Tag Archives: Poetry

The way to catch your audience’ interest

At the annual Mouse Molecular Genetics conference at the Sanger Center in Hinxton. Some of the presentations seem to attract more attention by the audience than others, and this not only depends on the originality of the subject or the wealth of novel results. Not completely unexpected, speakers also had quite different presentation styles. Some were giving their presentation while… (more…)

Love and Devotion: Exhibition at the Bodleian Library

The idea of Persia has long fascinated Western minds. From the Middle Ages on, knowledge of Persia gradually expanded as a result of increased contact through trade, travel and diplomacy. Writers in Europe, such as Goethe, Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare, reflected this understanding in the parallels with Persian literature and shared symbolism evident in their plays, poetry and prose. Love… (more…)

Lost in Translation

Ghazal, my Dear, We recently discussed the issue of translating poetry from one language to another. You told me ones that in Persian language there are no gender specific prepositions, as there are HE and SHE in English or IT for all un-animated items. In German, in contrast, also un-animated objects usually are assigned a male or female gender, which… (more…)

Forough Farrokhzad: An Iranian poetry that fell silent too soon

Recently I was invited by a friend in Munich to a reading of poetry by an Iranian writer, who died much too young in 1967, only reaching 32 years of age. Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) was exceptional among woman in modern Persian literature, since only an extremely small number of Iranian women in general have achieved anything outside of the home… (more…)

Verse aus dem EVIN Gefängniss

Bahareh Hedayat has been sentenced again to 7 years in the notorious Evin prison. The following letter she send to her husband. I have collected translations of this and other prisoner letters into various languages at the partner website Evin-Rosetta If you want to read other than the following german version, or if you want to contribute a translation into… (more…)

Persian Blogosphere

To: iraniansblog@gmail.com I would highly appreciate if you would add my blog to your directory. I called it “Letter to an Persian Cat” If you will see, it is totally un-political, it has to do with cats (mainly as an aphorism), and I am not iranian nor had I ever the chance to visit your country. Why do I want… (more…)

Oscar Wilde says …

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature my whole soul my very art itself. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the… (more…)