The Legend of 1921 (Persian Short Story: Jamalzadeh or Hedayat?)

Introduction

Most scholars consider Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud  (Once Upon a Time) (1922) by Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh (1892-1997) to be the first Persian short story collection. Some also regard the year (1922) as a turning point in Persian literature across poetry, fiction, and drama, marked by works such as Nima’s Afsaneh, Jamalzadeh’s short story collection Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud, Moshfegh Kazemi’s novel Tehran-e Makhuf, and Hasan Moghaddam’s play Ja’far Khan az Farang Amadeh. In this article, I aim to demonstrate the inaccuracy of this assumption from various perspectives and argue that the first true Persian short story collection is Zendeh be Gur (Buried Alive) (1930) by Sadegh Hedayat (1903–1951).

Literature Review

Much has been written about the first Persian short story collection, and scholars such as Mohammad Jafar Yahaghi, Michel Cuypers, Hassan Mir-Abedini, Hasan Kamshad, Jamal Mir-Sadeghi, Reza Baraheni, and others have conducted diverse studies on the significance of Jamalzadeh’s work, as well as its merits and shortcomings.

Methodology

In this article, using the narratology toolbox and general perspectives, the structure and form of Jamalzadeh and Hedayat's stories have been examined.

Discussion

For this study, in addition to the discussion about the publication dates of the works, I have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the stories in both collections across the following aspects: language, ideology, form, narrative structure, characterization, and setting. Finally, alongside a brief genre-based examination of the stories, I have also studied their thematic similarities.
- Language: Most scholars who consider Jamalzadeh’s work highly significant focus primarily on his prose, whereas the primary medium of a story is not prose itself. Precisely because of this shift from prose to narrative, Hedayat’s work should be considered the first true Persian short story collection.
- Ideology: Politics and morality hold great importance in Jamalzadeh’s work, giving his stories a distinctly didactic tone—as if each story, beyond its narrative form, must also carry an allegorical and instructive message. In Hedayat’s work, however, this tendency is far less pronounced.
- Form: Jamalzadeh’s stories largely follow a Maqama-like (picaresque) structure, where dialogue and the narrator’s speech take precedence. Zendeh be Gur marks a formal break, whereas Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud, like Jamalzadeh’s other humorous tales, remains more connected to the literary traditions of the past. The anecdotal humor that characterizes nearly all of Jamalzadeh’s short and long stories occasionally appears in Sadegh Hedayat’s work as well.
In terms of resemblance to the Maqama tradition, only “Dard-e Del-e Molla Ghorban-Ali” (Mullah Qorban-Ali’s Complaint) in Jamalzadeh’s collection lacks a sermon-like introduction, while the rest borrow from it in some way. In Hedayat’s work, however, we hardly encounter the Maqama in this sense. The element of travel is dominant in Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud, whereas in Zendeh be Gur, only four stories contain traces of travel. Conversely, Jamalzadeh’s use of framing devices in storytelling is about half as frequent as Hedayat’s.
- Narrative Structure: The narrative framework in Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud lacks the kind of complexity found in Zendeh be Gur. Breaking away from the traditional anecdotal structure and connecting with what we now recognize as the modern short story is a prerequisite for this new form.
In Jamalzadeh’s work, all stories except Vaylan-al-Dowla feature a first-person narrator, which may indicate continuity with the Maqama and memoir traditions. In Hedayat’s work, however, third-person narration is more prevalent than first-person, and even the first-person narrators are homodiegetic.
- Characterization: Dehkhoda’s caricatures evolve into Jamalzadeh’s social types, which then develop into Hedayat’s fully realized characters. Thus, the emergence of individuality gives new meaning to this modern form. These new characters require introspection to transcend the stereotypical molds of the past and achieve a fresh narrative depth.
Hedayat’s stories are not merely simple tales with straightforward moral/political conclusions but go beyond conventional storytelling to explore the depths of character. Moreover, the stories in Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud revolve around protagonists from the lower economic or cultural classes. Jamalzadeh’s focus is not on himself or the class he comes from; rather, his aim is to critique the lower classes from an elitist perspective. Hedayat, however, represents his own cultural and economic class in at least half of his stories—even the allegorical tale “Āb-e Zendegi” (The Water of Life) reflects the aspirations of this class.
- Place: Jamalzadeh’s avoidance of urban centers reflects his stronger ties to Persian literary traditions. References to Europe are scarce, and the concerns of modern urban life are rarely present. In Hedayat’s work, however, only one story takes place outside the capital. His relative detachment from Iranian places signals a rupture with this traditional literary world.
 

Conclusion

By examining the order in which the stories were composed versus their arrangement in the collections, I've attempted to discern patterns in each writer's approach to short story writing. I've also sought to categorize them in a thematic chart to clearly demonstrate the conceptual connections between these two collections.