New York-letters: An Ode to New York, a Panegyric to Persia

ABSTRACT

Despite the fact that a significant number of Iranians have lived in or visited the United States for more than half a century, they have produced very few accounts of their lives in or visits to the country. In the last decade, however, a number of narratives of travel to the United States have been published by Iranian authors, of which professor Mir Jalaleddin Kazzazi’s New York-Letters merits special attention. This paper analyzes Kazzazi’s text to highlight its distinctive features as a travelogue, which have led to the work claiming its own place among contemporary Iranian narratives of travel to America. More specifically, this study argues how, especially as a narrative in verse, the book challenges some of the conventional modes of travel writing; how it engages in its own mode of defamiliarising not only its content (that is, the all-too-familiar New York), but also the book’s own epitext; how the author exploits a vast array of images from the repertoire of classical Persian literature to narrate New York; and, finally, how the ode narrative is interrupted to shift from the poet’s account of New York to a lengthy panegyric to Persia.

KEYWORDS:

• Epitext
• New York
• New York-Letters
• Persian literature
• US travelogues

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I should hasten to add that, as is often the case with translations, much of the elegance and loftiness of Kazzazi’s prose and verse is, inevitably, lost in translation.

2 These include Masud Sa'd Salman, Khaqani, Abu-Shakur Balkhi, Asadi Tusi, Kamal al-Din Ismail Isfahani, Mansour Hallaj, Khwaju Kermani, Imad Faqih Kermani, Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani, Baha al-Din Valad, Sanai Ghaznavi, Anvari, Nizari Quhistani, Falaki Shirvani, Mujir al-Din Baylaqani, Athir al-Din Akhsikati, Saif Farghani, Suzani Samarqandi, Osman Mokhtari, Ubayd Zakani, Onsori Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani, Manuchehri, Humam Tabrizi, Asir Awmani, Abu Mansur Daqiqi, Atayi, Owhadi Maraghei, Fakhr al-Din Araqi, Emami Heravi, Badr al-Din Jajarmi, Majd al-Din Hamgar, Ghanei Tousi, Ala al-Dawla Semnani, Azraqi, and many more.

Additional information

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Hossein Nazari

Hossein Nazari holds a PhD in English from the University of Canterbury. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Tehran, Iran, where he teaches English and American literature. Some of his main areas of interest and research include Postcolonialism, (Neo-)Orientalism, Women’s Studies, and Travel Writing. His monograph, Representing Post-Revolutionary Iran: Captivity, Neo-Orientalism, and Resistance in Iranian-American Life Writing has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing (2022) and has won a number of research awards.