What realism cannot simply show

Different ways of making a war story

Panjali distinguishes epic, melodramatic and realist responses to the Iran–Iraq war. He argues that the first two can reproduce fixed moral oppositions through heroes, enemies and exemplary victims. His larger question concerns how literary form simplifies or exposes a difficult historical reality. Source 1

Memoirs of a Soldier appears among the realist works he discusses. He recognises Rabihavi’s ability to withdraw the author’s overt intervention and present suffering through an indifferent conscript. That appreciation is qualified: Panjali sees documentary or social value without accepting that recording visible circumstances exhausts literature’s task. Source 1

A critical reservation

Drawing on Adorno, the essay asks whether realism can reveal the difficulty of representing reality within its own form and language. Panjali argues that a direct inventory of soldiers or displaced people may remain insufficient, even when its intention is humane and critical of war. Source 1

This is a disputable critical position, preserved as his argument. It sits beside readers who value precisely Rabihavi’s attention to everyday experience. Bringing those responses together makes the reception of the early war writing a discussion with real differences, rather than a sequence of promotional endorsements. Source 1

Sources & credits

1. Bahman Panjali · war, anti-war and idealism

   Persian critical essay, 17 August 2018, in Radio Zamaneh’s thirty-years-since-the-war dossier. Its distinctions between epic, melodrama and realism are the critic’s argument.