turban sitting under a cypress tree, separated by a small stream from a beautiful woman in black who offers him a water lily. In a one-page transition, the reader finds the narrator covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrest him. In part two, readers glimpse the grim realities that unlock the mysteries of the first part. In a new translation that reflects Hedayat's conversational, confessional tone, Blind Owl joins the ranks of classics by Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky that explore the dark recesses of the human psyche.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member beelzebubba
Perhaps my hopes had been raised too high: from reading some recommendations from one who supposedly is an expert on such literature, claiming this was the most depressing book ever written. And then I heard that some editions even warned the reader in an introductory section, of the dangers of
Either my sensitivity wasn't of a depth necessary to appreciate the moroseness of this work, or I'm just one sick puppy who needs much more in the way of insanity, depravity and doom to move me. After finishing it, I was left wondering, “That's it?” Oh well, looks like I'll live to see another day.
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reading this book causing thoughts of suicide.Either my sensitivity wasn't of a depth necessary to appreciate the moroseness of this work, or I'm just one sick puppy who needs much more in the way of insanity, depravity and doom to move me. After finishing it, I was left wondering, “That's it?” Oh well, looks like I'll live to see another day.
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LibraryThing member Meredy
I'd like to say that this is the novel that Jackson Pollack would have written if his medium had been words instead of paint, but I don't think it is.
Reading The Blind Owl was like having a feverish hallucination, a nightmare too real to be a dream. It was like swallowing tea steeped in the bones
Reading The Blind Owl was like having a feverish hallucination, a nightmare too real to be a dream. It was like swallowing tea steeped in the bones
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of E. A. Poe, or gulping a liqueur distilled from the carapace of Gregor Samsa. It was like smoking a painting by Bosch, wallowing in the base line of "O Fortuna," fleeing the monster in the labyrinth only to circle back and embrace it--and discover that it is you. Show Less
LibraryThing member missizicks
I had read various things about this book that left me with a feeling of trepidation about reading it. It apparently has a reputation for encouraging suicide. Some consider its portrayal of women to be misogynistic. It deals with madness, drug addiction and murder in violent terms.
I wasn't
The narrator is unreliable. From the start he tells us that he is an opium addict and an alcoholic. The story he tells is disjointed, jumbled, part hallucination, and it's never clear whether any of it is true, because we never hear from anyone else. He's talking to his shadow which makes the shape of an owl on the wall.
As a testimony of someone who is severely mentally ill, it is compelling. The narrator is imprisoned inside his own mind, and in the story he tells this is represented by the room in which he is quarantined during an illness that seems to start when his adoptive mother dies. From the experience of viewing her body all his paranoia stems.
He believes his wife to be unfaithful, but I'm not convinced he really has a wife. He refers to her as a whore because he believes she forced him to have intercourse with her alongside her dead mother's body. He is obsessed with the butcher's shop across the street, and tells us that he killed his wife having witnessed the butcher slaughtering sheep. He relates a family history that is part ancient myth, explaining that he doesn't know who his father is. His hallucinations recur around the vision of a young girl he believes to be his wife but also his mother, dancing for a peddler that he believes is his father and uncle and his wife's father and a beggar in the street.
The narration reads to me like mania, the ravings of someone who believes the things their corrupted mind is telling them about the people around them. The narrator's conviction that his wife is unfaithful made sense to me, in relation to his mental illness. I didn't think it was misogyny. For that to be true, the narrator would have to clearly state that all women were whores. His delusion only makes him believe that of his wife. He is not coherent in his narration. His mind is a jumble tipped out onto the page. His delusion is what dictates his violent actions, including what we see as the rape and murder of his wife, but that he only sees as her accidental killing in a moment he doesn't fully remember happening.
Perhaps the translation I read is different to the one most often discussed online. I read the 75th anniversary edition translated by Naveed Noori and authorised by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation. The claim of the translator is that his is most true to meaning, based as it is on the earliest known manuscript and not on later, possibly corrupt, editions. He claims to have retained the sense of frenzy from the original, whereas other translators have favoured narrative flow and inadvertently made the narrator seem a more reasonable man. I might seek out the Costello translation from 1957 for comparison.
I have no idea whether Hedayat intended the book to be an allegory for Persia/Iran under Reza Shah. I have no cultural reference points to recognise any allusions Hedayat made in the text (although the footnotes helped at times). I have no idea whether Hedayat himself was mentally ill. I read the book purely as a story and I do know that The Blind Owl is one of the most interesting treatments of mental illness in fiction that I have read.
I wasn't
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expecting to enjoy it, but I did. It reminded me of the passages in Crime and Punishment where we experience Raskolnikov's delirium. The repetition and nightmarish quality also made me think of Kafka.The narrator is unreliable. From the start he tells us that he is an opium addict and an alcoholic. The story he tells is disjointed, jumbled, part hallucination, and it's never clear whether any of it is true, because we never hear from anyone else. He's talking to his shadow which makes the shape of an owl on the wall.
As a testimony of someone who is severely mentally ill, it is compelling. The narrator is imprisoned inside his own mind, and in the story he tells this is represented by the room in which he is quarantined during an illness that seems to start when his adoptive mother dies. From the experience of viewing her body all his paranoia stems.
He believes his wife to be unfaithful, but I'm not convinced he really has a wife. He refers to her as a whore because he believes she forced him to have intercourse with her alongside her dead mother's body. He is obsessed with the butcher's shop across the street, and tells us that he killed his wife having witnessed the butcher slaughtering sheep. He relates a family history that is part ancient myth, explaining that he doesn't know who his father is. His hallucinations recur around the vision of a young girl he believes to be his wife but also his mother, dancing for a peddler that he believes is his father and uncle and his wife's father and a beggar in the street.
The narration reads to me like mania, the ravings of someone who believes the things their corrupted mind is telling them about the people around them. The narrator's conviction that his wife is unfaithful made sense to me, in relation to his mental illness. I didn't think it was misogyny. For that to be true, the narrator would have to clearly state that all women were whores. His delusion only makes him believe that of his wife. He is not coherent in his narration. His mind is a jumble tipped out onto the page. His delusion is what dictates his violent actions, including what we see as the rape and murder of his wife, but that he only sees as her accidental killing in a moment he doesn't fully remember happening.
Perhaps the translation I read is different to the one most often discussed online. I read the 75th anniversary edition translated by Naveed Noori and authorised by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation. The claim of the translator is that his is most true to meaning, based as it is on the earliest known manuscript and not on later, possibly corrupt, editions. He claims to have retained the sense of frenzy from the original, whereas other translators have favoured narrative flow and inadvertently made the narrator seem a more reasonable man. I might seek out the Costello translation from 1957 for comparison.
I have no idea whether Hedayat intended the book to be an allegory for Persia/Iran under Reza Shah. I have no cultural reference points to recognise any allusions Hedayat made in the text (although the footnotes helped at times). I have no idea whether Hedayat himself was mentally ill. I read the book purely as a story and I do know that The Blind Owl is one of the most interesting treatments of mental illness in fiction that I have read.
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LibraryThing member The_Hibernator
In this surreal novella, an unnamed protagonist unburdens the deadly weight on his chest by confessing to his own grotesquely owl-shaped shadow on the wall.
"in order to explain my life to my stooping shadow, I am obliged to tell a story. Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and
In his mind-spinning narration, it is difficult to tell when the events described are cloaked with opium, veiled with madness, or are simple truth. This novel is deeply disturbing in many ways. It narrates horrific events, certainly, but it is the manner that they are conveyed that is frightening. His imagery is surreal. His repetition is hypnotic. His words are oppressive.
"Only death does not lie. The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life."
The imagery and symbolism used by Hedayat portrays his personal marriage between Western and Eastern culture. Although this book is considered the essence of Persian literature, there are signs of Poe and Kafka. The Blind Owl bled, vomited, and wept Freudian symbolism.
This was an amazing book, and highly recommended to people interested in Persian fiction or in modernist fiction.
"in order to explain my life to my stooping shadow, I am obliged to tell a story. Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and
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death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!"In his mind-spinning narration, it is difficult to tell when the events described are cloaked with opium, veiled with madness, or are simple truth. This novel is deeply disturbing in many ways. It narrates horrific events, certainly, but it is the manner that they are conveyed that is frightening. His imagery is surreal. His repetition is hypnotic. His words are oppressive.
"Only death does not lie. The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life."
The imagery and symbolism used by Hedayat portrays his personal marriage between Western and Eastern culture. Although this book is considered the essence of Persian literature, there are signs of Poe and Kafka. The Blind Owl bled, vomited, and wept Freudian symbolism.
This was an amazing book, and highly recommended to people interested in Persian fiction or in modernist fiction.
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LibraryThing member DieFledermaus
The Blind Owl is a gorgeously written opium nightmare. The plot is circular and surreal and much of this slim book is taken up by the narrator’s claustrophobic musings on death and decay. Although it is divided into two parts - a present and a past - everything feels timeless and like something
In the second half the narrator has jumped in time but still the same elements appear - the girl, the old man laughing, the same buildings and places and situations. Here, the narrator is an invalid with a scornful, unfaithful wife. But he’s still isolated, alienated and fixated on death. Events occur in a dreamlike and fateful manner. Claustrophobic, repetitive and nightmarish but undeniably well-written.
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half-remembered out of a dream. The narrator overtly sets out to tell th story as one that is unbelievable and painful. He lives alone and paints pen cases for a living - always the same picture of an old man, a beautiful girl and a stream. One day, while retrieving something from a closet, he sees this picture come to life through a hole in the wall. But he can’t find the man or the girl outside and even the hole in his closet has disappeared. The narrator is tormented and frantically searches for this image - until one day the girl turns up at his doorstep. His story devolves into one of death, possession, and guilt and ends in a highly symbolic journey.In the second half the narrator has jumped in time but still the same elements appear - the girl, the old man laughing, the same buildings and places and situations. Here, the narrator is an invalid with a scornful, unfaithful wife. But he’s still isolated, alienated and fixated on death. Events occur in a dreamlike and fateful manner. Claustrophobic, repetitive and nightmarish but undeniably well-written.
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LibraryThing member hemlokgang
Enter, if you dare, into the landscape of madness, the delirium of opium, the fever dream of a genius. This novella is exquisitely painful to read, and I would not have missed the experience for anything. The author, Iranian born Sadegh Hedayat, who committed suicide upon finishing this novel,
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offers this oh so generous and passionately painful glimpse into the existential madness of his mind. Determined to know himself fully, the narrator shares a nightmare compilation of childhood and adult fantasies, passions, and despair. To top the experience off of reading this masterpiece, the introduction is magnificent in and of itself. Not for the fainthearted, this mesmerizing work of art! Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
(Original Review, 1981-04-20)
“I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a
In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat
“My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself.”
In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat
Unforgettable is "The Blind Owl", the masterpiece of Sadegh Hedayat, who with this novel inaugurated modern Persian literature. The reader is seduced into entering the dangerous terrain of psychic disintegration, experiencing in the company of the protagonist a vicarious nightmare of hallucinations where the boundaries between reality and dreams dissolve and we are left lost in a labyrinth of terror, to struggle in vain against the sinister apparitions emanating from the shadows beyond the reach of rationality. The reading experience is akin to the existential panic suffered during sleep paralysis when the ego feels overwhelmed by the threat of extinction by an unseen presence. Oh the horror! Reading this tale while stoned enhances the fear and mystery, but can be recommended only to those possessing steady nerves. “I finally learned that I must remain silent as much as possible. I must always keep my thoughts to myself.” Heinlein couldn’t have said it better himself…
“I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a
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condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams.”In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat
“My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself.”
In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat
Unforgettable is "The Blind Owl", the masterpiece of Sadegh Hedayat, who with this novel inaugurated modern Persian literature. The reader is seduced into entering the dangerous terrain of psychic disintegration, experiencing in the company of the protagonist a vicarious nightmare of hallucinations where the boundaries between reality and dreams dissolve and we are left lost in a labyrinth of terror, to struggle in vain against the sinister apparitions emanating from the shadows beyond the reach of rationality. The reading experience is akin to the existential panic suffered during sleep paralysis when the ego feels overwhelmed by the threat of extinction by an unseen presence. Oh the horror! Reading this tale while stoned enhances the fear and mystery, but can be recommended only to those possessing steady nerves. “I finally learned that I must remain silent as much as possible. I must always keep my thoughts to myself.” Heinlein couldn’t have said it better himself…
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LibraryThing member Danielle23
I have to admit to not completely understanding this book although I was very impressed with the narrative and the beautiful language used.
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
This novella is about a young man quite fond of wine and opium, who sees a beautiful but mysterious woman through a ventilation hole in his closet. He goes back to the closet three days later to look for her, but there is no such aperture there. He is in despair over "losing" her, but several weeks
If you like Edgar Allan Poe, you'll probably like this novella. If not, I wouldn't recommend it.
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later she shows up outside of his front door. He invites her in, and she lies on his bed. He touches her, and realizes she is dead. From there on, the story is more morbid and surreal, and he eventually descends into madness.If you like Edgar Allan Poe, you'll probably like this novella. If not, I wouldn't recommend it.
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
Is this the story of a mentally ill man? Or a description of his opium-fueled dreams? It is not clear--he certainly loves his opium, but whether he is mentally ill, physically ill (coughing blood, or is this from the opium smoking?), or high is unclear.
Too violent for me (even if it is all dreams).
Too violent for me (even if it is all dreams).
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His wife is "the bitch" (and also his first cousin), which is tiring to read over and over. Creepy, like a bad dream. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lunarreader
a very special novel, dark, gloomy, depressing. The author, not the most joyful person it seems, uses opium but the reader only needs his writing to reach a trance. Don't kill yourself after reading this, seems to be the recommendation to give.
LibraryThing member ASKelmore
This is an extremely important work of Iranian fiction, written in the 1930s. It was chosen by someone in one of the book clubs I participate in. According to the introduction, it is so shocking that there are rumors that it led to people dying by suicide.
The book tells two versions of the same
I missed something in this book. I didn’t get it, and that is why I didn’t give it a ranking. I feel like it’s just not something I can wrap my head around, because I can’t wrap my head around the book. It obviously is full of symbolism that I don’t get because I don’t have the shared culture that might be necessary to truly pick up on the nuance of the storytelling. I’m not even entirely clear on the purpose of the book. Perhaps is an allegory of death? I don’t know.
The author’s style keeps me from really getting into the book – the writing is fine, but it’s also a translation to English, so it comes across as fairly plain and also repetitive. There is (according to Wikipedia, which I visited immediately upon completion) a reason for this, and an art to it, but again I think a whole lot has been lost in translation.
Mostly reading this book made me angry that I a) can’t read all the languages and b) don’t understand or even have a basic understanding of the vast majority of cultures in the world.
So yay for that?
The book tells two versions of the same
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story – both told from the main character’s perspective. He is an artist who is either solitary or lives with his wife (depending on the telling). One version is a bit more supernatural-feeling than the other, both heavily feature sadness, loneliness, and darkness.I missed something in this book. I didn’t get it, and that is why I didn’t give it a ranking. I feel like it’s just not something I can wrap my head around, because I can’t wrap my head around the book. It obviously is full of symbolism that I don’t get because I don’t have the shared culture that might be necessary to truly pick up on the nuance of the storytelling. I’m not even entirely clear on the purpose of the book. Perhaps is an allegory of death? I don’t know.
The author’s style keeps me from really getting into the book – the writing is fine, but it’s also a translation to English, so it comes across as fairly plain and also repetitive. There is (according to Wikipedia, which I visited immediately upon completion) a reason for this, and an art to it, but again I think a whole lot has been lost in translation.
Mostly reading this book made me angry that I a) can’t read all the languages and b) don’t understand or even have a basic understanding of the vast majority of cultures in the world.
So yay for that?
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LibraryThing member varielle
This was enthralling though I didn’t understand a darn thing. Is this a hallucination of a man on drugs? Is this a picture of increasing madness culminating in murder? Is the wife an innocent party married to a paranoid lunatic? Did nothing at all actually happen? The Blind Owl is a catastrophe
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you can’t look away from. Show Less
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
I don’t quite know what to make of The Blind Owl by Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat. Although very short it was a difficult and dark read. The story is of a lonely pen case illustrator and his decent into madness through his use of opium, his obsession with death and decay, and his obvious sexual
As he hallucinates we enter into his dream sequence about a woman who he sees and then can’t find however much he searches. Later she shows up on his doorstep, appears to die in his bed upon which he dismembers her body and buries her in the ancient city of Rey. The second part of the book reveals more about the narrator. He is ill, deranged, and taking opium. He is an invalid being looked after by an old woman and his wife, whom he calls “the bitch” and who he imagines is sleeping with every man she meets. It isn’t pleasant being given access to this man’s fevered mind.
With no clear plot or obvious point to make, I guess I would label The Blind Owl as a bleak psychological portrait that is meant to challenge the reader to reach some element of self-knowledge but it was entirely too opaque for me.
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frustration. As he hallucinates we enter into his dream sequence about a woman who he sees and then can’t find however much he searches. Later she shows up on his doorstep, appears to die in his bed upon which he dismembers her body and buries her in the ancient city of Rey. The second part of the book reveals more about the narrator. He is ill, deranged, and taking opium. He is an invalid being looked after by an old woman and his wife, whom he calls “the bitch” and who he imagines is sleeping with every man she meets. It isn’t pleasant being given access to this man’s fevered mind.
With no clear plot or obvious point to make, I guess I would label The Blind Owl as a bleak psychological portrait that is meant to challenge the reader to reach some element of self-knowledge but it was entirely too opaque for me.
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LibraryThing member m.belljackson
A real life horror story of a man addicted to opium and wine who writes to his shadow and veers
around illusory reality with ugly, repetitive and boring images of a butcher, a snake trial, and murder, dismemberment, suffering, and death.
The Owl seemed to understand his writings.
around illusory reality with ugly, repetitive and boring images of a butcher, a snake trial, and murder, dismemberment, suffering, and death.
The Owl seemed to understand his writings.
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
This is a fever-dream of a dark, compelling novel, and a reading experience that sucks one in until each moment is its own small psychological impact. A novel that was banned in Hedayat's home country of Iran, the work mounts gorgeous prose, a poetic sensibility, and a sometimes-style of repetition
Recommended.
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that makes one feel as if they're being sucked into a whirlpool of a story. It's a novel to be sucked into and experience...and perhaps to be read more than once if the darkness isn't too much.Recommended.
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Original publication date
1937