The Blind Owl (Authorized by The Sadegh Hedayat Foundation - First Translation into English Based on the Bombay Edition)

Sadegh Hedayat, Naveed Noori

Description

Widely regarded as Sadegh Hedayat's masterpiece, the Blind Owl is the most important work of literature to come out of Iran in the past century. On the surface this work seems to be a tale of doomed love, but with the turning of each page basic facts become obscure and the reader soon realizes this book is much more than a love story. Although the Blind Owl has been compared to the works of the Kafka, Rilke and Poe, this work defies categorization. Lescot's French translation made the Blind Owl world-famous, while D.P. Costello's English translation made it largely accessible. Sadly, this work has yet to find its way into the English pantheon of Classics. This 75th anniversary edition, translated by award-winning writer Naveed Noori and published in conjunction with the Hedayat Foundation, aims to change this and is notable for a number of firsts: *The only translation endorsed by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation *The first translation to use the definitive Bombay edition (Hedayat's handwritten text) *The only available English translation by a native Persian and English speaker *The preface includes a detailed textual analysis of the Blind Owl Finally, by largely preserving the spirit as well as the structure of Hedayat's writing, this edition brings the English reader into the world of the Hedayat's Blind Owl as never before. Extensive footnotes (explaining Persian words, phrases, and customs ignored in previous translations) provide deeper understanding of this work for both the causal reader and the serious student of literature.


“….There are indeed marked differences between Costello’s and Noori’s translations. As Noori indicates, his attempt to preserve the overabundance of dashes gives the reader a more immediate sense of the narrator’s agitation...The first sentence flows on in Noori’s translation, piling sensation upon sensation never allowing us to pause and catch our breath or separate out the images from the sensations. In his discussion of the relationship between his translation and Costello’s, Noori also draws on translation theory and sees Costello’s focus on the fluidity of the text in English as a “domestication” of Hedayat’s original. Noori’s new English translation and his preface are a welcome addition and will no doubt draw the attention of scholars interested in Hedayat’s works. The close textual and comparative analysis of the type Noori offers marks a new and long-overdue critical approach to the translation of the most celebrated work of modern Persian prose.” -Professor Nasrin Rahimieh in Middle Eastern Literatures

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Epic Fantasy
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Wisehouse
• Date de parution: 01 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789186131487
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Blind Owl
The Blind Owl
By
Sadegh Hedayat
Translated By Naveed Noori
Cover art by Lynn Hatzius
The Blind Owl
By Sadegh Hedayat
Translated by Naveed Noori
ISBN 978-91-86131-48-7
Under the auspices of the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation
1st Edition ebook
October 2011
Editorial l Aleph
Iran Open Publishing Group
www.entesharate-iran.com
www.l-aleph.com
2011 All Rights reserved by Iran Open Publishing Group
Preface
Introduction
In your hands is the first translation into English of Sadegh Hedayat s The Blind Owl based on the Bombay edition. The first question that should come to mind is why a new translation is necessary when two others are available, namely D. P. Costello s 1957 and Iraj Bashiri s 1984 translations. I chose to undertake this translation for three important reasons. First, as I will discuss in the textual analysis section below, I believe that all typed Persian language editions and English translations of Hedayat s The Blind Owl suffer from a multitude of inaccuracies stemming from the corruption of an early typed Persian edition. Second, Costello s decision to translate the work with a strong emphasis on fluency has led to a work that flows very well but which fails to convey the nuances of Hedayat s pen. Lastly, I have undertaken this project because of the high regard I have for Hedayat, and hope that this will help renew interest in his works.
Textual Analysis
Dates of Publication and Available Texts
The first edition of The Blind Owl was published in 1936 (1315) 1 in Bombay, India. 2 Hedayat completed this work while studying the Pahlavi language in Bombay. On the first page of the book Hedayat wrote, The printing and sale [of this work] in Iran is forbidden. Knowing that publication of this book would never be allowed in Iran during the reign of Reza Shah, prior to his return to Iran Hedayat mimeographed 50 copies of the handwritten manuscript and sent them to friends and associates around the world. There is debate about when he actually wrote this book. As noted above, 1936 is the official date of publication. Some have argued that Hedayat wrote this before he left Paris in 1930; however, Katouzian and others have stated that based on the analysis of his work at the time, he could not have written this prior to 1934. 1 , 2 M. F. Farzaneh argues that the second part of the work was influenced by his return to Iran, while Hedayat himself states that parts of it were changed when he was in India in 1936. 3 Importantly, Hedayat does not appear to have revised this manuscript after the Bombay edition. 4
Five years later, in 1941 (1320), with Reza Shah s exile and the subsequent change in the political and social climate, part of The Blind Owl (in censored form) was published as a serial in Rooznameh-ye Iran . 5 Apparently during the same year, the first typed version of The Blind Owl also appeared. I have been unable to locate any copies of either the serial or the first typed edition in any major library catalogs around the world. The first typed edition of 1941 may in fact have been considered the second edition as in the Amir Kabir and Javidan editions the first edition is always referred to as the Bombay edition. This second edition (or the first typed edition) is the edition published by Nashr-e Mazaheri. The autographed title page of M. F. Farzaneh s copy can be seen in Ashnai ba Sadegh Hedayat . 6 The Nashr-e Mazaheri edition was based on the censored Rooznameh-ye Iran version, but apparently with some changes. 7 There is one unsubstantiated account of this being the definitive edition, claiming Hedayat personally worked with the staff of Rooznameh-ye Iran on this edition; however, this comes from a brief article based on a phone conversation with a friend of Hedayat. 1 This friend has never been identified, and this claim has been rejected by scholars such as Baharloo, as well as Hassan Qaemian, who worked at Rooznameh-ye Iran at the time. 2 As mentioned before, Hedayat does not appear to have revised this manuscript after 1936. Both the Hedayat Foundation and M. F. Farzaneh (who owns both the first and second editions) consider the Bombay edition to be the definitive edition, and both have published this edition. 3 , 4
After the Nashr-e Mazaheri edition, The Blind Owl was not reprinted for about 10 years. In Hedayat s letters to Shahid-Noorai prior to Hedayat s final trip to France, there is no mention of a reprint of The Blind Owl , whereas the two do discuss new editions and reprints of other works, as well as a failed effort on the part of a publisher to publish his entire catalogue. 5 M. F. Farzaneh s account of this time and a publisher s failed bid to acquire the rights to all of Hedayat s works also matches this. 6 However, in a letter to Shahid-Noorai, Hedayat mentions the translation of The Blind Owl into French by Orientalist and diplomat Roger Lescot whom Hedayat had met in Tehran. The translation appears to have been completed by 1948 but its publication was delayed when the intended publisher (Grasset) ran into difficulties. 7 Upon Hedayat s departure for France, he had put Manoochehr Kolbadi in charge of publishing his works. 1 It is likely that he reached an agreement with Entesharat-e Amir Kabir once Hedayat was in France, or after his death. One source states that the first Amir Kabir edition was published in 1950. 2 It is possible that this was published when Hedayat was in France. However, it is more likely that The Blind Owl was not re-introduced in Iran until after Hedayat s death.
After Hedayat s suicide in 1951, the fourth edition was published by Amir Kabir, and new editions of this work were published by Amir Kabir for the next several decades. This edition was said to have been edited and compiled by Hedayat s father and Bozorg Alavi. 3 This fourth fourth edition is the earliest typed edition this author could find and examine, 4 and is available in several of the major libraries around the world (Edinburgh University, Harvard University, University of London, University of Manchester, University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania). In addition to the fourth edition, I have closely examined the eighth Amir Kabir edition, 5 as well as the Javidan Javidan edition. 6 Thus, there is the problem of the third edition. Was this published by Amir Kabir right before Hedayat s death (based on the Nashr-e Mazaheri), or was it published after his death (the edition compiled by Hedayat s father and Bozorg Alavi)? Or is the third edition actually the Nashr-e Mazaheri edition, and the second was considered the Rooznameh-ye Iran serialized version? In either case, what we have remaining today are the first and fourth editions (the former handwritten by Hedayat and largely unavailable until M. F. Farzaneh s reprint in 1994, and the latter which is the source of most subsequent Persian editions and foreign translations).
The first translation of this work was by Roger Lescot. It was published in book form in France in 1953. 1 However the translation into French, which appears to have been completed by 1948, was first published in serial form in Egypt in the journal La revue du Caire in 1952. Although I am not proficient in French, it seems that Lescot had access to the Bombay edition and that the translation is either based entirely on that edition, or possibly a combination of the Bombay and Nashr-e Mazaheri editions. In all existing Persian editions, from at least the fourth edition onwards, the first sentence is also the entire first paragraph, but this is not the case in the Bombay edition or Lescot s. Also, Lescot s edition has the reproduction of two of Hedayat s drawings that are found in the Bombay edition, but these are not seen in the existing Persian editions. In addition, in the very first section of Lescot s translation, the paragraph structure differs in one way from the Bombay edition (and in this respect is similar to the fourth Amir Kabir edition). The first section the Bombay edition has five paragraphs, Lescot s translation six paragraphs, and Amir Kabir (and Costello s translation) seven paragraphs. Thus, Lescot may have used more than just the Bombay edition for the translation.
The first English-language translation, published in 1957, was by Desmond Patrick Costello. 2 This author has examined that edition. In the Costello version there is no introduction by the translator that identifies the source text. It has been suggested by some that the English translation was based on Lescot s French translation. Costello first studied Persian around the age of 40 while working at a diplomatic mission in Paris (1950-1955), and it was during this time that he translated The Blind Owl into English. 3 Thus, while in Paris he might have been introduced to Hedayat by his Persian tutor but it is equally likely that he would have been familiar with Lescot s acclaimed translation which was published in 1953 (when Costello was in Paris).
Costello was a linguist with a working knowledge of at least nine languages; however, it is difficult to imagine him mastering Persian to the point of translating a book while also serving full-time as a diplomat and continuing the study of other languages such as French and Russian. Based on formatting alone, Lescot s translation was likely based on a pre-third/fourth edition version, while Costello s was definitely based on a post-third/fourth edition version. It remains a possibility that Costello used both Hedayat s Persian and Lescot s French versions for the English translation; however, this would require detailed analysis by someone fluent in English, French, and Persian. Regardless of this, as has been noted before and will be demonstrated below, Costello s version differs substantially from Hedayat s original text and is a classic example of domestication in translation. 1
Textual Analysis
All Persian typed editions since 1951 and the English translations share a common source which is