False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/anniversary-iranian-revolution.html

False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution
By Juan Cole | Feb. 12, 2014
(By Farhang Jahanpour)

The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had waged a campaign against him mainly from his exile in Najaf in Iraq for 14 years returned in triumph on 2nd February 1979 and ten days later his armed supporters attacked the last standing barracks of the shah’s forces, overrun them, killed a large number of soldiers who were defending the barracks and the shah’s palaces, and put an end to more than 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy. The ten days between Ayatollah Khomeini’s return and the victory of the revolution is marked every year in Iran as the Ten Days of Dawn.

The aim of this article is neither to study the political, economic, and social causes that led to the revolution, nor what happened afterwards. Numerous books and thousands of articles have been written analysing those issues. The aim of this article is to look at a rather neglected aspect of the revolution, namely the works of Iranian writers and poets that painted a gloomy picture of Iranian conditions at the time and advocated the need for a great change and transformation that inspired mainly the young and educated classes to support the revolution.

In Iran, poets and writers are regarded by the public – and by themselves – as seers, guides or even prophets who teach and enlighten the masses. The “committed” or “engaged” writer is the eye, the ear and the conscience of society and, for better or worse, exerts a profound influence upon the minds of the reading public. In Iran a complex philosophical or religious debate can often be settled by an apt line from one of the great Iranian poets in favour of one side of the argument or the other. However, one great difference between the classical and modern Iranian literature is that while in the past poets such as Rumi, Hafiz, Attar and Sa’di acted as spiritual guides, allegedly revealing divine secrets and engaging in metaphysical speculation, modern writers are more concerned about here and now and about political and social issues.

With the dawn of the Constitutional Movement (1905-11) – a movement which itself owed a great deal to Iranian writers and intellectuals – a new literary climate was created. With the introduction of printing, the spreading of education and with greater public access to books and newspapers, Iranian writers and poets found a much larger audience to communicate to and many political and social issues to write about. One aspect of the Iranian revolution that has not received enough attention has been the role that writers and poets played in mobilising the people – especially university students and the educated classes – and indoctrinating them with revolutionary ideas.