Internationale Poetry-Biennale  -  Filmfestival  -  Salon  -  Netzwerk

Samstag, 25. Oktober, 18 Uhr

Behnaz Amani
(Iran)

⇒ Focus PEN Writers in Exile

I‘m from the Middle East, the cradle of civilisation, yet ironically the place that each day reminds me of this part of Dante‘s Inferno Canto iii „Abandon all hope, ye who enter here“.

As a woman, a poet and a literary scholar, I can paint the 21st-century human condition and his/her hopes, endeavours, devastations, and beliefs with my words; my audience can see each like an Alice who dares to enter the rabbit hole. I am a former political prisoner of Iran’s recent revolt Woman, Life, Freedom who spent almost two months in Gharchak Women‘s Prison and only bailed out due to her uterus cancer. I used to teach English Literature at the
university but after my imprisonment, they expelled me from university and prohibited me from publishing anything academically or non-academically.

Thanks to dear Mr. Charles Bernstein and other American poets who ran a petition for me, my voice was heard first by PEN America and then by PEN Germany.

I‘m from the Middle East, the cradle of civilisation, yet ironically the place that each day reminds me of this part of Dante‘s Inferno Canto iii „Abandon all hope, ye who enter here“.

As a woman, a poet and a literary scholar, I can paint the 21st-century human condition and his/her hopes, endeavours, devastations, and beliefs with my words; my audience can see each like an Alice who dares to enter the rabbit hole. I am a former political prisoner of Iran’s recent revolt Woman, Life, Freedom who spent almost two months in Gharchak Women‘s Prison and only bailed out due to her uterus cancer. I used to teach English Literature at the
university but after my imprisonment, they expelled me from university and prohibited me from publishing anything academically or non-academically.

Thanks to dear Mr. Charles Bernstein and other American poets who ran a petition for me, my voice was heard first by PEN America and then by PEN Germany.

Exile

Rotten if the warp and woof of your home town be,
The hanging threads of all cities rip each to each, and
For a distant anamnesis, the word homeland an appellation would but be,
In a hesitant mind disorientated about where and when to belong to
An alien you be, it matters not!
Whether in the North or in the South of all these aeons,
In your land, in that very same land
To your absences only framed,
No sun also rises, and
And you remain but a wanderer, to whom
There will be never a destination awaiting…

 

تبعیدی

تار و پود شهرت که پوسیده باشد
یکی­یکی شهرها از هم می­درند
و واژه­ای به نام وطن تنها خاطره­ی دوری می­شود
در ذهنِ الکنی که نمی­داند تعلقش به کدامین زمان و مکان است
غریبه که باشی
فرقی نمی­کند شمال یا جنوب این اعصار در سرزمینت
در همانی که تنها از آنِ نبودن­های توست
هیچ خورشیدی طلوع نخواهد کرد
و تو آواره­ای خواهی­ماند
که هرگز مقصدی در انتظارش نخواهد نشست...

 

The Surreal World, Now

Murky is the firmament in sanguineous crimson,
The air stenches of ash dancing cheek to cheek with blood.
The ablaze fumes from far-off distances,
Busy with devouring the cadavers of Being,
The last survivor’s ebony tresses dishevelled.
A fissured flesh in weeping wound and
Two weary hands have in perpetuity
Stretched to touch the state of inexistence;
The flimsy angels into the lowest bottom of the Fire fall, and
The ending curtain also turns into gaping jaws cachinnating:
 “God and Satan had been two sides of a same apocryphal coin which,
In Human both forged be, and the earth
In teary eyes circumambulates, while
Stifling is in profusion in the air.”
Towards an ignis fatuus the skyline is headed,
And hope into the Earth’s inner core,
And The cursing Sun a fugitive in pursuit of night.
Solitude has crept into Love’s bedchamber attire by raping amused,
And The dusk is pandering to its every whim, and
Time has its pharynx squeezed by the rebellion unbound.

Calmly to each other’s bosoms rested are the mad,
Since they in pain have dwelled, and know,
Life is but the palpitation and respiration of the veins each to each,
And birth is but nothing rather than the cries
Being wailed within arms of tear …
And The last survivor,
And the last survivor under the spell of empty iteration of breathing.

Teil des Zyklus: Aus dem Harz der Empfängnis

آاینک، جهانی سورئال


سمان تیره
­ی سرخ است و هوا بویِ رقصِ خون و خاکستر می
­دهد. هُرم آتشی که در دوردست
­ها به بلعِ اجساد هستی مشغول است سیاهِ موهایِ آخرین بازمانده را مشوّش می
­کند. تنی زخم خورده و دستانی خسته که به ابدیتی رو به انتها دراز شده
­اند تا به لمسِ بی
­هست شدگی بپردازند؛ فرشتگان مقوایی به اسفل درکات فرو
­می
­افتند و آخرین پرده نیز دهان بزرگی می
­شود و قاه
­قاه می
­خندد که شیطان و خدا هردو رویِ سکه
­ای جعلی بوده
­اند و آدمی همان هردوان است و زمین بر
­مدار اشک می
­گردد و هوا از خفقان پُر. افق به سویِ سراب و امید به ثقل زمین و خورشیدِ متواری دشنام گویان به دنبال شب روان است. تنهایی سر در گریبان عشق مشغول تجاوز است و سایه برایش جاکشی می
­کند و عصیان که از بند گریخته گلوگاه زمان را می
­فشرد.

دیوانگان در آغوش هم آرمیده اند زیرا که درد را زیسته
­اند، زیرا که می
­دانند زندگی همان لحظه
­ی نیشتر و نفس
­کشیدن رگ
­هاست، که تولد همان نعره
­هایِ از سرِ دردِ گم شده در میان بازوانِ اشک است
... و آخرین بازمانده،
و آخرین بازمانده طلسمِ تکرارِ پوچِ نفس
­کشیدن.