Ariel Dorfman: Narrator of Women, Love, and Resistance

Ariel Dorfman is a renowned Chilean-Argentinian-American writer, playwright, poet, journalist, and human rights activist. The 75-year-old author served as an advisor to Salvador Allende's government and narrowly escaped the Pinochet coup. He went into hiding, fled to Europe, and subsequently wrote and published some of his best works. He has written dozens of books, which have been translated into 30 languages worldwide. Some of his works have also been adapted by famous filmmakers, including the play 'Death and the Maiden,' which Roman Polanski turned into a film. One of his most brilliant works is the 'Resistance Trilogy,' which contains three of his important plays titled 'The Widows,' 'Death and the Maiden,' and 'The Reader.' Mostafa Razei, a translator residing in Canada, has translated this significant work of Dorfman into Persian. He is our guest today. Before the conversation, however, let’s listen to some lines from the book read by the translator: [Audio Clip]. * * * *Captain: Let me tell you a story. My father had a dog, and he beat it every day. Lieutenant: Captain, I really don’t want to... Captain: Sit down and close that damn door and listen to my story. This is an order. My father had a dog, and he beat it every day. Then one day, without any warning, the dog bit him. It was clinging to him. We were alone at home. My father sent me to get his revolver. He was a colonel. He showed me how to load the bullets into the revolver. That’s all. The dog had bitten his arm and was chewing it. My father yelled at me. When the revolver was loaded, I shot the dog. But the dog still wouldn’t let go. After all those years of being beaten and humiliated, it had gotten what it wanted, and even after death, it wouldn’t let go. Well, I took out my hunting knife and went for its teeth, and I was seven years old. Lieutenant: That was enlightening, a parable. You shot the dog. Captain: I had to. Lieutenant: Do you shoot here too? Captain: Oh... but you missed the point of this parable. The gun easily distracted you. Lieutenant: What was the point? Captain: The point is this: when you push people to the wall, they surrender. Or they might start a fight that you come out of disabled. My father could no longer use that hand for the rest of his life. People get hurt. That’s the point. Lieutenant: These people are used to being beaten. That’s the point. Make sure they don’t forget whose whip it is. Of course, if the whip is in your hand, at least you have me to give orders. You are my captain, Captain, woof woof. * * * *- Thank you, Mr. Razei. What you just heard was a part of the play 'The Widows' read by the translator. This work of Dorfman has been published in parts or scattered in Iran, and [previously] a translation of it has come out. How did you come to think of translating it into Persian once again? Mostafa Razei: The first discussion is curiosity. Well, the play 'The Thicket' had been translated, which to be honest, I hadn’t read until my own translation was complete. What encouraged me to translate was that Dorfman, aside from 'The Widows,' which has a deeply South American atmosphere, tries to make all three of his plays countryless. And when the audience confronts them, they face a narrative that can resonate with the stories of their own people. This particularly resonated with me when I encountered this book after the 2009 elections, with the atmosphere around me. There are three plays; the first one [The Widows] goes back to the past, we can relate it to the Mothers of Khavaran, we can relate it to the chain murders; and then 'Death and the Maiden,' which addresses the topic of torture, and finally 'The Reader,' which deals with censorship. In Iran, I had been grappling with censorship for the publication of any book, and this was not just specific to me... This familiarity that it creates for the Iranian reader, of course, Dorfman himself explains in one of the afterwords in this book, and in the introduction, that these works and the events that occur in this very valuable book of his, through his plays, are not events related to Chile. And in all countries where tyrants rule and people are in the grip of a lack of freedom, it can happen. The main themes of Dorfman's three plays, which include 'Death and the Maiden,' 'The Widows,' and 'The Reader,' are torture due to beliefs, which occurs in 'Death and the Maiden,' or the issue of disappearances where people disappeared for their political thoughts during Pinochet's Chile after the coup, and in 'The Reader,' there is censorship. But the interesting point is that Dorfman says this trilogy cannot be called a trilogy of oppression or a trilogy of violence. He raises a more central point, which is the human's attainment of their unique place. For this reason, he named it 'The Resistance Trilogy.' It is true that people are killed, tortured, and their ideas and opinions are suppressed, which are the main foundations of these three plays, but another issue that Dorfman raises is that this oppression occurs more by men against women, and for a specific reason, the main characters in his plays who suffer are mostly women. Dorfman himself explains that the heroes of these works are women in a violent world created by men. It seems we are faced with a feminist and justice-seeking trilogy in a gender-unequal world in Dorfman's work. It can indeed be considered a feminist work. It should be noted, however, that Dorfman deliberately ensures that none of the three plays reach a definitive ending. That is, when the story reaches its climax and you are waiting to understand what will happen in a minute, the characters and the plays end, and the audience, whether they are watching or reading, is confronted with the question of what is happening in my life? What is happening to the people around me? What ending have we created for the people around us? And this is the goal that Dorfman seeks to achieve, and the issue is that when the questions come to us and demand answers from us, we do not ignore them and allow these questions to be raised and to reach answers. It cannot be denied that the world that Dorfman creates in his works is very close to the mindset of the Iranian reader, especially the Iranian book-reading audience, creating a strange appeal that, for example, even some great European writers can connect with the Iranian world and mindset less directly. Why was this work not publishable in Iran? I don’t know why they didn’t allow it. Twice, two different publishers in two different governments submitted the book to the Ministry of Culture, and only for the play 'The Widows' did they send me deletions, but with the changes made, they still did not allow publication. On one hand, I am now happy that at least the book, which has now been published [outside Iran], is without a single word changed from the original text. No censorship has been done. Its free version is available, and they can download it with a few clicks from [the site] of Nogham Publishing. But it would have been a very big paradox if this book were to be published in Iran and something from it were to be removed while one of its trilogies is actually about censorship, and it would fundamentally defeat the purpose, and perhaps as you say, it is better that it was published outside Iran. But let’s also take a look at the very good note that Dorfman wrote on your translation and for the Iranian reader, which seems to contain both new information and is very appealing, especially when we learn about Ariel Dorfman's mastery over the political history of Iran, or Iranian civilization and culture, Iranian literature, classical Iranian literature, contemporary cinema, and this is an interesting point, and he has this mastery in various fields [he even refers to the JCPOA], and this is very interesting. The truth is that Kuleh Posh Publishing, which was supposed to work on the book, asked Dorfman to write this introduction, and he did. In his introduction, Dorfman specifically mentions the coup against Mohammad Mossadegh's government and compares it with the coup that occurred in Chile and then talks about how he has followed politics, how he has followed literature, specifically mentioning the great Rumi, using the title 'Great' for him...