AHMAD SHAMLOU, IRAN’S GREATEST CONTEMPORARY POET DIES

TEHRAN 24^TH July (IPS)          Ahmad Shamlou, one of Iran’s greatest national poet, writer, researcher, playwright, critic, intellectual and literary Tsar died Monday after midnight in a Tehran hospital, suffering from a long diabetes disease, of which he had lost one leg.

          Also known under his “nom de plume” A. Bamdad he used for his poetry, Shamlou was working relentlessly on a huge encyclopedia named “The Book of the Street”, a collection of popular expressions, slang, proverbs and idioms he was keen to finish before death comes.

Born in Tehran in 1925, Shamlou entered the limited and closed Iranian intellectual and cultural community at the age of 17 and quickly established his own reputation as a “turbulent” poet mixing a modern, popular, clear language with the old way of poetic expression, a style not much appreciated at the time by the literary circles who regarded him as an “arrogant new comer with ambitions to reform the Iranian poetry”.

A follower of Nima Yushij, the great poet who for the first time introduced the “free rhyme” in the rigid Iranian poetry dominated by great poets such as Hafez, Shams Tabrizi, Baba Taher or Omar Khayyam, A. Bamdad quickly became the flag bearer of young Iranian poets and writers that included (Ms) Forouq Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Mehdi Akhavan, Yadollah Roya’I, Nosrat Rahmani, Nader Naderpour etc.

A poet of world standing, Shamlou Edited and published more than 30 literary and cultural magazines and revues, all of them widely popular but that made no money.

A leftist intellectual, Shamlou was a tireless worker and an enthusiast researcher, doing several things at the same time, writing poems, articles, translating, collect material for his books

Self educated, he also enhanced the Iranian poetic scene with translation of world leading political figures like Federico Garcia Lorca, the renowned Spanish poet or Pablo Neruda, the Chilean master. He also translated books from classic authors such as Mikhail Sholokhov, using what he had coined as “free translation” in order to better adapt foreign texts and rhythms with Persian.

Jailed several times for short periods under the previous regime for both his political activities and writings considered favourable to the leftists, Shamlou was just hated by the victorious mullahs, particularly Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i who would consider him, like other secularist intellectuals, as anti-Islamist nationalist elements.

However, considering his immense popularity, the ruling clerics did not dare to arrest him, but at the same time never allowed any of his works to be published.

According to Aida, his companion for the past 35 years, he was hospitalised three months ago, suffering from several illness at the same time, affecting his heart.

They were living in a modest residence in Karaj, 40 kilometres West of Tehran, where the poet had imposed a self exile on himself.

For many prominent literary critic, Shamlou can be considered one, if the not the biggest Iranian poet in the past five centuries, comparable to Hafez of Shiraz. ENDS SHAMLOU 24700