by Candace Barrington
On 5 March 2024, an interview between two Alirezas—Alireza Mahdipour (Chaucer’s Farsi translator) and Alireza Anushiravani (founder of the Iran Comparative Literature Society)—was broadcast as a webinar. Titled “Translation and Comparative Literature,” the interview introduced its audience to Mahdipour’s literary translations of English literature into Farsi before concentrating on his translation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (published by Cheshmeh Press in 2023). As the audience learned, although a translated (and retranslated) Shakespeare has been available to Farsi readers for more than a century ago, Mahdipour’s translation of the complete Canterbury Tales into Farsi is a first.
During the interview’s opening introduction, Mahdipour was asked about his age. He reports answering that “Chaucer and I are almost coeval, since it so happens that I was born in 1341 (according to Persian calendar, of course, which is 621 years behind or ahead of the Christian calendar, and you may be marveled to know that we are now in 1403!). This joke that I carry on seriously is of some significance: Chaucer’s time and situation somehow overlaps with that of ours and this helps us understand him sometimes better than some of his own contemporary fellow countrymen. Hermeneutically speaking, to understand the historical author we have to recreate the context of his text, which is lost to us (according to Schleiermacher) and/or we attempt to associate ourselves with his mind (according to Dilthey) or still, a more modern (actually postmodern) view, we may grasp some of the author’s ideas, intentions, and meanings only when they coincide or overlap with those of our own, and this happens in occasions when (according to the phenomenological approach of Heidegger and Gadamer), there is a ‘fusion of horizon’ between the author and the translator, since they establish a broader context within which they come to a shared understanding.”
Mahdipour goes on to explain that “In my argument I simplified all the above philosophical considerations by claiming that all these considerations are happily met with our present condition in Iran, as we are now in 1403! For example, in addition to having the Puritan discourse of England’s Commonwealth period, we are provided with medieval Summoners, who survived, or rather were revived, after their hibernation during Iran’s short period of modernization half a century ago.”
When asked about his decision to translate Chaucer’s verse into verse (rather than prose), he adamantly responded that a prose translation would ruin the merits of the book, as happened when an earlier prose translation appeared and was quickly disregarded. Because Chaucer’s achievement includes his use of rhyme and couplets—which are common devices in classic Persian narrative poetry—Mahdipour sees Chaucer as the perfect opportunity for a Persian translator with a poetic gift. Indeed, translating Chaucer was a pleasurable challenge for Mahdipour, since Persian prosody requires a strict rhythm and meter throughout the whole text, a feature achieved due to the flexibility of Persian syntax and its abundance of rhyming words. Thus, in addition to living in “coeval” times, Chaucer and his Farsi translator share the happy coincidence of writing in languages and poetic traditions sharing important qualities.
When asked about his intentions or motivations in choosing Chaucer, he referenced his article “The Translator Writes Back” published in Literature Compass (Vol. 15, Issue 6, 2018) and edited by Jonathan Hsy and Candace Barrington.
The 2nd edition of Peter Brown’s