"The Blind Owl" by Sadegh Hedayat *****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Iranian author, born 1903, committed suicide in 1951
• Originally published in 1932
• Introduction by Porochista Khakpour:  fascinating story of her childhood with this novella being a forbidden book
• Hedayat was 33 when it was published
• 50 handwritten copies comprised the initial publication
• Censored and banned, yet no "circulation hiatus" amongst the people
• "Given the usefulness of his (her father's) tactics with respect to that, I'll then pass on what got me to these pages:  refrain, reader, from reading this book, whatever you do. ....You've been warned."
• Vocabulary:
• mandrake:  a narcotic, short stemmed European plant, Mandragora officinarum,of the nightshade family, having a fleshy, often forked root somewhat resembling a human form.
• Quotes:
• p.17..."There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker."...opening line
• p.18..."My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself."
• p.19..."I am writing only for my shadow, which is now stretched across the wall in the light of the lamp.  I must make myself known to him."......Jung anyone?
• p.67...."Within the four walls that form my room, this fortress which I have erected around my life and thoughts, my life has been slowly wasting away like a candle.  No, I am wrong.  It is like a green log which has rolled to one side of the fireplace and which has been scorched and charred by  the flames from the other logs; it has neither burnt away nor remained fresh and green; it has been choked by the smoke and steam from others."
• p.84..."Is not life from beginning to end a ludicrous story, an improbable, stupid yarn?  Am I not now writing my own personal piece of fiction?   A story is only an outlet for frustrated aspirations, for aspiration which the storyteller conceives an accordance with a limited stock of spiritual resources inherited from previous generations."
• p.140..."I had become like a screech owl, but my cries caught in my throat and I spat them out in the form of clots of blood.  Perhaps screech owls are subject to a disease which makes them think as I think.  My shadow on the wall had become exactly like an owl and, leaning forward, read intently every word I wrote.  Without doubt he understood perfectly.  Only he was capable of understanding.  When I looked out o the corner of my eye at my shadow on the wall I felt afraid."...of understanding?
• Notes: 
• recurrent image....old man with scarf by stream with young girl in black, along with blue morning glories
• recurrent....biting nail of index finger of left hand, the old man and his wife
• narrative of killing a woman, chopping the body, putting it in a suitcase, hiring the hearse with the old man
• significant symbols:
• old man
• girl in black
• stream
• blue morning glories
• wife/bitch/unborn child
• nanny
• trip to bury dead woman
• Review:  Enter, if you dare, into the landscape of madness, the delirium of opium, the fever dream of a genius.  This novella is exquisitely painful to read, and I would not have missed the experience for anything.  The author, Iranian born Sadegh Hedayat, who committed suicide upon finishing this novel, offers this oh so generous and passionately painful glimpse into the existential madness of his mind.  Determined to know himself fully, the narrator shares a  nightmare compilation of childhood and adult fantasies, passions, and despair. To top the experience off of reading this masterpiece, the introduction is magnificent in and of itself.  Not for the fainthearted, this mesmerizing work of art!