Ahmed Shamlow’s life was not limited to literature and poetry. He lived on writing popular screenplays, but under a pseudonym. He turned to dictionaries and wrote an encyclopedia of “alley culture” in Iranian linguistic folklore. He worked as a translator and produced documentaries about politics. His views on Ferdowsi, Hafez al-Shirazi, and Iranian music have been a source of considerable controversy.
Shumlow had two failed and troubled marriages before marrying Aida Sargsyan. But he eventually fell in love with Sargsyan, an Armenian from Tehran.
Shumlow and Ida were married on April 2, 1964, and after a six -month residence in the north of the country, they returned to Tehran and lived until Shumlow’s death.
We can trace the echo of his presence in Shumlow’s poetry. In the same year, “Ida in the Mirror”, “Moments and Eternity” and “Ida: Wood, Dagger and Memory” were published. With Ida’s encouragement and help, Shumlow tried again to make a book and also turned to film and television activities. He wrote the book Like Blood in My Veins, which were his letters to Ida in the sixties and seventies of the last century, and it describes the aspect of pure and free love of property. Shumlow said of Aida: “Everything I wrote for her and for her, I found in Ida someone I had never met in my life.”
In Aida, modern Iranian love poetry for the first time evolved from a generic and abstract form to a pure and honest earthly form.
Iranian poet, editor of the literary magazine Jameh.
Source: Al Akhbar
Source: Al Akhbar
