Persian Huck: On the Reception of Huckleberry Finn in Iran

Abstract

During a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1872, Samuel Langhorne Clemens had the privilege of seeing “the venerable vase that once contained the ashes of Xerxes,” the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. The following year he wrote five letters for the New York Herald about the visit of Naser al-Din, the shah of Persia, to England and Belgium. Furthermore, in a response written on December 1, 1874, to a request from a Miss Street, he incorrectly wrote “as the Persians say—on your head be it” instead of “on my head be it.” The American writer’s interest in the Persians as indicated in his willingness to quote them obviously outweighed his knowledge of them. However, as the present paper shows, the Persians’ treatment of the American writer, which can be traced back to 1910, was clearly more serious and informed.