L'eau de jouvence et autres recits.

Beard, Michael

There is a characteristic style for which Sadeq Hedayat is famous among Iranian readers (close attention to local color, a lingering sense of doom, characters whose lives follow a fated downward spiral), but only one of the stories collected here ("Cul-de-sac," 1942) is an example of it. The title story (originally "Abe zendegi," "The Water of Life," 1944) is a political fable in folktale mode, one of Hedayat's most optimistic moments. There is also a fascinating piece of science fiction ("S.G.L.L.," 1933) and a dialogue of recently deceased spirits discoursing in a Zoroastrian funeral tower, as confused in death as they were in life ("Afarin-gan," 1933). There are even two stories written originally in French ("Lunatique" and "Sampingue"), both on themes suggested by Hedayat's extended visit to India (1936-37). The French stories have been available on and off for years in Iranian publications (and in English translation), but in the company of close French translations it is striking how differently Hedayat wrote in French, with a lush vocabulary and a sense of leisure quite unlike the spare, antirhetorical voice which became so influential on Iranian writers in the generation after him. L'eau de jouvence is a short collection, but the variety can be dizzying.

There is no one pace at which writers attain classic status. Some reputations climb steadily, and some if we graphed them would perform erratic roller-coaster loops. Hedayat's has done both. When he died in 1951, a suicide in Paris, it must have seemed to Iranians that he was on the verge of a global reputation, that he would be widely translated and recognized immediately for his brilliance. The aftermath has been less encouraging. Translations into English have been frequent but scattered through anthologies and periodicals, usually targeted at a specialized audience, and one needs a big library to track them all down. The French Hedayat has followed a more deliberate course.

Slowly, but with painstaking care in their choice of translators, the editors at Jose Corti are bringing Hedayat's works to the light in French. Roger Lescot's translation of Buf-e kur (Eng. The Blind Owl) was greeted with real acclaim in 1953, and since then five other collections have appeared (some as substantial as Hedayat's novel Hajji Agha, some as brief as his essay on Omar Khayyam), at a constant but geological pace. Little by little, a shelf is accreting which promises, some day, to offer the French reader a consistent if expensive selection of the author's major works. We may be thankful for their quality, control, but if we are hoping for Hedayat's complete works in a French boxed set, it looks like a long wait.

Michael Beard University of North Dakota