"Such a sticky customer that if you poured a heap of millet over him, not one grain would have reached the ground."
"Tell the phoenix to cast honour's shadow never
On lands where the parrot's less than the kitebird..."
"Now they want to wangle a bit more. If there were only one or two, I wouldn't worry; but there's eight of them, all trying to outdo one another."
"The German army isn't mounted on ants, you know."
"Just as an archaeologist gazes with reverence when confronted with ancient monuments, so people fell awestruck at the cast and shape of Haji Agha's ideas, which were in fact but the manifestations of an age of cheapness and insensitivity."
"You don't know what I've been through. I've actually seen the next world."
frontispiece
"Security prevails throughout the land from one end to the other, so that if a woman were to place a tray of gold on her head and walk from Maku to Bandar-Chah-Bahar, no one would molest her."
*****
I feature here Eje Wray's illustrations for Sadegh Hedayat's Haji Agha: Portrait of an Iranian Confidence Man (University of Texas Austin, 1979). The quotes are printed under the illustrations in the book.
I don't see much info online about Eje Wray, except that (s)he worked as a designer and/or illustrator on a wide variety of books in the 70s and 80s. Though by no means a typical project, Wray is listed as the designer of this 1971 chestnut:
About Hedayat's 1945 novel Haji Agha, the translator G. M. Wickens wrote (in the late 70s):
I don't see much info online about Eje Wray, except that (s)he worked as a designer and/or illustrator on a wide variety of books in the 70s and 80s. Though by no means a typical project, Wray is listed as the designer of this 1971 chestnut:
Psychedelic Guide To The Preparation Of The Euchar by Robert E. Brown & Associates of the Neo American Church League for Spiritual Development and the Ultimate Authority of the Clear Light. (Includes "four colour plates, profusely illustrated with vignettes, chemicals schemas and technical drawings.") [I want it.]I have a few upcoming posts on Hedayat, including Stephen Sparks' review of The Blind Owl, a novel I love.
About Hedayat's 1945 novel Haji Agha, the translator G. M. Wickens wrote (in the late 70s):
Its unusualness lies not in the picture it presents of Iranian life in the early forties, but in the comprehensiveness of that picture and in its topical relevance to Iran of the present day. The satire is universal and of multiple aspect, and few attitudes -- left, right, or just plain apathetic, foolish, or corrupt -- are spared Hedayat's barbs.
5 comments:
Wonderful stuff.
Two great posts in two days - well done.
Having been used to the lurid art of American sf pulps for so long, this book art is like a breath of fresh air.
I love this. Thanks.
will! thanks for posting on Hedayat and the blind owl, hadn't heard of him, and the book sounds stellar!!! you are a unending fountain of golden literary nuggets!
thanks for your comments.
Steve, check back soon for the Obrist stuff I'm posting tonight or tomorrow. For Blind Owl, the first sentence lets you know what's in store for you: "There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker." Apparently Hedayat borrowed whole passages from Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge (another fave), which Stephen Sparks will try to unravel before writing his review. I wouldn't mind if every author borrowed from that book.
"If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful."
Where did you go?
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