PERSIAN LITERATURE QUARTERLY
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:30|Papers Count:11

The present article focuses on the relation between criticism and texts and their effects on each other. It emphasizes the role of texts and considers leniency and tolerance in using texts harmful. The relation between criticism and texts is old and unbreakable, and their cooperation and relation is welcome. Three examples are mentioned in this respect:1. Exact texts and innovations2. Exact texts and imitations3. Criticism of texts

In his invaluable works, Attar deals with monotheism and expresses it in simple language. In Manteq al-Tayr, particularly in the fifth position, by using stories and parables, he portrays monotheism as a religious status and mystic issue. Attar’s view of monotheism is an ascetic one, completely different from the views of Ibn Arabi and others, but there are some similarities between this ascetic view and neo-Platonic ideas.The present article studies Attar’s view of monotheism and presents Platonic ideas which are similar to Attar’s.

Whispers are an integral part of literary genres, including epical and mythological genres. It can be said that one of the poets’ techniques in telling stories is the introspection of the heroes through retelling their internal thoughts. Ferdowsi, the great Iranian epic poet, has sometimes tried to create more excitement in the audience through the introspection of the characters in the story to describe their mentalities and have them put their thoughts into words. The use of this method, a technique used by Ferdowsi, has made him successful in introducing the heroes more exactly and helped him to examine the various aspects of the stories and to prepare the audience for the acceptance of the heroes’ deeds.In this article, the author has made an attempt to analyze three tragic stories of Iraj, Sohrab, and Siavash, through the introspection of the heroes, telling their internal thoughts and preparing the grounds appropriately for the formation of these stories.

The first enormous and comprehensive dictionary on Persian adages, Amsal-o-Hekam, compiled by the great contemporary scholar, Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, is known as the most reliable and complete dictionary on Persian adages. His work caught the attention of many scholars and researches after publication and brought rapture to literature enthusiasts in such a way that many scholars were motivated to record adages. Nevertheless, after the rapture subsided in the next years, some researchers explored the different aspects of this collection and pointed out some of its deficiencies, such as having some adages about races as being superior to Iranian race, not having translations for Arabic adages, containing unknown adages, having no preface or introduction, and containing no obscene words and adages. My attempt in this enquiry is to study the views expressed on this precious work.

Reporting a conversation between Bunasr Meshkan and Khajeh Ahmad Hasan Meimandi, in which Bunasr speaks in support of Bubakr Hasiri, Beihaqi states, “The news about Ma’moon and Ebrahim is known to the lord. I won’t speak of this issue, as it is like taking coal to Newcastle.”Ebrahim, whose full name is Ebrahim ibn Mahdi Abbasi, has not been introduced to literature students, who want to know who this man is. The present article introduces him, his works, and his political and artistic activities, hoping to provide an answer to the above questions.

Late eighteenth century and all the ninth century are important and effective periods in the formation and spread of mystic sects and tendencies in the Khanqahi system of Iran, particularly in the Great Khorasan. Shah Ne'matollah Vali and Shah Qassem Anvaar are two great men of literature and mysticism in this period. They are two mystics with the same thought-provoking title, whose mystic and Khanqahi tendencies were not similar to and compatible with those of the rulers of the Timurid era and the dominant elders of the Khanqah.The present article deals with the relations and similarities between these two mystic poets and their status in the Khanqahi system of the Timurid era.

The present article wants to study the composition and form of love mathnavis, analyze the structure of some of them, explicate the style of story-telling followed by Persian mathnavi writers, and illustrate a picture of the context and composition of these mathnavis by presenting evidence from various works, including Abd al-Razzaq Beig’s “Salim and Salma,” which has been recently published. In addition, the article reveals the great part that Hakim Nezami Ganjavi has played in spreading this style and also shows the status of Abd al-Razzaq as a follower of Nezami in composing mathnavis and in his mathnavi of Salim and Salma.

In composing his great work, Ferdowsi used resources such as Khodaynamehs, historical narratives, Abu Mansoor’s Shahnameh, Avesta, and oral narratives. With his wise views, Ferdowsi precisely and delicately combined the fundamentals of Iranian ancient culture and civilization with Islamic art and culture and thereby made the Iranian global culture last forever.In this article, two early kings of Shahnameh who played great roles in the creation and expansion of Aryan culture and civilization have been studied. Kyumars, the founder of the first human civilization and the first king and Jamshid, the fourth king were influential in spreading this unique culture and civilization. Presenting evidence from Shahnameh, the article mentions the first discoveries and innovations attributed to these two kings in creating and spreading this great culture and civilization.

Romanticism is an intellectual, literal, cultural, and social movement which appeared in the late eighteenth century in Europe. This movement could affect the culture and intellect of many different nations, including Iran. Romanticism could be found in every period of Persian poetry and prose in different ways, but in the Constitutional period it was in the heart of literal and social changes. The poets such as Mirzadeh Eshqi, Nasim Shomal, and Bahar are the most famous ones in constitutional literature, reflecting their special thinking in their poetry.Although Bahar has a tendency toward the classical poetry, because the modernism of his time, he has composed some poems completely compatible with romantic elements. The six main points of romantic thinking (freedom, emotion and feeling, escape and journey, discovery and intuition, common sense, and imagination) constitute a large part of his poetry which can never be separated from it.

Since old times, in addition to rhythm, rhyme, and imagination, other principles and constraints have been devised for Persian poetry. All poets were required to abide by these rules and principles. Doing this and paying attention to the superficial structure of the work indicated the art and skill of the poets, so poets endeavored not to deviate from the main framework of these rules and principles. However, mysticism, which practices a shift of attention from appearance to inner part – from form to meaning – and upsets the familiar habits of this world, applies such beliefs to poetry as well.Mowlana, a great mystic poet, has sometimes not restricted his poetry to current rules and principles, and, in many of his lyrics, has unconsciously practiced defamiliarization and structure deviation in rhyme and rhythm. Such structure deviations and innovations result from the enthusiasm and excitement of his restless soul, which frees him from the necessary consciousness to account for the audience and the rules dominating poetry. This freedom breaks the framework of familiar rules and techniques. The freedom of his soul from his body frees his tongue as well and upsets the logical, standard principles. Whenever Mowlana deviates from current norms of poetry, his soul has practically been free from his body. Breaking away from poetic norms, he flies out of the framework of his body as if he speaks with his divine self.

If Persian poetry is divided into two schools of love and wisdom, the last book of the school of love is "The Lyrics of Shams," a book replete with feelings, emotions, excitement, and enthusiasm, a book in which music and lyrics are perfectly joined. Repetition denotes emphasis; emphasis may be used to praise, despise, warn, …. Mowlana's use of repetition is aimed to highlight the foreground of the picture. He uses it as a power to express sublime ideas that language is not able to express. In other words, language is not effective enough; the audience should try to feel like the composer of the poem in order to realize its artistic value.Repetition creates music and also arts such as alliteration, anadiplosis, epanalepsis, chiasm …. An important musical element in Persian poetry is the rhyme, which is a kind of repetition.