Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Intro
Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Chai & Conversation
4.9 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2021
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
In this lesson, we introduce the iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou, and talk about his poem ‘Raz’ or راز, meaning ‘the secret’. Shamlou was born in 1925 in Rasht, and he died in 2000, after a few years of health problems. He went through a few revolutions, he was put in jail and he was a journalist for a while. He wrote about politics and was part of the Toudeh party. And so he did live through a lot of turmoil in Islamic Republic, and he stayed in Iran- he didn't leave, like so many others. For a few years after the Islamic revolution happened, he did go silent. But he emerged after that, and did tours of Europe and he did tours of the US. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1984. He remains one of the most famous contemporary poets from Iran to this day.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation, Lesson 88. |
| 0:27.1 | Hello and welcome to Lesson 88 of Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation. |
| 0:29.8 | We're back with our poetry series of lessons. |
| 0:35.6 | In this lesson, we'll be going over Amat Shomlu's poem, Rauz, which means secret. |
| 0:39.8 | And in this first lesson, I'll be discussing the poem with a very special guest, |
| 0:45.1 | Tehran von Ghastri, an extremely funny and insightful comedian that you are hopefully already familiar with. |
| 0:46.4 | In this lesson, we'll be going over the entirety of the poem, and I'll be releasing a few |
| 0:50.9 | more lessons after this going over the poem word by word, phrase by phrase, |
| 0:55.4 | so you can add new Persian words and phrases to your vocabulary, phrases you can use in everyday |
| 1:00.6 | conversation. You can get the full transcript of this poem to read along with us in English |
| 1:06.1 | phonetic and in Persian script, and also the translation on our website at cha and |
| 1:11.6 | conversation.com with chaise spelled C-H-A-I. I'll go over this more after the lesson, |
| 1:18.3 | but if you're looking to follow along with us right now, go to chaiinconversation.com |
| 1:23.2 | slash lesson 88 and it'll take you right to where you need to go. And now the interview. |
| 1:29.0 | Enjoy. So Tehran, thank you so much for talking with me today. Yeah, you kind of made me do this. |
| 1:37.1 | I love how you thank me for talking. I know, I've been badgering you. Yeah, you're like, |
| 1:41.9 | yo, we're going to do this. Like, you didn't even, look, usually the Persian way is to tar off and ask. You're not even asking nicely. You're like, Tehran, we're doing this. Like, you're doing it. Well, the thing is, so we recorded a raising name René's episode about you growing up half Iranian. And you said this one part of a poem in there, you said, |
| 2:01.6 | Kesi Khabe, you know that quote. What was the quote? |
| 2:06.0 | It's like a Persian saying, Kessi that's khaubh has, me should be dead. That's right. You said |
| 2:15.2 | that and you explained it and I've been getting emails |
| 2:17.9 | about this. Seriously, several emails of people saying that was such a nice quote. Like it really |
| 2:22.9 | made me think. You know, what Tehran said was really interesting. And so I've been doing this poetry |
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