Last week, high-ranking Iranian politicians and clergymen eulogized Moshfeq Kashani, who served as court poet to the ayatollahs. As it happens, Kashani’s death fell close to the first anniversary of the death of another poet, Hashem Shaabani, executed for using verse to protest the regime. Amir Taheri contrasts the artistic visions of the two men:
Because the Persian language is extremely musical, even the most amateurish poems could resonate with Iranians. Kashani’s poems are no exception. Using a limited vocabulary, heavily dominated by clichés borrowed from classical poems, things like “your eyebrows resemble the crescent moon” and “Zohreh (Venus) playing the sitar in the sky,” Kashani’s poems sound familiar and thus, to many, somehow reassuring . . . part of the ambient noise of life—something like pumped music in lifts or shopping malls. . . .
Shaabani, on the other hand, is a modernist through and through. He represents the new Iran which wants to be part of the modern world with its gift of nonconformity, diversity, and, yes, risk-taking.
Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani prevented Iranians from remembering Shaabani even with a simple ceremony. However, history will remember him long after they are forgotten.
Read more on Asharq al-Awsat: http://www.aawsat.net/2015/01/article55340682