SOMETHING ABOUT IRANIAN POET PAINTER SOHRAB SEPEHRI

                                                                                 

When you make someone swallow his pride,

When you destroy someone's castles in the air,

When you put out someone's candle of hope,

When you pass someone over,

When you even close your ears for not hearing the sound of somebody's breaking (breaking of his pride),

When you see God, but don't see God's creatures (people),

I want to know,

To which sky do you raise your hand to pray for your benediction?

( Sohrab Sepehri )
              
                                                                              

WHO IS SOHRAB SEPHERI  ?

Sohrab Sepehri ( 1928 – 1980) was a well known modern Persian poet and  painter. He was born in Kashan( Isfahan province) , Iran . His poetry is for entire  humanity with a deep  concern for human values . It has been translated into almost all the major languages of the world. Sohrab  is considered to be one of the five most famous Iranian poets who have practiced modern poetry. Other practitioners of this form were Nima Youshij, Ahmad Shamlou, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forough Farrokhzad.

Sohrab studied art at the  School of Fine Arts ,Tehran  and also got some training under Japanese painters.  Zen philosophy had its  influence on his verse and painting. His work shows his profound love for  nature. Sohrab  expressed a layered sensibility through his distinct abstract landscapes. Sepehri travelled a lot. Accordingly he absorbed from  various cultures.  

He studied lithography in Paris,  modernism in the  US, Japanese calligraphy in Tokyo, and Buddhism in India. These influences produced a distinct quality in his work,  both  poetry and paintings. His poems have marked Buddhist influence .  Buddhist Lotus is evident  in many of his poems . His paintings are  marked by bold brush strokes or wave like  swipes . 

Sepehri’s paintings are in major international collections, including the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art  ,New York, The Grey Art Gallery of New York University and Leila Heller Gallery. 

Some abstracts of Sohrab Sepheri ..

                                                             

                                        

                                   

Sohrab was a lover of Vedas  . In  1966 he published “Mosāfer” (Traveller) and translations of hymns from the Rig Veda.

A gentle introvert by nature, Sorab Sepehri was accused of escapism when his reaction to the world around him was to go back to nature, mysticism and mythology, poetry and painting. His Art and poetry bears Influence of Sufism ,Mysticism , Buddhism ,Taoism and Vedanta .

Abbas Kiarostami , the well known Iranian film maker admitted that his film ‘ Khaneh Ye Dost Kojast?" or  "Where is the Friend’s House?” was started after he read and reread a poem of Sohrab Sepehri titled “ Address ”. 

Sepheri never married and there is  no record of a personal relationship anywhere in his writings or in any of his  published  biographies . For the greater part of his adult life, he lived with his mother and younger sister Parvāna.

The death of Foruḡh Farroḵzād in  1967 had a deep  impact on  Sepehri   and the same is  reflected in his famous elegy for her called “Doust” (Friend-1968).  In  her death Sepehri lost not only a close friend, but a fellow poet who shared much of his world vision and sensibilities, both emotional and poetic. 

 In 1979 he was diagnosed with cancer and for the last time he moved to England for treatment. A year later, in 1980, he passed away in Tehran and now rests in his birthplace, Kashan.The inscription on his tombstone, taken from one of his famous poems “Vāḥa-i dar laḥẓa” (An oasis in a fleeting moment, Ḥajm-e sabz)  reads: 

“Be sorāḡ-e man agar miāʾid ,

narm o āhesta biyāʾid, 

mabādā ke tarak bardārad ,

 čini-e nāzok-e tanhāʾi-e man”

 (If you come to call on me ,

tread gently, 

Step softly lest you crack ,

the fine porcelain of my loneliness).

 ( Avtar Mota)

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