ABSTRACT
‘Sin’ is probably the most well-known poem of Forugh Farrokhzad, though it is not one of her best, even in comparison with most of the poems before the period of Rebirth. It is apparently a defiant declaration of feminist independence, but a closer examination of it and some other earlier poems betrays a sense of guilt, bewilderment and remorse. It is in the later poems, and especially those of the period of Rebirth or Another Birth, that ‘pleasure’ gives way to acceptance, and ‘sin’, to real self-assertion and self-confidence. Nevertheless, analysing her published letters, and especially the two long letters to her father, it will be argued that, in spite of the upward journey in both love and poetry, the poet's longing for deep fulfilment remained frustrated until the very end.
