Remembering Forough

 On the anniversary of her death, February 14th, 1962

On Monday February 14 Forugh visited her mother, who later recalled their conversation over lunch as the nicest that they
ever had. From her mother's home, on the way back, with Forugh driving, at the intersection of Marvdasht and
Loqumanoddowleh Streets in Darrus, her jeep station wagon swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle and struck a wall.
Thrown from her car, at the height of her creativity and barely thirty-two Forugh Farrokhzad died of head injuries. She was
buried beneath the falling snow in the Zahiro-Doleh in Tehran.

 

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Green Delusion

The following poem, called "Green Delusion" is described by the feminist critic Farzaneh Milani as "Forugh's eloquent statement of all the sacrifices she has had to make for her art." In this poem, which Milani entitles in translation "Green Terror", the ever honest poet reveals that her decision to live as an individualistic female and artist is not without its price. Doubts, questions, and twinges of regret remains to roads not taken and more conventional, more acceptable roles rejected. The speaker in "Green Delusion" recognizes that nature can no longer be a comforting idyllic force in her life, that she is far beyond able to seek refuge in comfortable maternal and other domestic female roles, and that her steadfast search for life's meaning has deprived her of the comfort of religious faith. 


I cried all day in the mirror. 
Spring 
Had entrusted my window to the trees' green delusion. 
My body would not fit n the cocoon of my loneliness. 
And the odor of my paper crown had polluted the air 
Of that sunless realm. 

I couldn't anymore, I just couldn't: 
Street sounds, the sound of birds, 
The sound of felt balls being lost, 
And the fleeting clamor of children, 
And the dance of balloons 
Bobbing upward at he end of their string stems 
Like soap bubbles. 
And the wind, wind which seemed 
To be breathing in the depths 
Of the deepest dark moments of lovemaking, 
Were exerting pressure 
On the ramparts of the silent fortress of my confidence
And through old cracks in the walls were calling my heart by name. 

All day my gaze was fixed 
On my life's eyes, 
At those two anxious fearful eyes which avoided my stare 
And sought refuge in their lids' safe seclusion like liars. 

Which peak, which summit? 
Do not all of these winding roads 
Reach the point of converence and termination 
In that cold sucking mouth? 

O simple words of deception and renunciation of bodies and desires, 
What did you give me? 
If I stuck a flower in my own hair, 
Would it not be more alluring 
Than this fraud, than this paper crown? 

How the spirit of the desert got me 
And the moon's magic led me from the flock's faith! 
How the incompleteness of my heart grew large 
And no half completed this half! 
How I stood and saw 
The ground beneath my two feet vanish, 
And no warmth of my mate's body 
Fulfill the futile anticipation of my body! 

Which peak, which summit? 
Give me refuge, O apprehensive lights, 
O bright doubting houses 
On whose sunny roofs sway 
Clothes laundered in the embrace of scented smoke. 

Give me refuge, O simple whole women 
Whose slender fingertips 
Trace 
The exhilarating movement of a foetus beneath the skin
And in whose opened blouses 
The air always mingles with the smell of fresh milk. 

Which peak, which summit? 
Give me refuge, O hearthsful of fire-O goodluck horeshoes. 
And O song of copper pots in the blackened kitchen, 
And O somber humming of the sewing machine, 
And O day-and-night struggle between carpets and brooms. 
Give me refuge, O insatiable loves, 
Whose painful desire for immortality 
Adorns your bed of conquests 
With magical water and drops of fresh blood. 

All day, all day, 
Forsaken, forsaken like a corpse on water, 
I floated towards the most terrifying rocks, 
Toward the deepest sea caves. 
And the most carnivorous of fish 
And the thin vertebrae of my back 
twinged with pain at sending death. 

I couldn't any longer, I just couldn't. 
The sound of my feet arose from the denial of the road,
And my despair had become vaster than my spirit's capacity to endure. 
And that spring season and that green-colored delusion 
Passing by the window said to my heart: 
"Look, 
You never progressed, 
Yours has been a descent." 

Iranian Culture "A Persianist View" Michael Hillmann Page 162 

 

A review on her movie, The House is Black

 

The House is Black 
One of the Ten Best Films of 1997 

By Jonathan Rosenbaum 


The House is Black. 


I mainly have to take it on faith that Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-ā87) is the greatest Iranian poet of the 20th century. My
involvement with her only film goes much deeper: after seeing this 22-minute 1962 documentary about a leper colony a few years
ago at the Locarno film festival, I resolved as a member of the New York film festivalās selection committee to get it screened
there, and finally succeeded last year after agreeing to subtitle it in collaboration with several Iranians. After premiering in New Y
ork, the subtitled print showed at the Film Center twice in early October on its way back to the Swiss Cinematheque. 

Thanks to my work on the film, I had plenty of opportunity to experience the overwhelming poetry of Farrokhzadās sounds and
images÷including the extraordinary sound of her voice and the no less remarkable configurations of her words in relation to he r
sounds and images÷even if I could only appreciate the power of her written poetry secondhand. But if the greatness of some films
can be measured by how much they change oneās view of the world, few have altered mine as much as this precious work. 

Perhaps the most formative film I saw as a child was Tod Browningās Freaks (1932): its view of deformity, which combines
compassion and horror, has been definitive for most of my life. But The House Is Black, whose radical and poetic compass ion for
lepers eschews any sense of horror or voyeurism or sentimentality, changed all that. Whether this vision is specifically Iranian is a
question Iām not equipped to answer. Itās worth noting that when the film was made, its reception in Iran was far from unanimously
positive; given its subject matter, I doubt it could comfortably enter the mainstream anywhere on earth. On the other hand,I suspect
that part of my attraction to Iranian and Taiwanese films stems from their resistance to Western values, which implies they have a
great deal to teach me. An Iranian friend who loves The House Is Black as much as I do told me that she didnāt much care for
Yangās Taipei Story because it reminded her too much of various Iranian films that inveig hed against westernization÷which
implies in turn that national characteristics are merely one of the many lenses we look through when we watch movies. With or
without its Iranian character, The House Is Black remains the most successful fusion of cinema and poetry that I know. I suspect
this is true less for formal reasons than because of Farrokhzadās irreducible sureness in what she has to say.