They smell your breath lest you uttered the words I love you. Discuss the battles of the poet and censor in the 20th and 21st century Iran.

While the works of famous and classical Persian poets like Hafez and even Khayyam, that make frequent reference to love, whine and drunkenness, are interpreted to refer to divine love and spiritual drunkenness, in modern poetry even harmless phrases or waords referring to love or the body might not be permitted. Ahmed Shamlou referred to this in his famous poem 'In this dead end':

"They smell your breath./
Lest you have said, "I love you."
They smell your heart.
These are strange times, my dear..."

The first line- they smell your breath- might  refer to drinking alcohol- a delict often identified with westernisation and secularism and an example of the way the Islamic regime tries to enforce its ideology onto every aspect of its citizens' daily private life.

To publish a book, a poet  has to first find a publisher.  The publisher then prints one copy and hands it over to the MCIG for inspection. The MCIG can respond in 3 different ways: approve (with modifications), refuse, or simply not answer at all. If approved (and if modifications were demanded after changing the objected words or passages) a number of copies is printed and given to MCIG for further inspection. Again the MCIG can approve, demand further changes, refuse permission, or not respond at all. The MCIG also decides on pricing, which is used as a subtle tool of censorship: unwanted books can be made over expensive or too cheap to cover production costs. Permission to print a specific book can be withdrawn  and amendments can  be demanded at any point of time - with significant costs to writer or publishers.  

For example the writer Reza Barabeni had to wait for 6 years to obtain permission to publish his book 'The mysteries of my land'. It was then printed and sold for 18 months before being banned again. He and his publisher had to bear the cost of printing all the copies that could not be sold anymore, themselves.

The practice of changing or simply obmitting words or whole lines is expeccially damaging for poetry becasue it is such a  comprised form of literature. The poet Ziba Kassani, who lives abroad and does not publish in Iran asserts: "Words in poetry are not means. They exist in their own right, rich with nuance and colour. To change one would be akin to removing a persons head and asking them to continue walking."

Several poets that repeatedly spoke out against censorship or published critical or contraversial writings have been banned from publishing, imprisoned, tried at Revolutionary Courts, killed or had to flee for their life. After 5 Iranian intellectuals, including the poet Mohammad Mokhtari had been brutally murdered within a few weeks, Hushang Golshiri commented "Mokhtari and Puyandeh [another writer that was killed in the mid-90s] must have been crazy or in love, because only the crazy and those in love with freedom would ever to assemble, discuss (...) and say what they think. (...) We know that we are in danger"

Additionally to censorship from the MCIG and official percecution by the iranian authorities unwanted poets and writers have to fear vigilante groups like the  basij and ansar-e hezbollah who operate at least semi-autonomously but are actively tolerated by the state. In June 1993 sixty hebollahis attacked a magazine. Later the MCIG spokesperson declared: "We cannot stop them, but we also do not approve of their attitude and behaviour but our publications should behave in a way not to offend the sentiments of the hezbollahis". Another tool of control is the state-controlled media, in particular the newspaper 'Kayhan' which regularly discredits journalists, intellectuals and artists inclusing poets, labelling them servants of imperialism, communists and agents of SAVAK.

Poets have been dealing with this situation in different ways and can in no way been seen as a homogeneous block.

According to Susan Siavoshi Iranian writers and intellectuals can be fit into three categories. Poets in the first category are secular and oppose the Islamic Republic and all its basic principles. Many of them have been educated in the West  and look to western intellectual traditions to find solution to Iran's problems. The second category comes from the younger generation of the clergy at Qom and are let by intellectuals such as Abdulkarim Sorush who is deeply religious himself but challenges the claim to infallibility by the religious leadership and criticises religious devotion as prerequisites for public office rather than expertise.

Writers in the third category accept what the first and second reject and are led by intellectuals like Sadiq Larijani.

Due to the considerable dangers and costs of tying to resist censorship, self-censorship is widespread. By persecuting a few poets the censors have silenced many others.  

Some poets, that did not accept their work being censored, have other regular jobs to support themselves and circulate their poetry on the internet or underground. A vibrant underground literary scene exists, but materials tend to be expensive and circulation is limited.

Many poets have left Iran and publish their poetry abroad. Among them are Dr Vaseghi, Shirin Razavian and Roya Hakakian, who all argue that poetry written with censorship in mind simply becomes extremely bad poetry.

Others stay in Iran and try to fight for their right to write freely. In October 1994 134 writers and intellectuals, including many poets demanded an end to censorship in their joint statement 'Text of the 134':

We are writers (…) that is, we write about and publish our feelings, thoughts and research in various forms. It is our natural, social and civil right to see our work (…) reach our readers freely and without restriction. No person or institution, under any pretext, should be allowed to hamper the publication of these works. (…)

While obstacles which face us in our thinking and writing far exceed our individual means and power, we have no alternative but to confront them through collective professional channels, i.e. to unite in order to achieve freedom of thought and expression and to fight against censorship.".

 The first sentence "We are writers"seems self-evident but it explains why this manifesto has been written. Poetry has played an important part in Iranian society for a long time and is one of the things that Iranians turn to for guidance. Even in extremely rural areas people are familiar with classical pots like Hafez or Sa'adi. The signatories of the 134 declaration speak with the  authority that poets traditionally enjoy in Iranian culture and had they not been writers who would have wanted to know their opinion on an issue like censorship? At the same time "We are writers"  is the demand to let writers simply be writers.  In a country were everything from clothing and facial hair to family life and eating habits has been made a political issue, every poem is treated as a possible political manifesto and writers have a hard time defining apolitical spaces where poetry can exist for itself.

An immediate crack down on writers including poets followed the publication of the 'Text of the 134', leaving several dead, some imprisoned and  forced others to leave Iran.  Nevertheless there still are poets and other writers fighting against censorship in Iran today.

The story of Iran's independent writers' association kanoon-e navisandegan illustrates the resilience of Iranian writers fighting the censor.  Kannon was founded in 1967 and has since been suppressed by the Iranian authorities. The revolution in 1979 initially gave writers new hope and some went to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini, who "didn't understand what the poets wanted of him- or maybe he didn't want to understand. At the latest when they found themselves outside the door again already after a few minutes, they realised that this leader had a different kind of a revolution in mind than the poets." Soon after the revolution repression against poets and their association started once again- this time not in the name the nation and the monarch but in the name of Islam and the revolution. The poet Said Soltanpour was arrested and later killed, some poets that had been in exile during the Shah's reign had returned to Iran, many others had fled the country. Nevertheless 10 years later regular kanoon meetings were taking place again and in 1994 the association published their first protest declaration since the revolution against the arrest of Said Soltanpour. In the same year writers published the 'text of the 134' mentioned above. Again a wave of repression followed leaving several poets dead or imprisoned. An attempt to kill more than 20 writers on a bus trip to Armenia failed.

Still today there is a committee of kanoon in Iran- waves of repression have come and gone throughout the 20th and 21th century but still some poets continue to fight their censor. They fight because, acording to many of them, this is what logically follows from being a poet. As Ziba Kassrbassi puts it: "Poetry is like breathing. It is the beating pulse of a poet. It is alive. One cannot breathe for ten minutes and then stop for ten and then continue breathing for another 10 minutes. [There can be]  either no poetry or complete freedom- poetry and freedom simply can't coexist."

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Bibliography

Article 19:  Unvailed: Art and Censorship in Iran,  Article 19: London 2006.

Cheheltan, Amir Hassan: Lesen lehren die Dämonen- Literarische Zensur im Iran, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 173 (1999), p. 48.

Golshiri, Hushang: Gedanken am offenen Grab: Nur wer verückt ist kann sich noch trauen zu sagen was er denkt, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 203 (1998), p. 29.

Kermani, Navid: Iran- Die Revoluion der Kinder, Beck: Munich 2001.

Kermani, Navid: ‘Der Kampf um die Dichtung ist der Kampf um die Freiheit- Warum der iranische Schriftstellerverband seit 32 Jahren in der Gründungsphase ist’, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 173 (1999), p. 48.

Midle East Watch:  Guardians of thought- Limits on Freedom of Expression in Iran, Human Rights Watch: New York, 1993.

Siavoshi, Sussan: Cultural Policies and the Islamic Republic: Cinema and Book Publication’, International Journal of Middles East Studies, 29 (1997), p. 509-530.

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