The Poetics of Duality in the Works of Sadegh Hedayat

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic spectrum of duality in the works of S. Hedayat. The intertextual links between works of S. Hedayat, N. Gogol and F. Dostoevsky are considered.It is noted that F. Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Double” and the story of S. Hedayat “The Blind Owl” brings together the image of the protagonist – a man of the “underground” seeking to isolation from the hostile environment. The psychological complex of the underground acquires in the creative manner of S. Hedayat both behavioral and topological certainty, being realized in the image of the tomb room. The author considers the meanings of duality in the context of madness, going back to the story of N. Gogol “Notes of a madman”. The works of Russian classics are correlated in the article with the Iranian folklore heritage. It is noted that the imagery of “The Blind Owl” is organized in the logic of the twin myth. Zoroastrian model of the world order is manifested in the artistic interpretation of the Sizdah be dar holiday. In the two-part composition of the story the holiday formalizes the semantic constants of demonism and love. In the mythological context of the story “The Blind Owl” duality is realized as a confrontation of good and evil.Hedayat’s poetics of duality combines folklore and literary traditions, so that the phenomenon of the double is framed in an ontological scale. Hedayat’s poetic synthesis is understood as a pioneering work that defined the subsequent development of Iranian prose.