Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement

5. Icarus Reborn: Captivity and Flight in the Work of Forugh Farrokhzad

128 5 Icarus Reborn Captivity and Flight in the Work of Forugh Farrokhzad Why? Because she was the dew Pristine. Suicidal. Reaching for the sun. —Forugh Farrokhzad, “A Bitter Tale” Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honor. —Stephen Spender, “I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great” The Prisoner Who Flew out of Prison The gods and goddesses of the Greeks understood it well: prisoners learn how to fly. According to the myth, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the architect of the first labyrinth, the space of dead ends, winding roads with no beginning and no ends. In due course, though, the builder of the first prison became a prisoner himself. He was incarcerated with his son on Crete Island. To escape the waves, Daedalus created human wings for the two of them and counseled his son to avoid flying too high lest the sun melt the wax with which his wings were glued on or too low for fear that moisture would pull him into the ocean. Consumed by the love of beauty and freedom, summoned by the sun, an imprudent and daring Icarus glided overhead, soaring higher and higher, oblivious to his inevitable dive into the deep. And thus it was that a perfectly innocent prisoner became the I C A RUS R EB O R N • 129 patron saint of all prisoners and all those who dare to soar.1 Like Icarus, the Iranian poet Forugh-ol-zaman Farrokhzad (1935–67) kept her eyes on the sky and the gateless, inviting sun. Knowing but never fearing consequences and reckless, she refused to live under conventions of safety.2 Her first name, like many Iranian names, carries a meaning, “eternal light,” and she was beckoned by the blazing source of light. The image of the sun is one of the most recurring motifs in the poetry of this gifted and influential literary figure of twentieth-century Iran. It appears and reappears ten times in her first poetry collection and even more so in the next four. In her fourth book, Reborn, two of the thirty-five poems are titled after the sun.3 Seeking to be infused with energy, embraced by the clouds, touched by the breeze, she danced like a dervish, chased the winds, jumped over walls, darted on wings, journeyed to stars a thousand light years away. Look! See me scorched by the Star See me enveloped, fevered See me awash in the light Lifted to the stars . . . Look! How far I have come To eternity; to the Galaxies To the infinite.4 Acquainted with captivity, Farrokhzad never relinquished the desire to fly. Like the many birds that wing through her works—phoenixes, eagles, doves, crows, finches—she soared with the many pleasures of the sky. She disdained conventional strictures on women, from an early aversion to walls, bars, closed doors, shuttered windows, and cages to a perennial desire to fly and flow. Advocating reorganization of physical, discursive, and social spaces, she did not wish to stay in her “proper” place. She did not want to have her body, her voice, her gaze, her desire kept under lock and key, domesticated, tamed, or hedged in. Sheltered by the night I rush, clutching At the tail of every breeze To pour frantically My tresses in your hands 130 • W I N GS A N D WO R DS And I make you an offering Of tropical flowers From this green, fresh Summer pasture. Come with me. Come with me to that star A thousand years distant From the congealment of dust From the Earth’s counterfeit measures Come with me to that star Where no one fears the light.5 Like Icarus, Farrokhzad refused to take the prudent middle course; to live a life disciplined by delineated spaces. Believing in risky ideals and bold dreams, she refused to live in a smug and secure world. “I have always sacrificed my calm in life to my adventurous nature,” she wrote in “Confession,” a short autobiographical story she published anonymously in Omid-e Iran magazine early in her literary career.6 She pursued danger almost in a trance, throwing herself headfirst in harm’s way.7 It is hard to imagine an Iranian poet more concerned with the issue of space than Farrokhzad. Her body of work can be seen as...