Prayer By Shamloo Analysis

I looked at the good and I changed

I looked at the good

Because you are good and these are all confessions, it is the biggest confession –

I looked at my confessions

The bad year passed and I revived

You smiled and I got up. (نگاه کن 212)

Referring to above poem, the poet considers his beloved as his reviver. Indeed, his beloved is a mirror which reflects the meaning of life to him in a way that led to his changes. In the following, some excerpts of his poem regarding the theme of this study are given.

A shout and nothing else more/Because hope is not so mighty/To be able to put the foot on the despair's head

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We have slept on the grasses' bed/With certainty of stone/We have bonded on the grasses' bed with love /And with an unbeaten hope/From

He begins his new life and pushes nihilism away.

My screams were all escaping from pain/Because I, in the most horrific nights, have been begging hopelessly for the sun with a prayer /You have come from the suns, you have come from the daybreaks/You have come from the mirrors and the silks./In a vacuity where there was neither God nor fire/I had begged for your look and confidence with a prayer despairingly.()

Sadeq Hedayat

Certainly, if one search for the complete representative of western nihilism in Persian literature, he will reach to Sadeq Hedayat and, as the best example, his masterpiece The Blind Owl.

Hedayat was born in February 17, 1903 in an aristocratic family in Tehran. He was educated at Collège Saint-Louis and Darolfonoon. Also, he was among the students who were selected for pursuing their studies abroad. He went to study engineering in Belgium, however, he gave up after one year. Then, he went to France to study architecture which later he changed it to dentistry. Finally, after surrendering his scholarship, he returned to Persia without achieving any degree. Then, he stuck to literature. He studied Western literature and Persian history. He was interested in Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anton Chekov and translated some of their works including The Metamorphosis by Kafka. At 1950,

In this way, considering political situation, he was born in a wrong time when led him to become a nihilist and commit suicide. During his lifetime, the country along with the world was in transition. Only three years after his birth, one of the most important events of contemporary period of Persian history named “the Constitutional Revolution” happened which resulted in the establishment of an elected parliament along with the royal power. The event and the enactment of the new laws for saving the country from government corruption and foreign manipulation acted as an essential step in its time. He grew up in a paradoxical ambient between national sentiments and religious feelings, on one hand, and modernization and Westernization, on the other hand. Regarding his sentiments, he was a nationalist but not in its twentieth century meaning of the word which considered negatively to stop people from the love of their lands and birthplace. He loved Persia and admired its civilization and history. He looked up to Sasanian Empire, the last Persian Empire before the invasion of Islam in the land, and Zoroastrianism, the dominated religion of the country with the respect to other religions. He considered Islam as an anti-Iranian religion which destroyed the Persian traditions and celebrations as much as it could and brought superstitions into the people’s common life. It is