If Plato, the transcendentalist philosopher, abandoned poets from his ideal city, he had rightfully predicted the revolutionary power of poet and poetry. If soon later, his disciple, Aristotle protected poets and poetry, he deeply believed in the remedial impression of arts and poetry. In our contemporary world, where, people struggle with numerous predicaments, social moderators like music, poetry and painting may soften, in turn, that very society. 

The main gap between the Iranian Classical poetry and Modern poetry was the constitution period (1906) when Iran breathed and experienced a fresh air in culture, arts and politics.  Among such poets in Iran, though, after a century, arrived Nosratolah Masoudi, a poet, fiction writer, journalist, playwright and actor who received such an inevitable position in Iran and Lorestan in particular, that his amatory poems has spread its scent all over the new generation. 

Aside from his political life and his highly renowned academic career, Masoudi has always pursued his concern for love and his contemporary people. His soft and dedicated words invite people to peace and love.  Love, the dominant theme throughout Masoudi’s poems is never decorated with complicated philosophical expressions or images. The simple but immensely sensitive language is always blended with such sincerity, it is as if the poet is voicing out his own grievances:

One April day

I will grab

Your sweet scent

From a newborn bud.

Masoudi’s beloved could be a real human being or an imaginary creature. For him, it does not matter either sides. What is important is a mental support that one can get from love. Love would be the most protective shelter for human beings in such a cruel century, without which, one may not tolerate life itself:

Blessed is a dog

Compared with

The doggish life I’m leading.

In such a disparate misery

I keep my rambling

By the side of this

Narrow one-way road

Looking for the mercy of a

Brakeless truck.

The simple and daily language, the objective images and the metaphor of a dog resemble the disparate life for the contemporary century. The images of a ‘truck’ or a ‘narrow one-way road’ are our daily tangible observations. What has happened to the twenty and twenty first century man to compare his life with a dog, waiting for a brakeless truck on a narrow one-way road is Masoudi’s main concern. Such objective and dark images walk neck to neck with T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste land’. If Eliot’s solution for his corrupted contemporary society is religion and morality, Masoudi’s solution is to love and to be loved. For Masoudi, the only excuse is the love itself:

You are the only excuse for

My inhale and exhale.

That’s why I breathe.  

For Masoudi’s lover, committing a sin is a charity; for it will bring about sunlight in the lovers frozen heart:

Let’s commit the sin

And share its charity.

I have been frozen

From this killing

Sunless shadows of loneliness.

Let’s commit it soon.

As a playwright, director and actor, his poetry speaks for itself. The verbal aspect of his poetry gives the credence to his mastery over poetry. We rarely face overstatement in his simple but profound poetry:

Such courteously

And so kept in sanity

Devoted to you,

So much so that

I can’t love you

Without your consent.

But,

Now that you are

Too lost in distances

To beg your permission,

How can I take your mercy

For the moment

To cry my heart out?

Masoudi’s imaginary beloved ‘Parmida’ is a combination of all ideal females around the world. He himself confesses that “I have created her out of all my ideal females I have ever read about, seen or wished to meet”. He is so devoted to such an illusive beloved that cries out from his heart:

Do not believe

If only for a moment

I have ever loved you,

Except the moments

I have been breathing.

Satire might be one of Masoudi’s weapons in the battle of his society. As a satirist he has received many prizes from different festivals in Iran. He believes that in a society where one cannot express him/herself freely, artists have to use their old tricks; irony and satire. That is why he ingeniously kills two birds with one stone:

How dare I

To pass the security guards

Carrying a bomb

In my heart

And a memory loaded by

Gunpowder of your odor?

Writing eleven books of poetry, two books of play, many short stories, writing for many journals and newspaper for more than three decades, directing and acting in more than thirty plays, he still  pursues his literary career with the same vigor. Some of his poetry has been translated into English, Italy, Arabic, French, Germany and Kurdish.  

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Dr. Sasan Bazgir
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Picture from http://faramarzsoleimani.blogspot.com/2010/04/aprilmonth-of-poetry_07.html