Mental metamorphosis of Mashadi Hasan in the work "The Mourners of Bayal" by Gholam-Hossein Saedi

Ментальна метаморфоза Машаді Хасана у творі Голама-Хосейна Саеді «Скорботники Баяла»

It is after this episode that Mashadi Hasan has a deep psychological shock. The protagonist, who considers the cow to be the most important thing in his life, gradually loses his mental balance. Thus, under the influence of severe trauma, he denies his existence and thinks that he is a cow. As his condition worsened, Mashhadi Hasan spent the night in the barn, eating nothing but straw, alfalfa and hay like a cow. Mashadi Tuba, who is guarding the roof of the barn, cries day and night, and her husband is even more upset. This situation frightens people who face such a situation for the first time. Instead of taking Mashadi Hasan to the city-hospital, the ignorant villagers are trying in vain to "bring him back to life" and convince him that he is a cow. The villagers even say that the cow was first found, and admit that they buried the animal's carcass in a well when there was no effect. But this attempt is useless. One day, the Purus people really think that Mashadi Hasan is a cow and come to the village at night to kidnap him. Papax, the village dog, howls and raises the whole village. The thieves drive the thieves out of the village.

Purus is a village of riflemen located near Bayal, where people make a living by stealing, crossing roads and looting. Although there is no detailed information about the Purus people in the work, the Bayal people always talk about them with anxiety. It turns out that the looters repeatedly raided the villages at night, stole chickens, small horns and large horns, took them to Purus and hid them in wells. For this reason, when the sun goes down, the villagers are afraid at night as well. The people of Bayal are always on the alert. The excitement of the Purus looking at the only cow in the village and waiting for an opportunity to steal it is an additional psychological pressure on Mashadi Hasan, and these effects are even more pronounced against the background of the protagonist's post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mashadi Hasan weakens over time and no longer talks to people. Unable to bear the plight of his condition, Mashadi Islam finally decided to take him to the city, to the hospital. Together with Mashadi Islam Kandukha and Mashadi Jabbar, they tied Mashadi Hasan and dragged the "cow" to the city. In the next episode, Islam and Kandkhuda and Mashadi Jabbar return to Bayal near sunset. When Mashadi Baba called Islam from afar and heard from Mashadi Hasan, he could not finish his words, saying: "Mashadi Hasan? ... Before reaching the city ...". At the end of the story, the writer describes the atmosphere in the village and clarifies the fate of the protagonist with the phrase "Mashadi Hasan's widow":

"Papach, lying in the shade of a willow, got up and joined the goat of Islam. They passed through the crowd and entered the first street. The street was quiet and deserted. Only the voice of Mashadi Hasan's widow, who was sitting alone on the roof of the barn with an incandescent lamp, could be heard crying. [Saedi, 2020, pp.165-166]

Although the writer points out that Mashadi Hasan is dead, he continues to wait for the reader with the last sentence of the story:

"The roar of the drums and the noise of the clappers were getting closer and closer," he said. From the depths of a ruined barn could be heard the helpless moan of an unknown cow ”[Saedi, 2020, p.166]

The finale of the story begs the reader: Is Mashadi Hasan's cow still alive?

In the monograph "Localization of Magical Realism in Iran" co-authored by well-known Iranian literary scholars Mohammad and Mohsen Hanif, the stories of "Bayal mourners" are considered to be the most advanced examples of magical realism in Iranian literature. According to the article "Study of the concepts of magical realism in the novels of Ghulam Hussein Sayedi" Bayal mourners "and Najib Mahfuz" Nights of a Thousand Nights "in" Bayal mourners "

Although he does not mention Sayedi, the rural atmosphere and the descriptions of the characters he portrays in the imagination lead the reader to conclude that the heroes (Mashadi Hasan and Kurani) were "possessed by demons" (Hanif, 2018, p. 203).

Reza Nazemiyan and others present the events in the article as a metaphysical event, and Mashadi Hasan as a magical figure. At the same time, many researchers compare the story with Franz Kafka's (1883-1924) Transformation. One morning, Gregor Zamza, who woke up from a restless sleep and turned into a strange insect in his bed, analyzes his most valuable asset - the naive Mashadi Hasan, who lost his cow. In the article "Cow, metamorphosis - a comparison of image-creation methods in Sayedi's" Cow "and Kafka's" Transformation "co-authored by Dr. Mohammadreza Nasr Isfahani and Teyyiba Jafari" Transformation "and" Cow "(author of the article in question Although his works are the product of different cultures and worldviews, it is noted that they have many similarities in terms of subject and structure: “Both works are the expressionist expression and manifesto of the writers. These two authoritative stories are successful in terms of the magical description of the real environment of Sayedi and Kafka's states ”(Nasr Esfahani Muhammadrza, Jafari Teyyiba, 2010, p.146)

Some researchers even claim that Sayedi wrote this story inspired by Franz Kafka. Among his contemporaries, there are those who claim that the author has a "Kafkaesque" worldview and thinking in general. For example, Sayedi visited him after his release from prison and told a story about what happened in his cell to Hushang Golshiri (1938-2000), a close friend who wrote about his impressions of the dungeon and one of the most famous figures of twentieth-century Iranian prose.

"One day I was taken to torture another prisoner. He was not there when I returned to the cell. I looked around, right and left, I saw him climbing on the ceiling and he said, "I'm an insect." (Jamshidi, 2022, p. 224)

Hushang Golshiri writes on this ferry:

"When I heard this story, I thought it was in a Kafkaesque atmosphere. As he wrote his fantasies, he tried to bring them closer to the truth. His writings were biographies of psychiatric patients with whom he communicated on a daily basis. (Jamshidi, 2022, p. 224)

The most famous work of the Romanian-born French playwright Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994), considered one of the founders of the aesthetic current of absurdism in world literature, the play "Rhinoceros" is often compared with the work of Sayedi. "Rhinoceros" speaks of the influence of all systems and forces on the human personality in the example of totalitarianism. With the exception of the play's protagonist, Berange, all the characters in the play become rhinos, regardless of their social background or position in society. (Ionesco, 2000)

The comparison of Saedi's story with the works "Transformation" and "Rhinoceros" is due to the metamorphosis of the image (s) in all three works. It should be noted that the images of Mashadi Hasan mental, Gregor Zamza and Ionesco in Saedi's work undergo metaphysical transformation. Mashadi Hasan's interpretation is real, while other images are absurd. Kafka's "Transformation" and Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" are grotesque phantasmagoria, Sayedi's "Cow" is a realist story written in the traditional style.

All the truths presented to the reader in The Transformation and The Rhinoceros are in fact fabrications. Both works embody the illogicality and absurdity of the content, containing the qualities inherent in the style. The regressive journey of the protagonists from self-confidence and attachment to ordinary life to spiritual wandering and finally death is the common theme that brings these two stories together.

Unlike F. Kafka and E. Ionesco, Sayedi is a professional psychiatrist. He selected his images from among the patients he treated or observed, and based his observations on their pre-traumatic and post-traumatic conditions. The image of Mashadi Hasan also lost its emotional balance and underwent a spiritual transformation as a result of strong socio- psychological pressures, not under the influence of any magical or supernatural force. Contrary to many researchers, his thinking that he was a cow, in other words, his mental "turning into a cow," is not a mystical phenomenon, but a pathological manifestation of a rare mental illness called boantropia in psychiatry. This syndrome is a rare form of metamorphosis, especially in men, in which people with the disease believe they have been transformed or turned into cows. (Shahpesandy, 2020, p.2)

Boanthropia is a type of clinical zoantropia and is often seen in patients suffering from schizophrenia spectrum disorders and severe depression. The term is a combination of the ancient Greek words bous, meaning bull, and antropos, meaning man. Zoanthropy, a Greek term, is a generic combination of the words "animal" and "anthropos" and is a generic name for a very rare mental illness in which a person simply believes that he or she is in the process of becoming an animal or has already become an animal. According to experts, zoantropia is not only unusual, but also a very serious disease. The clinical manifestation of this disease usually manifests itself with psychosis when someone loses touch with reality. The description of Mashadi Hasan's behavior we are talking about coincides with the clinical features of Boantropia, a type of zoanthropy. According to Homayun Shahpasandi, boantropia is a mental, functional and emotional deficiency caused by psychological shocks. The mental and emotional, and in part, functional defects of Mashadi Hasan, who was deeply traumatized by the death of his cow, are clear from the last pages described by the author. It is not known whether G. Sayedi borrowed the image of Mashadi Hasan as a prototype of a specific patient he was treating, or from historical sources. By the way, although very few, there are records of this disease in historical sources. Interestingly, the oldest written sources on boanthropy date back to the East.

Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine Homayun Shahpasandi, who conducts research on personality and affective disorders, conducted research on the oldest facts of boantropia in the history of psychiatry and its treatment on the basis of ancient written sources. The study of the Jewish people during the reigns of the Babylonian and Persian empires and the prophet Denmark in the Bible (Old Testament) states that Novokhodnosor II (630-562 BC), son of Nabopolassar, the founder of the new Babylonian empire and the first ruler of the Keldani dynasty, and eats grass like cattle ”and lived in this condition for 7 years. The author states that this topic is also addressed in classical literature, and in Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi's "Masnavi" examples of "spiritual" and "physical" metamorphosis are described in an artistic form. (Shahpesandy, 2020, p.2)

According to historical sources, Ibn Sina (980-1037), the most famous physician and philosopher of the East, treated a prince belonging to the Buwayhid dynasty (the Bulayhids are a Persian dynasty of Deylam origin, which ruled mainly Iraq, central and southern Iran from 934 to 1062). There is information about. Sources do not disclose the name of the prince infected with the disease.

Homayun Shahpesandi in his article "Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna): Treatment of The Buyid Prince Suffering from Melancholy with Delusional Metamorphosis of Boanthropy" published in the International Journal of Psychiatry in 2020, the first written source of about 100 deaths. A year later, Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Ali (1110-1161) from Samarkand reported that he had a treatise entitled Chahar Maqala, written under the pseudonym Nizami. Another information about this is given in the poem "Seven Thrones" by Abdurrahman Jami, one of the most famous figures of Persian classical Sufi poetry. Although the name of the Buwayhid prince is not mentioned in both works, the pathological description of his behavior and, consequently, the disease is given in detail:

"One day, one of the princes of the Buwayhid dynasty became melancholy. The disease affects him so strongly that he imagines himself as a cow. All day long he says to everyone: - I am a cow, cut me, make a good goulash out of my meat. "If the cook cooked goulash from my meat, his/her pocket would become a silver treasure. Hurry up, cut my throat and take me to the slaughterhouse. " The prince repeated these words, roaring and moaning like a cow day and night. After a while, no doctor could find a cure for the Prince, who also refused to eat. When it became known that the doctors were unable to cure the young Prince, they appealed to Prince Alauddov (full name Husameddin Abu Jafar Muhammad bin Dushmanziyar; ruler of Isfahan and adjacent territories in 1008-1041). He is asked to instruct Ibn Sina, the vizier of treatment, in the hope of finding a cure for the Prince's pain. Thus, Alauddov talked to Ibn Sina and persuaded him. Ibn Sina sent a message: "Give good news to the patient, tell him that the butcher is coming to cut you," and he went to the palace accompanied by two people.

When this news is conveyed to the sick Prince, he is overjoyed. Ibn Sina took the butcher's knife in his hand and said at the entrance of the palace, “Where is the cow? I came to cut it, "he said. When the patient hears these words, he begins to make sounds like a cow. Ibn Sina brought him to the middle of the house and ordered him to tie his hands and feet tightly. The patient immediately lies obediently on his right side. His hands and feet are tied with a rope. Ibn Sina rubbed the knives together, sat down, and, as is the custom of the butchers, put his hand on the patient's ribs. "O skinny cow," he says. "It doesn't work to cut you. Feed it until it adjusts. Feed him for a while, never let him go hungry.

When it's greasy enough, I'll cut the knife so it's not wasted. " Ibn Sina then instructed the palace servants to open the Prince's arms and legs and place food in front of him. Ibn Sina said to the Prince, "You should eat plenty of them, because these foods make the cows well fat." They open his arms and legs and put food in front of him. The prince eats the food given to him without any resistance, along with the medicine given to him by Ibn Sina. Thus, the court doctors worked hard to treat him under the guidance of Ibn Sina, and a month later he completely recovered. (Shahpesandy, 2020, p.2)

Boanthropia is a rare mental disorder like other types of clinical zoantropia. An assessment of the review of this type of mental disorder recorded in the medical literature between 1850 and 2012 (Blom Jan Dirk, 2014) shows that only 56 animals metamorphosed during these 162 years. The majority of people with metamorphosis were diagnosed with schizophrenia (25%), psychotic depression (23.2%), bipolar disorder (19.6%) and other psychotic disorders - 12.5%.

mashadi hasan boantropia depression

Conclusion

Gulamhuseyn Saedi created one of the most unique and original images of a person subjected to boantropy in the person of Mashadi Hasan. The protagonist is not a phantasmagoric person who has been "insane" or metaphysically transformed, but a person who suffers from Boantropia Syndrome, a type of clinical zoantropia registered as a disease in psychiatry. Zoanthropy is a rare form of mental metamorphosis in which patients believe they have undergone transformation or become animals. This syndrome is often observed in patients suffering from schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, severe and psychotic depression. The village symbolically described by Saedi actually represents Iran, while the protagonist, who has reached the point of insanity under the psychological pressure of fear, ignorance and poverty, represents the Iranian people. In essence, it is a psychoanalytic analysis of the crisis of the rural ecosystem in an artistic form, written in the style of realism, the socio-political shortcomings of the period, as well as the influence of superstition and ignorance.

Bibliography

References