Invented motifs (ehtera‘) in classical and modern Persian ghazal

Abstract

This article is devoted to the identification and analysis of the author’s invented motifs in the ghazals by two prominent Iranian poets — Simin Behbahani (1927-2014), the “Mistress of the modern ghazal”, and Hushang Ebtehaj (poetic pseudonym — Sayeh) (1928-2022). Their numerous works, composed in this form, served as one of the factors in the emergence of the concept of the “modern ghazal” (gazal-e mo‘aser). Simin and Sayeh’s creative heritage from the point of view of poetics has hardly been studied in Russian Iranian studies. The reason for choosing the two named poets’ ghazals as a material for research was also a biographical factor: the authors belonged to the same generation and literary circle, were well acquainted with each other and composed “answers” to each other’s ghazals. For the analysis, Simin and Sayeh’s poems were selected that are similar in theme (love), but different in terms of a set of author’s invented motifs which have no analogues in the repertoire of the classical Persian ghazal. The problem of studying the ways and techniques of manifestation of the author’s originality in traditional poetic genres and forms extends beyond the analysis of the examples of classical medieval poetry. This article attempts to draw a boundary between the nature of manifestation of novelty in the traditional and modern ghazal using the example of “invented” motifs (ehtera‘). The use of this term rooted in the medieval Arabic theory of verse and used in classical Persian poetics and poetic practice is determined by the natural continuity of the modern ghazal in relation to the recognized examples of the past. This term is applied to the modern material with a certain degree of conventionality because classical and modern ghazals as literary phenomena are the product of different types of artistic consciousness — the traditionalist and the individual-creative ones. In order to identify differences in the nature of traditional and modern “invented” motifs, the analysis incorporates terminological references to medieval treatises on poetics and examples from classical Persian poetry. The analysis shows that in Simin Behbahani and Hushang Ebtehaj’s ghazals authorial motifs in most cases are aimed at modernizing the text.

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