سفر شب و ظهور حضرت

by Bahman Sholevar

The Night's Journey is a journey into the midnight darkness of the soul, and also a descent into the Hades of a modern police state. It is the story of two generations: one brooding in despair over the memory of a defeat; the other born to defeat, with neither the memory of a battle, nor the hope of one.

It is the story of Homer Pooladin, the Homeric son of a quasi-Falstaffian father, with the gap between them something more than a generation gap; and also the story of a society where not only the writer's privilege to either "forge the conscience of his race," or to "purify the dialect of the tribe," but his very right to exist is in question.

We have the portrait of the artist as an adolescent, medical student, lunatic, gangster, exile, clown. But in the hero's journey to the end of his night, we have the panorama of the modern Persian society, where the hero's encounters with the realities of his own situations become a sad commentary on, and a telling criticism of, almost every aspect of his society: the judicial, educational and prison systems; public health; the police: the press; the political, social and sexual lives of the youth: the degrading plight of women; the inhuman plight of prostitutes, peasants, the poor and the downtrodden; the demeaning literary scene where writers, muzzled, emasculated, and sterilized by official tyranny, starved by a mob of illiterate, ignorant, and mercenary book-by-the-pound-selling publishers, vent their furies and waste their creative energies in petty jealousies and personal enmities.

It is the story of Akbar Shiraz, the noble thug, the "looti," the last scion of a "chivalric" social order in the Persian folk culture, with an ancestry as ancient and time-honored as that of their Japanese cousins the samurai. If he takes payoffs from the gamblers, bootleggers, and smugglers, he has his own rigid code of honor, and he gives generously of himself to the poor and to the needy. With his outmoded dagger or knife, he is still the champion of his territory, the Quixotic protector of the weak, the old, women and children. When he is hanged in a public square, amidst the obscene wisecracks, catcalls, and whistles of the scum of the city, he seems as already belonging to a vanished past, like the last red man scent packing to the happy hunting grounds of his forefathers.

It is the story of "Hossein Diplomate," the orphaned peasant who escapes to the city at fourteen to become a house boy; to be molested, used, and abused by every man, woman and child, before he earns his manhood. It is a story of an education by trial and error, by illusion and disillusion.

It is the story of Arzhang, the musician-turned-doctor who blows his brains out on the eve of his graduation to escape the oppressiveness of a society which has left no outlet for his creative imagination. And it is the story of Farrokh, the artist-turned-doctor, who enlists as a private in the infantry as a futile gesture of rebellion in a society where even tacit discontent can be a crime.

The last part of the novel is a Menippean satire. Having returned from his self-imposed exile, the artist-turned-clown, in a state of supreme hangover, holds up the mirror of history to reflect the modern police state. Meditating upon his own plight, the hero finally sorts out three possible courses of action for himself: to sign a pact with the devil, which he finds indecent; to go on a Macduffian mission, which he finds impractical; or to commit suicide, which he finds cowardly. In the midst of despair, he is suddenly struck "by a Roman thought," a la Mark Anthony according to Shakespeare. What that "Roman thought" is, neither the hero nor the author reveals. Exit the hero with his gracious bilingual leave-taking — "ta ta" and "ciao" — finishing off the novel, or rather leaving it unfinished.

204 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Hana Hmp · Rating 2 out of 5]

نمی‌دونم دقیقا چه حسی دارم به رمان. مثلا به نظرم فصل ۸ تا ۱۱ خیلی خوب بودن. به خصوص فصل ۱۱، ولی سر فصلای دیگه این شکلی بودم که خب که چی و چقدر غر می‌زنی. احساس می‌کنم اگه هر کدوم از قسمتا رو یه داستان کوتاه می‌کرد بهتر بود چون به‌عنوان یه رمان انسجام خوبی نداشت ولی هر بخش به‌عنوان یه داستان کوتاه فراز و فرود مناسبی داشت.

[Mona Azimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

آنقدر که تعریف کتاب را شنیده بودم برایم تکان‌دهنده نبود، پر گویی و تکرار بیش از حد داستان زندگی پدر هومر از حوصله ام خارج و غیر جذاب شد و باعث شد یک مدت خواندن کتاب را متوقف کنم.

[Clarissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always wonder how much of a book’s original beauty can survive translation, and in this case, I think the translator managed to preserve a lot of the original work.

[Fatemeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The translation gave me access to a literary tradition I would otherwise be unable to read. For that, I am grateful to the translator.