Cyrus Atabay

Cyrus was born to Princess Hamdam-al-Ṣalṭana, who was Reza Shah Pahlavi’s firstborn (from his first wife), and Hādi Atabay. He was sent by his father to Berlin to attend school before he was eight years old. Atabay lived in Germany during World War II and in Iran and Switzerland subsequently. In Switzerland the Swiss poet and writer Max Rychner (1897-1965), and in Germany the essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), were impressed by his poetic talent and wrote favorably about him. Atabay’s poems were first published in 1948 in the Swiss journal Die Tat (The deed). He returned to Germany in 1951 and studied literature at Munich University from 1952 to 1960. His first three poetry collections, Einige Schatten (Some shadows, 1956), An- und Abflüge (Arrivals and departures, 1958), and Meditation am Webstuhl (Meditation on the loom, 1960), were published in Germany during this period. They were followed by the publication of Gegenüber der Sonne (Facing the sun) in 1964. This collection also included short pieces of prose, a trend that continued in several of Atabay’s later collections.

In 1978 he settled in London and became acquainted with Elias Canetti (1905-1994), the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Literature, and Erich Fried (1921-1988) the eminent Austrian poet. He returned to Munich in 1983 and remained there for the rest of his life.

Saeid Rezvani, "ATABAY, CYRUS," Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2014, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/atabay-cyrus (accessed on 02 September 2014).