Dick Davis ___On Not Translating Hafez
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'Momentary Glimpse' Final Report of the Conference
Persica 23, 123-126. doi: 10.2143/PERS.23.0.2050511 © 2009-2010 by Persica. All rights reserved. ‘MOMENTARY GLIMPSE’ FINAL REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE THE LEGACY OF OMAR KHAYYAM (6-7 JULY 2009, LEIDEN UNIVERSITY) Asghar Seyed-Gohrab Leiden University The conference was intended to highlight not only Khayyam as a mathematician, philoso- pher and astronomer, but also the reception of Khayyam in various literary traditions. It was very successful, in terms of academic achievement and of networking and establishing new projects in the future. The opening in the Music Hall (aan het Ij) in Amsterdam was especially successful, with a peerless performance from Het Nederlands Kamerkoor, singing a wide range of classical Western and Persian compositions based on the quatrains of Omar Khayyam. This impressive opening affected the programme in the following days, especially because of the fruitful cooperation with the musicologist Professor Rokus de Groot (University of Amsterdam). The first day began with the key note address of Dick Davis (Ohio State University, USA) with the intriguing title “Too good a poem to be faithful?” in which he discussed “the notion of ‘fidelity’ implied in Chesterton’s remark, and whether it applies to FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat.” After giving a background of translated literature in English in the nineteenth century, and various English views on literary translations, Davis gave a meticulous exposi- tion of the way the spirit and the sentiments of Khayyam’s poetry were transmitted into English poetry in the nineteenth century through Edward FitzGerald’s adaptations of the quatrains. Presenting the challenging idea that Khayyam as a poet never existed and that the poems attributed to him belong to other poets, Dick Davis opened a very informative and enthusiastic discussion. -
A Comparative Analysis of Educational Teaching in Shahnameh and Iliad Elhamshahverdi and Dr.Masoodsepahvandi Abstract
Date:12/1/18 A Comparative Analysis of Educational Teaching in Shahnameh and Iliad Elhamshahverdi and dr.Masoodsepahvandi Abstract Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and Homer's Iliad are among the first literary masterpieces of Iran and Greece. These teachings include the educational teachings of Zal and Roudabeh, and Paris and Helen. This paper presents a comparative look at the immortal effect of this Iranian poet with Homer's poem-- the Greek blind poet. In this comparison, using a content analysis method, the effects of the educational teachings of these two stories are extracted and expressed, The results of this study show that the human and universal educational teachings of Shahnameh are far more than that of Homer's Iliad. Keywords: teachings, education,analysis,Shahname,Iliad. Introduction The literature of every nation is a mirror of the entirety of thought, culture and customs of that nation, which can be expressed in elegance and artistic delicacy in many different ways. Shahnameh and Iliad both represent the literature of the two peoples of Iran and Greece, which contain moral values for the happiness of the individual and society. "The most obvious points of Shahnameh are its advice and many examples and moral commands. To do this, Ferdowsi has taken every opportunity and has made every event an excuse. Even kings and warriors are used for this purpose. "Comparative literature is also an important foundation for the exodus of indigenous literature from isolation, and it will be a part of the entire literary heritage of the world, exposed to thoughts and ideas, and is also capable of helping to identify contemplation legacies in the understanding and friendship of the various nations."(Ghanimi, 44: 1994) Epic literature includes poems that have a spiritual aspect, not an individual one. -
Rubai (Quatrain) As a Classical Form of Poetry in Persian Literature
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH CULTURE SOCIETY ISSN: 2456-6683 Volume - 2, Issue - 4, Apr – 2018 UGC Approved Monthly, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, Indexed Journal Impact Factor: 3.449 Publication Date: 30/04/2018 Rubai (Quatrain) as a Classical Form of Poetry in Persian Literature Ms. Mina Qarizada Lecturer in Samangan Higher Education, Samangan, Afghanistan Master of Arts in English, Department of English Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India Email – [email protected] Abstract: Studying literature, including poetry and prose writing, in Afghanistan is very significant. Poetry provides some remarkable historical, cultural, and geographical facts and its literary legacy of a particular country. Understanding the poetic forms is important in order to understand the themes and the styles of the poetry of the poets. All the Persian poets in some points of the time composed in the Rubai form which is very common till now among the past and present generation across Afghanistan. This paper is an overview of Rubai as a classical form of Poetry in Persian Literature. Rubai has its significant role in the society with different stylistic and themes related to the cultural, social, political, and gender based issues. The key features of Rubai are to be eloquent, spontaneous and ingenious. In a Rubai the first part is the introduction which is the first three lines that is the sublime for the fourth line of the poem. It represents the idea if sublet, pithy and clever. It also represents the poets’ literary works, poetic themes, styles, and visions. Key Words: Rubai, Classic, Poetry, Persian, Literature, Quatrain, 1. INTRODUCTION: Widespread geography of Persian speakers during the past centuries in the history of Afghanistan like many other countries, it can be seen and felt that only great men were trained in the fields of art and literature. -
Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected]
Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected] Introduction Studying the roots of a particular literary history enables us to better understand the allusions the literature transmits and why we appreciate them. It also allows us to foresee how the literature may progress.1 I will try to keep this attitude in the reader’s mind in offering this brief summary of medieval Persian literature, a formidable task considering the variety and wealth of the texts and documentation on the subject.2 In this study we will pay special attention to the development of the Persian literature over the last millennia, focusing in particular on the initial development and background of various literary genres in Persian. Although the concept of literary genres is rather subjective and unstable,3 reviewing them is nonetheless a useful approach for a synopsis, facilitating greater understanding, deeper argumentation, and further speculation than would a simple listing of dates, titles, and basic biographical facts of the giants of Persian literature. Also key to literary examination is diachronicity, or the outlining of literary development through successive generations and periods. Thriving Persian literature, undoubtedly shaped by historic events, lends itself to this approach: one can observe vast differences between the Persian literature of the tenth century and that of the eleventh or the twelfth, and so on.4 The fourteenth century stands as a bridge between the previous and the later periods, the Mongol and Timurid, followed by the Ṣafavids in Persia and the Mughals in India. Given the importance of local courts and their support of poets and writers, it is quite understandable that literature would be significantly influenced by schools of thought in different provinces of the Persian world.5 In this essay, I use the word literature to refer to the written word adeptly and artistically created. -
Survey on the Meaning of Love from Nur Ad-Din Abd Ar Rahman Jami View Point
J. Basic. Appl. Sci. Res., 3(2)1156-1161, 2013 ISSN 2090-4304 Journal of Basic and Applied © 2013, TextRoad Publication Scientific Research www.textroad.com Survey on the Meaning of Love from Nur ad-Din Abd Ar Rahman Jami View Point Parvaneh Adelzadeh, Masoumeh Khalilnoe Aliabad Department of Persian Language and Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran ABSTRACT Love is a principle issue of mysticism that causes to humors and quest for perfection of the creatures. Abd Ar Rahman Jami expresses this quest from virtual love toward real love in “Layla and Majnun” eloquently in literature history. Scholars and poets point to words like love, beloved, lover, request, and requestor in their speech. Jami uses these words in his poems explicitly and repeats them as allegorical stories implicitly. This article tries to investigate the meaning of love from Nur ad-Din Abd Ar Rahman Jami view point. KEYWORDS: Abd Ar Rahman Jami, love in Persian literature, Layla and Majnun. INTRODUCTION “Nur ad din Abd Ar-Rahman Nizamad din Ahmad Ben Mohammad Jami is one of the Persian poets of fifteen century. He wrote his triplet divans in 1517 in three periods of his life and he called them “Fatihat al- Shabab”, (the beginning of youth), “Wasitat al-'ikd” (the central pearl in the necklace), and “Khatimat al- hayat” (the conclusion of life). Certainly, he considered Amir Khosro Dehlavi as a great poet of fifteen century in this work and he divided his divans into three periods. Triplet divans of Jami involves sonnets, elegy and quatrain (review and sentiments of Jami works: 1999:90) .Haft Awrang (seven thrones) is his major poetical work. -
Irreverent Persia
Irreverent Persia IRANIAN IRANIAN SERIES SERIES Poetry expressing criticism of social, political and cultural life is a vital integral part of IRREVERENT PERSIA Persian literary history. Its principal genres – invective, satire and burlesque – have been INVECTIVE, SATIRICAL AND BURLESQUE POETRY very popular with authors in every age. Despite the rich uninterrupted tradition, such texts FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE TIMURID PERIOD have been little studied and rarely translated. Their irreverent tones range from subtle (10TH TO 15TH CENTURIES) irony to crude direct insults, at times involving the use of outrageous and obscene terms. This anthology includes both major and minor poets from the origins of Persian poetry RICCARDO ZIPOLI (10th century) up to the age of Jâmi (15th century), traditionally considered the last great classical Persian poet. In addition to their historical and linguistic interest, many of these poems deserve to be read for their technical and aesthetic accomplishments, setting them among the masterpieces of Persian literature. Riccardo Zipoli is professor of Persian Language and Literature at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, where he also teaches Conceiving and Producing Photography. The western cliché about Persian poetry is that it deals with roses, nightingales, wine, hyperbolic love-longing, an awareness of the transience of our existence, and a delicate appreciation of life’s fleeting pleasures. And so a great deal of it does. But there is another side to Persian verse, one that is satirical, sardonic, often obscene, one that delights in ad hominem invective and no-holds barred diatribes. Perhaps surprisingly enough for the uninitiated reader it is frequently the same poets who write both kinds of verse. -
The La Trobe Journal No. 91 June 2013 Endnotes Notes On
Endnotes NB: ‘Scollay’ refers to Susan Scollay, ed., Love and Devotion: from Persia and beyond, Melbourne: Macmillan Art Publishing in association with the State Library of Victoria and the Bodleian Library, 2012; reprinted with new covers, Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2012. Melville, The ‘Arts of the Book’ and the Diffusion of Persian Culture 1 This article is a revised version of the text of the ‘Keynote’ lecture delivered in Melbourne on 12 April 2012 to mark the opening of the conference Love and Devotion: Persian cultural crossroads. It is obviously not possible to reproduce the high level of illustrations that accompanied the lecture; instead I have supplied references to where most of them can be seen. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those at the State Library of Victoria who worked so hard to make the conference such a success, and for their warmth and hospitality that made our visit to Melbourne an unrivalled pleasure. A particular thanks to Shane Carmody, Robert Heather and Anna Welch. 2 The exhibition Love and Devotion: from Persia and beyond was held in Melbourne from 9 March to 1 July 2012 with a second showing in Oxford from 29 November 2012 to 28 April 2013. It was on display at Oxford at the time of writing. 3 Scollay. 4 For a recent survey of the issues at stake, see Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani, eds., Iran Facing Others: identity boundaries in a historical perspective, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; the series of lectures on the Idea of Iran, supported by the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, has now spawned five volumes, edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, vols. -
On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi
Official Digitized Version by Victoria Arakelova; with errata fixed from the print edition ON THE MODERN POLITICIZATION OF THE PERSIAN POET NEZAMI GANJAVI YEREVAN SERIES FOR ORIENTAL STUDIES Edited by Garnik S. Asatrian Vol.1 SIAVASH LORNEJAD ALI DOOSTZADEH ON THE MODERN POLITICIZATION OF THE PERSIAN POET NEZAMI GANJAVI Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies Yerevan 2012 Siavash Lornejad, Ali Doostzadeh On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi Guest Editor of the Volume Victoria Arakelova The monograph examines several anachronisms, misinterpretations and outright distortions related to the great Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi, that have been introduced since the USSR campaign for Nezami‖s 800th anniversary in the 1930s and 1940s. The authors of the monograph provide a critical analysis of both the arguments and terms put forward primarily by Soviet Oriental school, and those introduced in modern nationalistic writings, which misrepresent the background and cultural heritage of Nezami. Outright forgeries, including those about an alleged Turkish Divan by Nezami Ganjavi and falsified verses first published in Azerbaijan SSR, which have found their way into Persian publications, are also in the focus of the authors‖ attention. An important contribution of the book is that it highlights three rare and previously neglected historical sources with regards to the population of Arran and Azerbaijan, which provide information on the social conditions and ethnography of the urban Iranian Muslim population of the area and are indispensable for serious study of the Persian literature and Iranian culture of the period. ISBN 978-99930-69-74-4 The first print of the book was published by the Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies in 2012. -
The Poetics of Commitment in Modern Persian: a Case of Three Revolutionary Poets in Iran
The Poetics of Commitment in Modern Persian: A Case of Three Revolutionary Poets in Iran by Samad Josef Alavi A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Near Eastern Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Shahwali Ahmadi, Chair Professor Muhammad Siddiq Professor Robert Kaufman Fall 2013 Abstract The Poetics of Commitment in Modern Persian: A Case of Three Revolutionary Poets in Iran by Samad Josef Alavi Doctor of Philosophy in Near Eastern Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Shahwali Ahmadi, Chair Modern Persian literary histories generally characterize the decades leading up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as a single episode of accumulating political anxieties in Persian poetics, as in other areas of cultural production. According to the dominant literary-historical narrative, calls for “committed poetry” (she‘r-e mota‘ahhed) grew louder over the course of the radical 1970s, crescendoed with the monarch’s ouster, and then faded shortly thereafter as the consolidation of the Islamic Republic shattered any hopes among the once-influential Iranian Left for a secular, socio-economically equitable political order. Such a narrative has proven useful for locating general trends in poetic discourses of the last five decades, but it does not account for the complex and often divergent ways in which poets and critics have reconciled their political and aesthetic commitments. This dissertation begins with the historical assumption that in Iran a question of how poetry must serve society and vice versa did in fact acquire a heightened sense of urgency sometime during the ideologically-charged years surrounding the revolution. -
“The Spinning of the Mill Lightens My Soul”1
PERSICA XVII, 2001 “THE SPINNING OF THE MILL LIGHTENS MY SOUL”1 Asghar Seyed-Gohrab Leiden University Introduction Within a more than four centuries old relationship between Dutch and Persian culture, there are a wide range of subjects luring the researcher to launch an investigation.2 One may, for instance, choose to examine the Persian names of flowers in Dutch, or to linger on Rembrandt’s interest in the Persian miniature painting, or to study the 17th century translation of Sa‘di’s (d. 1292) Bustan in Dutch and so on and so forth.3 As a native Per- sian living in the country of tulips, clogs and mills, I have chosen to study the mill in Persian literature. In recent years I have been more and more fascinated by the mills in the foggy, flat and green Dutch landscape, while being constantly reminded of the wide- spread literary metaphors, popular beliefs, riddles, proverbs and folksongs based on this ancient invention of mankind in Persian literature. It should be, however, stated at the outset that although I deal briefly with the relationship between ancient Persian windmills and their Western counterparts, this essay does not pretend to peruse the link between these windmills; the study is an attempt to demonstrate how the mill, whether a windmill, watermill or handmill, is presented in Persian literary sources as well as in popular ex- pressions. Moreover, a study of the mill at literary level is conductive; especially since in molinological literature, Persian literary sources are usually neglected. It is generally believed that the Persians played a major role in the invention, the development and the spread of the mill. -
The Seljuks of Anatolia: an Epigraphic Study
American University in Cairo AUC Knowledge Fountain Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2017 The Seljuks of Anatolia: An epigraphic study Salma Moustafa Azzam Follow this and additional works at: https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds Recommended Citation APA Citation Azzam, S. (2017).The Seljuks of Anatolia: An epigraphic study [Master’s thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/656 MLA Citation Azzam, Salma Moustafa. The Seljuks of Anatolia: An epigraphic study. 2017. American University in Cairo, Master's thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/656 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by AUC Knowledge Fountain. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of AUC Knowledge Fountain. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Seljuks of Anatolia: An Epigraphic Study Abstract This is a study of the monumental epigraphy of the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate, also known as the Sultanate of Rum, which emerged in Anatolia following the Great Seljuk victory in Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in the year 1071.It was heavily weakened in the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243 against the Mongols but lasted until the end of the thirteenth century. The history of this sultanate which survived many wars, the Crusades and the Mongol invasion is analyzed through their epigraphy with regard to the influence of political and cultural shifts. The identity of the sultanate and its sultans is examined with the use of their titles in their monumental inscriptions with an emphasis on the use of the language and vocabulary, and with the purpose of assessing their strength during different periods of their realm. -
The Edgar Bowers Conference and Exhibition April 11, 2003
UCLA How Shall a Generation Know Its Story: The Edgar Bowers Conference and Exhibition April 11, 2003 Title Edgar Bowers and England Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43d7q8h6 Author Davis, Dick Publication Date 2003-04-11 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California How Shall a Generation Know Its Story: The Edgar Bowers Conference and Exhibition April 11, 2003, UCLA Edgar Bowers and England by Dick Davis Anyone familiar with Edgar’s poetry is aware that there is a recognizable break between the publication of Living Together, (1973), and For Louis Pasteur, (1989). We are not only talking about quite a considerable period of time (sixteen years) in which Edgar published no new collection, but there is also to some extent a break in style and subject matter between these two volumes. The relatively prolonged silence before the appearance of For Louis Pasteur can in fact be extended backwards for a few years, as Living Together is basically his first two volumes bound as one, with a handful of poems omitted, and it contains only six new poems, only one of which is of a substantial length. It seems then generally true to say that after the publication of The Astronomers (1965) Edgar entered on a relatively barren period as a poet, the end of which was signaled by the appearance of For Louis Pasteur over twenty years later. What enabled him to emerge from this barren patch, and to produce a volume that was startlingly more relaxed and personal in tone than his often lapidary and Parnassian earlier work? There cannot be a simple answer to the complicated question of why a poet writes as he does when he does, or of why he falls silent when he does.