Simin Behbahani


Simin Behbahani, her surname also appears as Bihbahani was a prominent Iranian contemporary poet, lyricist and activist. She is known for her poems in a ghazal-style of poetic form. She was an icon of modern Persian poetry, Iranian intelligentsia and literati who affectionately refer to her as the lioness of Iran. She was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in literature, and "received many literary accolades around the world."

Biography

Simin Behbahani, whose name at birth was Simin Khalili , was the daughter of Abbās Khalili, poet, writer and editor of the Eghdām newspaper, and Fakhr-e Ozmā Arghun, poet and teacher of the French language. Abbās Khalili wrote poetry in both Persian and Arabic and translated some 1100 verses of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh into Arabic. Fakhr-e Ozmā Arghun was one of the progressive women of her time and a member of Kānun-e Nesvān-e Vatan'khāh between 1925 and 1929. When being trained as a midwife, she got accused of writing an article against the school and criticizing it. Due to this false accusation, she was dismissed from the school and that was when she became a member of the communist Tudeh Party. In addition to her membership of Hezb-e Democrāt and Kānun-e Zanān, she was for a time Editor of the Āyandeh-ye Iran newspaper. She taught French at the secondary schools Nāmus, Dār ol-Mo'allemāt and No'bāvegān in Tehran.
Simin Behbahani started writing poetry at twelve and published her first poem at the age of fourteen. She used the "Char Pareh" style of Nima Yooshij and subsequently turned to ghazal. Behbahani contributed to a historic development by adding theatrical subjects and daily events and conversations to poetry using the ghazal style of poetry. She has expanded the range of the traditional Persian verse forms and has produced some of the most significant works of the Persian literature in the 20th century.
She was President of the Iranian Writers' Association and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 and 2002. In 2013, she was awarded the Janus Pannonius Grand Prize for Poetry.
In early March 2010, she could not leave the country due to official prohibitions. As she was about to board a plane to Paris, police detained her and interrogated her "all night long". She was released but without her passport. Her English translator expressed surprise at the arrest as detention as Behbahani was then 82 and nearly blind, "we all thought that she was untouchable."

Personal life

She had two marriages, the first was to Hassan Behbahani and it ended in divorce. She had three children from her first marriage, one daughter and two sons. Her second marriage was to Manuchehr Koushyar and it ended when he died in 1984.

Death

Behbahani was hospitalized on 6 August 2014. She remained in coma from 6 August until her death on 19 August 2014, and died in Tehran's Pars Hospital of Pulmonary heart disease at the age of 87. Her funeral, attended by thousands, was held on 22 August in Vahdat Hall, and her body was buried at Behesht-e Zahra.

Works