Mystical Literature
Year:2020 | Volume:11 | Issue:21|Papers Count:7

Numerous books and articles have been written about the mystic and celebrated Iranian poet, Attar, and there is hence an extensive record of Attar-related studies. The proliferation of these studies further demonstrates the necessity of studying and analyzing them in order to have a good grasp of the depth and breadth of conducted studies and their achievements, and to refrain from undertaking repetitive studies. Keeping a record of research heritage of literary figures is one of the necessary undertakings in today's literary research, which aids researchers to be aware of the issues that have or have not been investigated with regard to them. Attar is the focus of the present descriptive-analytic study. Due to the vastness of Attar-related studies, only the record of relevant studies in Persian articles is discussed in this article. The time period covered by the study is 1300 SH to 1395 SH. Six-hundred fifty Persian articles about Attar have been published in specialized literary journals, especially scientific-research ones, during these 95 years. Statistics related to time distribution of these articles and their broad and detailed topics have been presented in several tables, and an analysis of the trend and approaches of Attar-related studies in these 95 years has been carried out.

Unity is of the central concepts in mystical thinking. Mawlana has used metaphor to elucidate this concept, similar to numerous other inexplicit mystic concepts. In this study, metaphors used for the concept of unity by Mawlana's in Masnavi Ma’ navi (The Spiritual Couplets) have been studied and analyzed based on Lakoff and Johnson’ s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The present study aimed at understanding Mawlana’ s view about the concept, his style of introducing that to the audience, and the factors affecting his choice of metaphors, through analyzing the metaphors and identifying their type and cognitive functions. Accordingly, we first extracted instances of unity metaphors and then analyzed and described them. In Masnavi, Mawlana has used seven meta-metaphors of light, man, natural element, object, place and container, growing entities, and abstract concept; most of which are ontological metaphors. Through these metaphors, all the features and functions of the concept of unity are displayed to the audience, though via observing confidentiality principle. Rumi's eloquence as an orator, congenial relation with the public, poetic style, and living environment have been influential in choosing simple, tangible and popular metaphors. Nonetheless, there is a category of metaphors, such as “ unity is colorlessness” or “ unity is thought” , in which the presented image of unity is highly abstract; as if it needs to be interpreted by special target audience or elites. In these metaphors, the image used to introduce the abstract concept of unity is itself abstract and needs to be clarified.

There are written works in the field of Persian novels that have frequent explicit and implicit references to mystical issues. These novels often utilize mysticism either as an element for characterization and advancement of the story plot or as an effective factor for presenting the discourse desired by the author. Sag va Zemestan-e Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter) and Touba va ma'na-ye Shab (Touba and Meaning of Night) by Shahrnoush Parsipour are among novels in which mysticism and mystical elements are reflected in various ways. Preceptor and devotion to him in a spiritual journey is one of these mystical themes. In this study, which aimed to examine the place of preceptor and devotion to him in the mentioned works, it was found that in both novels, the temperamental features and sociopolitical circumstances of the time including war, crime, death, suffering, sin and loneliness have led the story characters to incline to mysticism. The manners of some characters in the two stories who, despite taking advantage of the preceptor’ s mystical teachings, did not reach spiritual excellence or acted differently from each other may reveal two things: first, the transformation in the author's approach occurred as a result of sociopolitical changes of the two decades of fifty and sixty, and second, her change of attitude about surrender to preceptor. The author establishes the idea that unconditional surrender to preceptor is incompatible with reflective and skeptical spirit of modern man; the fact that manifests itself in the words as well as the behaviors of the characters in the story.

The term “ Par-e-Jibril” (The Feather of Gabriel) turned to be one of the most frequent terms in various fields of Islamic sciences in the sixth century (AH). This ontological term, which is the evolved form of the former idea of “ Bal-e-Fereshte” (Angel’ s Wing), was mainly constructed in texts related to Sufism and gradually changed to a fundamental term for presenting the ontological tenets of Muslim thinkers. From the sixth century onwards, the mentioned term has been employed in other fields of Islamic sciences, including Hikmah and Philosophy. Probing into the historical evolution of the term, “ The Feather of Gabriel” , is considered essential for explicating one of the central milestones and turning points in the history of Islamic thought; which is the convergence point of the two fields of Mysticism and Philosophy. This article takes a historical-analytic approach and consists of two main parts. The first part presents an analysis of “ Angel’ s Wing” image in the primary texts of Islamic culture. The next part describes the evolution and inclination of the term towards the two posterior ideas of “ The Feather of Gabriel” and “ The Song of the Gabriel`s Feather” throughout a historical process.

Cognitive Linguistics through examination of relationships between mind and language strives to discover meaning. It also achieves novel understanding of the subjects through examination of pictorial schemas and discovery of assumptions between mental and real fields. Kinesthetic schemas are those pictorial schemas in which human, stimulated by his/her movement experiences and other mobile phenomena, creates mobile conceptual and perceptual structures for mental phenomena. Mantegh-o Teir, thanks to its didactic-mystical characteristics in narrating journey of birds and its symbolic language, could lend itself to being examined in terms of kinesthetic schemas. This schema implies Attar’ s determined efforts on returning to the origin. The questions of the article are what the indications and objectives of ascending and descending movements in Mantegh-o Teir are and what mystical issues Attar is trying to explain by illustrating the journey of birds. The principle of the fall of man is a positive one to Attar which is the result of integration of body and spirit. In other words, he assumes man as the “ wonder of mysteries” . His purpose in this descending schema is to delineate the obstacles and the necessity of passing through them. In ascending schema, Attar aims to explain the essence and significance of returning to the origin. The most important requirement for the ascending movement is “ self-detachment” and the worst kind of descending movement is decline in human attributes or qualities; corollary to which is loss of power of perception. The requirement for the ascending journey is disregarding this world and the other world and setting one’ s heart just on The Right (Hagh); which becomes possible by means of “ love” and eventually culminates in unity. Each of these schemas can be elucidated by qualitative and quantitative movements.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962 AD) was a German author and mystic. He became acquainted with the teachings of Christian theology from an early age and then showed an inclination towards Eastern mystical schools in his youth. The events in his life and his mystical studies created a special style for him, which could be seen in the story of Knulp; a modern story that deals with the mystic personality of a character called Knulp. By way of comparison, Shams Tabrizi (582-645 AH) was an Iranian mystic whose stories have been narrated in Shams' Maqalat (Conversations). Analogies could be drawn between the mystical image of the character of Knulp in the story of Knulp and Shams Tabrizi in Maqalat. Applying a descriptivecomparative method, in this article, we first provide a brief introduction to Hesse and describe the place of mysticism in his thoughts and works. We then examine Knulp in terms of its form and content, and explain the mystical characteristics of the leading character at different stages of his life. In the following, we give a brief description of Shams' life to present his mystical features. In the final part, comparisons are made between the two works, Knulp and Shams Maqalat, and the similarities between the two characters of Knulp and Shams Tabrizi will be described. Among these similarities, we can refer to the narratives of both works which depict the personality traits of Knulp and Shams, such as spiritual loneliness and humor. The main difference, however, is that Knulp is a literary work, but Maqalat is an intuitive one.

The story of Sheikh San’ aan is one of the stories for which various sources have been cited and suggested by different scholars. However, the interpretive narrative of Harut and Marut is a source which has not received due attention in these studies. This narrative contains elements that could not be found in any other probable and known sources of Sheikh San’ aan, and because of its great structural, thematic as well as historical resemblances, it supersedes other sources of Sheikh San’ aan. Relying on diverse solid evidence and indications in these two stories, the present study claims that this narrative can be considered one of the main hypotexts inspiring Attar’ s story of Sheikh San’ aan; which indicates a relationship of hypertextuality between the two texts. Attar's style in the introduction of the story and the similarities between the events and the main characters of these two stories, such as Harut and Marut, Sheikh San’ aan, Zohra and Christian girl, as well as the themes such descent, vanity, love as a means of divine test, sin and its effects, repentance, and mentioning specific cases that have not been mentioned in any one of the sources of Sheikh San’ aan, leave no doubt that Attar had taken this narrative into consideration when writing up that of his own.