This Eye, also described as Cheshm-i Mast (The Drunk Eye), Cheragh-e Cheshm (the Eye-Lamp), is the private, subjective eye of the Salek, the wayfarer, one who, even if involved in physical journeys, resides in the Mind and the Soul. The Eye of the Soul usually ruled over the eye of the head, leaving the external reality - variably described, among others, as Zendan-i Sekandar (Iskandar’s Prison House), Ahl-i Ab o Gel (the Residents of (sluggish) water and Mud) - to unite with a transcendental truth. The Eye has been described as Haft Khane-ye Nur (The Seven Chambers of Light) in classic Persian poetry. Keywords: The Blind Owl, durée, indivisibility of time, Modernism, simultaneity, stream-of-consciousness writing In the nameless narrator’s stream of consciousness and interrelated visions and reminiscences, characters, settings and incidents – which drive the narrative into a timeless and placeless context – constantly melt into and echo one another and ultimately become irreducible and radically interrelated constituents of an organic totality that resists temporal, spatial and cognitive divisibility. This article argues that certain features of the narrative structure of The Blind Owl, in particular the relativity and subjectivity of time and place and the constant intersection of memories and experiences, can be aligned with Bergson’s interpretation of temporality and consciousness. Likewise, for Bergson, consciousness is characterized by flux and continuity as it processes all previous memories and experiences synchronously, as if they were all parts of a unified and organic whole. Bergson refutes the logical and linear sequence of time and regards it as an indivisible whole that simultaneously posits the past, the present and the future on the same plane – the eternal present. This article aims to explore Henri Bergson’s notions of durée and simultaneity in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl (1937), a prominent Modernist narrative in contemporary Iranian literature.

The blind owl and other stories