The Iranian

 

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Alefba

Farshchian

Sehaty Foreign Exchange

    Letters

Friday
October 27, 2000

We want more!

I read your article on the demise of Fereydoun Moshiri with sadness ["Bi to mahtaab shabi... "]. It is true that recently and every month we have been losing our great poets. Nevertheless, death is inevitable and life, as Moshiri believed, is precious and deserves much appreciation.

Next to your piece on Moshiri, there was a short note by Esmail Nooriala about a picture of his with Shamlou and Royaei, remembering the events and times around that picture ["Footprint"]. His short explanation ended on a very sad note: "I can write pages about what was going on around the time and content of this picture but I do not think much of it will be of any interest to most of your readers."

Is this the way the readers of Persian poetry are perceived by our poets? Do we have to wait for the vanishing of each of them until we recognize their value for our culture and society? In his short note, Nooriala talks about a lot of important things:

1. The history of New Wave poetry, that we know he was the instigator and theoretician of, 2. The challenge of Spacementalism or She'r Hajm that became of utmost importance in the first decade of Islamic Iran, 3. The connection of both of these movements to the works of Ahmad Shamlou, 4. The story of Kanun e Nevisandegan that Nooriala briefly writes about his role during its formation phase. 5. The story of Iran Gallery and the unheard-of political position of our modernist painters of the sixties.

I can add a few more points touched on by Nooriala in his short note. But he just stops exactly where he has to start. I think he owes it to all of us to write about his literary and political experience in those two most important decades of our cultural history.

And one more point: Our literary figures are rarely capable of writing in English. This is a blessing that Nooriala is a prominent English writer as well. His few articles in your site has showed his excellent ability to write for a generation that is unable to read Farsi but is eagerly looking for sources on its contemporary culture and literature. I think you, as a modern media, should insist and encourage writers like Nooriala to write more often and in more detail.

Nooriala should rest assured that there are many people like me amongst the readers of this site who are enthusiastically looking for his future articles.

Hushang Mansurian
Hacienda Hights, California

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