The Blind Owl [Buf-e Kur]

<p>This is the original Persian (Farsi) text of Sadegh Hedayat's <strong>The Blind Owl</strong> is a foundational work of modern Iranian literature presented as a feverish fragmented and non-linear confession from an unnamed reclusive <strong>narrator</strong>. Plagued by mental illness solitude and the use of opium the narrator begins his account by describing a recurring vision he paints on pen cases: a mysterious beautiful woman in black offering a flower to an old man under a cypress tree. This vision quickly becomes an <strong>obsession</strong> when the woman suddenly appears at his window. When she enters his room and dies the narrator in a bizarre and desperate act of preservation has sex with her corpse dismembers it and buries it with the help of a hunchbacked old man who appears to be an avatar of death. The entire first part of the novella is shrouded in a <strong>surreal</strong> dreamlike atmosphere where reality hallucination and the boundaries between life and death are terrifyingly blurred.</p><p>The second part of the novella presents a murky more grounded yet equally distressing account that echoes the first suggesting an unsettling cycle of eternal recurrence and <strong>despair</strong>. The narrator now describes himself as a sickly invalid married to a woman he refers to only as the whore who is perpetually unfaithful and whom he intensely hates. Through a series of morbid revelations and the reappearance of sinister recurring figures-including the hunchbacked old man-the narrator's sense of self deteriorates. Driven to madness he ultimately stabs and kills his wife. Looking in a mirror he sees his face has transformed into the face of the old man suggesting a collapse of identity and the cyclical nature of his suffering. The novella is a profound exploration of <strong>existentialism</strong> alienation the corruption of desire and the overwhelming fear of death leaving the reader trapped in the labyrinthine terror of the narrator's psyche.</p>