*****The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

This is an incomplete and unedited overview of The Blind Owl.  I have published it in this form because I do not know when or if I will get back to working on it soon. However, it is such a magnificent and important work of literature, I hope what information I do provide entices you to read this novel. Despite the fact it is a novella it warrants a minimum of two readings. I have read it once, hence my reluctance to complete and edit my scruffy notes at this time.

Sadegh Hedayat 1903-1951

• Sadegh Hedayat  1903-1951
• first published 1937
• written in Persian
• first printed in Bombay bearing the stamp, "Not for sale or publication in Iran"
• 1941 - first appeared in Tehran as a serial in the weekly journal, Iran.
• It was believed that The Blind Owl made its readers commit suicide.
• This novel has been banned several times.
• Translated by D.P. Costello
• Introduction by Porochista Khakpour
• psycho-fiction
• Hedayat is considered the father of modern Iranian Literature
• Committed suicide at age 48 while living in France.

Setting city of Rey, now known as Tehran, Persia (now Iran) Main Character* -  an unnamed pen-case artist who narrates the entire novel Themes and Motifs (These should not be housed as one; please bear with me for now.) death (esp by murder or suicide: i.e., narrator will give woman his poisoned wine to kill her, or narrator will drink it in order to kill himself  p. 63) sexual desire madness - a developing psychosis repetition** opposites: desire for sex vs. sexual repulsion, fear of death and desire for it Symbols owl black eyes cypress tree jar/container form, as in an urn smell of cucumber on especially a female's breath (as adult or child) Quotes & Notes This book opens with one of those fantastic and memorable first lines you do not easily forget:  "There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker."  (p. 17) *Protagonist / narrator  - it is difficult to determine what are hallucinatory and what are real thoughts: Is there one female who symbolizes all females - i.e., the desired woman = the unattainable wife.  Likewise, are all or some of the portrayed men the narrator hallucinating- i.e., the butcher across the street = the one who butchered the girl, or his wife. Simultaneously, is the narrator also the sinister hearse driver who must bury the girl.  Is there a male nanny with his wife caring for him (the narrator), or is the nanny really his uncle, a person who cared for him in the past, or the narrator simply imagining someone taking care of his psychotic self.  ● Old men are always depicted as feeble with crazy laughter, women are seductress' but unattainable, so must die. **"I write only for the benefit of my shadow cast on the wall," is an  oft repeated phrase throughout the novel. The novel is broken up into two sections: The first part is a sort of journey where the narrator, a painter of pen-cases, sets out to find a woman who haunts his mind, the same woman he paints on his pen-cases. In the second section the narrator confesses his murder, revealing the background of the first section, as he is cared for by a Nanny and his wife. There is a developing sense of madness that increases as the novel progresses.   The narrator addresses his murderous confessions to the shadow on the wall which resembles an owl.