Persian literature (Persian: ادبیات پارسی) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources often come from far-flung regions beyond the borders of present-day Iran, as the Persian language flourished and survives across wide swaths of Central Asia. For instance, Rumi, one of Persia’s (and Islam’s) best-loved poets, wrote in Persian but lived in Konya, now in Turkey and then the capital of the Seljuks. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia, and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from areas that are now part of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia. Not all this literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included.
Surviving works in Persian languages (such as Old Persian or Middle Persian) date back as far as 650 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscriptions. The bulk of the surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Islamic conquest of Iran circa 650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Persians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and increasingly, also its writers and poets. Persians wrote both in Arabic and Persian; Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian poets such as Sa’di, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are well known in the world and have influenced the literature of many countries.
Pre-Islamic Iranian literature
Very few literary works have remained from ancient Persia. Most of these consist of the royal inscriptions of Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius I (522-486 BC) and his son Xerxes. Zoroastrian writings mainly were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Iran. The Parsis who fled to India however took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon, including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries (Zend) thereof. Some works of Sassanid geography and travel also survived albeit in Arabic translations.
No single text devoting to literary criticism has survived from Pre-Islamic Persia. However, some essays in Pahlavi such as ‘’Ayin-e name nebeshtan and Bab-e edteda’I-ye Kalile va Demne have been considered as literary criticism. (Zarrinkoub, 1959)[1] Some researchers have quoted the Sho’ubiyye as asserting the pre-Islamic Persians had books on eloquence, such as Karvand. No trace remains of such books. There are some indications that some among Persian elite were familiar with Greek rhetoric and literary criticism. (Zarrinkoub, 1947)
Persian literature of the medieval and pre-modern periods
While initially overshadowed by Arabic, during the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, modern Persian soon became a literary language again of the Central Asian lands. The rebirth of the language in its new form is often accredited to Ferdowsi, Unsuri, Daqiqi, Rudaki, and their generation, as they used pre-Islamic nationalism as a conduit to revive the language and customs of ancient Persia.
In particular, says Ferdowsi himself in his Shahnama:
بسی رنج بردم در این سال سی
عجم زنده کردم بدین پارسی
“For thirty years, I endured much pain and strife,
with Persian I gave the Ajam verve and life”.
Poetry
So strong is the Persian aptitude for versifying everyday expressions that one can encounter poetry in almost every classical work, whether from Persian literature, science, or metaphysics. In short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost half of Avicenna’s medical writings are in verse.
Works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as سبک فاخر “exalted in style”. The tradition of royal patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era, and carried over through the Abbasid and Samanid courts into every major Persian dynasty. The Qasideh was perhaps the most famous form of panegyric used, though quatrains such as those in Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyyat are also widely popular.
“Khorasani style”, as most of its followers were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized with its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, and Manuchehri. Panegyric masters such as Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions.
Through these courts and system of patronage emerged the epic style of poetry, with Ferdowsi’s Shahnama at the apex. By glorifying the Iranian historical past in heroic and elevated verses, he and other notables such as Daqiqi and Asadi Tusi presented the “Ajam” with a source of pride and inspiration that has helped preserve a sense of identity for the Iranian peoples over the ages. Ferdowsi set a model to be followed by a host of other poets later on.
The thirteenth century marks the ascendancy of lyric poetry with the consequent development of the ghazal into a major verse form, as well as the rise of mystical and Sufi poetry. This style is often called “the Eraqi style”, and is known by its emotional lyric qualities, rich meters, and the relative simplicity of its language. Emotional romantic poetry was not something new however, as works such as Vis o Ramin by Asad Gorgani, and Yusof o Zoleikha by Am’aq exemplify. Poets such as Sana’i and Attar (who ostensibly have inspired Rumi), Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, and Nezami, were highly respected ghazal writers. However, the elite of this school are none other than Rumi, Sadi, and Hafez.
Regarding the tradition of Persian love poetry during the Safavid era, Persian historian Ehsan Yarshater notes, “As a rule, the beloved is not a woman, but a young man. In the early centuries of Islam, the raids into Central Asia produced many young slaves. Slaves were also bought or received as gifts. They were made to serve as pages at court or in the households of the affluent, or as soldiers and bodyguards. Young men, slaves or not, also, served wine at banquets and receptions, and the more gifted among them could play music and maintain a cultivated conversation. It was love toward young pages, soldiers, or novices in trades and professions which was the subject of lyrical introductions to panegyrics from the beginning of Persian poetry, and of the ghazal.”[2]
In the didactic genre one can mention Sanai’s Hadiqatul Haqiqah as well as Nezami’s Makhzan-ul-Asrār. Some of Attar’s works also belong to this genre as do the major works of Rumi, although some tend to classify these in the lyrical type, due to their mystical and emotional qualities. In addition, some tend to group Naser Khosrow’s works in this style as well, however the true gem of this genre is Sadi’s Bustan, a heavyweight of Persian literature.
After the fifteenth century, the Indian style of Persian poetry (sometimes also called Isfahani or Safavi styles) took over. This style has its roots in the Timurid era, and produced the likes of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi.
Persian story writing
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Persian: هزار و یک شب) is a medieval Persian literary epic which tells the story of Scheherazade (Šarzād in Persian), a Sassanid Queen, who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, King Shahryar (Šahryār), to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over many centuries, by many people and in many styles, and many have become famous in their own right. Notable examples include Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.
The nucleus of the stories is formed by a Pahlavi Sassanid Persian book called Hazār Afsānah[3] (“Thousand Myths”, in Persian: هزارافسانه), a collection of ancient Indian and Persian folk tales. During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. It was during this time that many of the stories, which were originally folk stories, were thought to have been collected orally over many years and later then compiled into a single book. The later compiler and translator into Arabic is reputedly storyteller Abu abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar in the 9th century. The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the 14th century.
The influence of Persian literature on world literature
Sufi literature
William Shakespeare referred to Iran as the “land of the Sophy”.[4] Some of Persia’s best-beloved medieval poets were Sufis, and their poetry was, and is, widely read by Sufis from Morocco to Indonesia. Rumi (Maulānā) in particular is renowned both as a poet and as the founder of a widespread Sufi order. The themes and styles of this devotional poetry have been widely imitated by many Sufi poets. See also the article on Sufi poetry.
Many notable texts in Persian mystic literature are not poems, yet highly read and regarded. Among those are Kimiya-yi sa’ādat and Asrar al-Tawhid.
Afghanistan and Central Asia
Afghanistan and the Transoxiana have the claim of being the birthplace of Modern Persian. Most of the great patrons of Persian literature such as Sultan Sanjar and the courts of the Samanids and Ghaznavids were situated in this region, as were the geniuses such as Rudaki, Unsuri, and Ferdowsi who composed them. As such, this rich literary heritage continues to survive well into the present in countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
India, Pakistan, and Kashmir
With the emergence of the Ghaznavids and their successors such as the Ghurids, Timurids and Mughal Empire, Persian culture and its literature gradually diffused into the vast Indian subcontinent. Persian was the language of the nobility, literary circles, and the royal Mughal courts for hundreds of years. (In modern times, Persian has been generally supplanted by Urdu, a heavily Persian-influenced dialect of Hindustani.)
Under the Moghul Empire of India during the sixteenth century, the official language of India became Persian. Only in 1832 did the British army force the Indian subcontinent to begin conducting business in English. (Clawson, p.6) Persian poetry in fact flourished in these regions while post-Safavid Iranian literature stagnated. Dehkhoda and other scholars of the 20th century, for example, largely based their works on the detailed lexicography produced in India, using compilations such as Ghazi khan Badr Muhammad Dehlavi’s Adat al-Fudhala (اداه الفضلا), Ibrahim Ghavamuddin Farughi’s Farhang-i Ibrahimi (فرهنگ ابراهیمی), and particularly Muhammad Padshah’s Farhang-i Anandraj (فرهنگ آناندراج). Famous South Asian poets and scholars such as Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Muhammad Iqbal of Lahore found many admirers in Iran itself.
Western literature
Persian literature was little known in the West before the 19th century. It became much better known following the publication of several translations from the works of late medieval Persian poets, and inspired works by various Western poets and writers.
German literature
- In 1819, Goethe published his West-östlicher Divan, a collection of lyric poems inspired by a German translation of Hafiz (1326-1390).
- The German essayist and philosopher Nietzsche was the author of the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885),[5] referring to the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster(circa 1700 BCE).
English literature
- A selection from Firdausi’s Shahnameh (935-1020) was published in 1832 by James Atkinson, a physician employed by the British East India Company.
- A portion of this abridgment was later versified by the British poet Matthew Arnold in his 1853 Rustam and Sohrab.
- The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was another admirer of Persian poetry. He published several essays in 1876 that discuss Persian poetry: Letters and Social Aims, From the Persian of Hafiz, and Ghaselle.
Perhaps the most popular Persian poet of the 19th and early 20th centuries was Omar Khayyam (1048-1123), whose Rubaiyat was freely translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Khayyam is esteemed more as a scientist than a poet in his native Persia, but in Fitzgerald’s rendering, he became one of the most quoted poets in English. Khayyam’s line, “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou”, is known to many who could not say who wrote it, or where.
The Persian poet and mystic Rumi (1207-1273) (known as Molana in Iran) has attracted a large following in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Popularizing translations by Coleman Barks have presented Rumi as a New Age sage. There are also a number of more literary translations by scholars such as A. J. Arberry.
The classical poets (Hafiz, Sa’di, Khayyam, Rumi, Nezami and Ferdowsi), are now widely known in English and can be read in various translations. Other works of Persian literature are untranslated and little known.
Swedish literature
During the last century, numerous works of classical Persian literature have been translated into Swedish by baron Eric Hermelin. He translated works by, among others, Farid al-Din Attar, Rumi, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, Sa’adi and Sana’i. Being influenced by the writings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg he was especially attracted to the religious or Sufi aspects of classical Persian poetry.
More recently Rumi, Hafiz and Fakhruddin ‘Iraqi are available in translation by Ashk Dahlén, scholar in Iranian Studies, who has made Persian literature known to a wider audience in Sweden.
Contemporary Persian literature
In the 19th century, Persian literature experienced dramatic change and entered a new era. The beginning of this change is exemplified in an incident in the mid-nineteenth century at the court of Nasereddin Shah, where the reform-minded prime minister, Amir Kabir, chastised the poet Habibollah Qa’ani for “lying” in a panegyric qasida written in Kabir’s honor. Kabir saw poetry in general and the type of poetry that had developed during the Qajar period as detrimental to “progress” and “modernization” in Iranian society, which he believed was in dire need of change. Such concerns were also expressed by others such as Fath-’Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Mirza Malkom Khan. Khan also addressed a need for a change in Persian poetry in literary terms as well, always linking it to social concerns.
One cannot understand the new Persian literary movement without also understanding the intellectual movements among Iranian philosophical circles. Given the social and political climate of Persia (Iran) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which led to the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911, the idea that change in poetry was necessary became widespread. Many argued that Persian poetry should reflect the realities of a country in transition. This idea was propagated by notable literary figures such as Ali Akbar Dehkhoda and Abolqasem Aref, who challenged the traditional system of Persian poetry in terms of introducing new content and experimentation with rhetoric, lexico-semantics, and structe. Dehkhoda, for instance, used a lesser-known traditional form, the mosammat, to elegize the execution of a revolutionary journalist. ‘Aref employed the ghazal, “the most central genre within the lyrical tradition” (p. 88), to write his “Payam-e Azadi” (Message of Freedom).
Some researchers argue that, the notion of “sociopolitical ramifications of esthetic changes” led to the idea of poets “as social leaders trying the limits and possibilities of social change.
An important movement in modern Persian literature centered around the question of modernization and westernization, and whether these terms are synonymous as used to describe the evolution of Iranian society. It can be argued that almost all advocates of modernism in Persian literature, from Akhundzadeh, Kermani, and Malkom Khan to Dehkhoda, ‘Aref, Bahar, and Rafat, were inspired by developments and changes that had occurred in Western, particularly European, literatures. Such inspirations did not mean blindly copying Western models, but the adaptation of aspects of Western literature, changing them to fit the needs of the Iranian culture.
Following the pioneering works of Ahmad Kasravi, Sadeq Hedayat and many others, the Iranian wave of comparative literature and literary criticism reached a symbolic crest with the emergence of Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Shahrokh Meskoob, Houshang Golshiri and Ebrahim Golestan.
Literary criticism
Shahrokh Meskoob, Prominent literary critic and Shahnameh expert
Pioneers of Persian literary criticism in 19th century include Mirza Fath `Ali Akhundzade, Mirza Malkom Khan, Mirza `Abd al-Rahim Talebof and Zeyn al-`Abedin Maraghe`i.
Prominent 20th century critics include:
- Allameh Dehkhoda
- Badiozzaman Forouzanfar
- Mohammad Taghi Bahar
- Jalal Homaei
- Mohammad Moin
- Saeed Nafisi
- Parviz Natel-Khanlari
- Sadeq Hedayat
- Ahmad Kasravi.
- Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub
- Shahrokh Meskoob
- Hamid Dabashi
Persian short stories
Historically, the modern Persian short story has undergone three stages of development: a formative period, a period of consolidation and growth, and a period of diversity.
The formative period
The formative period was ushered in by Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh’s collection Yak-i Bud Yak-i Nabud(1921; tr. H. Moayyad and P. Sprachman as Once Upon a Time, New York, 1985), and gained momentum with the early short stories of Sadeq Hedayat (1903-51). Jamalzadeh (1895-1997) is usually considered as the first writer of modem short stories in Persian. His stories focus on plot and action rather than on mood or character development, and in that respect are reminiscent of the works of Guy de Maupassam and O. Henry. In contrast, Sadeq Hedayat, the writer who introduced modernism to Persian literature, brought about a fundamental change in Persian fiction. In addition to his longer stories, Bgf-e kur (his masterpiece; see above ii.) and Haji Aqa (1945), he wrote collections of short stories including Seh Ghatra Khun (Three Drops of Blood, 1932; tr. into French by G. Lazard as Trois gouuttes de sang, Paris 1996) and Zenda be Gur (Buried Alive, 1930). His stories were written in a simple and lucid language, but he employed a variety of approaches, from realism and naturalism to surrealistic fantasy, breaking new ground and introducing a whole range of literary models and presenting new possibilities for the further development of the genre. He experimented with disrupted chronology” and non-linear or circular plots, applying these techniques to both his realistic and surrealist writings. Unlike Hedayat, who focused on the psychological complexity and latent vulnerabilities of the individual, Bozorg Alavi depicts ideologically motivated personages defying oppression and social injustice. Such characters, seldom portrayed before in Persian fiction, are Alavi’s main contribution to the thematic range of the modem Persian short story. This commitment to social issues is emulated by Fereydun Tonokaboni (b. 1937), Mahmud Dawlatabadi (b. 1940), Samad Behrangi (q.v.; 1939-68), and other writers of the left in the next generation.
Sadeq Chubak was one of the first authors to break the taboo. Following the example of William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, and Ernest Hemingway, his blunt approach appears in the early short story collections Khayma Shab-bazi (The Puppet Show, 1945) and Antar-i ke Luti-ash Morda Bud (1949; tr. P. Avery as “The Baboon Whose Buffoon was Dead”, New World Writing 11, 1957, pp. 14-24), Later stories like Zir-e Cheragh-e Ghermez, Pirahan-e Zereski, and Chera Darya Tufani Shoda Bud describe the naked bestiality and moral degradation of the personages with no trace of squeamishness. His short stories mirror rotting society, populated by the crashed and the defeated. Chubak picks marginal characters–vagrants, pigeon-racers, corpse-washers, prostitutes, and opium addicts-who rarely appear in the fiction of his predecessors, and whom he portrays with vividness and force. His readers come face to face with grim realities and incidents, which they have often witnessed for themselves in everyday life but shunned out of their mind through complacency.
A distinctive trait of post-war Persian fiction, in all the three stages of development, is the attention devoted to narrative styles and techniques, In matters of style two main trends prevail: Some authors, like Chubak and Al-e Ahmad, follow colloquial speech patterns; others, such as Ebrahim Golestan (b. 1922) and Mohammad Etemadzadeh “Behazin” (b, 1915), have adopted a more literary and lyrical tone. Although the work of all four writers stretch into later periods, some brief remarks about their differing techniques, which delineated future paths, need mentioning at the outset. Golestan experimented with different narrative styles, and it was only in two late collections of stories, Juy o Divar o Teshna (The Stream and the Wall and the Parched, 1967) and Madd o Meh (The Tide and the Mist, 1969) that he managed to find a style and voice of his own. His poetic language draws inspiration both from syntactical forms of classical Persian prose, and the experiments of modernist writers, most notably Gertrude Stein. The influence of modernism is evident also in the structure of Golestan’s short stories, where the traditional linear plot line is abandoned in favor of disrupted chronology and free association of ideas. Contrary to most other modern Persian authors, Golestan pays little heed to the state of the poor and the dispossessed. Instead, his short stories are devoted to the world of Persian intellectuals, their concerns, anxieties and private obsessions. His short stories resemble well-made decorative objects d’art, pleasing perhaps to the cognoscenti but leaving the majority of readers unmoved. Golestan’s brand of modernism has influenced the later generation of writers like Bahman Forsi (b. 1933) and Hooshang Golshiri (b. 1937). Although the stories of Behazin show similar indebtedness to classical Persian models, he does not follow Golestan’s modernist experiments with syntax. Behazin is an author whose stories, delivered in a lucid literary style, express his leftist social beliefs. In some of his later works like the short story collection Mohra-ye Mar (The Snake Charm. 1955), he turns to literary allegory, imbuing ancient tales with a new message, a technique, which allows him to express his critical views obliquely. Behazin’s predecessors in the sub-genre of the allegorical tale were Hedayat (in Ab-e Zendegi, 1931) and Chubak (“Esa’a-ye Adab” in the collection Khayma-Shab-Bazi).
Period of growth and development
This second period in the development of the modern Persian short story began with the Mossadegh era and Plot against Mossadegh|coup of 19 August 1953, and ended with the revolution of 1979.
Mehdi Akhavan Sales and Fereydoon Moshiri, modern Persian poets
Jalal Al-e Ahmad is among the proponents of new political and cultural ideas whose influence and impact straddle both the first and the second periods in the history of modern Persian fiction. His writings show an awareness of the works of Franz Fanon and the new generation of third-world writers concerned with the problems of cultural domination by colonial powers. Al-e Ahmad, Behazin, Tonekaboni, and Behrangi can all be described as engage writers because most of their stories are built around a central ideological tenet or “thesis” and illustrate the authors’ political views and leanings. Among poets of this period Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967) has a special place as the first female poet of Persian language who reached the level of critical acclaim of her contemporary poets and left a very lasting legacy despite her short life. Her legacy and influence is not primarily (or uniquely) political however she was among the first women able to set a personal and original mark, in this sense she is elevated to an iconic status.
Another notable author from this period is Simin Daneshvar (b. 1921), the first woman writer of note in contemporary Persian literature. Her reputation rests largely on her popular navel Savusun (1969). Simin Daneshvar’s short stories deserve mention because they focus on the plight and social exclusion of women in Persian society and address topical issues from a woman’s point of view.
Gholam Hossein Saedi‘ s (1935-85) short stories, which he called ghessa, often transcend the boundaries of realism and attain a symbolic significance. His allegorical stories, which occasionally resemble folkloric tales and fables, are inhabited by displaced persons, trapped in dead ends (Sepanlu, p. 117). They emphasize the anxieties and the psychological perturbations of his deeply troubled personages. Sadeghi (1936-84) was yet another author who focused on the anxieties and secret mental agonies of his personages.
Hooshang Golshiri (b. 1937) and Asghar Elahi (b. 1944) both created memorable psychological portraits through interim monologue and stream of consciousness techniques. Golshiri the author of the long story Shazda Ehtejab (Prince Ehtejab, 1968), is particularly noted for his successful experiments with extended interior monologues. A bold, innovative writer eager to explore modern methods and styles, Golshiri uses stream of consciousness narrative to reassess familiar theories and events.
Period of diversity
Poetry
Of the hundreds of contemporary Persian poets (classical and modern) notable figures include[2]: Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Bijan Jalali, Siavash Kasraie, Fereydoon Moshiri, Nader Naderpour, Sohrab Sepehri, Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani, Ahmad Shamlou, Nima Yushij, Manouchehr Atashi, Houshang Ebtehaj, Mirzadeh Eshghi (classical), Mohammad Taghi Bahar(classical), Aref (classical), Parvin Etesami (classical), and Shahriar (classical) out of hundreds of poets.
Nima Yushij, founder of modern Persian poetry
Classical Persian poetry in modern times
A few notable classical poets arose since 19th century, among which Mohammad Taghi Bahar and Parvin Etesami have been most celebrated. Mohammad Taghi Bahar had the title “King of poets” and had a significant role in the emergence and development of Persian literature as a distinct institution in the early part of the twentieth century. The theme of his poems was social and political situation of Iran.
Parvin Etesami may be called the greatest Persian poetess writing in the classical style. One of her remarkable series, called Mast va Hoshyar (The Drunk and the Sober), won admirations from many of those involved in romantic poetry.
Modern Persian poetry
Nima Yushij is considered, quite rightly, the father of modern Persian poetry, introducing a whole bundle of techniques and forms to differentiate the modern from the old. Nevertheless, the merit of popularizing this new literary from within a country and culture that is solidly based on a thousand years of classical poetry, goes to his few disciples. Ahmad Shamlou stood tall amongst that new generation who adopted Nima’s methods and restlessly tried new undiscovered domains of modernism in poetry.
The transformation of Persian poetry brought about by Nima Youshij, untying it feet from the fetters of the prosodic measures, was a turning point in the long tradition of our poetry. It opened a huge vista in the perception and thinking of the poets that came after him. Nima offered a different understanding of the principles of classical poetry. His artistry was not confined to removing the need for a fixed length hemistich and dispensing with the tradition of rhyming. Above, and overseeing these changes, and going beyond altering the formation of the old poetry, he was focusing on a broader structure and function based on a more contemporary understanding of human and social existence. His aim in renovating poetry was to commit it to a natural identity and also to achieve a modern discipline in the mind and linguistic performance of the poet.
Nima rightly recognized that the formal and literal technique dominating classical poetry interfered with its vitality, vigor and progress. Although he accepted some of its aesthetic properties and extended them in the new poetry writing, he never ceased for a moment to widen his poetic experience by emphasizing the singular distinction of this art, and in returning a natural order to it. What Nima Youshij founded in contemporary poetry, which confirmed an entire era in the conviction that the traditional order of poetry could be challenged, his creative successor, Ahmad Shamlou, kept in our horizon by imparting a more innovative experience.
The Sepid poem (which translates to white poem), which draws its sources from this great poet, avoided the compulsory rules which had entered the Nimai’ school of poetry and adopted a freer structure. This allowed a more direct relationship linking the poet with his or her emotional roots. In previous poetry, the qualities of the poet’s vision as well as the span of the subject could only be expressed in general terms and were subsumed by the formal limitations imposed on poetic expression.
Simin Daneshvar, Iran’s first female novelist and short story writer.
Nima’s poetry transgressed these limitations. It relied on the natural function inherent within poetry itself to portray the poet’s solidarity with life and the wide world surrounding him or her in specific and unambiguous details and scenes. “Sepid poetry” continues the poetic vision as Nima underlined and avoids the contrived rules imposed on its creation. However, it’s most distinct difference with Nimai’ poetry is to move away from the rhythms it employed. Nima Yioushij paid attention to an overall harmonious rhyming and created many experimental examples to achieve this end.
Ahmad Shamlu discovered the inner characteristics of poetry and its manifestation in the literary creations of classical masters as well as the Nimai’ experience. He offered an individual approach. By distancing himself from the obligations imposed by older poetry, and some of the limitations that had entered the Nimai’ poem, he recognized the role of prose and music hidden in the language. In the structure of “Sepid poetry”, in contrast to the prosodic and Nimai’ rules, the poem arms itself entirely with the natural ability of words and incorporates a prose-like process without losing its poetic distinction. “Sepid poetry” is a development over the Nimai’ poetry – a large branch of that. It is a poetry created upon Nima Youshij innovations. Nima thought that any change in the construction and the tools of a poet’s expression is conditional on his/her knowledge of the world and a revolutionized outlook. “Sepid poetry” could not take root outside this teaching and a sincere application of it.
According to Simin Behbahani, Sepid Poetry did not received general acceptance before Bijan Jalali’s works. He is considered the founder of Sepid poetry according to Behbahani. Behbahani herself used the “Char Pareh” style of Nima, and subsequently, turn to “Ghazal”, a free flowing, poetry style similar to the Western “Sonnet”. Simin Behbahani contributed to a historic development in the form of the “Ghazal”, as she added theatrical subjects, and daily events and conversations into this style of poetry. She has expanded the range of traditional Persian verse forms and produced some of the most significant works of Persian literature in 20th century.
A reluctant follower of Nima Yushij, Mehdi Akhavan Sales published his “Organ” (1951) to support contentions against Nima Yushij’s groundbreaking endeavors. But before long he realized that Nima and the modernists emulating him had more to offer than a just a change in rhythm, rhyme, and the general application of the classical Arabic meters. In Persian poetry, Mehdi Akhavan Sales has established a bridge between the Khorassani and Nima Schools. The critics consider Mehdi Akhavan Sales as one of the best contemporary Persian poets. He is one of the pioneers of Free Verse (New Style Poetry) in Persian literature, particularly of modern style epics. It was his ambition, for a long time, to introduce a fresh style in the Persian poetry.
M.T.Bahar, the greatest classical poet of modern times
Forough Farrokhzad is important in the literary history of Iran for three reasons. First, she was among the first generation to embrace the new style of poetry, pioneered by Nima Yushij during the 1920s, which demanded that poets experiment with rhyme, imagery, and the individual voice. Second, she was the first modern Iranian woman to graphically articulate private sexual landscapes from a woman’s perspective. Finally, she transcended her own literary role and experimented with acting, painting, and documentary film-making.
Fereydoon Moshiri is best known as conciliator of classical Persian poetry at one side with the New Poetry initiated by Nima Yooshij at the other side. One of the major contributions of Moshiri’s poetry, according to some observers, is the broadening of the social and geographical scope of modern Persian literature.
A poet of the last generation before the Islamic Revolution worthy of mention is Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani (M. Sereshk). Though he is from Khorassan and sways between allegiance to Nima Youshij and Akhavan Saless; in his poetry, he shows the influences of Hafez and Mowlavi. He uses simple, lyrical language, and is mostly inspired by political atmosphere. He is the most successful of those poets who, in the past four decades, have tried hard to find a synthesis between the two models of Ahmad Shamloo and Nima Youshij.
