ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the Iranian Communist poet Houshang Ebtehaj (b. 1927), known better by his pen name Sayeh (Shadow), understands his use of Classical Persian poetic conventions and stock imagery of the ghazal in a modern setting as a deeply political act. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s notions of origin and time, the chapter examines Sayeh’s approach to poetry, political commitment, and literary memory. The conventional use of ghazal and a language that closely imitates that of Hafez’s allow Sayeh to play with notions of continuity and change and to examine the possibility of holding onto the contradictions of “truth” in a mystical materialist setting.
