Translating the plural text: Samuel Beckett in Persian

The process by which a literary text comes to be is among the understudied domains of translation studies. This article draws on my experience of translating Samuel Beckett’s late prose works into Persian to explore how a convergence of translation studies and genetic criticism can affect and broaden the literary translator’s choices. I outline a new way for literary translation to approach unstable source texts which consist of a set of drafts. I demonstrate how my translation of Beckett's late prose works into Persian consists of translating the differential space between the English and the French versions of Beckett’s work, on the one hand, and between the variants of each version according to the variorum editions of his works, on the other

Arbitrary Constellations: Writing the Imagination in Medieval Persian Astrology, with Translations from Tanklūshā (11th – 12th century)

The book we read today in the name of Tanklūshā in Arabic and Persian versions is pseudepigraphic––most likely an imaginary reconstruction of an astrological work by Teukros, rich with images of everyday life appearing in supernatural tints as constellations on the vast screen of the night sky. Each of the twelve zodiac signs contains depictions, of varying lengths, of thirty sets of triptych images. For those interested in Islamic theories of imagination (khayāl), Tanklūshā offers highly visualised texts and fantastic combinations of images. For those interested in Islamic sciences and practices of divination and prognostication, Tanklūshā presents a vivid map of the constantly changing sky — variously rendered as charkh, gardūn, falak, all meaning “turning,” and all representing fate in classical Persian literature — with its aleatory faces. Falak (sphere), which was described by Khāqānī Shirvānī as a “blank dice [kaʿbatayn-i bī-naqsh],” turns, in Tanklūshā, into a dice with 360 sides each inscribed by its dream-like patchworks of arbitrary images

Ṣā’in al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī’s Commentary on Ten Bayts by Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī

A translation of a commentary on a poem by Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī. The commentary is written by Ṣā’in al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 1432), a distinguished figure of intellectual millennialism in the early Timurid era: a productive scholar, commentator, and an occult philosopher, who is best known for his synthesis of Ibn Sīnā’s Peripatetic philosophy and Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism with Ibn ʿArabī’s theoretical mysticism

The Persian Vernacularization of the Rhetorical Figures Laff wa-nashr and Tafsīr

In Arabic and Persian rhetoric, laff wa-nashr or laff-u-nashr is a structuring device. It involves creating a one-to-one correspondence between two or more sets of words across verses or hemistiches of a poem. Laff wa-nashr was in use by the earliest Persian poets but only came to be named as such for the first time in Persian in the fourteenth century handbook of rhetorical figures Daqā’iq al-shiʿr (Minutia of Poetry) by Tāj al-Ḥalwā’ī, after the trope had gained currency in Arabic terminology by Arabic rhetoricians al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) and al-Qazwīnī. They used it as a rhetorical term in their analyses of the Qur’anic language. This working paper elaborates on laff-u-nashr in classical Persian handbooks of rhetorical figures, its typology, its development from another rhetorical figure, tafsīr, with translations from Rādūyānī, Waṭwāṭ, Shams-i Qays Rāzī, Tāj al-Ḥalvā’ī, Sharaf al-Dīn Rāmī, and Vāʾiẓ Kāshifī

Persian Dream Writing (khāb-nāma): With Translations from Khābguzārī (12th or 13th century), and ʿAjā’ib al-Makhlūqāt wa Gharā’ib al-Mawjūdāt (12th century)

There is something literary about dreams when they are written down. Dreams and literature intersect in wonder, imagination, and freedom. The excerpts translated here are dream writings from Khābguzārī by an anonymous writer in the twelfth or thirteenth century, and ʿAjā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt by Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd Hamadānī (also known as Ṭūsī) (circa 1161–1178). Translated here for the first time into English, the two excerpts provide examples of how dreams shaped literary imagination in medieval Persian dream interpretation manuals (khāb-nāma) and anthologies of wondrous things (ʿajāyib-nāma)

Taṣḥīf: A Poetics of Misreading

This working paper deals with the potentials of visual paronomasia and misreading in Persian poetics, and what they imply for textual criticism. In Arabic and Persian poetry, words gain an aesthetic value for their shape, the way they appear in writing. A visual parallelism between words defines a special kind of paronomasia known as script paronomasia (jinās-i khaṭṭ). The morphological features of Persian letters (which were adapted from Arabic alphabet following the Muslim conquest in seventh century) increases the possibility of mistaking one word for another, especially in manuscripts. 29 out of the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet can be classified in 11 groups. Each group consists of letters with the same general morphology. What distinguishes the letters in each group is the number and the position of diacritical dots (nuqṭa). In Arabic and Persian poetry, the potential of misreading is exploited as technique named taṣḥīf. Through taṣḥīf, the poet chooses words that are read differently with a slight change in dotting patterns, hence creating ambiguity

Translating Persian Poetry and its Discontents

Poetry is widely considered to be untranslatable. Notwithstanding the preponderance of theories which insist on the impossibility of poetry translation, poetry has been translated for millennia around the world. In this article, I discuss the untranslatability of poetry by drawing upon my experience as a translator of Persian poetry into English. By considering how the concept and experience of the poetic varies across different cultures, I discuss the development of global poetry in the translational interstices between languages and cultures. In this conception, the poetic belongs to the world and is not confined to any single language. In the end, I argue, untranslatability should not be seen to constitute interdiction against translation

Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics

Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible in poetry, constitutes the difference between poetry and prose. Yet, the translation of line breaks is among the least studied areas of translation theory. This essay explores the challenge of translating classical and modernist line breaks through examples from Persian and European literary canons. From Shams-i Qays’s classic treatise on Persian prosody to Arthur Rimbaud and William Carlos Williams to modernist poet Bijan Elahi’s poetic rewriting of One Thousand and One Nights, we explore the options open to the translator-poet who seeks to create a new poem in and through translation

Translating the Plural Text: Samuel Beckett in Persian

The process by which a literary text comes to be is among the understudied domains of translation studies. This article draws on my experience of translating Samuel Beckett’s late prose works into Persian to explore how a convergence of translation studies and genetic criticism can affect and broaden the literary translator’s choices. I outline a new way for literary translation to approach unstable source texts which consist of a set of drafts. I demonstrate how my translation of Beckett's late prose works into Persian consists of translating the differential space between the English and the French versions of Beckett’s work, on the one hand, and between the variants of each version according to the variorum editions of his works, on the other