Poetic theory

This book attempts to establish a paradigm for the way language works – that is, means and creates meaning – in contemporary Western poetry. The «model» is developed from a rereading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language; a rereading that is complemented with Karl Kraus’s conception of language creation and Paul Valéry’s theories of poetry and language. The implications of the paradigm are then explored from several perspectives: the process of writing and reading; the mechanisms of language combination; the «ideational» content of its «crystallizations» (meanings); and their materiality as linguistic objects. As a result, the paradigm allows us to understand the philosophical import of poetry as a form-of-life inextricably attached to the signifying mechanisms of language.

In this paper, I analyze Octavio Paz’s theoretical and political thought vis-à-vis
his view of the poet as a member of an exclusive brotherhood. By tracing the
displacement of Paz’s thought from philosophical discourse toward literary language
and poetic expression, I establish how (in opposition to Hegel’s dialectic)
Paz defined poetry and the poetic experience as superior forms of knowledge
that could serve as the foundation for a poets’ brotherhood, as well as being the
ideal cognitive instruments with which to think about the origin of community
at large and to develop a subversive critique of it. I trace Paz’s evolving view
of the decline of both the poets’ brotherhood and the subversive power of poetry
during the twentieth century, as he grappled with the profound transformations
in language and communications provoked by the development of technology.
I examine this transition in his thinking, which occurred between the first and
second editions of El arco y la lira, to discuss the trajectory that guided him
to the position that he assumed as an intellectual when he finally returned to
Mexico in 1971.

The origins of the poetic understanding of world in Heidegger's thought, this article demonstrates, can be traced back to his early phenomenological reflections on religious life. It is shown that the early notion of 'formal indication' anticipates poetic thinking in this later thought; that authentic everydayness as conceived in terms of the phenomenology of religious life anticipates the later poetic notion of dwelling; and the structure of proclamation such as Heidegger retrieves from scripture anticipates poetic calling. The interrelatedness of these ideas can be seen by addressing the primary concept of 'world.'

“Walt Whitman’s and Nima Yushij’s Literary Innovations: A Study in Comparative Poetics” is an attempt to investigate the sociopolitical and literary contexts of the nineteenth-century America and that of the constitutional Iran. The purpose of this study is to unravel the relation between sociopolitical situations of the two societies and the literary changes those situations brought about in each society. To be more precise, this study aims to investigate how Whitman and Nima translated the discourses of their societies to a literary discourse and developed free verse and New Poetry.

والت ویتمن به عنوان پدر شعر آزاد آمریکا و نیما یوشیج به عنوان پدر شعر نوی فارسی هر یک در سنّت ادبی
مربوط به خود نقشی اساسی بر عهده داشته¬اند. این دو شاعر در برهه¬ای حساس از تاریخ ملت خود زندگی کردند و نوآوری¬های ادبی¬شان جهت شعر ملت¬شان را تغییر داد. علاوه بر نوآوری¬های شاعرانه، شرایط تاریخیِ دو شاعر نیز وجوه مشابهی دارد. در واقع، هر دو ملت در مسیر حرکت به سوی دمکراسی قرار گرفته بودند. شعر آزاد ویتمن و شعر نوی نیما حاصل تبدیل گفتمان دمکراسی به نظریۀ ادبی است. چنین شباهت¬هایی در شعر، نظریۀ ادبی و شرایط تاریخیِ دو شاعر آن دو را گزینه¬های قابل تأملی برای مقایسه می-سازد.
هرچند پژوهش¬های متعددی در زمینۀ شباهت¬های اندیشۀ عارفانۀ ویتمن و عرفان فارسی انجام شده، امّا هیچ یک از آن پژوهش¬ها به بافت سیاسی-اجتماعی جامعۀ آمریکای قرن نوزدهم و قیاس آن با ایران عصر مشروطه عنایتی نداشته¬است. علاوه براین، نوآوری¬های ویتمن در شعر –که در شعر آزاد آمریکا متبلور شده¬است- با نوآوری¬های شاعرانۀ نیما –که در شعر نوی فارسی متبلور شده¬است- نیز مقایسه نشده¬است. نکتۀ حائز اهمیت این که تأثیر و تأثّری چندانی نیز بین دو شاعر وجود ندارد و همین امر پژوهش تطبیقی آن دو شاعر را جالب¬تر می¬سازد.
این پژوهش بر آن است تا ارتباط میان شرایط سیاسی-اجتماعی و همچنین تحولات ادبی دو جامعه -که در نتیجۀ شرایط تاریخی مذکور در آن دو جامعه بوجود آمده¬است- را آشکارسازد. تجزیه و تحلیل نقاط اشتراک و افتراق بافت سیاسی-اجتماعی و تحول ادبیِ دو ملت به درک عمیق¬تری از قواعد کلی حاکم بر تحول ادبی خواهد انجامید. علاوه بر این، چنین تجزیه و تحلیلی پژوهشگر را به شناخت بهتری از ویژگی¬های تاریخی هر یک از دو ادبیات، یکتایی بافت سیاسی-اجتماعی هر کشور و همچنین فردیت هر شاعر رهنمون خواهد شد. پژوهش پیش¬رو به اثبات این مدعا می¬پردازد که به طور کلی مشترکات موجود در بافت سیاسی-اجتماعی جوامع گوناگون به آفرینش ادبیات و نظریۀ ادبی مشابه –و نه لزوماً یکسان- می¬انجامد. به طور ویژه در این پژوهش ثابت می¬شود که گفتمان دمکراسی موجود در آمریکای قرن نوزدهم و ایران عصر مشروطه به شکل¬گیری شکل¬های آزادتری از شعر –شعر آزاد در آمریکا و شعر نو در ایران- کمک شایانی کرد.

Khaje Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez Shirazi is one of the greatest and the most popular of Persian poets. He was born in early ca. 8th century—14 A. D.—in Shiraz. His profound influence on Persian life and culture can not be denied. Hafez "is by universal consent the supreme master of the art of the Persian ghazal" (Arberry 1). His ghazals are widely read, appreciated and used in bibliomancy—fäl—by the Iranian and also other people from other cultures and languages which have affinity with the Persian. Through his "popular sobriquet, lesān-al- ğayb, the Tongue of the Unseen" (Yarshater 461), he is associated with the world of the unseen. Hafez's fame is not limited to Iran's boundaries, his fame is worldwide and many poets, thinkers and even common people are fond of his alchemy with the words. Great figures like P. Bibesco, Tagore, Edmond et Dulad, Sir William Jones, Goethe, Nietzsche, Byron, Swinburne, Hugo, Chenier, Voltaire, La Martin, Stefan George, P. Tedesco, E. B. Cowell, Pierre Loti, Edward Brown, Yohannes Scherr, and many others from different languages and cultures throughout the world during the history have admired and praised Hafez (Moein 758-80). Hafez himself says about the widespread reputation of his poetry even in his time, "Love's murmur, into Hijaz and Irak, casteth/ The melody of the strain of the ghazals of Hafiz of Shiraz" (Hafez 120.7); or "To the verse of Hafiz of Shiraz, dance whirl/ Those dark of eye of Kashmir, and the saucy ones, of Samarkand" (Hafez 200.11). This paper is intended to study and analyze Hafez's ghazals within the framework of Emerson's aestheticism mainly on the basis of his famous essay "The Poet."

"      Throughout history one of the main –perhaps the most important– concerns of the artists was to find a unanimous definition of art. Up to now, no one has succeeded in proposing such a definition. In the world of poetry, as a branch of art, the situation is the same. There are numerous definitions of the poet based on various theories of poetry, art, and beauty. Each and every poet has an answer to the question “Who is the poet?” The answer, consciously or unconsciously, relies on their theory of poetry. The American poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), too, has an answer. In “The Poet” he describes the characteristics of “the poet.”
      The present paper analyzes the poetry of the contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980), in the light of Emerson’s views in his essay “The Poet” (1844). The concepts of “the music,” “the imagery,” “the spiritual and the manifold meaning,” “the child,” “the new thought,” and “the beauty” are analyzed based on Emerson’s views and traced in the poetry of Sepehri. Whereas the contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri is not a full-fledged poet in the eyes of some of his contemporaries such as Ahmad Shamlu, Mehdi Akhavan Saless, Reza Baraheni, Hamid Mosaddegh, Mahmud Moshref Tehrani, Parviz Natel Khanlari, and Dariush Ashuri (Siahpoush), Emerson’s criteria in “The Poet”  seems to suit him best.
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