Mehdi Akhavan-Sales
مهدی اخوان ثالثThe poet of Winter, who fused the grandeur of Khorasani classical verse with Nima's new forms and a deep sense of loss.
- Known for
- Zemestan (Winter), 1956
- Forms
- New poetry (she'r-e now), Qasida
- Places
- Razavi Khorasanخراسان رضوی
- Tehranتهران
- Collection
- Contemporary
Akhavan-Sales was born in Mashhad, in Khorasan, and wrote under the pen name M. Omid, hope, which his admirers have always found ironic. He began in the classical manner and kept its weight all his life: his language draws on the Khorasani style of the early masters, Ferdowsi and Naser Khosrow, with an old, sonorous vocabulary.
In the 1950s he took up Nima's new poetry and became one of its strongest voices. Zemestan (Winter, 1956), written in the cold years after the coup of 1953, made his name; its title poem, of a greeting unanswered in a frozen world, became an emblem of a generation's despair. The End of the Shahnameh (1959) and From This Avesta (1965) mix ancient Iranian myth, history and private grief.
He also wrote criticism on Nima and on prosody. He died in Tehran in 1990 and, at his wish, is buried in Tus beside the tomb of Ferdowsi.
Akhavan-Sales's poems are in copyright. We publish them only with permission from the rights holders; until then we write about the work.
Booksکتابها
The principal works of Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.
Organon
ارغنونHis first collection, written in the classical forms, qasidas and ghazals among them. It shows his early mastery of the old Khorasani style that underpins even his most modern later work. The title, borrowed from a musical instrument named in the classics, announces a poet steeped in the old literature.
Winter
زمستانThe collection that made him one of the leading poets of Nima's school. Its title poem, about cold, isolation and a greeting no one returns, was read as a portrait of Iran after 1953 and is among the most quoted modern Persian poems.
The End of the Shahnameh
آخر شاهنامهPoems that set the heroic world of Iranian epic against a diminished present, in a language rich with old words and Khorasani cadence. The title piece imagines the old songs of glory played on a broken harp, an image of a culture that remembers its greatness but can no longer sound it.
From This Avesta
از این اوستاNamed after the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, this collection takes ancient Iranian myth and religion as a frame for meditations on history, defeat and memory, and includes some of his longest narrative poems, including tales told in an archaic, storytelling voice. It is often counted his most ambitious book.
Mehdi Akhavan-Sales in Iranian history
Iranian historyThe Pahlavi century and afterدوران پهلوی و پس از آن
Two Pahlavi shahs built railways, universities and a centralised state, while poets, novelists and film-makers created a new Persian culture. The era ended with the revolution of 1979.