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the complete review - poetry

Mirror of Dew

by
Ālam-Tāj Qā'em-Maqāmi
(Zhāle)

general information | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : striking

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       In the twentieth century several female Persian poets achieved considerable renown, notably Forough Farrokhzad and Parvin E'tesami. Ālam-Tāj Qā'em-Maqāmi certainly didn't seek fame -- or even publication: in his Introduction to this collected edition (containing all 917 known lines of her poetry) Asghar Seyed-Gohrab writes that she apparently denied being the author when a few were published in 1933, and that almost her poetry went unpublished until after her death; "She might be called the Emily Dickinson of Persian poetry", Seyed-Gohrab suggests.
       One imagines pen-names hardly count for much if the poet isn't published, but apparently Ālam-Tāj Qā'em-Maqāmi is widely know as 'Zhāle' ('dew' -- hence also the title for this collection), a pen-name of her choosing. [Transliteration further complicates and confuses matters: the (US) Library of Congress apparently goes for: ʻĀlamtāj Qāʼimʹmaqāmī (and Zhālah), while alternative Westernized spellings include Alamtaj Ghaemmaghami ..... Unable to deal with all the diacritical marks, Flipkart beautifully (but near-uselessly) lists the book as: Mirror of Dew: The Poetry of Lam-T J Zh Le Q 'Em-Maq Mi.] The name/reference appears several times in the poetry, as do reflections on mirror-reflections: the title selected for the collection is certainly appropriate.
       Asghar Seyed-Gohrab's thorough Introduction perhaps considers the poetry itself too closely -- the analysis and extensive quotation are considerably more than just a preview, and mean the reader reaches the poetry itself having already been guided to a very specific way of seeing it -- but does provide useful background information about an author most are likely entirely unfamiliar with. The essential point and fact is one that almost doesn't need to be made, as soon becomes clear from the poetry itself, but the biographical background and detail Seyed-Gohrab provides is useful: Zhāle was married off, at fifteen, to a man she loathed. The cultured and well-educated young woman was completely mismatched with the much older military man, who already had other wives. The death of her parents during the first year of her marriage, and the birth of a son, presumably compounded the trauma -- and Zhāle did then soon divorce the man.
       Zhāle's personal unhappiness and more generally the limitations imposed upon women in the Iranian society of that time -- the cause of much of her misery, she repeatedly makes clear -- are central to much of her poetry. Her verse is a devastating critique of the status quo and a convincing, rousing call for the equality of women in society, making her a standard-bearer of feminism. What is, however, perhaps most shocking about her work -- suggesting just how bad the situation of women was (and is), and how hopeless she saw it as being -- is that she apparently had no intention of making it public, or arguably couldn't even imagine her poems being shared or read publicly; Seyed-Gohrab reports that her son found most of them after her death, on sheets of paper slipped between the pages of books in her library. Zhāle was so discouraged by and in the society she lived that she made no effort to circulate any of it. Despite that, she still felt compelled to write poetry that is not just personal and introspective, but rather also emphatically denounces many social norms and calls for fundamental change -- a long-silent cry that now roars very loudly indeed: these poems are almost deafening.
       Yes, Zhāle's poetry is stunning: brutally honest and forthright, full of raw emotion. Much she expresses is hardly novel in this day and age, but considering the time and circumstances when she was writing it resounds all the more powerfully -- with far too much that still echoes familiarly today. There's a seething anger here, behind the veil, that has rarely been seen in Islamic poetry, and it is quite shocking just how directly and clearly Zhāle expresses it.
       Poems like 'Reproach to my Husband' are devastating portraits of the hated man as well as broader critiques of imposed marriage (elsewhere she writes: "Is this Sharia marriage, or Sharia-colored adultery ? / No, I misspoke, it's marriage mixed with punishment") and the limitations placed on women, concluding:

People say that one called "husband"
       is God to the wife.
He is a man, the God of my existence.
       No ! No ! he's a preordained affliction

[...]

Who am I ? Oh ! a weak creature
       whose name and being are mockery and scorn.
Alas ! Alack ! In this country where oppression rules
       a woman has no refuge, nor any arbiter.
If people use the names of existence and non-existence
       for men and women, these names suit them.
Woman is the disgrace of the world
       because she's wrapped in a tar-black veil.

I do not approve of a husband, I do not accept an oppressor.
       You'll hear no other answer, till the Day of Resurrection.

I grant him my trousseau and the bride price,
       but I do have one demand of him: his death.

It's not men I am sick of, but people's gossip,
       which is a lamp that gives neither profit nor light.

People say that women in Europe are influential
       but in Iran she's no more than unleavened dough.
Imagine, the candle of her destiny is glowing in Europe,
       but the candle gives no light in Fati's house, or in mine.

Although in our religion, the age of marriage is nine,
       there is a difference between intellectual and bodily maturity.
Although girls in other countries come of age at nine,
       dear sister, that sad fact has no place in our country.
Does a nine-year-old girl know what a husband is ?
       How can a wedding dress suit someone still playing with dolls ?
Even the nature of an animal rejects such a tradition,
       while my husband, who looks like a man, declines to accept this fact.

O you who have not come to our world !
       It's better if you do not come.

[...]

O, you who have not come to the world !
       Our existence is worse than death.

- M.A.Orthofer, 9 July 2014

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Links:

• Harvard University Press publicity page

• See Index of Poetry
• See Index of Persian and Iranian literature
• See Index of Bilingual editions under review

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About the Author:

       Ālam-Tāj Qā'em-Maqāmi (عالمتاج قائم مقامی) -- popularly known as Zhāle (ژاله) -- lived ca. 1883 to 1946.

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© 2014 the complete review

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