A Reading of Everyday Life in the Poetry of Forough Farrokhzad Based on Henri Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad

Abstract

Introduction

This study investigates how everyday life is conceptualized, transformed, and ultimately recreated in the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, using Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad as its analytical foundation. While Farrokhzad’s work has been widely examined from biographical, feminist, psychoanalytic, and stylistic perspectives, few studies have explored the structural and phenomenological dimensions of everydayness within her poetic universe. Drawing on Lefebvre’s categories of perceived space, conceived space, and lived space, the article argues that Farrokhzad’s poetic trajectory mirrors a progressive deepening of spatial consciousness: from the passive reproduction of daily norms to the creative reappropriation of space as an embodied, existential, and ideological act.
 

Methodology

The research employs a qualitative, interpretive framework that combines critical discourse analysis, cultural semiotics, and close reading. Three phases of Farrokhzad’s poetic development—Asir, Divar, Esyan; Tavalodi Digar; and Iman Biavarim be Aghaz-e Fasl-e Sard—are examined in relation to Lefebvre’s triadic model. Textual evidence is analyzed across three levels:
The spatial logic of the poem (how space is structured linguistically and symbolically),
The positioning of the body (as a rhythmic, affective, and socio-political node), and
The function of everyday life (as repetition, critique, or creative praxis).
This methodological approach allows the study to trace the evolution of Farrokhzad’s spatial imagination not merely as thematic variation but as a shift in the underlying logic of representation.
 

Discussion

Findings indicate that Farrokhzad’s early poetry corresponds to perceived space, where daily life is experienced as a constraining environment dominated by external norms, gendered expectations, and socio-familial surveillance. The body appears objectified, fragmented, and largely reactive. In Tavalodi Digar, the poems transition toward conceived space: Farrokhzad becomes increasingly aware of the ideological frameworks shaping experience. Space is no longer a backdrop, but a site of contestation, and the body emerges as an epistemic instrument capable of re-narrating everyday life. Finally, Iman Biavarim… exemplifies lived space, where the boundaries between inner life, philosophical reflection, and material environment dissolve. Here, everyday life becomes a dynamic field of meaning-making in which the poet actively reconfigures temporal, spatial, and affective relations. Farrokhzad’s language transforms into a phenomenology of feminine existence—one that exposes the tensions between repetition and creativity, domination and resistance, loss and becoming.
 

Conclusion

The study demonstrates that Farrokhzad’s poetic corpus functions as a microcosm of Lefebvre’s theory of space, charting a movement from passive immersion in everyday structures to an active reconstruction of lived reality. By integrating the body, space, and language, Farrokhzad converts the mundane into a site of philosophical and aesthetic innovation. Her work not only challenges the ideological contours of daily life but also reimagines its creative potential—offering a uniquely embodied, gender-conscious phenomenology of the everyday. The findings highlight the significance of Farrokhzad’s poetry as both a literary and spatial intervention, extending Lefebvre’s insights to the domain of modern Persian poetics.