Modernity, Modernization and Modernism of the 1920s and the 1930s Mirzadeh Eshqi, Three Pictures and Utop

Modernity and its impacts on urbanism and the change of the concept and the nature of the city which began in Qajar era, stands in a sensitive level in Pahlavi’s government (1920-1940). In this stage the concept of modernism can be seen as a pattern in cities (Tehran in particular) which affects all economic, social, cultural, physical, management and urban planning aspects s. The main question here is discovering concealed points in evolution and change in a city; points which can put forward the posture of Iranian modernity and modernism through out these years; points which are seen in novels, poems or short stories. In this period, literary script, either those which have been written by authors against the government, or the ones which have been written by devotees of the government or neutral authors, can express parts of the fact of city metamorphose? If accepted that: “literature is a mirror of all events and incidents,and history of nations” (Akbari Sholdarrei, 2003, 11), what has been written through these years, can be considered as a field for analyzing and explicating the city. This paper is a study based on the above issues. The paper has focused on one of those are written in this period and searches the tale of city, modernity and Iranian modernism: the long poem of “Se Tablo” (“the three pictures”) by Mohammad Reza M. Eshqi. During the first years of the formation of Pahlavi’s government, Farajollah Bahrami, the minister of war, invited the elites to take part in a competition to express their approaches and views in describing their utopia. Because of the chaos that had surrounded Iran at the end of Qajar period, after the coup detats of 1920, many elites hopped that an authoritative government whold be developed. Therefore, holding such a competition could have been considered propaganda for the government of Pahlavi. Later, Eshqi said “ it should be known that in 1924, Farajollah Bahrami asked all Iranian scholars to describe their ideal in a competition called “important competition” and said that it will be published in the newspaper of Sahafaq-e-Sorkh which was the most creditable press of the time. As it was guessed, his aim was for authors to describe their ideal for the formation of an authoritative government by Sardar Sepah (Reza Pahlavi), and later what seen in Shafaq-e-Sorkh had these themes. I was also requested this and I made the ideal pictures that are presented below and of course you will approve that my ideal disagrees with their purpose. All authors wrote in text, but I composed a poem which was pulished in Shafaq-e-Sorkh” (Eshqi. 1971, 172). As it is discussed in this paper, Eshqi’s utopia was a suggestion for the demolition of the process of demolition .It is in the flow of these continious demolitions that the concept of modernity and modernism appears, and the city is put in the procedure of nonstop demolition and renovation.