BASIL BUNTING

242 Newburn Road
Throckley
Northumberland
ENGLAND

29 October 1953

Professor Norman Pearson
English Department
Yale University
New Haven
Connecticut
U.S.A.

Dear Professor Pearson,

I gather that Carlos Williams has written to you
about my predicament.

About eighteen months ago Dr Mosaddeq expelled
me from Persia without giving any intelligible
reason, but in fact because I declined to distort
the news to suit his book. I was at that time Times
correspondent there, having previously held certain
diplomatic posts in Persia and an intelligence
appointment that included Persia in its field. All
these were responsible and highly paid posts but
after my expulsion the Times failed to find any
other work for me, and I have not been able to get
any myself.

Before the war my career was mainly literary,
and you may even chance to be familiar with some
of my poems ( I am thinking of those in Pound's
'Active Anthology'.)

It is no boast to say that I am more widely
read in Persian literature than most of the
Orientalists in British and European Universities,
especially in the early poets - Ferdosi, Rudaki,
Manuchehri, Farrukhi etc, whose work is fundamental
to a real understanding of Persian literature in
the same way that the work of Homer and Aeschylus

is fundamental to an understanding of Greek. Lacking
it, many Orientalists have lacked proportion in their
enthusiasms and run after secondary poets and
secondary aspects of great poets. Hafez, for
example, interpreted exclusively in the light of
Nasser-e Khosro or Khaqani, is less interesting
and far less compelling than the real Hafez who
never, I think, ceased to listen to the echo of
Manuchehri and Onsori.

My wife is Persian, and Persian was our
household language for several years: and there
again I claim some advantage over Orientalists
who, for the most part, know modern Persian
chiefly from newspapers and the careful conversation
of scholars, and miss much that, being still alive
in Persian common speech, reflects back upon the
poets.

I believe I could be of real use in a University,
either to bring a rather wider range of reading in
foreign languages than is usual to the exposition
of English poetry, or, more directly, to teach
Persian as a literature from which we can learn
much that has never been absorbed into European
literatures, and at least something that used to
be got from Latin and Greek before the syllabus
was choked with philology. I also believe that
my very varied experience in many lands is no
disadvantage. It affords us tools sometimes lacking
to academically trained persons which might to some
extent offset my lack of training or experience
in teaching. At least I know I was very successful
in training young intelligence officers immediately
after the war.

In England I find my lack of a degree an
insuperable bar to University work. America is,
or used to be, readier to assess a man's merits
directly, without referring to diplomas which may
have grown very dusty in the course of years.
Moreover I believe America has recently felt the
lack of men familiar with Oriental languages and
Oriental outlooks.

All this gives me no claim on your help: and
I can urge none except my need which is pressing
and the fact that my misfortunes are the result of