Anxious Gendered Appropriation: A Comparative Study of Chekhov’s “Misery” and Daneshvar’s “Whom Shall I Greet?”

This essay examines the appropriation of Anton Chekhov’s short story “Misery” (1886) by Simin Daneshvar in her “Be ki salam konam” (Whom Shall I Greet?” 1980). Daneshvar appropriates the Russian short story for her feminist agenda in the new Iranian context. Such a transnational transposition can be studied in light of Harold Bloom’s notion of “anxiety of influence”. More specifically, the comparison between these two short stories, in addition to throwing into relief the poetics of adaptation and influence, problematizes the supposed gender freeness of Bloom’s theory. Having described the many similarities (formal and thematic) between the two short stories, it is argued that Bloom’s theory needs a gendered and transnational revision. Daneshvar hybridizes the Russian text. From the perspective of Bloom’s theory of anxiety of influence, we can say that in the absence of a feminine tradition (at least in the realm of prose fiction), Daneshvar creates a feminist Chekhov in her misreading of the Russian author. Yet the problem with Bloom’s theory is its male-centeredness, that is, the paternal precursor. In a sense, Daneshvar’s creative misreading (in the Bloomian sense) replaces the paternal structure with a maternal metaphor. Also, the intercultural dialogue between the Russian and Iranian authors redefines anxiety as transnational. Accordingly, we might call Daneshvar’s story a gendered revisionist appropriation.