Three drops of blood, of Sadeq Hedayat. Ed El Cobre. 2004.
This book is a collection of short stories by one of the most notable writers of the twentieth century Persian fiction. Hedayat (Iran, 1903-Paris, 1951) was educated in France where he traveled on a scholarship in 1925. Very influenced by of Kafka's Metamorphosis, which introduced the Persian, built a work pessimism and dramatic cut.
Almost everyone agreed that the story's title is of a quality book well above the rest. Three drops of blood is one of the two stories in the book written in first person, but has a special mystery. For starters, the protagonist begins the text with a reflection on the depth of literature not escape the reader. Do not know exactly who it is, that place is (so only guess by Hedayat is releasing data skilfully), introduces in turn a series of stories within the main story, establishing relationships between the facts and narratives way that confuses reality with fiction (the story of the owl, the terrible story of the cat Nessi). The outcome, worthy of Kafka himself, is a twist in which subtly reveals the nature of the protagonist, her drama.
The remaining stories are more conventional in their structure (story, middle and end), and are more foreign to the Western reader, unaccustomed to the aesthetics and psychology of a culture as the Persian, the that religion and other moral values \u200b\u200bcourt, subject to the characters to be classified as conditions and situations and unsound practices. But it would be a mistake to judge the work of Sedayat from a Western rationalist view, and would be more relevant placed at coordinates of Eastern literature, the Persian in this case, in which they appear before our Western eyes and pray predictable conventions, sometimes inexplicable, acquires a natural meaning in its cultural context.
Sedayat tales are tragic, they have happy endings and are full of suicide, despair, death. Evidence that a melancholy nature and concerned about the darkest pits of human nature. In fact, the very Sedayat committed suicide, leaving open the gas valve. But it is the literary value of her work, we appreciate the scope of mentally stimulating stories soon talking about this book. Strike down
Sedayat against the conventions of their culture so fiercely attached to an immovable moral and social classism. In God's Forgiveness , the characters who make a pilgrimage to a holy city, are revealed as the perpetrators of terrible sins. In Tulip, the love of an old adopted daughter by his obsession and eventually becomes ironic outcome. The man who killed his ego , enters the field of metaliterature with numerous quotations from Sufi literature, whose contradictory readings, lead the protagonist to the mysterious suicide.
Overall, the literature Sedayat is claustrophobic, describes a psychological inner world of characters tied to religious, moral and social rights are leading to a fatal destiny. Not easy to assimilate so much drama inside, but there is a style in the use of language that makes his work a remarkable literary achievement. It is not, strictly speaking, a realist writer, but a gifted writer to turn their obsessions through landscapes and narratives that do not support more output than the squalor, the pessimism.
In any case, personally, I have enriched the discovery of this author and this literature, which is Persian while the nationality of the author, has a clear Western nihilism through each story. And above all, the first story, Three drops of blood, image re-appears in the latest retelling of the book, damn Castle, one of the most childish, we might say, but that reflects the aesthetics of the oriental tales so foreign to Western readers.
I think it would be desirable to take the reading of this book as an opening to other formulas rich aesthetic, regardless of our personal taste. In the West, there is a tendency to expect a happy ending, redemption and poetic justice that we leave a good impression. None of this has no place in the work of Sedayat. Their literature is sad and melancholic music that inspires us and makes us happy, but no, free quality.
