Download citation:
BibTeX | RIS | EndNote | Medlars | ProCite | Reference Manager | RefWorks
Send citation to:

---

This paper is a comparative study of a modern Persian poet, Forugh Farrokhzād (1935-1967), and a Russian film-maker, Andrei Tarkovsky (1932- 1989). The works of two artists, from two different cultures, across time and space, have been chosen to demonstrate their morbid fear of death and their search for immortality. Following the postulates of comparative cultural studies, as developed by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek, the objective of this search is to find interrelations between two different production of art, namely poetry and film, as communicative acts. To quote Totosy in "the New Humanities," this study "is performed in a contextual and relational construction and with a plurality of methods and approaches…" (60).
Benefiting from the main tenets of comparative literature, cultural studies and psychoanalysis, this research show how the concept thanatophobia and the quest for immortality are treated in the artistic works of Forugh Farrokhzād and Andrei Tarkovsky. In Forugh's poetry, the focus would be on her last two collections of poems, Tavalodi Digar [Another Birth] and Imanan Biāvarim be Āghāz Fasle Sard [Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season], in which she illustrates the temporality of life and the urge to be remembered. In Nostalghia, Tarkovsky creates characters like Andrei Gorchakov, the Russian researcher, and Domenicos, the Italian who wants to save the world by sacrificing. Andrei lives his death and joins eternity. This intercultural and interdisciplinary study shows how one can owercom the fear of death by substituting the moral time for the actual time.

Keywords: comparative literature, fear of death, urge for immortality, Forugh Farrokhzād, Andrei Tarkovsky

Full-Text [PDF 433 kb]   (1813 Downloads)    

Add your comments about this article : Your username or Email:

---

---