Siavash Kasraei lived in many cities during his 70-year, turbulent life: Tehran, Kabul, Moscow, and finally Vienna. Only Vienna has honored this famous Iranian poet and registered his final resting place as a “cultural heritage.”
Death in exile has taken many Iranian artists by surprise in the past few decades, who had once left their homeland, either voluntarily or by force. Some of these artists and writers, in the last stages of their lives, still longed to return to their homeland, dreaming of “leaning on a palm tree and drinking a bowl of cool water” (Sadegh Choubak), while others continued their work “hoping to appear on stage” and sing for their compatriots (Mounir Vakili). The heartfelt wish of most of these exiled artists was to “die in peace and in their own homes”; a wish that some took with them to their graves for various reasons; for years, most cemeteries in European and American cities have become the eternal homes of many figures of Iranian art and literature; Bozorg Alavi (author) in Berlin, Gholamhossein Saedi (playwright and novelist) in Paris, Ardeshir Mohasses (painter and cartoonist) in New York, Bahman Mohasses (painter and sculptor) in Rome, Homa Nateg (author and historian) in Paris.
Siavash Kasraei, the poet of the enduring poem “Arash the Archer,” is also one of these figures who always longed to return to Iran and, after years of residence in Kabul and Moscow and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, emigrated to Austria. Kasraei’s stay in Vienna, however, did not last long. The poet of “My Heart Feels Like the Sun,” suddenly contracted pneumonia after a heart surgery and died in the hospital. He is buried near the “Artists’ Section” of the Vienna Central Cemetery.
Kasraei's eternal home, however, has a significant difference from the graves of other artists who have completed their eternal journey abroad: the city of Vienna has registered the tomb of the composer of "Sound from the Moon Window" as an "honorary tomb." In an interview with DW, Shams Asadi, head of the city's human rights office, said about the significance of this title: "This is a gift that the Vienna municipality has given to our Iranian compatriots living in Vienna. This decision by the municipality is comparable to the honorary tomb of Sadegh Hedayat in Paris, which thousands of Iranians visit for years." Shams Asadi emphasizes that this part of the city's central cemetery has a special feature: "Nearby, there are tombs of artists such as Beethoven and Mozart."
Waiting to return home
Although Kasraei generally called death a “terrible lie”* and had sung that “my heart does not believe in its own death, no, no, I do not believe in this certainty,” he not only always wished to return to Iran, but also preferred to have his “lifeless body buried in the soil of his homeland,” a wish that was not possible when he died in 1996 due to the suffocating socio-political atmosphere prevailing in the country during the last year of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency. That year, the regime’s agents could not even bear to hold a proper ceremony to mark his passing in one of Tehran’s mosques, and the “Ansar Hezbollah” group, led by Zabihollah Bakhshizadeh, disrupted the “funeral gathering” organized by a group of Kasraei’s friends and associates.
Gorji Marzban, an Iranian poet and writer living in Vienna who played an active role in the process of awarding the title of honorary grave of the city of Vienna, tells DW: "After Siavash Kasraei's death, of course, efforts were made to return his body to Iran. But political conflicts and the prevailing police and security atmosphere prevented the poet from returning and being buried in his beloved homeland. For this reason, he was placed in an iron coffin to be temporarily buried in Vienna while awaiting his return."
Saving “a part of the history of contemporary Iranian culture”
Death in exile presents another unpleasant face, including the back-breaking costs of shrouding, burial, and maintaining the tomb. According to Gorji Marzban, who also manages the Iranian Cultural House in Vienna, the Kasraei family paid these huge expenses for years. At first: “Kasraei’s friends were able to find a suitable tomb for him in a place a few steps away from the artists’ plot. However, this tomb was an ordinary tomb like the others and was bought and renovated every few years by Kasraei’s relatives and survivors. When the poet’s elderly wife decided to leave Vienna permanently and return to her homeland, her great concern was the loss of Kasraei’s tomb, because the contract with the authorities to extend the use of his tomb was about to expire. This matter greatly distressed Kasraei's wife... Finally, in their last meeting, she left this matter to me, so that in some way or another, the grave of Siavash Kasraei, and with it, a part of the history of contemporary Iranian culture, would be preserved from the passing of time in a framework worthy of the composer of the poem "Arash the Archer."
“Cultural Heritage”
Transforming an ordinary grave into an honorary tomb that also carries the title of part of the “cultural heritage” is not an easy task in Austria. Therefore, Gorji Marzban consults with Ms. Asadi, who is more familiar with the administrative authorities and regulations of the city of Vienna in general.
According to the head of the Vienna Human Rights Office, a written application for the registration of an honorary grave and the documents related to it are examined separately in three different stages by three different cultural institutions. Each of these institutions has the right to reject the registration application. Furthermore, “in the final stage, the mayor of Vienna must accept the application. After that, the municipality, with the permission of the artist’s family, declares his grave as an honorary grave, which is also considered a “cultural heritage” and the municipality must maintain and protect it forever.”
Kasraei's activities in Vienna
Although Kasraei's stay in Vienna, where nearly 9,000 Iranians and people of Iranian descent live, was very short, the cultural and artistic activities of the poet of the poem "Wave" brought enthusiasm and hope to his fans even in this short time. According to Marzban, when Kasraei arrived in Vienna, "culture lovers and political and human rights activists gathered around him. He became a hope for the creation of a literary and artistic circle. This same group provided him with the opportunity to publish the poem "Mehra Sorkh". However, death soon took the pen away from the hands of the great Iranian poet, leaving this circle mourning and sad." Years later, on the fifteenth anniversary of his death, the translation of the poem "Arash Kamangir" into German, translated by Anahita Shaa'iyan, was also published, which also won the translator an award.
Kasraei did not stop at just introducing and publishing his works in Vienna. By attending cultural meetings and giving speeches, he also valued the activities and achievements of Iranian artists and encouraged “newcomers” to continue their path. His passionate speech at the opening ceremony of the painting exhibition of Behrouz Heshmat, an Austrian Iranian artist, held at the city’s Artists’ House is one of Shams Asadi’s lasting memories of Kasraei, which also shows the humor of this “people’s poet.” Asadi says about this: “I had the honor of simultaneously translating his poetry and speech into German at this event, which was attended by many famous Austrian and Iranian artists. … After the meeting, Mr. Kasraei came to me and, thanking me profusely for my translation, jokingly said, “I will soon give a speech in German myself.”
The cornerstone of the last home
The city of Vienna has not made any changes to the construction and decoration of Kasraei’s tomb, which was planned in accordance with his family’s wishes in 1996. The marble tomb of the poet of the poem “Watan” only has his name and dates of birth and death engraved in Persian and Latin. According to Shams Asadi: “In principle, tombs in Vienna are free of any type of carvings, paintings, or decorations.”
Kasraei's grave in Vienna's central cemetery preserves, above all, a part of the history of an irreversible exile that the emanations of "His Faith in the Garden of Life" immortalize:
…
Curse the lie, the terrible lie.
The bridge leads to the future shore of my poetry.
So that the pilgrims can pass through it happily.
My message to the kiss of lips and hands
It flies.
May lovers be reconciled to such a messenger.
Give me a hint.
It is constantly exploring lips and hands.
Cain, the role of man
On the tablet of time
It becomes immortal.
This silent bit of warmth of ours
One day without a doubt
It goes somewhere and becomes the sun.
As long as you love me
I love you so much.
Until our tears fall on each other's cheeks from love
As long as there is one loving soul in time
Who can die?
Will my name be forgotten by time?
The wind has taken many flowers from my palm.
But I am sad.
I don't fill anyone's memorial with flowers.
I don't want the death of any loved one.
I don't believe it.
It will eventually fall.
One day my leaf
One day my eyes will also fall asleep.
The dream of a saddle is not hidden from anyone's eyes.
But inside the garden
The fragrance of my belief is always in the air.
* Taken from the poem "Faith"
