Javad Mojabi | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 19 October 1939 Qazvin, Iran |
| Occupation | Poet, writer, researcher, painter and literary critic |
| Nationality | Iranian |
| Citizenship | Iran |
| Alma mater | University of Tehran |
| Spouse | Asie Javadi |
| Children | Poupak and Hosein |
| Website | |
| www | |
Javad Mojabi (Persian: جواد مجابی, born 14 October 1939 in Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian poet, writer, researcher, and literary and art critic. Mojabi is one of Iran's most prominent modern writers and poets, and has published over 50 literary works in various forms. He has also written hundreds of critical works and essays on art and culture in journals and magazines. He began writing poetry in the 1960s, along with short story writing and research on modern painting in Iran.
A well-known satirist, the poet is close to Nima in style but mostly inclined to Shamlou in blank verse. Mostly focusing on social themes, Mojabi is a poet of philosophy and thought, which he sweetens with a blend of satire. He employs the meter but omits it when it prevents him from expressing his thoughts. He has a daughter, Poupak, on whom he bases some of his works. He has previously criticised the censorship process in Iran.[1]
Javad Mojabi was born in Qazvin in 1939, in a neighbourhood that was commonly known by his family name, Mojabi. Due to his father's employment, Mojabi spent his early years living in Alamut, but completed his final years of schooling in Qazvin. In 1958, he was accepted to the University of Tehran to study Law. His brother Hossein, who was a painter died in 1963, aged just 19. Following his bachelor's degree, Mojabi went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Economics.
For 19 years he worked for the Ministry of Justice, before being appointed as a cultural expert at the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. In parallel, he worked as a professional journalist, and served as cultural editor at Ettela'at newspaper between 1968 and 1978. Later, he was involved with literary magazines including Ferdowsi, Jahan-e Noh, Khooshe, Adineh and Donya-e Sokhan for which he served as editor. In early 1978, along with his colleagues at Kayhan and Ayandegan – including Amid Naeini, Mehdi Sahabi, Firouz Gouran, Sirous Alinejad and Mohammad Ghaed – he formed the Foundation for Independent Journalists. This group ceased functioning in 1979 following the Iranian revolution.
His published writings include over fifty works, consisting of eight collections of poetry, four collections of short stories, nine novels, several plays and films, and a children's stories and satirical books and several biographical works on writers and poets on Iran's literary scene. In addition to publishing poems and novels and stories, his work over the last fifty years has focused on the visual arts, including modernism over six volumes, and analysis on the life and works of painters and sculptors.
He is married to Nastin, and has two children Poupak and Hossein.
Sample Poems[2]
Your name to the wind I bestow,
And your body's white music also,
In the bush,
At night,
I remembered you,
Brimful of songs of drunkenness,
I arise,
In an Isfahan morning.
Your name has survived in my book
With this dervish's broken handwriting
On the azure tablet.
Before moon-rise,
Bring me wine, O dear,
So that in the gaze of sleep
In the redness of my wine
- Like your name -
You will arise naked.
Now you are more naked than the moon,
Under the banner of the night
A wine drinking moon.
Chairs arrive from the jungle
To the veranda,
So that I can sit in the jungle.
Sip a mouthful of wine
To your memory, the loveliest stars,
My earthly mother!
With its sharp chips,
This old jungle
Tears up within the distance of wound and the rust.
- Do you hear the news?
- No.
- Do you see?
- Yes.
Behind a paper cloud
A man with the blind man's spectacle,
Looks after one within a printed paper;
The quail sings - at Azadi Cafe -
The plectrum of her song,
Circles
On the sterile flowers,
On bold letters of the world,
On cigarette smoke,
On frozen fingers.
Your name has been lost,
On the unreadable marble sentence,
On the pale blue veins of the stone,
And I can't find
Save the image of a gun on the marble,
The horse of your image has been saddled,
And your name takes root in the depth.
I will return,
I must return
In spring.
Under the shallow ceiling
Somebody here in the red twilight
Has drunk a cup;
Somebody has laughed unguardedly here,
Death in the scull,
Musician insects
With their tiny larynxes
Sing of sorrow;
From somewhere,
The lute of a soldier, scatters the light notes
In Azadi Cafe.
Put the red chairs
In the veranda.
Rain is falling.
Arise,
Arise colorless birds of flight,
On the bitter coast of exile;
The sadness of birds in the world
Call for witchcraft
With waters which not a moment remain hoisted from repeating raising,
This moon, whirling the moon around my head,
Drives my heart to the law of madness.
The world devours the drunken ship
To the extreme end of wandering.
Let us arrive before a gale
For the dark and just sea
Reverberates under the snorting trumpet of whales and the curtains of the mermaids,
The mermaids of former voyages
Are calling me again
Towards another fancy.
Since I grew young from the delightful cloudy hue
In its jujube red umbrella of kisses;
And I rose victorious,
And left this realm
And marched to the mysterious corners of the waves,
And a butterfly
Carried my red intelligence from my head
With its violet and white wing
Beyond adventure.
Twist me o fair mermaid,
All the water in the world gushes form your mouth;
It is this,
This moment,
This fearless twisting,
Who have closed eyes to all
And turned your face from fear!
Only your voice
Has survived
Of all the sounds in the world
Here
Where bloody winged birds
Have formed my sky.
I cross from the plain of your voice,
Headlong and dancing,
The fairies of alphabet,
Dancing in a dialect which has ravished me.
They have made me thirstier for that clear naked spring,
That shadowy meadow,
To hang my head like newly blossomed fruit,
Beside others' heads
On that tree branches.
You look at my imaginations in the spring
Which has now been converted
Into your sweet voice.
