"If it is true that everyone has his own star in the sky mine must be remote, dark and meaningless. Perhaps I have never had a star at all."

This book is most likely the most artistic and therefore the best depiction of depression, mania, and alienation in literature. Louis Ferdinand-Celine, author of Journey to the End of The Night, wrote in his book "When you write, you should put your skin on the table." I think that's especially true of Sadegh Hedayat. Growing up sickly and weak he spent most of his early life isolated and alone in his Tehran house. Selected to study engineering at an esteemed Parisian university, Sadegh spent a year there before attempting suicide due to a love affair. After returning to Tehran, he spent the rest of his life devoting his time to the study of Western Literature. Making a living translating the works of Checkov, Kafka and Poe he became a scholar of literature. However, through his life a cloud of depression followed him culminating with his suicide in Paris when he was 48. His masterpiece, The Blind Owl, details the reaches of his depression in a surreal nightmare.

Ironically, Sadegh Hedayat, an obscure writer from Iran, is most likely the most brilliant author I have read. Reading through the book you can clearly see is influences: Kafka-Alienation, Nietszche-Eternal Recurrance, Poe-Unreliable Narrator and Jung-The Shadow. Combining all of these together, Sadegh writes a book that is by no exaggeration, mind-blowing. It's impossible to describe the effect that this book has. What I will try to explain about Jung I think in some ways can only be understood if you read the book.

This is far out, but in a weird way, I would argue that this book transcends reality. Carl Jung, a Swiss Psychologist, is famous for his theories on something called the Collective Unconscious(CU). (Hedayat was huge reader of Jung) Jung argues that all human beings are connected with a "Collected Unconscious" that dictates their nature. What does that mean? If I had to explain, you could think of it as two people who were born on opposite sides of the globe. He argues that these two people in completely different cultures, environments, and surroundings would both resemble each other in nature. In general, they both would hold morals, have similar views toward family etc. Now obviously this is impossible to prove with technology so Jung uses dreams instead. He states that all humans are connected through dreams. These dreams all share symbols of the Child, Hero/Heroine, Great Mother, Wise Old Man, and Death. In this way we are all connected.

How does this relate to The Blind Owl? Hedayat uses all of these symbols and intertwines them together. His narrator, dreams of these symbols which end up influencing the novel. Hedayat is able to access our consciousness through these intertwining of symbols. I think this is the most complex psychological novel I have ever read.

Anyway, I loved this book, and in a way, I almost wish I don't read a book that's better. Immensely beautiful imagery followed by fantastic prose, it's a shame that this book isn't more well known. I would also shy away from reading this to feel better, it's not exactly uplifting.

A fever dream or opium-induced hallucination of a book. The Blind Owl was a moody, dark, sinister, and slightly surrealist reading experience resembling literature of the Decadent movement; however, this is not like Huysman's Against Nature. Our narrator does not wallow and whine in a setting of luxury, culture, and opulence. The "othering" and mocking of others, referred to as the "rabble" in the novella, is not borne from any superior artistic tastes or literary intelligence on behalf of the narrator. No, his decadence is in his indulgent self-pity and navel gazing, exemplified by his decision to live rather in his inner world, his melancholy daydreams and reflections, than the reality inhabited by the busy and practical masses. He revels in his malaise. In fact, it almost reads narcissistic. The narrator has resigned himself to a view that there is an inevitability and predestined outcome for his life, which gives him the luxury of being weak in will power and without true stress, guilt, or conscientiousness.

The world built in the novella feels blurry at the edges, which creates a reading experience that feels like trying to run in water or finding your way in a dense and disorienting fog. There are many moments of deja vu and a pervasive feeling of isolation despite the proximity of the hustling and bustling "rabble" outside his door. There may be a whole world at the narrator's peripheral but it doesn’t exist for him. The only thing he chooses to recognize the existence of are his mental decline and his desire for a woman who does not submit herself to his lust. He allows this obsession to make him mentally and physically ill, and even seems to enjoy the destructive effects of it, similar to people who enjoy watching themselves cry in the mirror.

The obsession the narrator has for the unnamed woman, who he almost affectionately refers to as "the whore", is almost a perversion of the Madonna-whore complex. Her promiscuousness (with everyone but him) lends her a saintliness. It is precisely because she is a whore that he desires and idolizes her. Hate and desire are one and the same for him as these are the only two things that can manage to induce any feeling in him. She has many lovers and seems to be fairly indiscriminate in selecting them while continuing to spurn him, essentially rendering the narrator symbolically impotent. Sadomasochism presents itself strongly in this dynamic.

Spoler alert! He is driven to an act of killing her in order to metaphorically consume and conquer that which has had such a cripping and arresting power over him. To destroy her was the closest act of shared climax he could ever achieve with "the whore". The Blind Owl was a dark, disorientating and psychologically twisted nightmare of a book.