Parvin Etesami

Born 1907, in Tabriz; died 1941, in Tehran. Iranian poet.

Parvin Etesami graduated from the American School for Girls in Tehran in 1925. An adversary of oppression and force, she regarded moral improvement as the means to progress. Her poems “The Drunkard and the Sober Man” and “The Qadi and the Thief condemned vices; the poem “The Toiler” contrasted the honest toiler to the clergy and the authorities. In the second half of the 1930’s, Parvin Etesami advocated personal freedom in such poems as “For Us, Lightning Is the Oppression of the Wealthy.” Her works, traditional in style, made wide use of allegory.