Sadegh Hedayat and The Blind Owl: Introducing Persian Modernism

Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl (Boof-e koor), first published in 1937, stands as the watershed moment when Persian literature entered the modernist era. In a literary landscape still dominated by classical forms and romantic tropes, Hedayat’s unsettling novella charted a new territory of psychological depth, existential anguish, and formal experimentation. Below, we explore the man, his masterpiece, and the seismic shift they helped unleash in 20th‑century Persian letters.

1. From Traditional Roots to Modern Reckoning

Early Life and Education
Born in 1903 into a landed family in Tehran, Hedayat grew up steeped in the classical Persian canon—divans of Hafez, Rumi’s masnavis, Ferdowsi’s epics. Yet his schooling in Europe (Paris and Belgium, 1920s–’30s) exposed him to Freud, Kafka, and surrealist art. Confronted with Western existentialism and its preoccupation with alienation, Hedayat returned to Iran determined to reinvent his native literature.

Literary Climate in 1930s Iran
Until the mid‑1930s, most Persian fiction remained firmly in a realist or romantic mode: ethical parables, courtly romances, pastoral idylls. The idea of a fractured psyche, dream‑logic narratives, or ambiguous endings was virtually unheard of. Hedayat’s innovations, then, were nothing short of revolutionary.

2. The Blind Owl: A Portrait of Inner Darkness

At its surface, The Blind Owl chronicles an unnamed narrator’s descent into obsession—a morbid fixation on a mysterious woman “in white,” brought back night after night in opium‑laden visions. But its true power lies in its fractured form and its refusal to comfort:

1. A Non‑Linear Structure. Two intertwined narrative strands—one …