The Persian and philhellene poet Fereydoon Faryad died of cancer on Sunday night at the age of 63. From his childhood, he had always busied himself with literature and published his poems in different magazines and reviews.
In 1985, Faryad came to Greece after visiting Paris and undertaking a course in the Greek language at the Hellenic-American Society. He entered the University of Athens to study modern Greek and Greek Literature in general.
At the same time, he began to translate Greek poets and writers. In this way he acquainted Persian readers with Elitis, Sinopoulos, Vrettakos, Livaditis and many others.
In 1990, a large anthology of Ritsos’ poetry was published in Iran with the title “The Diary of an Exile”. For this translation Faryad won the 1991 prize from the Greek Centre for the Translation of Literature. In the same year he taught Persian in the University of Thessaloniki. From that year on, he began to study Ancient Greek, and finished a translation of an anthology of short stories of Antonis Samarakis.
In 1997 he published a translation from ancient Persian literature into Greek – the first book of its kind, entitled “Stories from Paradise”. It includes five magic stories from four classical Iranian poets – Ferdowssi, Nezami, Attar, and Khajouye-Kermani.
The latest work of Faryad was an anthology of modern Greek poetry from Solomos, Kalvos, Palamas, and Kavafy, up to the present time.
Many celebrated poets and writers have written in praise of Faryad’s poetry: for example – Antonis Samarakis, Manolis Anagnostarkis, Titos Patrikios, Dinos Christianopoulos, Katerina Angelaki-Rook, Kostas Asimakopoulos, Michael Meraklis, Kostas Tchaousis, Pandelis Boukalas, Maria Markantonatou, as well as the great poet Iannis Ritsos, and French writer and poet Jacques Lacarrier.
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