Dariush Shayegan's Remarks at the Ceremony Awarding Mahmoud Dowlatabadi the French Legion of Honour

Dowlatabadi succeeded, over the course of fifteen years and through many ups and downs, in creating one of the most captivating and greatest rural epics of modern Iran, Kelidar. Dowlatabadi is from Khorasan, the renowned birthplace of Iranian wisdom and literature. He has crystallized within himself both the grandeur of this land and its wounds.

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Dariush Shayegan's Remarks at the Ceremony Awarding Mahmoud Dowlatabadi the French Chevalier of Arts and Letters

Dowlatabadi

Like every true artist, he is sensitive,

anxious, and wounded by inner pain

Dowlatabadi is undoubtedly one of the greatest novelists of contemporary Iran. Unlike Honoré de Balzac, he did not drink fifty thousand cups of coffee to create, over twenty years and at the cost of his life, the greatest literary masterpiece of the nineteenth century, The Human Comedy.

Dowlatabadi, however, succeeded, over the course of fifteen years and through many ups and downs, in creating one of the most captivating and greatest rural epics of modern Iran, Kelidar. Dowlatabadi is from Khorasan, the renowned birthplace of Iranian wisdom and literature. He has crystallized within himself both the grandeur of this land and its wounds.

What fascinates me about the exceptional character of Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, in addition to his special talent, is his moral integrity, intellectual honesty, and complete authenticity in the face of a world wholly occupied by media charlatans.

Dowlatabadi, like every true artist, is sensitive and anxious, wounded by inner pain, and worried for the souls of those whose lofty dreams are always in conflict with vulgar realities, a world indifferent to the longing of a heart seeking truth and freedom.

This unknown, or little-known, or who knows, perhaps very well-known sphinx, in his inner journey, is a man in exile. As for what concerns his readers, who are many, here tonight and everywhere, with his permission, by inhabiting his being and in the words of the great French poet, I wish to say:

You know him, reader, this delicate monster—

— my double — my brother — hypocritical reader!

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Dariush Shayegan's Remarks at the Ceremony Awarding Mahmoud Dowlatabadi the French Chevalier

Quoted from Bukhara Magazine, Issue 103, Azar–Dey 1393

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