Grotesque Corporeality and Literary Aesthetics in Sadeq Chubak's The Patient Stone

Abstract

This article is concerned with ways in which grotesque corporeality shapes Sadeq Chubak's controversial novel The Patient Stone (Sang-e Sabur, 1966). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's understanding of grotesque realism in Rabelais and His World, the discussion demonstrates that Chubak employed devices associated with grotesque aesthetics, and that these devices were used to invert and contest social and literary conventions in Iranian culture, although it seems he remains caught to a certain extent within the very systems he challenges. Grotesque realism involves estrangement of the familiar, and leads to degrading the abstract, spiritual and sublime to the material level of physicality and the body. In The Patient Stone, Chubak replicates motifs of classical Persian epics, religious scriptures and the myth of creation and debases them by excessive depictions of bodily conditions and grotesque corporeality (such as deformity, paralysis and decay). The use of grotesque corporeality embodied in the style, content and characters of Chubak's novel facilitates a variety of paradoxes of being and non-being, appearance and reality, death and rebirth, hope and anxiety of a fragmented and alienated society in desperate need of change.

Notes

¹For the convenience of readers in both languages, this article refers to the English translation by M.R. Ghanoonparvar of Sadeq Chubak, The Patient Stone (Costa Mesa, CA, 1989); and the second edition of the novel in Persian, Sadeq Chubak, Sang-e Sabur (Tehran, 1973). In some cases, the English quotations contain incorrect grammar and various idiosyncrasies in language patterns, which correspond with the different idioms employed in the Persian text. On the translation see, M.R. Ghanoonparvar, in Chubak, The Patient Stone (1989), xxii–xxiii.

²This article does not claim Chubak was familiar with Bakhtin's work or Rabelaisianism at the time he wrote the novel, although he was unequivocally acquainted with writings of other authors who experimented with grotesque aesthetics, most notably Edgar Allen Poe, James Joyce and William Faulkner, see in F.R.C. Bagley, Sadeq Chubak: An Anthology (Delmar, NY, 1982), 10; Jahangir Dorri, “The Satire of Sadeq Chubak,” in Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature, ed. Thomas M. Ricks (Washington, DC, 1984), 327–8.

³Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN, 1984), 26.

⁴Ibid., 9–10.

⁵On the traditional improvisatory theatre, see William Beeman, “Why Do They Laugh? An Interactional Approach to Humor in Traditional Iranian Improvisatory Theatre,” Journal of American Folklore 94, no. 374 (1981): 506–26; Farrokh Gaffary, “Evolution of Ritual and Theatre in Iran,” Iranian Studies, 17, no. 4 (1984): 361–89; Kaveh Safa-Isfahani, “Female-centered World Views in Iranian Culture: Symbolic Representations of Sexuality in Dramatic Games,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 6, no. 1 (1980): 33–53; Anthony Shay, “‘Bazi-ha-ye Nameyeshi:’ [sic.] Iranian Women's Theatrical Plays,” Dance Research Journal 27, no. 2 (1995): 16–24.

⁶Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 10.

⁷Ali Ferdowsi, “Sang-e Sabur,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (2011), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sang-e-sabur; Kinga Markus, “Experiments with the Kunstlerroman in the Modern Persian Fiction: The Patient Stone of Sadeq Chubak and The Night's Journey of Bahman Sholevar,” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies 3 (1985): 235.

⁸Ehsan Yar-Shater, “The Modern Literary Idiom,” in Iran Faces the Seventies, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater (New York, 1971), 307.

⁹Ferdowsi, “Sang-e Sabur.”

¹⁰Yar-Shater, “The Modern Literary Idiom,” 306.

¹¹Markus, “Experiments with the Kunstlerroman in the Modern Persian Fiction,” 231.

¹²The twenty-six short chapters of the novel are divided as follows: ten are presented under the heading of Ahmad Aqa, Kakolzari lends his name to six, Belqeys to five, Jahansoltan to four and Seyf ol-Qalam to one.

¹³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 25; Sang-e Sabur, 57.

¹⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 33–4, 37; Sang-e Sabur, 76, 84.

¹⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 35; Sang-e Sabur, 79.

¹⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 35; Sang-e Sabur, 78–9.

¹⁷Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 151.

¹⁸Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 148.

¹⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 3; Sang-e Sabur, 14.

²⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 136–7; Sang-e Sabur, 289–90.

²¹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 86; Sang-e Sabur, 189.

²²Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar, “Chubak, Sadeq,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (2009), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chubak-sadeq.

²³For further discussion on the situation and trends of Iranian writers during the 1960s see Michael C. Hillmann, “The Modernist Trend in Persian Literature and its Social Impact,” Iranian Studies 15, no. 1–4 (1982): 7–29; Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature, ed. Thomas M. Ricks (Washington, DC, 1984); M.R. Ghanoonparvar, Prophets of Doom: Literature as a Socio-Political Phenomenon in Modern Iran (Lanham, MD, 1984); Rivanne Sandler, “Literary Developments in Iran in the 1960s and the 1970s Prior to the 1978 Revolution,” World Literature Today 60, no. 2 (1986): 246–51; Kamran Talattof, The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse, NY, 2000); Claus V. Pedersen, World View in Pre-Revolutionary Iran—Literary Analysis of Five Iranian Authors in the Context of History of Ideas (Wiesbaden, 2002).

²⁴Michael C. Hillmann, “‘The Sigh of Mankind’ and ‘The Kerosene Man’ 1945,” Literature East and West 20, no. 1–4 (1976): 71.

²⁵Chubak's first collection of short stories, the Puppet Show (Kheymeh-shab-bazi), was published in 1945; a second collection of short stories, The Baboon Whose Buffoon Was Dead (Antari keh lutiyash ordeh bud), appeared in 1949; his first novel, Tangsir, was made into a motion picture in 1974; a third collection, The First Day in the Grave (Ruz-e avval-e qabr), was published in 1965 and the fourth collection, The Last Alms (Cheragh-e akhar), in 1966. For further reading on Chubak's works see, for instance, the collection of essays published in the periodical Iran Shenasi 18 (1993): 231–97; Yad-e Sadeq Chubak, ed. Ali Dabashi (Tehran, 2001); and M.R. Ghanoonparvar, Reading Chubak (Washington, DC, 2005).

²⁶Ghanoonparvar, “Introduction,” in Chubak, The Patient Stone, xv.

²⁷For further reading see Liora Hendelman-Baavur, “The Odyssey of Jalal Al-e Ahmad's Gharbzadegi - Five Decades After,” in New Leaves, Fresh Looks: Essays on Persian Language, Literature and Culture, ed. Kamran Talattof (London, Routledge), forthcoming in 2014.

²⁸See especially the commentary of Feraydoon Tonokaboni quoted in Jalal Al-e Ahmad, “The Unwanted Woman,” trans. Leonard Bogle, in Iranian Society: An Anthology of Writings by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, ed. Michael C. Hillmann (Lexington, KY, 1982), 70–80. For further reading see Jalal Al-e Ahmad, “Pink Nail Polish: A Story,” trans. A. Reza Navabpour, Iranian Studies 15, no. 1–4 (1982): 81–95; Jalal Al-e Ahmad, “Someone Else's Child,” trans. Theodore S. Gochenour, Iranian Studies 1, no. 4 (1968): 155–62.

²⁹Heshmat Moayyad, “The Persian Short Story: An Overview,” in Stories from Iran: A Chicago Anthology 1921–1991, ed. Heshmat Moayyad (Washington, DC, 1997), 22.

³⁰Melissa Gniadek, “The Act of Becoming: Sherwood Anderson, Frank Sargeson and Grotesque Aesthetic,” Journal of New Zealand Literature 23, no. 2 (2005): 24.

³¹Nasrin Rahimieh, “Capturing the Abject of the Nation in The House is Black,” in Forugh Farrokhzad Poet of Modern Iran, ed. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Nasrin Rahimieh (New York, 2010), 127.

³²Ahmad Aqa questions, for instance, the tendency to regulate sexual relations by claiming that “this is the very act that every bastard who's come along has, right off, set up rules for, to the extent that it's become like going to the outhouse, it's got to be done secretly, brushed under the carpet, with fear and anxiety.” Chubak, The Patient Stone, 133; Sang-e Sabur, 283.

³³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 25; Sang-e Sabur, 57.

³⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 34, 38; Sang-e Sabur, 78, 86.

³⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 38; Sang-e Sabur, 86.

³⁶Deborah Miller Mostaghel, “The Second Sadeq: The Short Stories of Iranian Writer Sadeq Chubak,” World Literature Today 53, no. 2 (1979): 227–31; Bagley, Sadeq Chubak: An Anthology, 3–4; Ghanoonparvar, Reading Chubak, 4–5.

³⁷Hillmann, “The Sigh of Mankind,” 72.

³⁸Houra Yavari, “Fiction II(b)—The Novel,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fiction-libthe-novel.

³⁹Quoted respectively in Pederson, World View in Pre-Revolutionary Iran, 107; Ghanoonparvar, “Introduction,” xvii; Bagley, Sadeq Chubak, 7.

⁴⁰Joya Blondel Saad, The Image of Arabs in Modern Persian Literature (Lanham, MD, 1996), 51, 129.

⁴¹Amirshahi specifically refers to Chubak's description of a paltry brothel in his short story Under the Red Light (Zir-e cheragh-e qermez), and to the female characters in The Maroon Dress (Pirahan-e zereshki), who survive thanks to the corpses they wash. For further reading see Mahshid Amirshahi, “The Image of Women in Contemporary Persian Prose,” a lecture delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley and Utrecht University (Holland), http://www.amirshahi.org/english/1000-bisheh/The%20Image%20of%20Woman%20in%20Contemporary%20Persian%20Prose1.htm.

⁴²Ghanoonparvar, “Introduction,” xix–xx. An extended analysis of The Patient Stone also appears in chapter 4 of Ghanoonparvar's Reading Chubak, 68–115.

⁴³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 34; Sang-e Sabur, 78.

⁴⁴Chubak chose Shiraz as the locale of The Patient Stone probably because a series of murders actually took place there in the 1930s, after his family moved to the city from Bushehr, which was chosen as the setting of his first novel Tangsir (Ghanoonparvar, “Introduction,” x). Kinga Markus further implies that by setting the story in Shiraz, Chubak mocks the city, famous for its poets, saints and mystics, by presenting it “at the height of the police regime of Reza Shah” as a “dull provincial town with sinister implications.” See Markus, “Experiments with the Kunstlerroman in the Modern Persian Fiction,” 232.

⁴⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 7, 33; Sang-e Sabur, 21, 75. For a discussion of Chubak's naturalistic approach see Shahla Haeri and Saadi Jaafari, “Sadeq Chubak, Farasoo Naturalism,” Qalam 11 (2010): 73–84.

⁴⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 1; Sang-e Sabur, 11.

⁴⁷Chubak, The Patient Stone, 139; Sang-e Sabur, 296.

⁴⁸F.R.C. Bagley notes that many of the stories in the classical Persian literature were probably taken by later authors from contemporary folklore, while others were not written down, but preserved in the memories of reciters, Bagley, Sadeq Chubak: An Anthology, 2.

⁴⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 2; Sang-e Sabur, 12.

⁵⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 7; Sang-e Sabur, 23.

⁵¹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 59; Sang-e Sabur, 131.

⁵²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 6; Sang-e Sabur, 12–13.

⁵³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 52; Sang-e Sabur, 116.

⁵⁴Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 325.

⁵⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 59–60; Sang-e Sabur, 131.

⁵⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 34, 19; Sang-e Sabur, 77, 44.

⁵⁷Chubak, The Patient Stone, 136–7; Sang-e Sabur, 290.

⁵⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 26; Sang-e Sabur, 58.

⁵⁹Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 309.

⁶⁰Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 19–20.

⁶¹The Bible, Book of Proverbs, 31:30.

⁶²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 10, 137; Sang-e Sabur, 27, 290.

⁶³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 42; Sang-e Sabur, 92.

⁶⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 3; Sang-e Sabur, 13. Hajji Esma'il was also the name of Chubak's father, who was an affluent merchant.

⁶⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 31; Sang-e Sabur, 69–70.

⁶⁶Wiebke Walther, Women from Medieval to Modern Times, trans. C.S.V. Salt (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 183.

⁶⁷Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words—The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse, NY, 1992), 187.

⁶⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 176; Sang-e Sabur, 384.

⁶⁹Bakhtin also indicates that the grotesque body is presented “differently than in the classic and naturalist images.” Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 315.

⁷⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 137–8; Sang-e Sabur, 289–90, 293–4.

⁷¹A sixteenth-century Italian painter known for experimenting with Renaissance-style grotesque. Chubak, The Patient Stone, 152; Sang-e Sabur, 325–6.

⁷²Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317.

⁷³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 75; Sang-e Sabur, 166. Grotesque bodily conditions apply to the descriptions of other characters in The Patient Stone as well; see, for instance: the snorting, yawning and contraction of Jahansoltan's dying body; Ahmad Aqa vomiting the bread and kabob he ate for lunch following the death of Jahansoltan (The Patient Stone, 105; Sang-e Sabur, 224); the nose bleeding of Kakolzari (The Patient Stone, 117; Sang-e Sabur, 247); in Belqeys's derogatory interior monologues with her husband, Bemunali, she repeatedly blames him for being an impotent, unable to “shove his donkey's handle in once in a while” and due to the consumption of drugs cannot even fart (The Patient Stone, 11; Sang-e Sabur, 29).

⁷⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 11, 12; Sang-e Sabur, 28–9, 32.

⁷⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 77; Sang-e Sabur, 171.

⁷⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 11; Sang-e Sabur, 29.

⁷⁷Chubak, The Patient Stone, 13; Sang-e Sabur, 33.

⁷⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 13; Sang-e Sabur, 34–5.

⁷⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 21; Sang-e Sabur, 49.

⁸⁰Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 322.

⁸¹Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 25.

⁸²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 105; Sang-e Sabur, 225.

⁸³For further reading on women's traditional improvisatory theatre in Iran, see: Safa-Isfahani, “Female-centered World Views in Iranian Culture,” and Shay, ““Bazi-ha-ye Nameyeshi.”

⁸⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 100; Sang-e Sabur, 213.

⁸⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 114; Sang-e Sabur, 242.

⁸⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 3; Sang-e Sabur, 13.

⁸⁷Despite earlier legislative restrictions on the marriage of girls before reaching the full age of fifteen, Momeni indicated that in the 1960s child marriages were still very common in Iran. For further reading, see Djamchid A. Momeni, “The Difficulties of Changing the Age at Marriage in Iran,” Journal of Marriage and Family 34, no. 3 (1972): 545–51; Jamshid A. Momeni, “Determinants of Female First Marriage in Shiraz, Iran,” Canadian Studies in Population 6 (1979): 81–99.

⁸⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 43; Sang-e Sabur, 95–6.

⁸⁹Although no reliable figures existed on the number of polygynous marriages in the 1960s, they were believed to be on the decline and largely confined to the older generation, see “The Family,” in Iran: A Country Study, ed. Helen Chapin Metz (Washington, DC, 1987), http://countrystudies.us/iran/52.htm; Djamchid A. Momeni, “Polygyny in Iran,” Journal of Marriage and Family 37, no. 2 (1975): 453–6.

⁹⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 29–30; Sang-e Sabur, 65–7.

⁹¹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 44; Sang-e Sabur, 98.

⁹²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 79; Sang-e Sabur, 175.

⁹³Haleh Afshar indicates that in the 1960s and 1970s desertion was identified as the primary cause for prostitution in Tehran. See Haleh Afshar, “Women, Marriage and the State in Iran,” in Women, State, and Ideology: Studies from Africa and Asia, ed. Haleh Afshar (Albany, NY, 1987), 82.

⁹⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 10, 33; Sang-e Sabur, 27, 76.

⁹⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 10; Sang-e Sabur, 27.

⁹⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 75; Sang-e Sabur, 168. It is important to note that there is no reliable data on the number of temporary marriages or to what extent they were practiced in the 1960s, mostly because they were not officially recorded and censuses in Iran did not include questions regarding the practice. See Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi'i Iran (Syracuse, NY, 1989), 14.

⁹⁷See the complete dialogue between Ahmad Aqa and Sheykh Mahmud in Chubak, The Patient Stone, 83–8; Sang-e Sabur, 183–92.

⁹⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 75–76; Sang-e Sabur, 167–9.

⁹⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 145; Sang-e Sabur, 310.

¹⁰⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 13, 135; Sang-e Sabur, 33, 286.

¹⁰¹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 125; Sang-e Sabur, 265.

¹⁰²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 29; Sang-e Sabur, 65.

¹⁰³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 15, 90; Sang-e Sabur, 35, 195.

¹⁰⁴Chubak, The Patient Stone, 40; Sang-e Sabur, 89.

¹⁰⁵Chubak, The Patient Stone, 57–8; Sang-e Sabur, 127–9.

¹⁰⁶Pedersen, World View in Pre-Revolutionary Iran, 107.

¹⁰⁷Chubak, The Patient Stone, 33; Sang-e Sabur, 74–5.

¹⁰⁸Chubak, The Patient Stone, 133; Sang-e Sabur, 283.

¹⁰⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 20; Sang-e Sabur, 46.

¹¹⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 19, 127; Sang-e Sabur, 45, 270.

¹¹¹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 17–18; Sang-e Sabur, 39–41.

¹¹²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 85; Sang-e Sabur, 185–6.

¹¹³Chubak, The Patient Stone, 17–18, 20; Sang-e Sabur, 39–40, 47.

¹¹⁴Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 91.

¹¹⁵In Chubak's version of the Myth of Creation, appearing in the final scenes of his novel, heavenly creatures manage to kill the tyrannical God of Time (Zurvan) only after they overcome the fear of the huge and fiery sword hovering over the Tree of Knowledge, see Chubak, The Patient Stone, 162; Sang-e Sabur, 350.

¹¹⁶Chubak, The Patient Stone, 119–31; Sang-e Sabur, 251–79.

¹¹⁷Chubak, The Patient Stone, 128; Sang-e Sabur, 272.

¹¹⁸Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 316, 303.

¹¹⁹Chubak, The Patient Stone, 137; Sang-e Sabur, 291–2.

¹²⁰Chubak, The Patient Stone, 146; Sang-e Sabur, 312–13.

¹²¹Markus, “Experiments with the Kunstlerroman in the Modern Persian Fiction,” 233.

¹²²Chubak, The Patient Stone, 4, 59, 132; Sang-e Sabur, 16, 130, 281.

¹²³Azar Nafisi, “Images of Women in Classical Persian Literature and the Contemporary Iranian Novel,” in The Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran, eds. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl (New York, 1994), 124–5.

¹²⁴Nayereh Tohidi, “Modernity, Islamization, and Women in Iran,” in Gender and National Identity, ed. Valentine M. Moghadam (London, 1984), 130.

¹²⁵Nafisi, “Images of Women in Classical Persian Literature”, 124–5.

¹²⁶Markus, “Experiments with the Kunstlerroman in the Modern Persian Fiction,” 231–2.