Sadeq Hedeyat

Die Verwandlung Deterritorialized: Hedayat's Appropriation of Kafka
Author(s): Nasrin Rahimieh

Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1994), pp. 251-269
Published by: Penn State University Press
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Die Verwandlung Deterritorialized:
Hedayat's Appropriation of Kafka
NASRIN RAHIMIEH
Given the scope and rigor of Kafka scholarship today, this discussion of
the first Persian translation of Die Verwandlung by the most prominent
modern Iranian writer, Sadeq Hedayat1 (1903-51), might seem belated or
superfluous. Studies such as Shimon Sandbank's After Kafka: The Influ-
ence of Kafka's Fiction have already explored at length the ways in which
the Czech-German author has been interpreted and adapted by many
writers of disparate linguistic and literary heritage.2 An analogous state of
apparent exhaustiveness reigns in Hedayat criticism which, at first glance
at least, appears to have touched upon all aspects of the Iranian's literary
production. In addition to countless studies of Hedayat in Persian, there is
a wealth of material on Hedayat in English and other major European
languages, to say nothing of translations of his short stories,3 one play,4
and celebrated novel, The Blind Owl 5 The considerable range of Hedayat
scholarship in English can be glimpsed in titles such as Hedayat' s Blind
Owl as a Western Novel6 Hedayat' s The Blind Owl: Forty Years After,1
Hedayat' s Ivory Tower: Structural Analysis of The Blind Owl,8 and Fiction of
Sadeq Hedayat. 9 To this list could easily be added many titles in French,
Italian, German, and Russian.
Yet Hedayat's translation of Die Verwandlung has never been thoroughly
analyzed. Maskh, the title by which the translation is known in Persian, is
most often cited as a measure of Hedayat's familiarity with world litera-
ture, or a justification of his rightful place among the major figures of
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1994.

Copyright © 1994. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
252 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES
twentieth-century literature. In fact, considerations of

usually become entangled in disputes over influence u
"nationalist poetics," a phrase I borrow from Michael B
Blind Owl as a Western Novel. The arguments themselves a
Hedayat's crucial place within the Persian literary system.
family with a literary penchant. His great-grandfather wa
rian, and tutor to the princes of the ruling Qajar mona
Hedayat's reputation as a writer did not coalesce around th
his role in revolutionizing Persian prose forms, which up t
remained highly ornate and formulaic, that has granted h
he now occupies in the annals of Persian literature. At a
writers dared to "contaminate" their literary style with sp
which was and is clearly distinguishable from written
experimented with the use of colloquial language in his sto
Because Hedayat received most of his education in F
Lycée St. Louis in Tehran) and spent some four years living
sometimes assumed that the innovations he brought to Per
were a function of his familiarity with Western literary fo
is no doubt that through his extensive readings Heday
become aware of the literary and artistic movements of h
clear how this knowledge would have blended with his
passion for pre-Islamic Iranian history and myth. If he rea
Western literary works, he also spent a year in India steep
of Middle Persian, a language he believed would allow h
Iran's lost glory.
Added to these enigmas is the aura surrounding the figu
the writer. His heterodox views, his almost pathologica
lam, his obsession with death, and his suicide have elev
status of a cult figure. 10 Beard cites an instance of Iranian
Hedayat, bordering on the morbid: "Esma'il Jamshidi's Kho
Hedayat [Sadeq Hedayat's suicide] concludes with seven p
of Hedayat's corpse in the rue Championnet apartment wh
in the coffin before his interment in Père Lachaise Cemet
photos,' it comments, 'upset us, shook us, made us
you?' "n Many such cases of Hedayat's reputation, not t
could be cited, but two examples should suffice in this con
Socialization in Pahlavi Iran," an autobiographical chap
Muslims, Mehdi Abedi relates that, while working as an ap
HEDAYAT AND KAFKA 253
binder in a library attached to a seminary

of Hedayat's stories, whereupon he was
books of Hedayat make people commit
summed up by Bozorg Alavi, one of Heday
who regards Hedayat as the most influent
generation. In response to a question regar
modern Persian prose style, Alavi points o
to Hedayat, of course. It was Hedayat who
To raise the matter of Maskh and to spea
Hedayat and Franz Kafka is, however, to r
was profoundly influenced by Kafka. My
familiar debates about Hedayat's originalit
ness to his Western counterparts. Inste
translation of Die Verwandlung against Gi
Kafka: pour une littérature mineure in ord
which Hedayat detached Kafka's text fr
cultural system into which Kafka had insc
his own purposes. I shall argue that in
Hedayat intuited the double function of K
bear upon his own translation: "L'écr
transcrire en agencements, démontrer les
This double function was made even m
engaged in an actual transcribing and di
forced to read across the barrier of yet an
know German and therefore relied upon
The tension and the crossbreeding betwee
and cultural systems with which Heda
replication of the simultaneous presence a
Deleuze and Guattari see in Kafka's work
law," i.e., the Oedipal system that insists
and the "immanent schizo-law," which sub
ates, or "deterritorializes," what has been
Because Kafka's universe does not merely
sion and expression of desire to a binary o
new, revolutionary combinations and assem
the possibility of disassembling the trans
signifying structures of Persian. In oth
novella into Persian, Hedayat was given th
of "schizoanalysis" to his native linguistic and literary tradi

work opened itself up as a "rhizome" (Deleuze and Guatt
Hedayat, then he was able to use it as a fertile ground on w
his own "minor literature."
As defined by Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature is its
supplanting the established tradition:
Les trois caractères de la littérature mineure sont la déterri-

torialisation de la langue, le branchment de l'individuel sur
l'immédiat-politique, l'agencement collectif d'énonciation. Au-
tant dire que 'mineur' ne qualifie plus certaines littératures, mais
les conditions révolutionaires de toute littérature au sein de celle
qu'on appelle grande (ou établie).15
That realizing the revolutionary conditions of Persian literature was one of

Hedayat's primary objectives is evident in his loose understanding of his
role as a translator. The deterritorializations to which Hedayat subjected
Kafka are not as easily classifiable as a translator's dilemma in charting a
path between alterity and fidelity. 16 Hedayat's translation cannot be under-
stood solely in terms of either "annexation" or "decentering," conceptual-
ized in translation theory as:
Le décentrement est un rapport textuel entre deux textes dans

deux langues-cultures jusque dans la structure linguistique de la
langue, cette structure linguistique étant valeur dans le système
du texte. Vannexion est l'effacement de ce rapport, l'illusion du
naturel, le comme-si, comme si un texte en langue de départ
était écrit en langue d'arrivé, abstraction faite des différences de
culture, d'époque, de structure linguistique.17
In certain respects, and using these themes, Hedayat's translation was an

annexation or appropriation of Kafka. He manipulated Kafka's text to the
extent that it enabled him to bring it in line with his own vision of the
prevalent conditions of minority in Persian prose literature.
Long before his translation of Kafka's novella, Hedayat had launched
an attempt to revolutionize Persian prose styles. In and through MasWi,
Hedayat thought he could translate his vision of the metamorphosis he
wished upon his native literary discourse. Yet what began as a de-
territorialization of Kafka's Die Verwandlu

subversion of linguistic codes into Persian
into the kind of reterritorialization De
lurking in a minor literature:
C'est toujours dans les conditions col

dans les conditions de littérature et de
si chacun de nous a dû découvrir en lui
son désert intime (compte tenu des dan
réterritorialiser, refaire des photos, re
refaire aussi de la "grande littérature")
In his enthusiasm to bring about a revolut

overlooked these inherent dangers and eve
new set of transcendental laws that had
minority literature.
To reconstruct the path that led Heda
"great literature," I will divide my analys
consist of a study of the types of linguist
Hedayat brought into his translation of
light on his deterritorialization of Die Ver
be devoted to Hedayat's essay on Kafka
setting aside all pretense of a translator's
reads and inscribes himself into Kafka's te
that we can perceive his reterritorializatio
As Hedayat's Persian rendering was based
not the German original, it is importan
text and to examine the Persian versio
Iranian publishers seem to have found
French text he used. This may not be s
when Hedayat completed and published
translation of Die Verwandlung was availa
La Métamorphosef first published in 1938.
As Persian is not a widely known lan
reading of the German, French, and Persi
accessible to all readers. To facilitate matt
tions of the Persian quoted in transliterat
fact that my own English translations of
additional difficulties, but the comparative analysis o

forms the backbone of my study and cannot be overlook
Any discussion of a translation of Kafka's Die Verwandlu
bly begin with the translator's rendering of the underst
atic opening sentence: "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morge
Traumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu ei
Ungeziefer verwandelt."20 The word "Ungeziefer," litera
min, has certain connotations in German that are diff
English, French, or Persian. As Stanley Corngold
" 'Ungeziefer' derives (as Kafka probably knew) from the
German word originally meaning 'the unclean animal not
fice.' "21 The French translator opts for "vermine," whic
the spirit of the original. For the modifier, "ungeheuer,
chooses "véritable," which obviously changes the flavo
ing sentence. It was this example that Hedayat follo
translation of "hashareh-e tamam 'ayar-e 'ajibi" ["a fu
insect"].22 The Persian text is, in a sense, too true to the
explicit what Kafka merely implies in his wording. H
words hastens the evolution of the narrative. In his v
discovers the exact nature of Gregor's transformation be
self has had a chance to observe his new physical appeara
is more deliberately paced to take stock of the proce
animal" and to maintain the kind of ambiguity Kafk
crucial to his novella.
Kafka was opposed to a literal or even graphic equation of the metamor-
phosed Gregor Samsa and any particular species of vermin. For instance,
at the time of publication he forbade his publisher to have a drawing of an
insect on the cover of the book. Kafka's insistence on ambiguity derives
from his deliberate juxtaposition of dream and reality. This logic is clearly
behind the opening sentence in which Gregor awakes from disturbing
dreams into an even more horrifying and concrete reality.
In the original German, this suspension between dream and reality
becomes fixed only in the first sentence of the second paragraph: " 'Was ist
mir geschehen?' dachte er. Es war kein Traum."23 The phrase "Es war kein
Traum" is intended to reinforce Gregor's attempts to come to grips with his
new reality. In Persian we read: "Gerehgoar fekr kard: 'cheh besaram
amadeh?' m'ahaza dar 'alam-e khwab nabud" ["Gregor thought: 'What has
happened to me?' Nevertheless he was not in a dream state"].24 Hedayat's
" 'alam-e khwab" [dream state] again makes e

two realms in which Gregor is striving t
Hedayat's own choice. The French text is
m'est-il arrivé?' pensa-t-il. Ce n'était pourtant
in nuance such as this may well be attributed
desire to produce a fluid text in Persian.
means both sleep and dream. For instance,
while "khwab didam" means "I dreamt." It
" 'alam-e khwab" Hedayat was trying to avoi
ing and dreaming Gregor Samsa. The prob
had Hedayat used another Persian word for
wished to emphasize Gregorys precarious exis
states of consciousness. That Hedayat's dec
stylistic preference and his personal inter
choices he made throughout the translation.
Such is the case in his decision to add term
his Iranian readers. For example, in the firs
makes before his family and his superior
addresses his agitated mother as "Mutter,
chooses the more familiar "Maman, mama
Gregorys attempt to appeal to his mother's
them by adding "madar jun, madar jun"2
implies that before his metamorphosis Gr
bound to his family and, by extension, t
wording also suggests a degree of nostalgia i
in the original. It would seem that Hedayat
the Oedipal impasse that Kafka's text ackn
"La question du père n'est pas comment d
(question oedipienne), mais comment trou
pas trouvé."29 In Hedayat's translation, this
obscured.
One such example occurs towards the end
the scene cited above. Gregor is being dri
father: "Unerbittlich dràngte der Vater un
Wilder."30 Vialatte's translation reads: "Ma
son fils en poussant des sifflements de Si
note that Vialatte equates the Sioux In
Kafka's text, introducing an element of
wiliness that Sioux implies in French. This ethnocentr

to be aimed at underlining both the savage and the frigh
scene as experienced by Gregor.
Hedayat, who either did not understand the reference
saw this as an opportunity to disrupt the existing chains
transfers the attribute "wild" from the father to the so
morovvat pesarash ra donbal mikard va betarz-e ram k
vahshi sut mikeshid" ["But the ruthless father was follow
whistling like the tamers of wild horses"].32 Obviously,
creates a total reversal or deterritorialization of Kafka's
that of Kafka's French translator. While in Kafka's text
in Hedayat's translation the father becomes the tamer of
son. Hedayat's inversion restores the Oedipal order of th
it impossible to see the father "comme l'homme qui a
propre désir."33 Moreover, the Persian text changes the
of Gregor's re-Oedipalization, and by extension his fa
zation through the becoming-animal. For Deleuze and Gu
is epitomized in the later episode in which Gregor's f
apple at him:
A partir de là, la déterritorialisation de Grégoire dans son devenir-

animal échoue: il se fait re-oedipianiser par le jet de pomme, et n'a
plus qu'à mourir, pomme incrustée dans le dos. Parallèlement, la
déterritorialisation de la famille dans les triangles plus complexes
et diaboliques n'a pas lieu de se poursuivre: le père chasse les trois
bureaucrates locataires, retour au principe paternaliste du triangle
oedipien, la famille se referme sur elle-même heureuse.34
In Hedayat's text the father is already occupying the re-Oedipalized posi-

tion in the earlier incident of driving Gregor back to his room.
A secondary consequence of Hedayat's choice of words is an inadver-
tent shift in the narrator's perspective that in Kafka's text is closely
identified with that of Gregor. The Persian text makes this focalization
less consistent. The subtlety with which Kafka uses his third-person narra-
tive voice to at once signal identification with Gregor's perspective and
objective distancing is at other times lost in Hedayat's translation. One of
the more obvious examples of this type of problem in Hedayat's transla-
tion is found in the passage in which G

enter her brother's room is signaled. In Ge
Es ware fur Gregor nicht unerwarte

eingetreten ware, da er sie durch seine
das Fenster zu offhen, aber sie trat nic
sogar zuriick und schloB die Tùr; ein
denken kônnen, Gregor habe ihr aufg
wollen.35
The sentence relevant to our discussion is:

one who is not part of the family) could
lying in wait for her and would have wante
it as: "un étranger aurait pu penser que Gr
pour la mordre."36 Hedayat's version distor
"yek nafar khareji mitavanest hads bezanad
mipayid ta gaz nagirad" ["a foreigner could
keeping an eye on his sister not to be (h
have been partially misled by the Fren
"étranger" as "foreigner," though the d
would weaken this hypothesis. Moreover
sian should have enabled him to use a more
which refers to someone excluded from th
family. This oversight may be a remnant o
which Hedayat found himself entangled
Kafka's text across the double barrier of F
back together in Persian, Hedayat seems
linguistic boundaries and centers of signif
word "foreigner" is in the Persian text
Hedayat's own deterritorialization. He is th
one who can dislodge the established patter
possible and desirable in his Persian vers
une langue ne peut pas être dit dans une
peut être dit et de ce qui ne peut pas l'êt
chaque langue et les rapports entre ces lang
that Hedayat once again reverses the role
making the sentence read as if it is Gregor
avoid being bitten by his sister. Gregor is portrayed as th

when he is meant to be perceived as an aggressor. Thi
changes the pace of the narrative. The Persian text co
fate as a victim of "un oedipe trop gros" in a much ea
narrative than in the German original.
Hedyat's emphasis on Gregor's re-Oedipalization beco
noticeable in his interpretation of Gregor's thresho
crucial scene of the third part of the novella in whic
into the sitting room by his sister's violin playing, his b
completely undermined in favor of a reterritorialization
ego. While Gregor is observing his sister, he reflects: "W
ihn die Musik so ergriff?"39 Hedayat's translation fi
French: "N'était-il donc qu'une bête? Cette musique l'
Vialatte breaks up Kafka's sentence into two and, as a
make Gregor's enjoyment of music integral to his being
ing Vialatte's model, Hedayat writes: "aya u janevari nabu
bi andazeh moteasser kard" ["Wasn't he an animal? This m
immensely"].41 Because of the earlier passages in wh
sealed Gregor's condition, in his translation this question
rhetorical. The Persian text detaches Gregor's enjoyme
his becoming-animal which, as pointed out by Deleuz
itself a form of escape and an act of liberation. The para
in Kafka's text, that only as an animal Gregor finds nou
is lost in the Persian translation. Hedayat's Gregor st
ability to enjoy the music as an animal. The overall effec
cations is that Kafka's protagonist is portrayed as a more
the social and familial circumstances into which he is immersed. The
Samsa that Hedayat presents to his Iranian readers is re-Oedipalized be-
fore he has had a chance to take stock of what it means to become an
animal:
Devenir animal, c'est précisément faire le mouvement, tracer la

ligne de fuite dans toute sa positivité, franchir un seuil, atteindre à
un continuum d'intensités qui ne valent plus que pour elles-
mêmes, trouver un monde d'intensités pures, où toutes les formes
se défont, toutes les significations aussi, signifiants et signifiés, au
profit d'une matière non formée, de flux déterritorialisés, de signes
asignifiants.42
Hedayat seems to have gained an apprecia

flux, at least insofar as he freed Kafka's tex
this practice he was, to some extent, encou
had already created a larger gap between th
Yet, as we have seen, Hedayat's decisions we
particular textual authority. He had a vision
the metamorphosis and his ultimate reterr
is this vision that we find in "Kafka's Mess
the preface to the Persian translation of In
"Kafka's Message" appears to have been int
tion to Kafka's works. It offers both a biog
Hedayat calls "Kafka's world." Like most
remarks upon the type of logic that dete
What he finds remarkable in Kafka's wr
which Kafka describes ordinary protagonis
them a twist - in other words, de territ
throws his readers into the realm of the im
We encounter ordinary characters, bure

have anxieties and problems similar t
guage, and everything takes its natur
are overcome with angst. All that app
monsensical, and logical loses its sign
on the clock move differently, distance
measurements, the air becomes thin, an
due to a lack of logic? On the contrar
logic - a reverse logic, a logic out of con
that we understand that the ordinary
people who think like us and share our
ers and perpetrators of utter futility.43
Unlike Deleuze and Guattari, Hedayat doe

aspects of Kafka's universe. We see that r
deterritorialization of the categories of log
is quick to reestablish the existence of a ce
narratives. This is necessary for Hedayat's
inglessness of "the ordinary existence." Fro
moves to his presentation of the existent
of the "guilt of our existence" with which, as readers of

are confronted at every turn.44 In Kafka's universe Heda
as totally alone and helpless without a guiding force or a
and moral power. Kafka's characters, Hedayat concludes,
selves to rely upon.
Hedayat attributes this loss of spirituality in Kafka
unsettling events of the First World War and the ensuin
Throughout the essay, Hedayat returns to the overw
pessimism he finds in Kafka's works, and which he so vi
his translation of Die Verwandlung. This pessimism is ev
underlined in his overview of Kafka's biography, whe
correlations to his fictional characters.
Hedayat describes Kafka's father as "uneducated and
while Kafka's mother is seen as "a superstitious Jew.
three factors determined Kafka's fate: (1) his conflict wi
consequently his conflict with his Jewish milieu, (2) his
his illness. Hedayat dwells upon those aspects of Kaf
roots of his alienation, with which he himself identifies
title of an anonymous review published in Iran, "Ka
Hedayat's Message," Hedayat molds Kafka in his own i
I am not suggesting that Hedayat suffered from dilem
those he finds in Kafka's life, nor am I implying that Ka
well-known conflict with his father are unduly emph
Instead, it is Hedayat's particular reading of these pro
lights Kafka's life in such a way as to make him most re
In Hedayat's description of Kafka's Jewish heritage,
find clear reflections of Hedayat's aversion to the religio
his own society. In Kafka's famous "Brief an den Vater,"
excerpts in the French translation of Max Brod's biograp
dayat believes to have found the roots of Kafka's reje
The passages in which Kafka speaks with resentment
attend the temple become central to Hedayat's unders
attitudes towards Judaism. Of Kafka's friendship wit
dayat writes: "Max Brod pleaded with him and tried to r
Judaism, but he did not succeed. Kafka tells his frien
in common with Jews?' "47 In drawing upon such details
phy, Hedayat cannot be acccused of distortion. Kafka
letter to his father in which he mocked his father's
ment to Jewish rituals. It is also true th

towards Zionism than his trusted friend, M
Ernst Pawel, it is not possible to see Kafk
his Jewish heritage: "Denn das Judentum w
Kafkas Schiksal, sondern gleichermaBen
punkt zwischen seinem Leben und seinem
study Hebrew, he also became a defende
ture. His attraction to the Yiddish theat
Some Kafka biographers suggest that Ka
involved in the Zionist movement. For
points out:
Kafka . . . could not and did not forget

Several distinctively Jewish forms of s
able to him, including the Zionist m
interest in Zionism has been much de
maintain that he was wholeheartedly
same case has been argued by Klara Ca
the biographer with the curious diary en
which he lists the many undertakings b
the course of his life: amid this oddly
starts with piano lessons and ends wi
married and set up a home of his ow
zionismus, Zionismus." . . . Till his lat
seems to have regarded Zionism neither
ity, but with almost total indifference
However, in a letter of 13 February 19
speaks of "mein Freund Franz Kafka (m
und auf den zu meiner Freunde das Jud
ubergeht)," and in that year we find Ka
tion to Palestine, where he would work
It matters little whether Kafka actually pa

ist movement of his time. What is relevan
left untouched Kafka's complex relations
gorical denial that Kafka was in any way a
of Hedayat's desire to see him as an alien
forms of religion that he equated with s
because Hedayat despised Islam, he wanted Kafka to reject J

tion of tradition, religion, and authority were so centr
world view that he could not but project it onto Kafka.
For Hedayat, even Kafka's conflict with his father become
the latter's consistent repudiation of authority. Hedayat did
this conflict on a personal level, hence his linking of t
conflict and Kafka's dislike of Judaism. In Hedayat's an
difficulties with his father were a symptom of a larger soc
gious, and even political malaise. Coupled with this is the ph
tion that Hedayat regards as the final impasse in Kafka's
he saw was both spiritually and physically impeded.
Hedayat's soul mate. The conclusions he reaches in his analys
works echo his own longings and frustrations:
This world is not fit for living. It is stifling. That is w

goes in search of "the land, and the air, and the law
accommodate a decent life. Kafka believes that this fals
and hypocritical world should be destroyed and on its r
world be constructed. If Kafka's world is adrift in futilit
be embraced with open arms. On the contrary, it
world. One feels that Kafka has an answer, but this ans
given. In his unfinished works the essence is not utter
Although Hedayat signals that he has not found this "es

not deny its existence. In his translation of Die Verwandlun
Message," he signals the indeterminacy, the absence of the "
celebrates Kafka's ability to deterritorialize language and
scribed within it, but quickly reterritorializes these same p
a new signifying order.
It is not surprising to find similarities between Hedayat's
and his treatise on the medieval Persian poet, 'Omar Khay
Hedayat appears to have found another soul mate. His fa
Khayyam led him to publish a new edition of his quatrai
Songs, accompanied by his own explanatory essay. In spite o
ences between Khayyam and Kafka, Hedayat uses exactly
guage to describe their world views in his appraisal of
"Khayyam wanted to destroy this ridiculous, sordid, gloo
world and build a more logical one on its ruins."51 Like Kaf
becomes a rebel against tradition and autho

disgusted with the people of his time, cond
and customs with bitter sarcasm and had n
tions of the society. "52 The rebellion and t
attributes to Kafka and Khayyam are proje
What Hedayat sought out in his favorite po
mity. If he needed to embellish certain aspe
the profile his own vision required, his pow
than adequate to the task. Both Khayyam a
in Hedayat's image. This indirect confir
existential angst was a necessary catalyst f
Hedayat was engaged in a rebellion agains
tradition, he revelled in finding his spiritu
places. His writings on Khayyam and Kafka
need as does the act of writing for the n
novel The Blind Owl; he is writing for his
understand himself:
If I have made up my mind to write

myself to my shadow, that shadow
stretched across the wall in the attit
insatiable appetite each word I write. It
make the attempt. Who knows? We m
each other better. Ever since I broke th
the rest of mankind my one desire
knowledge of myself. 53
This process of self-discovery is particular

on Kafka's language and style, which he
barrier of another translation. Here Heday
tic exactness and economy to which he him
Translating Kafka's works is not an e

albeit limited, is surprisingly exact, me
all the characteristics of a classical sty
have been possible for him to convey
speakable anxieties which are found in
clear, but underneath impenetrable.54
The qualities Hedayat attributes to Kafka's language could

able in the original. The melody and the elegance he
Kafka are properties to which he himself aspires. Kafka
reterritorialized in Hedayat's discourse that his remarks
Kafka's works may well be applied to his own perce
Persian prose he helped create.
Hedayat is also sensitive to Kafka's mixed linguistic h
we find a parallel to his own efforts to draw Persian awa
domination. He knew that Kafka's German was always set
and Czech. Kafka's choice of language and literary her
another symptom of his alienation. Like Hedayat, Kafka
medium of expression for his literary creations. Kafk
linguistic alienation and often noted the degree to which
from other native speakers of German. The Prague Germ
wrote his stories in was a deterritorialized literary and c
To this Kafka brought his own linguistic and metaphoric
one Kafka critic:
Kafka's attachment to the everyday language of Pra

impetus in the thrust of his poetic consciousness
truth. His language probes the depth which lies c
ordinary language but which can be brought to ligh
willful distortion of the figurative underlayer of
guage. . . . Kafka's destruction of his native pers
sake of a poetic development destroys the privile
language.55
Although Hedayat does not explicitly draw a parallel betw

Kafka, he is certainly conscious of being involved in a si
and regeneration of his native linguistic tradition. Bozor
ries of Hedayat's linguistic innovations bring to light his
highlight the deterritorializing properties of Persian: "Y
dig up words which you couldn't find in dictionaries and
life."56
In his translation of Kafka, as in his essay of Kafka, Hedayat carried out
the same double task of uprooting and reviving, deterritorializing and
reterritorializing the established orders, hierarchies, and centers of power.
In the course of rendering Die Verwandlung into Persian, Hedayat sub-
jected Kafka and himself to a parallel me

Gregor Samsa's case, there was no return
was a crucial step in his "becoming-Hedayat
ultimately led to a renaissance in Persian
of Die Verwandlung was to serve as a co
spiritual regression Hedayat feared his com
Hedayat's message seems not to have falle
longer serves as a translation of Kafka'
translation of Die Verwandlung by Farzan
territorialize Hedayat's Kafka. The cond
reconceived and reiterated in contemporary
University of Alberta, E
NOTES
1 . In my transliteration of Persian I shall follow the system adopted by Iranian Studies,

with the slight modification of eliminating the diacritics even from titles.
2. Shimon Sandbank, After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka s tiction (Athens, UA: U ot
Georgia P, 1989).
3. Sadeq Hedayat: An Anthobgy, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979)
offers translations of seventeen of his short stories. Two other collections of Hedayat's works
in translation are Iraj Bashiri's The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories (Minneapolis:
Sorayya, 1984) and Siavosh Danesh, trans. Sadeq's Omnibus: A Selection of Short Stories
(Tehran: Mehre Danesh, n.d.).
4. Haji Agha: Portrait of an Iranian Confidence Man, trans. G. M. Wickens, Middle East
Monographs 6 (Austin: U of Texas P, 1979).
5. The most widely referred to English translation ot this novel is 1 he blind Uwl, trans.
D. P. Costello (New York: Grove, 1957). Like the French translation by Roger Lescot, La
Chouette aveugle (Paris: José Corti, 1952), it is still available in print.
6. Michael Beard, Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel (Princeton: Princeton UP,
1990).
7. Michael C. Hillmann, éd., Hedayat s The Blind Owl: torty Years After, Middle bast
Monographs 4 (Austin: U of Texas P, 1978).
8. Iraj Bashiri, Hedayat s Ivory lower: structural Analysis of 1 he Blind Uwl iMinneapo-
lis: Manor House, 1974).
9. Iraj Bashiri, Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1984).
10. Numerous biographers and literary critics have devoted themselves to an apprecia-
tion of the position occupied by Hedayat in Iranian culture. The curious Western reader
could start by referring to the note to the first chapter of Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western
Novel wherein Beard refers his readers to all existing biographies of Hedayat.
11. Beard 38.
12. Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Debating Muslims: C

Postmodernity and Tradition, New Directions in Anthropological Wri
Cultural Criticism (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990) 60.
13. Donné Rafïat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary
Syracuse UP, 1985) 63.
14. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mi
de Minuit, 1975) 86.
15. Deleuze and Guattari 33.
16. For a comprehensive discussion of these issues in translation theory, see George
Lang's "La Belle Alterité: Towards a Dialogical Paradigm in Translation Theory?" Canadian
Review of Comparative Literature 19.1-2 (1992): 237-51.
17. Meschonnic quoted in Robert Larose, Théories contemporaines de la traduction
(Sillerv, Québec: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1989) 82.
19. The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints, Vol. 287, lists Vialatte's translation
of 1938 and its 1946 reprint only. The relevant volume of Catalogue général des livres
imprimés de le Bibliothèque Nationale, Vol. 80, dates back to 1924 and has no reference to
Kafka.
20. Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung, Sàmtliche Erzàhlungen, ed. Paul Raabe (Frankfurt:
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978) 56.
21. Stanley Corngold, The Commentator's Despair: The Interpretation of Kafka's Metamor-
phosis (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat P, 1973) 10.
22. Franz Kafka, Maskh [The Metamorphosis], trans. Sadeq Hedayat (Tehran: Parastu,
1965) 11.
23. Kafka, Die Verwandlung 56.
24. Kafka, Maskh 12.
25. Franz Kafka, La Métamorphose, trans. Alexandre Vialatte (Paris: Gallimard, 1938) 7.
26. Kafka, Verwandlung 68.
27. Kafka, Métamorphose 34.
34. Deleuze and Guattari 27, my emphasis.
37. Kafka, Maskh 72-73.
M. Katka, Verwandlung VL
43. Sadeq Hedayat, Goruh-e mahkumin va payam-e kafka [In the Penal Colony and Kafka's
Message], 4th ed. (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1963) 11-12. All quotations from this text are my
own translations.
44. Hedayat, "Kafka's Message" 13.
46. This entry in Mohammad Golbon's bibliograph

Hedayat Bibliography], 4th ed. (Tehran: Tus, 197
Ferdosi 131 (n.d.): 13.
48. Ernst Pawel, "Franz Kafkas Judentum," Fra
Erich Grôzinger, Stéphane Mosès, and Hans Diete
1987) 254.
49. Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon P,
1985) 12-13.
50. Hedayat, "Kafka's Message" 74-75.
51. Quoted in Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1966) 150.
52. Quoted in Kamshad 150.
53. Hedayat, I he blind Uwl 1-5.
54. Hedayat, Kafka s Message 55.
55. Corngoldl7.
56. Raffat63.

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Die Verwandlung Deterritorialized: Hedayat's Appropriation of Kafka

Author(s): Nasrin Rahimieh

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1994.

twentieth-century literature. In fact, considerations of

binder in a library attached to a seminary

of "schizoanalysis" to his native linguistic and literary tradi

Les trois caractères de la littérature mineure sont la déterri-

That realizing the revolutionary conditions of Persian literature was one of

Le décentrement est un rapport textuel entre deux textes dans

In certain respects, and using these themes, Hedayat's translation was an

territorialization of Kafka's Die Verwandlu

C'est toujours dans les conditions col

In his enthusiasm to bring about a revolut

additional difficulties, but the comparative analysis o

" 'alam-e khwab" [dream state] again makes e

wiliness that Sioux implies in French. This ethnocentr

A partir de là, la déterritorialisation de Grégoire dans son devenir-

In Hedayat's text the father is already occupying the re-Oedipalized posi-

tion is found in the passage in which G

Es ware fur Gregor nicht unerwarte

The sentence relevant to our discussion is:

avoid being bitten by his sister. Gregor is portrayed as th

Devenir animal, c'est précisément faire le mouvement, tracer la

Hedayat seems to have gained an apprecia

We encounter ordinary characters, bure

Unlike Deleuze and Guattari, Hedayat doe

of the "guilt of our existence" with which, as readers of

ment to Jewish rituals. It is also true th

Kafka . . . could not and did not forget

It matters little whether Kafka actually pa

because Hedayat despised Islam, he wanted Kafka to reject J

This world is not fit for living. It is stifling. That is w

Although Hedayat signals that he has not found this "es

becomes a rebel against tradition and autho

If I have made up my mind to write

This process of self-discovery is particular

Translating Kafka's works is not an e

The qualities Hedayat attributes to Kafka's language could

Kafka's attachment to the everyday language of Pra

Although Hedayat does not explicitly draw a parallel betw

jected Kafka and himself to a parallel me

1 . In my transliteration of Persian I shall follow the system adopted by Iranian Studies,

12. Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Debating Muslims: C

46. This entry in Mohammad Golbon's bibliograph

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