Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-gwv8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-21T12:47:03.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Récit: Narrative Movement in Sadeq Hedayat's Buf-e- Kur (The Blind Owl)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2025

Marziyeh Kameli Open the ORCID record for Marziyeh Kameli [Opens in a new window]
Marziyeh Kameli*
Affiliation:
Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
*
Email: mkame002@ucr.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl through the lens of récit, focusing on the non-linear structure and elusive nature of the narrative. By analyzing the fluidity of time, space, and identity, the study argues that the seeming narrative flaws – including the instability of characters and shifting perspectives – are deliberate artistic strategies. Central to this reading is the concept of barzakh, the in-between state, which frames the narrator's ongoing struggle to navigate the boundaries between life and death, reality and imagination. The narrator's inability to fully express himself through art reflects this tension, as each attempt to articulate his vision reveals the inadequacy of language and the inherent impossibility of fully capturing the essence of life in art. The récit form reinforces this theme by immersing the reader in an unfinished, ever-shifting narrative, where meaning remains just beyond reach. This study highlights the importance of reading The Blind Owl as a récit to better understand its existential exploration and critique of the artist's role in grappling with the unknown.

Keywords

in-betweennessnarrative structurerécitSadeq HedayatThe Blind Owl

Information

Type
Article
Information
Iranian Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 20
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Iranian Studies.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Azadibougar, O. The Persian Novel: ideology, Fiction and Form in the Periphery. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014.10.1163/9789401211673CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beard, M. “Review of Hedayat's Ivory Tower: structural Analysis of the Blind Owl, by Iraj Bashiri.” Iranian Studies 9, no. 1 (1976): 80–84.10.1017/S0021086200006824CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beard, M. “The Hierarchy of the Arts in Buf-E Kur.” Iranian Studies 15, no. 1/4 (1982): 53–67.10.1080/00210868208701592CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beard, M. Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400861323.Google Scholar
Benveniste, E. “Subjectivity in Language.” Problems in General Linguistics 1 (1971): 223–230.Google Scholar
Blanchot, M. The Gaze of Orpheus, and Other Literary Essays. Edited by Sitney, P Adams. Translated by Davis, Lydia. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Blanchot, M. The Infinite Conversation. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Blanchot, M. Friendship. Translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.10.1515/9781503620445CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchot, M. “Encountering the Imaginary.” In The Book to Come, 2003, 3–10. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Blanchot, M. “Literature and the Right to Death.” In The Work of Fire. edited by Werner, Hamacher and David E., Wellbery, translated by Charlotte, Mandell, 300–346. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Blanchot, M. “The Myth of Mallarmé.” In The Work of Fire edited by Werner, Hamacher and David E., Wellbery, translated by Charlotte, Mandell, 27–42. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Carter, B., “Hedayat's Psychoanalysis of a Nation.” In Hedāyat's “The Blind Owl” Forty Years After edited by Michael C., Hillmann, 153–167. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Cisco, M. “Eternal Recurrence in ‘The Blind Owl.’” Iranian Studies 43, no. 4 (2010): 471–488.10.1080/00210862.2010.495563CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedayat, S. The Blind Owl. Translated by Naveed Noori. 75th anniversary ed. Iran Open Publishing Group, 2012.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. Cambridge, MA: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 1957.Google Scholar
Johnson, J.S. “The Blind Owl, Nerval, Kafka, Poe and the Surrealists: affinities.” In Hedāyat's “The Blind Owl” Forty Years, edited by Michael C., Hillmann After, 125–141. Austin, TX: University of Texas press, 1978.Google Scholar
Just, D. “The Politics of the Novel and Maurice Blanchot's Theory of the Recit, 1954–1964.” French Forum 33 (2008): 121–139.10.1353/frf.0.0043CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamshad, H. Modern Persian Prose Literature. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Katouzian, H., ed. Sadeq Hedayat: his Work and His Wondrous World. London, UK: Routledge, 2007.10.4324/9780203939963CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katouzian, H. Sadeq Hedayat: the Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer. London: I.B. Tauris, 2022.Google Scholar
Lashgari, D. “Absurdity and Creation in the Work of Sadeq Hedayat.” Iranian Studies 15, no. 1 (1982): 31–52.10.1080/00210868208701591CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallarmé, S. Divagations. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009.10.2307/j.ctv1pdrpr1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansouri-Zeyni, S. “Haunting Language-Game: Baudrillardian Metamorphoses in Sadeq Hedayat's ‘The Blind Owl.’” Iranian Studies 46, no. 4 (2013): 553–568.10.1080/00210862.2013.784518CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meghdadi, B., and Hamalian, L.. “Oedipus and the Owl.” In Hedāyat's “The Blind Owl” Forty Years After, edited by Michael C., Hillmann, 142–151. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Mohaghegh, J. Silence in Middle Eastern and Western Thought: the Radical Unspoken. London: Routledge, 2013.10.4324/9780203766706CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohandessi, M. “Hedayat and Rilke.” Comparative Literature 23, no. 3 (1971): 209–216. https://doi.org/10.2307/1769316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahimieh, N. “A Systemic Approach to Modern Persian Prose Fiction.” World Literature Today 63, no. 1 (1989): 15–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/40145040.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smock, A. What Is There to Say? Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Syrotinski, Michael. “Introduction.” In Progress in Love on the Slow Side, by Jean Paulhan, trans. Christine Moneera Laennec and Michael Syrotinski, vii–xxii. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Turan, O. “Spaces of Suicide: architectural Metaphors and Leitmotifs in Sadeq Hedayat's Blind Owl.” The Journal of Architecture 12, no. 2 (April 2007): 193–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602360701363536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wanberg, Kyle. “Disorientation and Horror in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl.” In Maps of Empire: A Topography of World Literature, 94–124. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Yavari, H. “The Blind Owl: present in the Past or the Story of a Dream.” In Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous World, edited by Homa, Katouzian, 56–70. London, UK: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar