Looking at the works and ideas of Sadegh Hedayat in the sixty-fourth anniversary of suicide

Sadegh Hedayat and intellectual crisis in the Constitutional Era
Sadegh Hedayat was born in 1280 AH. His grandfather was the principal of the Darolfonoon School and the Science Minister. His father was the advisor of ministers and prime ministers and general manager of Real Estate Registration in Qajar regime. His mother was the daughter of grand Mokhber Al- saltaneh and granddaughter of Etezar Al-Malek. His older brother was Deputy Prime Minister and the judge of the Supreme Court and his other brother was one of the senior officer and head of the Military School. His cousin Mehdi Qoli Khan Hedayat was one of the members of modernization party and Prime Minister of Reza Khan 1306 and 1309. He was one of the important factors of remaining Hedayat in Europe for higher education in his duration of being Prime Minister while the evidence suggests that Hedayat did not like this work at all and in an interview with M. Farzaneh; he said that he went abroad for sightseeing. One of his sisters was Ali Razm Ara’s wife, Chief of the army owners’ headquarter and then, the Prime Minister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
When Hedayat was six years old, we was sent to Elmiyeh School and by the end of elementary school, he went to Darolfonoon School. In 1295, he left Darolfonoon School due to eye disease. A year later he began studying at St. Louis School and in 1304, when he was twenty-four years old, he finished his education in this school. A year later he was sent to Belgium and he started his education in an engineering school and after eight months, he expelled from the school. With the power that his family had in the government, he went to Paris and he studied in the field of civil engineering. But, he abandoned that after two years. In 1307, Hedayat tried to immerse himself in Mann River. Then, he returned to Iran and employed at the Melli Bank. But, one year later he resigned. He went to the Department of Commerce and resigned in 1313. Then, he went abroad and resigned one year later and then, he went to Mumbai with the efforts of his family and "Sh. Partow". Sh. Partow writes about it:
"We went to Mumbai together. I gave him a place and a scrap typewriter to entertain him so that he can copy "Blind Owl". I was the person who helped Sadegh Hedayat, this spoiled and fractious boy to see India and write spam works. Now, you keep busy writing articles and books about him to do what? Literature is not this nonsense words."
Hedayat stayed in India for one year and he learned Pahlavi language there and he returned to Iran (1316) and he employed in Melli bank but he resigned. In 1317, he went to the Ministry of Culture and three years after, he became the translator of the School of Fine Arts and he continued this work until the end of his presence in Iran. In 1324, he traveled to Tashkent due to his closeness with the members of the Tudeh Party and he went to Paris in 1329. After four months of his residence and thirty-three days after the assassination of his sister’s husband –Razm Ara- he committed suicide with gas in a rented apartment. According to Mustafa Farzaneh, in the last months of his life, Hedayat tried to destroy all his unpublished and retained writings except his two anti-Islamic works i.e. "البعثه الا سلامیه الی البلاد الافرنجیه" and "possession of pearls".
"I've lost what was in the life and I wanted them to go!"
The characters of Hedayat’s works from "Mrs Alawiya" to "Blind Owl", from "patience stone" to "Abji Khanom", from "Don Juan Karaj" to "Katia", "Haji Marda", "the man who killed his breath" or "Dash Akol" and from "the case of spirit hen" to "Stray Dog", "Creation myth", "Turkish salt theorem" and "Mrs Alawiya" reflects the worldview and social conditions prevailing on the constitutional period.
The literary of short story in Iran became full of simplistic realism in line with the west oriented enlightenment and constitution bourgeois and this period was the reflection of the conciliatory ideas of the intellectuals with the failure of the Constitutional Revolution and the infamous Treaty in 1907. Jamalzadeh’s works can be from disappointment and social-political failure of the constitutional era. Archaism and recording neutral memories in his works disguised his political orientation of his short stories to a kind of passivity and caused depleting literature from any social criticism. His frustration and the lack of challenge with the western formation after the constitutional era and accepting it caused frustrating nihilism of Sadegh Hedayat. Thus, this trend in the history of short stories represents the depth of sedation in intellectuals after the era to fight with west orientation.
The Melancholy semi-modernity of Pahlavi government and the economic development school of Reza Shah put the Iranian society in the line of industrialization and this was the path that the very hasty society moved in it. Industrial plants’ need to cheap labor with long hours caused the influx of impoverished and deprived people from villages and their deployment divided the city to south and north. The south of the city was the home of colonial workers which was the only place to retrieve their work force. Hedayat and Chubak were initially noted about this trend and created a kind of social realism that the most important feature of which was submission to the current status. Hedayat’s works was a horrifying picture of poverty caused by economic development of Reza Shah and they represented the crisis of Iran’s historical identity with the advent of modernism. Metamorphosis of traditional and religious beliefs, discrediting and mocking them in Hedayat’s works have a special place. The beginning of the modernism course was from the late Qajar and also, with the coup of Seyyed Zia and Pahlavi government simultaneously with the strengthening the Freemasonry circles and promoting secularism. This issue led to the rise of non-historic and modern bourgeoisie from the industrial development concentration of Iran and this class of people created beliefs that Jalal Al-Ahmad called it enlightened disease. Meanwhile, Hedayat’s family had a very vivid role in the progressive movements of the Qajar.
Hedayat's works are full of passivity, apathy against the conflicted status after the constitutional era. His literary nihilism which was loaned by writers such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Sall Blue and etc. created a world in his stories that the most important feature of that was ignoring the essence of God. The root of this negligence can be his Jewish consideration of God that similar to this was found in the Kafka’s works. In the worldview of Hedayat, God is the source of evil and anger and he created him and then, abandoned. In the works such as "pearl ball", "Tales of Creation", "Blind Owl" Hedayat depicts a world, in which there is no God and their characters are depressed and exhausted. "Tales of Creation" like "the patient stone" of Chubak is struggling with any idea of relying on divine. In works such as "pearl ball", "Mrs Alawiya", Hedayat expresses his hate of Shia in an angry manner. Sanctity orientation and any spiritual belief in the Hedayat’s thinking are rejected so that the way for the emergence of his third world nihilism in his literature, be opened.
The most important effect of Hedayat according to many critics is "Blind Owl" that the full color footprints of French and German literature can be seen in it. Jalal Al-e Ahmad considers this work as a the transcription of "Diary" by Rilke in many parts and on the other hand, Reza Davari in the book of "post-modern ideas" refers to objective similarities of "Blind Owl" with the work of Virginia Woolf. On the other hand, the heavy shadow of the nineteenth century American writer Washington Irving and his book i.e. "The Adventure of the German Student" or "Aurelia" of Gerard de Nerval's are dominated on "Blind Owl".