Ahmad Shamlou: The Warrior of Prose

Ahmad Shamlou (1925 — 2000) was a very prolific Persian poet, writer, and journalist. His poetry shoud be placed within the new frames initiated for Persian poetry by Nima Youshij.

Ahmad Shmlou’s career spanned over half a century, a century with decisive turns in the country’s socio-political environment. Such environment combined with the richness of the poet's repertory of myth and his universal outlook on human condition allowed him to use themes that are to some extent exotic to Iranian culture in his poetry. It is so that he artfully uses the atmosphere like the Passion of Christ or Exodus and Passover or masterpieces like Hamlet for his personal expressions.

In his poetry language takes on more complex uses compared to his contemporary poets and his style is quite pretentious. The abstractions used in his poems are less figurative than usual for Persian poetry tradition and one sees the conscious intervention of the poet is the arrangements of emotions and thoughts. The themes in his poetry range from poilitical issues mostly freedom to human condition and love. He was a Nobel prize candidate for literature in 1984.

This website contains my translation of a selection of his poems.

Maryam Dilmaghani

Winter 2008, Montréal