Nameh Farhangestan
Year:2008 | Volume:10 | Issue:3 (39)|Papers Count:18

This paper deals with the characteristics of Khayyamian poetry with a study of the poetries of Kayyam and Abu al-‘Ala Ma’arri. The questions addressed is whether Khayyamian poetry can be regarded as an independent poetic current, and if yes, what these characteristics are. To this end, the writer argues that khayyamian poetry is a blend of two contradictory worlds of philosophy and poetry. Thus it has two different dimensions to it; the dimension of art and the dimension of thought. The latter consists of six elements as follows: discovery of the existing contradictions in the nature of the world and the human being; motif of protest; seizing the day; reaction to the dominant ideology of the time; fatalism as a mocking reaction; a longing for the beauties lost and philosophical doubt and despair. The former exploits a language whose main function is aesthetic, not informative. In all cases, the writer mentions examples for the poetry of the two poets under study, showing that both dimensions of Kayyam's poetry stand far superior to those of Abu al-‘Ala Ma’arri.

A translation theory is by nature interdisciplinary and a function of many literary, social and cultural factors. This article aims at the study of the origins of these theories. As a case study, the translation theories of Goethe and Schleiermacher, and the socio-cultural context of the Romantic Germany have been investigated. The results confirm that their theories of translation are not independent of philosophical, literary and social considerations of the Romantic era in Germany. An important implication of this study concerns the question of translation theories in Iran. In spite of a fairly long tradition of translation in Iran, no specific translation theory has developed. This, it is argued, is because we lack theories in other literary, social, philosophical or cultural areas, for translation theories do not develop in a vacuum. Thus, it is not possible to propose realistic theories of translation without considering these factors.

Sa'di's poems are among the most beautiful Persian poems. While he is called the “undeniable master of words”, the secrets of his craft have rarely been explored. In this paper, the writer examines two sonnets without reference to extratextual elements to show some of the secrets which explain the beauty of the poems. Some of these secrets are as follows: exploiting the artistic function of verbs, proper choice of words, integrity of form and meaning, strong bond between the lines in horizontal and vertical directions.

Up to the time of the Teimoorids, there are two lines attributed to Ferdowsi in the sources recording his biography. It is said that Ferdowsi, when leaving Gazneh, wrote the two lines, addressed to the Gaznavi king, on the wall of the grand mosque of the city. Later, the lines became so famous that many poets mentioned them in their poetry. One of these poets is Baba Qazvini Eftekari, who quotes in one of his poems the two lines from an obscure poet named Sams-e Jasbi. Until now it was either assumed that no such person existed or little attention was paid to him. In this paper, the writer argues that Sams-e Jasbi, the poet referred to in Eftekari's poem, is, most probably, a poet living in the seventh century AH, born in Jasb, Qum.

sod az koruj-e riayin co asman rowsanzamin be aktar-e meymun-o tale’-e mas’udMost authentic critical editions of Hafez record “boruj”, not “koruj”, in the above line, while the late Allameh Ghazvini, and before him Khalkhali and Bakhtiyari, have opted for “koruj-e riyahin”. In an article entitled “boruj-e riyahin”, published in his recent book, Hafez-e Javid, Hashem Javid has presented evidence to show that “koruj-e riyahin” is wrong. In this paper, the writer, presenting lexical, poetical and Qur'anic evidence to show that “koruj-e riyahin” is not only the correct but the better choice.

The literary merits and social concepts of One Thousand and One Nights, a book with anonymous writers, have been of interest in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The importance of the book in the European history of eastern studies is due to its various translations, which have created a western image of the Islamic east. In this paper, which is based on a book by Robert Irvin (translated into Persian by Fereydoun Badrei, the writer examines these translations and their effects on the development of romanticism and fiction in Europe in the 19th century. The writer also refers to the efforts made in the 20th century to find the genuine copies of the book and the sources of the stories. Finally, the writer touches on the importance of folklore for better understanding of the book and on the current studies of the book dealing with the social concepts which used to be of interest to the scholars of Middle Ages.

The question of the influence of Ibn al-‘Arabi on Mowlavi has, even though it has occasioned an immense debate, not been properly addressed. The scholars entering the debate are divided into two groups: those who agree and those who disagree that Mowlavi was influenced by Ibn al-‘Arabi. Expressing a moderate view, William C. Chittick, in his groundbreaking work on Rumi and Ibn al-‘Arabi, takes a fresh historic and objective look at the debate, showing the type and extent of these influences. This paper is an attempt to explain and expand on Chittick's views and his methodological analysis of the question.

In this book, R. Schmitt changes the method of presenting, the transliteration and transcription of the inscriptions by dividing them in paragraphes, each paragraph in clauses and giving each clause an alphabetic symbol A, B, C...The formal and traditional presentation, up to now, was the transliteration of an inscription line by line in accordance with the original text. In this way, the researcher could find very easily the word he was looking, with the knowledge of the name of the inscription and the number of the line in any source. The name of the inscription is presented by abbreviated form of the name of the king and the place it is found.In the new method of prof. Schmitt, the researcher has to find, the same word, under the number of paragraph and the alphabetic symbol of the clause. This difficult task becomes more conspicuous with a long inscription, such as the inscription of Darius in Bistun, with 5 columns (some of them more than 90 lines), where the writer has not even mentioned the beginning of each column. The absence of a glossary or a concordance makes the task of research even harder.Forgetting these anomalies, this book presents many new informations, especially for the view of the writer about inscripions which were not studied by him in his two earlier book (1991, and 2000). With the hope that this book will be followed by a glossary and a concordance giving for each word its identity in the old and new method.

In this paper, the writer introduces “Poetry of Nima Youshij, a discussion on the emergence of poetic systems”, the newly published book of Omid Tabibzadeh, associate professor of linguistics at Bu ‘Ali Sina University. The greater part of the paper, however, is devoted to a critical examination of the contents of the book.

Recently, an incomplete Persian translation manuscript of the History of Herat, written by ‘Abd al-rahman Fami-e Heravi, has been published by Miras-e Maktub publishers in the form of images. In this paper, the writer first presents a brief discussion on the tradition of historiography in the Islamic world, and then examines the manuscript, showing that the first 45 pages have been taken from the second chapter of Fami's book and that the other pages are translations of chapters three to six. The writer also examines the histories of Herat and refers to the sources of Fami's book, and the errors of the text. He claims that this book is a shortened translation of Fami's history of Herat.

In this paper, the writers first describe the rituals of death and rebirth festivities in the ancient Iran and then explore the concept of death in Zurvanism, Manichaeism, Mazdani, Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism. This is followed by a detailed description of the concept of death and the world after death ad burial rituals in Zoroastrianism. The article ends with a description of burial rituals as practiced by the Achaemenian kings and modern Zoroastrians. The writers argue that ancient Iranians have always believed in the resurrection of dead humans, a belief which developed from a primitive faith in the world of the dead into more elaborate ideas of heaven and hell.

In this paper, the writer divides loan translation into two kinds: semantic and structural-semantic. In the former case, the meaning of a word is gradually extended under the influence of a foreign word. In the latter case, a foreign expression is translated into the target language word for word. The writer further divides the structural-semantic loan translation into two kinds: whole and partial. In the former case, each part of the foreign word is translated into a corresponding part in the target language, whereas in the latter case, only part of the foreign word is translated, the other parts are chosen from among the target language elements based on the meaning the word conveys. Finally, the writer offers guidelines that facilitate structural-semantic loan translation.