ABSTRACT
Much has been said about Sadeq Hedayat’s interest in Franz Kafka and the affinity he believed to have found with the Czech writer. Some commentators have examined Hedayat’s translations of Kafka as the roots of possible influence for Hedayat’s own literary creations. Others have disputed the concept of influence and have focused on Hedayat’s translations as adaptations shaped by his own worldview. Fortunately we have an important document in Hedayat’s essay, “Payam-e Kafka” (Kafka’s Message), which enables us to grasp the broader contours of Hedayat’s understanding of Kafka. But there is an even more profound link between Hedayat’s readings and translations of Kafka and his vision of modern Persian literature. As one of the most prominent literary figures of his era, Hedayat played a significant role in shaping Persian literary modernity. Hedayat’s translations of Kafka and his essay on Kafka are part and parcel of his continuous search for literary and cultural revivification and a transition to modernity. Hedayat was not the only member of his generation to be preoccupied with such questions, but for him the boundary between the personal, the national, and the cultural was utterly blurred so that finding answers to his questions about the modern world became ontological in nature. In this sense, Hedayat became the very embodiment of a culture at the crossroads between what it believed to be its own historical stagnation and a modernity that was native to Europe only.
