Translation as Metonymy: Bijan Elahi’s Persian Variation on Cyrano de Bergerac

Abstract

In this article, I develop a model for world literature as a patchwork comprised of translations that cross boundaries of language, genre, style and culture. Through a close reading of the modernist Iranian poet Bijan Elahi’s (d. 2010) translations of a poem by the Sufi martyr and poet al-Ḥallāj (d. 922) and the play Cyrano de Bergerac by the French playwright Edmond Rostand (1868–1918), I demonstrate how translation can be used as a comparative method to conjoin, constellate and patch texts and ideas together regardless of their similarities or differences.