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37 pages 1 hour read

Sadegh Hedayat

The Blind Owl

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1936

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Important Quotes

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“In life there are wounds that, like leprosy, silently scrape at and consume the soul, in solitude.”


(Part 1, Page 3)

This is the opening line of The Blind Owl. It prefaces the narrator’s motivation for telling his story: He has had to bear his “wound” alone and it has been leading him to regard Death as an Ideal Eternal State. Later, it will be revealed that his “wound” is his unrealized desire for the young woman.

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“I only write for my shadow that, in front of the lamp, is cast on the wall, I must introduce myself to him.”


(Part 1, Page 4)

The narrator disdains the rest of humanity, describing them as rabble. Instead, he is telling the story to a reflection of himself, his shadow. The concept of reflections in the form of shadows and mirrors is important symbolism that reoccurs throughout the text (See: Symbols & Motifs).

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“The damsel was right in front of me, but it seemed as if she was completely unaware of her surroundings […] and my lifeblood fell onto those meaningful and shiny globes and was absorbed into their depths—this mesmerizing looking glass pulled at my entire being to the point where the mind of man becomes feeble.”


(Part 1, Page 7)

The sight of the “damsel” is the inciting incident that precipitates the narrator’s decline into substance misuse and “madness.” He describes her as a “mesmerizing looking glass,” which suggests that part of what he sees in her is in fact his own self-image. She is a reflection of his own ego.

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“In a wretched world such as this, I either wanted her love or the love of no one—how could anyone else affect me so?”


(Part 1, Page 8)

The narrator believes that the world is fallen, base, and “wretched.” Within this context, only the young woman he has a vision of is sublime and exalted. He describes this feeling as “love.”

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“I was entirely content to uncover the secret of ancient paintings, the mysteries of abstruse philosophical texts, the eternal depths of species and forms, for in this moment I was partaking in the turning of heaven and earth, in the design and appearance of plant life, in the moment of beasts. Past and future, near and far became partner to and melded with my spiritual existence.”


(Part 1, Page 15)

In both the narrative structure and the symbolism found in The Blind Owl, the narrator addresses The Tensions Between Modernity and Tradition. He realizes that he is connected to the “Past and future” and to a multitude of forms that “became partner to and melded with [his] spiritual existence,” suggesting that the past is something from which he can never fully escape.

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“It was as if the smell of the dead had always been with me and I had spent my entire life lying in a black coffin, and a humpbacked old man whose face I could not see was moving me in circles, between the fog and the passing shadows.”


(Part 1, Page 23)

The narrator frequently fantasizes about Death as an Ideal Eternal State. He sees death as both frightening and a state with which he is intimately familiar, reflecting his personal isolation and detachment from life.

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“I am not the least inclined to save my own hide, furthermore there is no room left for denial, even supposing I can conceal the bloodstains, but before I fall into their hands I will drink a cupful from that flask of wine, from the wine of my inheritance that I have placed on the top shelf.”


(Part 2, Page 28)

At the beginning of Part 2, the narrator admits that he has done something bloody and terrible for which the night watchmen may come and arrest him. Instead of trying to deny his actions, he has decided to turn back to his “inheritance,” represented in the poisoned wine that it is later revealed his mother gave him.

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“From where must I begin? For all the thoughts that are presently boiling in my head are from this moment, they are without hour, minute or history—an incident from yesterday may be older and less moving than an incident from a thousand years ago.”


(Part 2, Page 29)

The statement that “an incident from yesterday may be older […] than an incident from a thousand years ago” reflects the theme of The Tensions Between Modernity and Tradition. Rather than break with the past, the narrator describes the way the past is reflected in the present, making some events “older” than their chronological time.

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“Red wine, the elixir of death that grants eternal tranquility—perhaps she, too, had squeezed her life like a bunch of grapes and offered its wine to me—from the same poison that killed my father—now I understand what a precious gift she has given!”


(Part 2, Page 35)

The narrator becomes increasingly dependent upon drinking and smoking opium, as it gives him some approximation of the death (“eternal tranquility”) for which he longs, regarding Death as an Ideal Eternal State. The wine he has is poisoned with the venom from the Naja snake ritual and represents his link to his parents and ancient ritual.

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“Because I feared I was losing my wife, I wanted to learn the manners and sexual charm of my wife’s lovers, but I was the wretched pimp whom all the fools laughed at—how could I ever have learned the ways and manners of the rabble? Now I understand: She liked them because she was impudent, dull and malodorous; her love, in essence, was at one with filth and death.”


(Part 2, Page 39)

The narrator despairs because his wife refuses to have sex with him while having sex with other men. He feels like his masculinity is threatened by this state of affairs, describing himself as a “wretched pimp.” In contrast with the transcendent love he has for the image of a young woman in Part 1, he has only disgust for his flesh-and-blood wife.

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“A story is nothing more than a way of escaping unfulfilled dreams—dreams that have not been reached, dreams that each storyteller has imagined according to their own inherited and constrained state of mind.”


(Part 2, Page 41)

In this quote, the narrator describes how he thinks about the story he himself is telling the reader and his own shadow. He sees it as an expression of his “unfulfilled dreams,” which is to say his unfulfilled desire to have sex.

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“For a long time this feeling as born in me that I was decomposing alive; not only my body, but also my soul always stood contrary to my heart and they were never in agreement—I was perpetually undergoing a strange and particular kind of dissolution and decomposition.”


(Part 2, Page 42)

The narrator’s physical and mental health decline over the course of the narrative. He characterizes this decline as if he is approaching death, thinking of himself as a kind of zombie, a walking dead.

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“I passed by the rabble who all had avaricious faces and who chased money and carnality—I did not need to see them, for one of them was a representative for all—they were all one mouth connected to a heap of intestines which ended in their reproductive organs.”


(Part 2, Page 44)

The narrator detests all of humanity, describing them repeatedly as “the rabble.” He sees them as driven by base desires for sustenance and sexual desire. Ironically, he is of course also driven by his sexual desire for the young woman in her different forms.

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“All around me there were strange and peculiar houses, but their white walls shone with an unearthly light, and what was strange, what I could not believe was that when I stood opposite each of these walls, in front of the moonlight, my shadow would fall upon the wall, thick and enormous, but it was without a head—my shadow was headless—I had heard that if the shadow of a persona cast upon a wall was headless they would die by the year’s end.”


(Part 2, Page 48)

The narrator says he is writing his narrative for his shadow, but when he sees his shadow, it is headless, an omen of death. The image of a headless man is common in interwar European surrealism, such as the work of George Bataille, but it is also an image that dates back to ancient times, further highlighting the theme of The Tensions Between Modernity and Tradition.

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“[N]ot only had I no use for a prayer book, but likewise no sort of rabble book, writing, or any idea had any use for me. What use had I for their lies and nonsense, was not I, myself, the product of a long line of past generations and were not their inherited experiences found in me, was not the past in my being?”


(Part 2, Page 53)

The narrator discusses here The Decay of Religious Belief and connects it with the world of the living that he despises. He feels all he needs to know is within him and has been given to him by his ancestors “in [his] being.” All he needs to understand the world is in his body.

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“Confronted with death, I sensed how weak and childish were religion, faith and belief, almost a kind of diversion for healthy and fortunate persons—Confronted with the horrifying actuality of death and the suffering that I went through, all that they had inculcated in me about reward and punishment of the soul and the Day of Resurrection had become an insipid lie, and when confronted with the fear of death the prayers that they had taught me had no effect.”


(Part 2, Page 54)

This quotation is a further expression of the narrator’s attitude towards The Decay of Religious Belief. He finds no comfort in it and doubts traditional Islam’s teachings about “the Day of Resurrection” when in the Apocalypse everyone who has died will be resurrected and judged on their faith.

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“I thought to myself, ‘If it’s true that each person has a star in the sky, then mine must be far, dark and meaningless—maybe I never had a star.’”


(Part 2, Page 55)

The stars are a symbol of one’s fate. The narrator wonders if he does not have a fate, or if he does have a fate that it is “meaningless.” This is an expression of his nihilistic attitude towards life.

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“Was not my room a coffin? Was not my bedding colder and darker than a grave?”


(Part 2, Page 59)

The narrator believes that he is experiencing a form of living death. He makes this belief material by analogizing his bedroom, where he spends all of his time, with imagery of death, the coffin and the grave.

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“By casting aside beliefs that had been forced upon me, I felt a particular sense of inner peace—The only thing that comforted me was the hope of nothingness after death.”


(Part 2, Page 60)

In this quote, the narrator expresses why he thinks that Death is an Ideal Eternal State. He finds it comforting. In particular, he rejects notions of resurrection after death found in Islam and Hinduism, and instead has a materialist belief in nothingness after death.

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“During the act of procreation, the force that bonds two people together escaping solitude is in essence a trait that exists in each person, a madness which is imbued with a grief that slowly draws toward the depths of death.

Only Death does not lie!”


(Part 2, Page 60)

For the narrator, death is closely connected with sex. The belief he expresses in this quote foreshadows the culmination of the narrative, when the narrator murders his wife in the middle of having sex with her.

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“Life, with coolness and indifference, will reveal to each person their mask—perhaps each person carries several masks.”


(Part 2, Page 62)

Part of the motivation for the narrator’s disdain for the living “rabble” is that he sees life as a form of constantly changing lies. By contrast, he believes that death is honest and eternal, reinforcing Death as an Ideal Eternal State.

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“These pains, these incrustations of misfortune that were patched together on the old man’s face and body, and the misery that as dripping off of him, maybe he himself was unaware, but it gave him the appearance of a minor deity, and with the filthy sofre that was in front of him, he was the representative and manifestation of Creation.”


(Part 2, Page 66)

The narrator projects his disgust for humanity onto the old peddler, whom he regards as physically repulsive. In describing the old peddler as “the representative […] of Creation,” the narrator is implying that living beings created by God are essentially repulsive and miserable.

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“I had become like the insane and took pleasure in my pain—a pleasure that was beyond human, a pleasure that only I could feel, even the gods, if they existed, could not experience this amount of pleasure….It was then that I discovered my superiority, I felt my superiority over the rabble, nature, the gods—gods that born of man’s lust—I had become a god, I was even greater than a god for I felt an eternal and holy current within me.”


(Part 2, Page 68)

The Nietzschean philosophy that the narrator evinces here is a function of his rejection of humanity and The Decay of Religious Belief. In overcoming his fear of death and rejecting life, he has surpassed the common “rabble” and become a demigod, in his own estimation. The many em dashes and ellipses imply that the narrator is writing in a frantic, erratic state of mental distress.

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“[A]ll of these faces were inside of and belonged to me: scary, funny, and criminal masks that could change with the snap of the finger—the form of the old man who read the Koran, the form of the butcher, the form of my wife, I had seen all these in myself, as though their reflection was inside me—All of these faces were within me yet none belonged to me.”


(Part 2, Page 69)

At the end of the novella, the narrator realizes that he, too, wears masks, making him no better than the rabble he has so despised. This realization generates a further realization: He is essentially connected to all of the characters in the story.

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“Death was softly humming its song, like a mute that is forced to repeat each word, and as soon as he finishes the verse, he starts from the beginning once more.”


(Part 2, Page 75)

In this quote, the narrator describes why Death is an Ideal Eternal State: It never ends and simply repeats. The notion of repetition in death can be found in the structure and language of the novella itself wherein events, images, and phrases are often repeated, albeit in slightly altered forms.

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