A Survey to ‘the Letter by Saint Paul to the Writers’ (A manifesto Issued by Jalal Al Ahamad)
Subject Areas : Research in Iranian classical literature
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Abstract :
Certain social–political conditions may lead the writers to use indirect ways to express their thoughts, for example, reporting them as the words of others in a different time and place. This is what happened for Jalal Al Ahamad, in a preface, titled as the “Letter by Saint Paul to the Writers”, to the second edition of “Zan-e Ziadi” (unwanted woman), a collection of his short stories. The letter is something made by Jalal himself not as seemingly claimed by Saint Paul. It was in fact an expression of objection to Parviz Natel Khanlari who had joined the palace folks, detaching himself from the circle of the intellectuals oppositions to Pahlavi regime. This study becomes of special necessity when we see that this letter has been treated as a true text, not as a poetic technique by Jala, as many researchers did in their references to it in their works. The purpose of the present article is to explore the motives behind inventing this letter, its consequences, and to argue why it is fake, so that we can stop the young generation getting mislead in this regard. The argumentation is done based on the text itself, and the comments by Jalal’s contemporaries, i.e. intra-textual an extra- textual studies.
