Believing in Louis Althusser's axiom that writing is a campaign against absence, Shahrokh Meskoob struggled, throughout his literary and intellectual life, against all manners of absence. His language was a most potent weapon in, and the clearest manifestation of, his struggles. Many adjectives have been used by literary critics to describe his linguistic style. Some have called it a literary creation of first order. Others have characterized it as no less than a miracle; a phenomenon that defies definition. Indeed, Meskoob's language has an existence and identity of its own, palpably independent of the meanings and ideas that it projects. One can claim that his language a gate to a town; but a gate that deserves to be observed and admired in its own right. Meskoob was forever preoccupied with form. In a sense he constantly strove to flesh out and delineate abstract and diffused concepts. He wanted to embody and encase the flow of water, the fleeting time and the unbounded nature. In Meskoob's language, one does not come across the allegories common to classical and even modern Persian literature since he does not want to present his inner experiences through the filter of common linguistic norms or constructs and thereby pare away their original zest and liveliness. The sheer beauty, elegance and power of Meskoobs language is not only the natural byproduct of his mastery of Persian classic literature and western modern culture. It is also the concrete manifestation of his deep fascination with the language itself. In his own words: Language is the panacea of life and antidote to death. Ferdowsi used it to construct a lofty edifice never to be felled by the ravages of time.