
Gholam-hossein Sa’edi’s speech on the fourth night of Goethe Institute’s literary nights in Tehran (year 1977)
Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi
In the autumn of 1977, a literary festival was held in Tehran that has gone down in history. The Ten Literary Evenings at the Goethe Institute had an audience of 20,000 people. They brought together the Iranian public with the most important dissident intellectuals of the monarchist period. The unrest that began during these literary evenings is considered the beginning of the series of protests that led to the Islamic Revolution.
During the literary festival, Iranian intellectuals talk about freedom, censorship, true and false art. Below is a speech by playwright Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi (translated by Vladimir Mitev with minor abridgements) about fake artists. Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi is a psychiatrist who cared for the mentally ill in southern Tehran. He is known for his plays influenced by the theatre of the absurd. He was repressed by the authorities both before and after the Revolution. He died in Paris in 1985.
Continue reading “On pseudo-artists”