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ABSTRACT
In this essay, I offer a response to conclusions in affect theory that empathy inspired by the reading of a text is unlikely to result in direct action for change. I balance my understanding of empathy and activism in poetry with Lévinasian theories of ethical relationality and moral responsibility. I discuss the unique quality of a collection of prison poems by Persian poet and Bahá'í leader Mahvash Sabet, revealing her remarkable acts of compassion for her fellow prisoners. I explore how her poems awakened my own voice as a poet and an advocate, taking into account the problematic power hierarchies of geographical distance and cultural difference. Finally, I reflect on the way empathic poetry can provide a shared language capable of reaching across geographical and cultural divides.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Many Persian women keep their maiden name when they marry. Mahvash’s full name includes her maiden name, Shahriari, but she publishes as Mahvash Sabet, her first name and her married name.
2 PEN International, ‘Case Lists’, https://pen-international.org/who-we-are/case-lists.
3 Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, personal communication, June 18, 2019; Sabet (Citation2018).
4 Bahiyyih can understand spoken Persian but she cannot read it, so her parents translated Mahvash’s words into English and then Bahiyyih turned them back into poems. The collection was published in English due to the impossibility of consulting directly with Mahvash while she was in prison, meaning that all editing decisions would be made by the publishing and translating teams. Mahvash was able to communicate her acceptance of the decision and Bahiyyih chose to distinguish the poems as ‘adaptations’ to reflect the particular journey they had taken. Personal communication with the author, April 3 and 4, 2016.
5 Nakhjavani, interview with the author, April 3, 2016.
6 ‘The Perfume of Poetry’, Prison Poems, 32–33.
7 ‘Lonely Prisoner’, Prison Poems, 34.
8 Jurecic (Citation2011, 11); Garber (Citation2004, 20); and Ahmed (Citation2014, 22).
9 ‘The Perfume of Poetry’, Prison Poems, 32.
10 ‘The Sacrifice’, Prison Poems, 36.
11 After the Revolution, Mahvash was dismissed from her position as a teacher and school principal for being Bahá'í and so helped to set up and run the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education, where she worked for 15 years. ‘Profiles of the Seven Bahá'í “Leaders,”’ Bahá'í World News Service, https://news.bahai.org/human-rights/iran/yaran-special-report/profiles.
12 ‘The Sacrifice’, Prison Poems, 36.
13 Extract from my poem Dear Mahvash 1 (posted to Mahvash Sabet in Evin Prison, July 4, 2016).
14 Jurecic (Citation2011, 17). Jurecic is refering to sympathy here but she uses the term more-or-less interchangeably with her key concept of empathy. See also Woodward (Citation2004, 71); and Kulbaga (Citation2008, 517).
15 See, for example, Berlant’s discussion of Rogers and Hammerstein’s The King and I in ‘Poor Eliza’; and, in ‘The Risks of Empathy’, Boler’s observation of her students’ problematic responses to reading Art Spiegelman’s MAUS.
16 The Iran Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least 17 Bahá’ís were banned from attending university in 2020 ‘despite being academically qualified.’ Reported in English in Iran International, November 1, 2020, https://iranintl.com/en/iran-in-brief/iran-authorities-deprive-least-17-bahai-students-higher-education.
17 Bahá’í International Community has recorded more than 750 instances of ‘economic persecution.’ ‘The Bahá’í International Community’s Contribution to the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on FoRB’, May 2020, ‘Discrimination of Economic Rights’, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Religion/Submissions/CSOs/12.bic.pdf.
18 For more on this, see Cameron and Danesh (Citation2008).
19 Extract from ‘Nasturtium Messages’, October 1, 2021. Some details in this poem are taken from Saberi (Citation2010, 171–172). Roxana Saberi is an American-Iranian journalist who shared a cell with Mahvash for a time.
20 Boler (Citation1997, 257–258, 266); see also Berlant (Citation1998, 641, 645).
21 ‘One Human Family’, The Bahá'í Faith, https://www.bahai.org/beliefs/essential-relationships/one-human-family/.
22 Lévinas was, in fact, determinedly against the notion of social identity, that an individual may be categorised according to race, culture, sexual orientation, and so forth (Citation1996, 166). This, of course, has made the problem of how to apply Lévinasian philosophy to political situations complex.
23 Extract from my poem ‘Nasturtium Messages’.
24 Nakhjavani, personal communication, April 4, 2016. The matter of the many voices involved in the translation of Prison Poems is fascinating and perhaps could be picked up in another essay.
25 My poem, ‘Transmission Not Translation’ (unpublished, August 2021).
26 Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Citation2005), 64–65.
27 Behrouz Afagh in personal communication with Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, June 4, 2021.
28 Rumi (Citation2004), ‘How a Hare Killed the Tyrannical Lion’, 76–77.
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April-Rose Geers
April-Rose Geers is an Aotearoa New Zealand poet and scholar of transnational creative activism. She studies writing that has emerged from present-day sites of persecution and joins the response to these crises with her poetry. She is in her final year of a PhD in Creative Writing at Massey University, NZ.