"The Sad Little Fairy's" Death Anniversary
Reza Parhizgar
A survey on Forough Farrokhzad


"The Sad Little Fairy's" (1) Death Anniversary

Thirty nine years after her tragic death in a car accident on Feb" 14, 1967, which happened because she tried to avoid crashing into a mini-bus full of children coming from school, Forough Farrokh-zad is still considered one of the great poets of the modern era in Persian Poetry. Her feminine, bold, sincere outlook and frankness of expression, unique among Iranian women poets up to her time, combined with poetic craft and imaginative talent, ranks her among the five outstanding figures in modern Persian poetry.

By the age of twenty–five, Forough had published three volumes of poetry: Asir (Prisoner) (1955), Divar (The Wall) (1957) and Esyan (Rebellion) (1968).

Her earlier poems were personal, sentimental and romantic, but she underwent a drastic change, both in form and content, in her later poetry collected and published in her fourth volume Tavalodi Digar (Another Birth) (1964). In the poems published in this volume, more mature thinking and a sense of social commitment replaced the earlier confessional more personal modes of expression and a free rhythm scheme was employed.

Two of her poems are of the kind, which is referred to as apocalyptic: In kasi ke mesl-e hich kasi nist (The one who resembles no one) published after the publication of Another Birth, she explicitly"… predicts the coming of a social Messiah who will establish social justice." (2)

The other one, Ay-e hay-e Zamini (Terrestrial verses), is also apocalyptic in content.

The prophetic vision, portrayal of social conditions and anticipation of change, are specifically striking in the following poem, which has a biblical tone.


Endnotes:
1. From a line in the final stanza of a poem by Forough named Another Birth, which reads: I know a sad little fairy/ who lives in an ocean/ and softly plays her heart/ into a magic wooden flute.
2. Ghanoon-parvar, M. R. (1984), Prophets of Doom, New York: University press of America