Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan: Anomalous Visions of History and Form (Iranian Studies)

193 Pages·2008·0.94 MB·English

by  Wali Ahmadi

Modern Persian Literature
in Afghanistan
With the unleashing of the “War on Terror” in the aftermath of 9/11,
Afghanistan has become prominent in the news. However, we need to
appreciate that no substantive understanding of contemporary history,
politics and society of this country can be achieved without a thorough
analysis of the Afghan encounter with cultural and literary modernity and
modernization.
Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan does just that. The book offers
a balanced and interdisciplinary analysis of the rich and admirable con-
temporary poetry and fiction of a land long tormented by wars and inva-
sions. It sets out to demonstrate that, within the trajectory of the union
between modern aesthetic imagination and politics, creativity and produc-
tion, and representation and history, the modernist intervention enabled
many contemporary poets and writers of fiction to resist the overt politiciza-
tion of the literary field, without evading politics or disavowing the modern
state.
The interpretative moves and nuanced readings of a series of literary texts
make this book a major contribution to a rather neglected area of research
and study. It is essential reading for students and scholars in comparative
literary analysis, Middle East and Central Asian cultural studies and the
emergent Afghanistan studies.
Wali Ahmadi is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University
of California, Berkeley, USA.
Iranian Studies
Edited by:
Homa Katouzian
University of Oxford
and
Mohamad Tavakoli
University of Toronto
Since 1967 the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has been a
leading learned society for the advancement of new approaches in the study
of Iranian society, history, culture, and literature. The new ISIS Iranian
Studies series published by Routledge will provide a venue for the publica-
tion of original and innovative scholarly works in all areas of Iranian and
Persianate Studies.
1. Journalism in Iran
From mission to profession
Hossein Shahidi
2. Sadeq Hedayat
His work and his wondrous world
Homa Katouzian
3. Iran in the 21st Century
Politics, economics and confrontation
Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi
4. Media, Culture and Society in Iran
Living with globalization and the Islamic state
Mehdi Semati
5. Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan
Anomalous visions of history and form
Wali Ahmadi
Modern Persian Literature
in Afghanistan
Anomalous visions of history
and form
Wali Ahmadi
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2008 Wali Ahmadi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ahmadi, Wali.
Modern Persian literature in Afghanistan : anomalous visions of
history and form / Wali Ahmadi.
p. cm—(Iranian studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Persian literature—Afghanistan—History and criticism.
2. Persian literature—Political aspects—Afghanistan. 3. Politics and
literature—Afghanistan. I. Title.
PK6427.6.A3A33 2008
891′.55099581—dc22 2007036608
ISBN 0-203-94602-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0–415–43778–4 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0–203–94602–2 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–43778–3 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–94602–2 (ebk)
To the memory of my parents
and
to Geeta, Yassna, and Yamna

Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: the conundrum of modernity 1
1 Beyond “Mist and Pebble”: ordering the culture of
modernity 16
2 The poetics of (national) truth content 38
3 Perilous ends of history: the rhetoric of commitment
and the poetics of nationalism 62
4 Literature of Commandement and the crisis
of commitment 88
5 De-centering dissent 114
Epilogue: contending with history 141
Notes 148
Bibliography 169
Index 181
Acknowledgments
In the writing of this book, much gratitude is owed to many. I am particu-
larly grateful to Amin Banani for his continued interest in, and unfailing
support of, my research and scholarly endeavors over the years. I have bene-
fited greatly from his encouragement and incisively subtle suggestions about
my approach to contemporary literature in Persian. I have also learned
much from the late Ali Razawi’s vast knowledge of literary and intellectual
trends in Afghanistan. He was undoubtedly a genuine representative of
modern Afghan literature and culture. The debt I owe to Wasef Bakhtari is,
as it has always been, so immense that it is impossible to define or measure.
His critical writings, his poetry, and his intellectual example have been a
constant inspiration to me. My colleagues at the Near Eastern Studies
department in Berkeley have provided me with a warm collegiate atmos-
phere in which to finish this project. I am also indebted to my editor Kathryn
Summer Drabinski. I should gratefully acknowledge that in the preparation
of this book I received generous support from the Hillman Family Faculty
Fund and a crucial sabbatical grant from the University of California’s
Committee on Research.
I dedicate the book to the memory of my parents and to my loving wife
and daughters. I am deeply grateful to Geeta for her amazing patience, her
charm, and her faith in my work. She endured so much while several drafts
of the manuscript were being written, rewritten, and revised. No words can
express the depth of my endless love and affection for my precious and
adorable little angels Yassna and Yamna. Heartfelt thanks also go to my
supportive sisters and brothers and delightful nieces and nephews.
Wali Ahmadi
Introduction
The conundrum of modernity
All works of art, including those that pretend to be completely harmonious,
belong to a complex of problems. As such they participate in history,
transcending their uniqueness.
Theodor W. Adorno
On October 1, 1901 the “Iron Amı¯r” (cid:1)Abd al-Rahma¯n died in Kabul. In the
wake of the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001 in America, the iron
rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan came to a violent end. The intervening
hundred years—the tumultuous twentieth century—constitute Afghanistan’s
intricate and often tortuous encounter with modernity. This book is not a
study of Afghan modernity, in all its varied and complex facets, in a social
context where aspects that are considered hallmarks of modernity remain
full of paradoxes, contradictions, and twists and turns. Rather, as the first
full-length analysis of a hitherto neglected area in the fields of contemporary
comparative, post-colonial, and Persian literary studies, it is a study of the
experience of cultural modernity as projected and expressed in the elaborate
interweaving of texts and their socio-historical contexts in a “Third-World”
society. More specifically, it elucidates the dynamic conjunction of intel-
lectual and literary-aesthetic discourses with history and politics in the
peculiar propagation and reception of modernity in Afghanistan.
The experience of modernity can function to make historical development
and social vitality more visible; literature has contributed to that experience
throughout the twentieth century. Afghan writers of poetry and fiction were
more than aware that the introduction of an array of continuous literary
innovations radically reinforced the development of a modern literary-
aesthetic discourse and the concomitant destabilization of traditional dis-
cursive frames. Nevertheless, in what reveals the vigor as well as the protean
nature of modernity, as inheritors of a long-preserved cultural legacy and
literary tradition, these writers attempted to integrate a number of specific
traditional literary forms and sensibilities within the emergent aesthetics. A
distinguishing aspect of the new aesthetics consisted of the impulse towards
synthesizing formal laws that derived from traditional literature—and