Will to Death, Erasure, and Survival: A Critical Evolution of the Nietzschean Übermensch in The Blind Owl, Prince Ehtejab, and Gavkhuni

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Persian Language and Literature, University of Mazandaran, Mazandaran, Iran

10.22059/jor.2026.407602.2787

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche, responding to the crisis of modernity, introduced the concept of the "Übermensch" as a way to overcome nihilism and recreate meaning and human selfhood. In Iran, engagement with modernity, filtered through Western epistemic frameworks, took a distinct historical and cultural form. This study, using a philosophical-critical approach and thematic-interpretive analysis, examines how the idea of the Übermensch was localized in three novels: The Blind Owl (Pahlavi I), Prince Ehtejab (Pahlavi II), and Gavkhuni (post-revolution). At the theoretical level, Nietzsche’s critique of religion, morality, and modernity is revisited in connection with the authors’ thought—from Hedayat’s Romantic nationalism to Golshiri’s formal leftist view and Modarres-Sadeghi’s individual-national identity—and developed into a fourfold, localized framework. Philosophical-narrative dimensions of subjectivity (action, desire, power, memory) are reflected in the texts, revealing the subject’s fluctuation between passive and active nihilism. This oscillation gives rise to "intermediate nihilism," in which the will-to-power and the Übermensch undergo transformation: in The Blind Owl, as self-directed death and the semi-divine Übermensch; in Prince Ehtejab, as erasure and the flaming Übermensch; and in Gavkhuni, as survival and the fracture-prone Übermensch. Thus, the interplay of philosophy and literature facilitates localizing the Übermensch and rethinking human, ideology, history, and power.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 31, Issue 1
April 2026
Pages 37-58

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