Conquest of the Garden (Fath-e Bagh) appeared in Farrokhzad’s fourth collection, Another Birth. An early translator and proponent of Farrokhzad’s poetry, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, argued that this publication was “perhaps the most significant single document of contemporary Persian letters” (An Anthology of Modern Persian Poetry 18).

Farrokhzad herself prized Another Birth above earlier volumes as her most fully developed articulation of style and thematic concerns. She believed contemporary literature necessitated concrete vocabulary, fresh imagery, and structural innovation. “Our poetry,” she claimed, “requires a great deal of harshness and unpoetical words in order to be vitalized and live anew.”

Innovative poets of Farrokhzad’s generation countered the classical canon in several ways. Traditional metric patterns were loosened; the poetic voice became more colloquial, confessional, and psychological; and old symbols gained new identities. Farrokhzad’s signal contribution was her authenticity of expression. The sexual explicitness of her poems was unprecedented. Her transgression was to unveil the intimate female self, hitherto cloaked and silent. She wrote so unequivocally outside the masculine tradition that it was impossible not to approach her poetry on its own terms.

It is important to note that auto/biography as it exists in the West was not found in the Persian literary tradition. Similarly, Iranian society is still very private and guarded, especially as it relates to women. Farrokhzad’s feminist challenge becomes clear when one realizes the enormous, complex, and even dangerous pressures opposing her candid self-expression.

In Conquest of the Garden, two lovers escape to the countryside for privacy. Figured as Adam and Eve, the couple plucks an apple. But they resist the biblical and Koranic narrative with blissful communion: there is no Fall in this Paradise. Farrokhzad puts language at issue in this poem. The talk in town is condemning, and it contrasts with the language of love transmitted in “the burning peonies of your kiss, / of our candid bodies in playfulness.” The lovers refuse the speech of convention, and they seek answers in nature.

Love’s journey leads to the mystic state of the Phoenix. The experience depersonalizes and joins Being to the cosmic everlasting, such that the lovers discover “existence in one infinite moment / when two suns gazed at one another.” Conquest of the Garden is an eloquent and defiant poetic argument for emancipated union over contractual coupling. What becomes satanic are the narrow and oppressive judgments of society.

Bibliography
Farrokhzad, Forugh. Another Birth, translated by Hasan Javadi with Susan Sallee. Emoryville, Calif.: Albany Press, 1981.
Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, comp. and trans. An Anthology of Modern Persian Poetry. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1978.

Categories: British Literature, Iranian Literature, Literature

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