Son of an officer in the Army of the Shah, SAID - Said Mirhadi by his legal name - left Iran at 17 in order to learn in Germany. Returning home only for a short time, after the installment of the new regime, he built up a prestigious literary career as a poet and writer, being the first non German director of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland between 2000 and 2002.
His memoir - a succession of short stanzas - ein vibrierendes kind - in my approximate translation, An Awake Child - was published after his death, last year, from a heart attack. The multi-awarded poet evokes his childhood in Iran, the female relatives substituting his mother that died in childbirth, his father, his school friends - including through interaction with his Jewish and Armenian neighbours. It is an evokative yet emotionally balanced account. He identifies himself as ´the child´. By using the third person there is a certain distance the author takes from his own memories, which even it may not work as such in reality, literarily speaking it creates a different biographical interpretation. Thus, it builds up the bridge between a personal account and a memoir which serves more than as a counter against forgetting, but shares an unique experience belonging to a timeframe.
The language is clear and poetically suggestive. A testimony of a life broke by historical occurrences. What could it be more heartbreaking than being unable to re-visit the world of your literary dreams, which inspires your writing?
Rating: 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment