Bitter Conflict: Warfare and Sensory Overload in the Poetry of Simin Behbahani

To date, Persian war literature and its relationship with the state ideology of warfare have been mostly examined from a historical viewpoint. As opposed to this historical approach, the present article aims to develop a sensory reading of post-revolutionary war poetry, with specific reference to a number of war poems by Simin Behbahini, the prominent contemporary poet (1927 – 2014) . In light of anthropological sensory studies, this paper focuses on the ways in which the poet’s sensual war lexicon gives way to a process by which an ideologically charged war between Iran and its neighboring country Iraq is transformed into a human tragedy rather than the sacred cause described by the official ideology of warfare and its official literary advocates.

Based on the poems in question, the paper argues that the use of sensory dynamics in Behbahani’s work serves to undermine substantial features and messages of the official war ideology and introduces a critical approach to the war, one which is deeply rooted in the human sensory encounter with conflict. In other words, the paper sheds light on the fact that in Behbahani’s work, to be killed, disabled, homeless or even ideologically disenchanted with the political power is to live out a specific kind of sensory existence. By highlighting the sensory blocks hidden in these poems, the paper hopes to provide the ground for creating a fine-grained sensually informed, literary method to study war literature in a way that helps us to map the cultural, social and ideological transformations as they take form over the course of military conflict.