Contemporary Persian Literature

Abstract The early twentieth century was a special era for Arabs. Because Arab countries still did not get rid of the Ottoman tyranny and at the same time, they were caught in a foreign colonization and became foreigner’s protégé. Among these countries, Iraq was of particular importance, so it was noticed by Britain colonial government. After that, some revolutions and movements were formed in the country and the protests escalated. Iran, however, had different situation. Although Iran was not a colony, colonizers had extra authority on it, because of its especial strategic situation and underground reserves and also neighboring former Soviet. The colonization of these lands made Muslims to protest against their cruelness. Different groups of people, ranging from politicians to intellectuals, reacted against them. At this time, some noble poets, especially Bahar and Safi Najafi, fight with colonization, using pens and poets as their weapons. In this paper, we used context analysis approach to investigate their methods in fighting colonization.

Abstract It is impossible to deny the effects of rapid economic, cultural and social changes on modern literature. Romanticism, with its tendency to the nature and its love to natural simple elements which is consistent with human nature, is an effort to leak in the metaphysics. Among different elements of this school, “village” as a symbol of returning to human original nature and noble virtues, and city as a symbol of the distortion, solitude, remoteness and crowdedness, has been present in many poets’ approaches with various nations. In this research, we have tried to compare the view points of modern Iranian and Arab Poets - Gheisar Aminpour and Joudat Fakhroddin – in order to investigate the effects of Romanticism tendencies on them, because they have so many common backgrounds.

Abstract The wistfulness and remembrance of the past bring about sadness and sorrow for people. A feeling of pleasure and sometimes slight sadness at the same time as one thinks about things that happened in the past, a contrast between the present and the past is reflected on nostalgia or sadness and loneliness. What causes nostalgia in people is the separation from the origin, social, cultural, and political status as well as today’s chaotic life. It is said that this unconscious behavior can be manifested through a common feeling among all the people. Nostalgia is one of the main themes of contemporary Persian poems. Manoucher Atashi is one of the contemporary poets who have frequently used nostalgia in his poems. Being familiar with great poets and the scholars along with his living conditions, social status, and his strong feelings and thoughts, Atashi’s sense of nostalgia has been excited. By applying Young and Freud’s ideas, the researchers studied Atashi’s poems as far as the elements of invoking nostalgia are concerned.

Abstract The poetry refers to something which can’t be stated and can’t basically be described in the form of prose and prose poetry. In fact, it is not translatable, but it is interpretable. Some poets try to write poems to describe ideas, issues or events that they have in their mind. We call this kind of poets, poets of events. So we thought that what has been written in such manner can be placed in scope of allegory, not poetry, because poetry is a kind of symbol. In this context, hermeneutics (interpretation of text) that can be imposed on religious works also are used in poetry. So any kind of reading of poems is a new symbol which is added to poetry system. External events in dealing with poet’s experiences are reflected in his mind and influence his experiences and tendencies. It is an unconscious process, so the events are translated to language by poet re-expression. Expression of outer motives by poet is not intentional. Such expression is performed unconsciously based on his worldview. Whenever a poem is constructed and completed in his mind and his unconscious, it is born in the form of words. In this paper we try detect how poet (and not the moderator) contemplates in poetic space. We believe that the order is an individual product and poetry is social one. It means that in poetry, artist’s individuality is dissolved in collective identity. In other words, the order means thinking singly and poetry means thinking collectively.

Abstract In Iranian worldview, there is two special world, i.e. light and gloom world. These two worlds are taken from Zarathustra’s valuable instructions. According to the instructions, the universe is divided into two parts; one part is under Ahura’s authority and the other part is under Ahriman’s authority. Such thinking is still used, because it influenced many beliefs and schools. We can clearly see the reflection of these two worlds in Sohrab Sepehri’s poems. In order to picture the light world, which in comparison to the gloomy world is a virtual one, Sohrab used both Iranian and Islamic elements. He has designed the light city based on immense lightness, Iranian utopia, and garden pictures taken from Islamic instructions; an outlook that of course before him has been existed in mystical texts.

Abstract The study of the Nima Yooshij’s poems shows that there are so many common aspects between imagery in his poems and imagery in classical Iranian poems. This can be seen in his traditional and semi-traditional poems because of his tradition approach in these kinds of poems. Reviewing Nima`s free poems also showed that some of the images of traditional and semi-classical poems have found their way into this kind poems, because they have common usages and backgrounds in the classical poems. This fact is also true about poems of the other contemporary poets. But some other parts of the classical images in the Nima`s free poems are likely the result of his contemplation and thought in the poems of predecessors. Consequently, some similes, metaphors and less-known ironies have found their way into his poems. In this paper, we try to analyze various aspects of this image borrowing concerning the poems of the 38 classical Iranian poets. So we will answer this main question: how much did images of previous poets influence Nima’s imagery?