Satire That Praises Is No Longer Satire; What Kind of Garb Is Free Verse Anymore?

On Hafez Day, Naser Feyz speaks about his late start in poetry, his father's literary legacy, Aziz Nesin's influence on critical satire and parody, and Rahbari poetry nights, and on the link between tradition and modernity in today's Iranian satirical poetry.

Arjan Ambassador of Culture and Literature Group, Tahereh Tehrani: Nasser Faiz, the well-known face of today's humor, talks about the path that brought him from the corner of an old library in Qom to the official platforms of literature. He, who joined the Jirga of poets late, narrates from the tremendous influence of Mirza Ali Akbar Saber's "Huphopnameh" and Turkish writers to his difficult relationship with his father's traditionalism and criticism in high literary circles. This conversation is not only a review of memories; Analyzing the place of "critical humor" in the cultural atmosphere of Iran; Where the border between "praise" and "criticism" is clarified by the sharpness of the writer's audience:

* Where did Nasser Faiz's poetry and literary taste come from and in what climate did it originate? Did your family environment, and specifically your father's, play a role in your inclination towards poetry and humor in particular?

I started poetry very late. Unlike many poets who have been seriously cultivating their poetry since their youth, I did not think seriously about writing until I was twenty-seven years old. Of course, I had whispers in my mind before that, but those poems should be considered among the turmoil and raw writings of adolescence; Incoherent experiences that did not have any specific literary quality. At the age of twenty-seven, the flame of this interest ignited in me in an authentic way and I took writing and poetry seriously.

In spite of this delay, my progress was greatly accelerated by my presence in serious literary circles. The meetings of Professor Mohammad Ali Mojahedi (Qom's "Environment" Literary Association) were the first poetry meetings that I participated in. The environment literary association was a turning point in my literary destiny. In a situation where I had just learned about the basics of weight and prosody and had no experience, Professor Mujahidi raised technical, precise and path-breaking points in every session and had a fatherly and considerate attitude towards budding poets.

But about the atmosphere of the house and its relationship with poetry; My father was a spiritual figure. Naturally, the books in his library consisted of Arabic books in the field of jurisprudence, principles and religious sciences. Specialized Arabic books were not useful for my literary taste at that early age. However, due to my father's special interest in Persian poetry and literature, in the same library, two or three rows were dedicated to Divans of Persian classical poetry. The interesting point was my father's special taste and view on books and the publishing process; Basically, he did not believe in small, thin and so-called thin books. In his opinion, the value of the book was due to the validity of the old texts and its heavy volume; Works on the level of "Tafseer al-Mizan" or numerous volumes of hadith and jurisprudence such as "Bihar al-Anwar" which were bound in thick volumes with high quality and exquisite leather covers.

My father never recognized anything like pamphlets or pamphlets as books. I remember well that one day I took one of my first printed books, which was a small notebook of my poems, to his service with enthusiasm and enthusiasm, he looked at the title and appearance of the book and said: "This is a pamphlet!" According to his traditional standards, such works did not have the weight and credibility of books at all. Among the same shelves of Persian poetry, there were divans of great poets, and next to them, there was a work that completely changed my path: "Hop-Hop Name" written by Mirza Ali Akbar Saber.

Saber was one of the brilliant figures of that period; A current that was moving in Iran at the same time as our constitutionalists. If on this side of the border, Ali Akbar Dehkhoda created a revolution in Sourasrafil newspaper with "Cherand and Parand", on the other side, Jalil Mohammad Qolizadeh, Saber and others published the irreplaceable magazine "Melanseruddin". These two spaces had great structural and intellectual similarities with each other; Because in both platforms, the flow of modernism, the emergence of parties, confrontation with tyranny and superstitions was developing. Saber's Huphopnameh was full of poetic humor and fiery criticisms of the relations of the time; Especially the frank criticism of hypocrites and religious sellers who abused people's religious beliefs. I read these poems with great thirst due to my Azerbaijani descent and mastery of the Turkish language. The copy in my father's library was a Baku edition published in the Arabic alphabet, because the Turkish script had not been changed at that time. Encountering Saber's structural subtleties and sharp expressions planted the first seeds of love for critical humor years before I was twenty-seven years old and before I started being an official poet.

In addition to "Huphopnameh", around the age of sixteen or seventeen, I was greatly fascinated by the satires of contemporary Turkish writers, especially "Aziz Nesin". Aziz Nasin was a writer with left leanings and radical thoughts, who later came up with the story of his support for Salman Rushdie's controversial novel; The incident that caused him to be depressed in Iran, his works were marginalized and the mention of his name in the official media was limited, until he finally died.

But in the era before that, his works were met with rare success in Iran. The late Reza Mohoram contributed the most to the translation of Aziz Nasin's works, and other translators also provided translations. Reza Mohorem translated maybe fifty to sixty book titles of this author into Farsi. Of course, sometimes there were rumors that some of these stories were written by the translator himself in the style of Nasin, Aziz Nasin was an incredibly prolific writer. Someone who has written hundreds of short stories, naturally gives a lot of source text for translation by a competent translator like Reza Saham, and it does not seem that Saham has published his own stories under the name of Azizensin.

Of course, when I was translating a book of stories by the Turkish satirist Muzafar Izgu. During the translation of this work, I realized that when you translate about seventeen or eighteen short stories from Turkish texts, the narrative structure, the incident rhythm, and the humorous tone enter your mind and pen unconsciously, so that I felt that I could write a story with the same mental pattern as mine; Although I preferred not to pursue this independently.

My attraction to Aziz Nasin's works was rooted in the cultural and psychological similarities and historical ties between the two nations of Iran and Türkiye. A lot of geographic commonalities, a similar historical course during the transition to modernity, and even a commonality in the Ottoman script, which created many lexical and semantic affinities, made me think that these events actually happened in Iranian society when I read Aziz Nasin's stories. Nesin's humor was a criticism of the administrative system, class hypocrisy and false pretenses. Suppose in a story, an intrusive inspector enters a school; The principal and the teacher try to make the class seem super successful and orderly, but suddenly the naive answers of the students cause such a scandal that the fake reputation of the school is blown away.

Or it depicted a situation in which a foreign or American guest entered the home of a middle-class family. The host family borrows the neighbor's utensils and valuables to pretend and cook, but during the transfer, some of the borrowed furniture falls on the stairs and a ridiculous and scandalous disaster occurs. In Iranian society, we are not strangers to such habits. For example, in our childhood, whenever a guest was supposed to come from abroad, or even someone from Tehran came to Qom, there was a ruckus. Children lined up to see him. In our whole street, only one family had a car. Suddenly, if a party arrived in a Chevrolet car or any foreign and slightly different ride, the neighborhood kids would circle around it. We used to take care of our guest's car with the same childhood mood and asked our peers not to "touch the car!" The presence of such a car next to Renault and Xian and the usual arrows was an unconventional event. These biological affinities made me understand Aziz Nesin and the humor of the story with all my skin and flesh.

Later, my look at humor went beyond superficial fun and found a deeper aspect. I was looking for the works of Persian-language authors; I carefully read the collections of Rasul Parvizi, I studied all the works of Khosrow Shahani, and among the writings of Jalal Al-Ahmad, I was always looking for those parts that had biting humor and biting humor. Then, naturally and to know the literary tradition, I went to the classic texts, and at the head of them were Obeid Zakani's generalities. Despite this extreme fascination with humor, I did not write humorous poetry at all in the beginning. In addition to my strong interest in humor, I used to read serious poetry and I used to say that if I had even a brief test of humor, it would be in the line of satires and sarcastic jokes that were not suitable for presenting to the literary society. I recognized that those braids are not a luxurious work. Every poet should have a judgment scale in his privacy and measure the quality of his work before others.

* So, from what point did your serious and open poetry writing was clearly keyed?

I said, I officially entered the field of poetry when I was twenty-seven years old. Before I dared to read poetry in front of the professors of the poetry association, I used to send my poems to the press to test my poetry. I had a shop in Qom. A poet friend visited me from time to time and we used to read each other's poems. One day he asked: "Why don't you go to Mr. Mujahidi's association?" About a year before getting to know the environment association, I used to send my poems by post to the magazine "Information Weekly".

At that time, even though it was considered a popular magazine, it had a literary page called "Tamasagheh Raz" which was under the supervision of Dr. Mohammad Reza Mehdizadeh. This lovely character was one of my first and main encouragements in the path of poetry and poetry. He was a man of taste, opinion, conscientious and fair, who had sufficient mastery of poetry and answered the letters of young and novice poets with the care of a caring teacher.

I remember that in one of the letters I had sent them a sonnet that caused me to write this poem because my poetry notebook was lost, the information of that poem was: "The ash of a butterfly was lost in the wind / It turned around in memories and was lost / I had found a mirror in the water / It fell into the hands of so and so, it was lost" and... But the verse of the sonnet had a humorous atmosphere; And its content was something like this: One day while reading a poem, my hands and feet were lost in the teacher's presence!

In response, Mr. Mehdizadeh wrote to me that this sonnet is very strong and beautiful, but the last verse has a humorous tone and does not match the overall atmosphere of the poem, and they were very aware of this issue. The following week, they published the ghazal in the magazine by removing the last verse. This wise reaction and his continued encouragements made me realize that after a while, whenever I opened the poetry page of the magazine, a poem of mine was either at the top of the page or in a special box. Appreciating the pen of a young man doubled my enthusiasm.

After that, my connection with Ostad Mujahidi Literary Association in Qom became unbreakable. The distance from our house to Professor Mojahedi's house was about five to six minutes of walking and I never missed a single Friday meeting. These meetings, which continue today with the same title as more than half a century ago, that is, "Environmental Literary Association", are the meeting point of talented poets from different classes and tastes.

During all those years, I read only serious poetry, that is, often romantic and classical sonnets, in the meetings, and I never went to read humorous poetry; Because I believed that the work of humor, like a serious poem, should reach full maturity and should not be presented in public until it reaches the desired level.

* What was your father's reaction to these serious poems and your official entry into the world of poetry? Do you read your poems to them?

Yes, it happened many times that I read my poems to my father, but he, with his special mentality of the function of literature, never accepted a poet as an original work and art for me. Every time I read a ghazal to them, they showed a critical reaction; For example, he used to say: "Go after your card and do something right!" Or one day he said in a reproachful tone: "Didn't you find a more dignified job than writing poetry?" My father did not recognize me as a poet for a long time! This view of my late father was without a doubt directly related to my uncooked and ordinary poems, which later gradually adjusted to a certain extent as I progressed, and sometimes I heard that he praised me in front of his friends, away from my eyes.

My father had a very traditional, so-called old definition of poetry. From his point of view, true poetry is poetry that carries educational messages, moral wisdom and practical advice; Like Bostan Saadi or Makhzan al-Asrar Nizami, etc., he considered a poem to be a poem that narrates a meaningful story or implies the virtues of morality, rather than merely playing with emotions and feelings along with imagination and the so-called common imagery of the day.

Once I read a piece in the form of a white poem for him. My father said, this was like a poem!? What kind of poem was it!? I cautiously said, well... the poem was white. "What was it?" he said in surprise. White poetry!? Is poetry a dress that has black and white? What does black and white mean?! I tried to explain that the structure of this poem is based on imagery, metaphor and discovery of new meanings and...

This time my father said with a slight change: "Picture? The picture is for TV! "Poetry must have meaning, message and wisdom." And in order to show that he has a correct understanding of the literary image, he cited Hakim Nizami's poems and said: "Look at what image Nizami has created in Khosrow and Shirin or Haftpiker and what a magnificent atmosphere he has created; This is the picture, not your unclear statements!

He even had a special opinion about Nimai's poetry; He used to say that Shahriar's famous poem "Oh, my mother" has beauty, it is because it has weight, although the stanzas are short and long, but a sign of poetry can be seen in it. In my father's opinion, a word that lacked weight and coherent meaning was an example of ordinary speech, not poetry.

I consider this traditional view to be a largely correct pathology of the state of poetry. The truth is that many of the claimants, due to their literary poverty and extreme inability to master the weights and techniques of ancient poetry, took refuge in Nimai's poetry, especially Sepid. While the giants of New Persian poetry were those who left the tradition behind in mastery. The third Akhwan was a master poet who mastered the Khorasan style and after years of practicing rhythmic and rhyming words, he reached Nimai's poetry and created lasting masterpieces. Before reaching the special language of "Fresh Air", Ahmad Shamlou practiced weights for years and created a book like "Forgotten Songs". You cannot criticize or reject the philosophy of another's thinking until you know the philosophy with all its foundations; The weight and prosody techniques are exactly the same; As long as you don't have the rules of weight in your fist, giving it up will not be out of grace, but it is running away from weakness.

* One of the most prominent aspects of your presence in the field of official poetry is the poetry evenings known as Bayt Derhi poetry evenings in the middle of Ramadan. How was the invitation and selection process of poets managed in these meetings? Were you there from the beginning with only satirical poetry?

Regarding the mechanism of that meeting, I must say that the work was the responsibility of a specialized council with the presence of more than ten experts who carefully monitored all the poetic events of the country throughout the year. This council reviewed the results of festivals and literary developments in the provinces; For example, if someone had excelled in Fajr Festival, Hossein Manzavi Poetry Prize, Parveen Etisami Festival, Talab Poetry Festivals or Young Poetry Nights, his name would reach the Shura.

The most important approach of the council was to respect the originality, coherence, strength and diversity of the poems; Variety in format, style, subject, age and geography, etc., the effort was to ensure that all songs are not limited to religious themes, poetry of stability, praise of the homeland or mourning of martyrs; Rather, a poet should come and read the poetry of children and teenagers, a poet from among the veterans and a young and talented poet by his side, women should be prominently present, student poets should be represented, and even Persian-speaking non-Iranian poets should be invited; For many years poets from India, Pakistan and Tajikistan such as Belgram Shukla, Shahryar and others attended, or even a lady poet from Russia who studied Persian language and literature at Tehran University read poetry. This diversification gives life to the structure of the meeting.

The reason for the enthusiasm of the poets to attend this meeting, apart from the media aspects and the country's macro position, is an important literary fact: the host of this meeting, before he is a political leader or jurist and mujtahid, is a writer, rhetorician, poet and cultivated in old literary circles such as the famous associations of Mashhad. Throughout history, you have cases where a king or a ruler was interested in poetry out of curiosity, but here you are facing an audience that not only knows poetry well, but is also well versed in rhetorical details, weights and technical points, and while reading the poem, corrects mistakes and criticizes the work. Almost all the points he noted during the poetry readings were accepted by the poet himself and the experts at the same moment as accurate and correct corrections.

I remember a poet was present at one of the meetings, who told me in a private space: "During the meeting, the leadership criticized my poem in a stanza." At that moment, I resisted and said to myself that they were wrong and my interpretation was correct. But later, when I meditated on the verse for hours, I was surprised; I realized that the word that he suggested, in addition to maintaining the original weight and context, found a better and deeper connection with the other elements of the verse, so that I myself was not aware of that network of associations when I was composing because I had taken the word in its simple and primary meaning, but with his perspective, new horizons of meaning opened up for my poem.

I have an audible memory of these subtleties and observations. There is a hospital in Qom called Nekui Hospital. I had contradicted a famous verse by changing only one word, a famous verse attributed to Abu Saeed Abul Khair or Saadi, the main verse is:

The dead is the one whose name is not blasphemed

I changed the second stanza jokingly and with the intention of praising the services of the hospital and said:

He is dead if he is not taken to hell

As soon as I read the verse, Hazrat Agha immediately said with a smile and a delicate expression: "Take it!" That is, the stanza should be like this: "Dead is the one who takes him to hell!" In fact, knowing about the condition of some hospitals, they said that if the function of humor is criticism, why did you praise the hospital? Humor requires you to say that if they take him to that hospital, he will be done and die! This correction was done completely improvisationally and with a deep understanding of the critical nature of humor, and the audience accompanied him with a rather loud laugh.

In another meeting, a poet went behind the podium. In these meetings, due to the severe time limit, two poems were rarely allowed to be read. That poet said: "If I may read two poems!" In these cases, since the owner and manager were having a meeting, Hazrat Agha did not interfere, they said to see if it is possible to read. Halseh official said to read. The poet said that one of these two poems is about you and the other is a miscellaneous poem. The gentleman immediately said: "Don't read the poem about us!" In principle, he strictly avoided praise and flattery. Years ago, when a poet had written a poem in praise of him, after the meeting was over, they called him aside and addressed the poet with great kindness: "God has given you this gift and taste for poetry; It's a shame to waste it on praising people. If you want to say a praise, say in praise of God, say the Naat of the Prophet and the prayers of the holy people and the Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them), even say a romantic lyric for your wife; Not for individuals. Never praise anyone.

The poet began to sing; His poetry, from the first stanza to the last verse, was a biting protest and criticism to all the country's problems; From mismanagement and expensiveness to rent-seeking, injustice and inefficiency, etc. After the poem was finished, the gentleman said with a meaningful smile: "This was also about us!" This stance shows openness in accepting social criticisms; That is, they accept the shortcomings and disadvantages of the structure and are not ready to project them.