Siavash Kasraie

Siavash Kasrai (February 25, 1927 – February 8, 1996; ) was an Iranian poet, literary critic and novelist. He is well-known for his epic poem of Arash the Archer written in the late 1950s. An active supporter of the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s, he distanced himself from its leadership in 1988–1990, and turned into an outspoken critic in the mid 1990s.

Life Siavash Kasrai was born on February 25, 1927, in Isfahan, Iran, into a family of officials, some (his uncle Abdol-Karim Kasrai in particular) with a serious interest in literature. In Tehran from an early age, he received his primary education at Adab School and secondary education at the Military College and Dar ul-Funun. He graduated from the University of Tehran, Faculty of Law, in 1950, and did his military service at the Military Academy.

In the early 1950s, Kasrai worked at the Iranian Health Co-operation Agency, created under Truman’s Point Four Program, and headed two of the agency’s periodicals (Behdashte Hamegani dar Nahiyeye Dariaye Khazar and Zendegi o Behdasht). From the mid-1950s to the early-1980s, Kasrai almost continuously served in government bodies focusing on housing or urban development: the Iranian Bank of Housing, the Housing Agency and the Ministry of Housing and Urbanization. In the early- to mid-1970s, in a forced leave from the Ministry, he worked for a few years as chief copywriter for the Behshahr Industrial Group. In addition to his regular employment, Kasrai occasionally taught literature at the Universities of Tehran and Zahedan.

During his secondary education, Kasrai was part of a group of young nationalists including Dariush Forouhar and Mohsen Pezeshkpour. In 1948, he became a member of the Tudeh Party, which he actively supported during the next four decades. Kasrai was shortly imprisoned in the aftermath of 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh. He was a founding member of the Iranian Writers' Association and one of its elected secretaries in the first four years of its existence, from 1968 to 1971. Kasrai took part in 1977 Tehran Goethe-Institut nights of poetry readings, a noted public event with dissident overtones in the pre-Iranian Revolution period. As a result of a post-revolution crackdown on Tudeh supporters, he left Iran in 1983, resided in Kabul until late 1987, in Moscow until 1995, and then in Vienna. Kasrai was elected to the Tudeh Party Political Bureau in 1986. He resigned from the party's Bureau in 1988 and from its Central Committee in 1990. Kasrai's last major work (Mohreye Sorkh), published in 1995, was a public expression of disappointment with Communist activity.

Kasrai had an intense social life, informed by his intellectual interests and an ethic of solidarity. He was, at various times, in close personal relationships with such literary figures as Iraj Afshar, Ahmadreza Ahmadi, Houshang Ebtehaj (alias H. E. Sayeh), Mahmoud Etemadzadeh (alias M. E. Behazin), Forough Farrokhzad, Morteza Keyvan, Nader Naderpour, Shahrokh Meskoob, Fereydoon Moshiri, Brayim Younisi and Nima Yooshij. He held informal eclectic salons at both his office and his home on an almost daily basis from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.

He died on February 8, 1996, in Vienna and is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery.