No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Revivification of an Ossified Genre? Simin Behbahani and the Persian Ghazal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
Although considered a ‘modern’ poet, unlike most of her contemporaries (e.g. Ahmad Shamlou, Mehdi Akhavan-e Sales, and Nader Naderpour), Simin Behbahani, has, on the whole, avoided the free verse forms of shi‘r-i nu and has chosen to employ the most popular classical genre of Persian lyric poetry, the ghazal, as the chief vehicle for her poetic expression. Behbahani has been praised by many literary critics for her use of innovative metric schemes, especially from the mid-1970s onwards, and she is perhaps one of the first Persian poets since the medieval period to do so with any success. This article, however, will focus on features other than meter (such as imagery, language, and structure) to examine how innovative or traditional Behbahani's ghazals are in these respects. There is a tangible tension between the old and the new in Behbahani's ghazals, which has yet to be fully explored. After a broader discussion of how Behbahani has reworked the classical ghazal and how her remolding of this traditional genre has been received by literary critics, I will examine two poems from her 1973 collection Rastakhiz [Resurrection] in order to demonstrate how the poet blends the old with the new in her ghazals.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2008
References
1 See the introduction to Khatti zi sur'at u az atash in Simin Behbahani, Majmu'a-yi Ash'ar (Tehran, 2003), 505–508. On p.507 Behbahani writes:
2 Behbahani, Simin, Ja-yi Pa (Tehran, 1983), 8Google Scholar. Behbahani says that she was influenced by the tone and content, but not the form of Parvin E'tesami's poetry. Behbahani also notes how she was influenced by Nima Yushij, although she did not seek to emulate his poetry as most other prominent poets of twentieth-century Iran have done. See also Milani, Farzaneh, “Az har dari sukhani: guftugu-yi Duktur Farzaneh Milani ba Simin-i Bihbahani,” in Zani ba damani shi'r: jashnnama-yi Simin-i Bihbahani, ed. Dihbashi, ‘Ali (Tehran, 2004), 583–584Google Scholar.
3 Two possible explanations for the popularity of the ghazals of Hafiz and Rumi, for example, among young people in Iran are a) the fact that some of the most popular and influential modernist poets (such as Ahmad Shamlou) made clear the esteem in which they hold their literary ancestors, and b) the popularity among Iran's youth (in particular in the post-Revolutionary period) of classical Persian music and the interpretations of pre-modern ghazals as performed by some of Iran's most acclaimed classical musicians, such as Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri and Davod Azad.
4 Behbahani, Simin, Rastakhiz (Tehran, 1991), 5Google Scholar:
5 On Behbahani's use of archaic vocabulary in her ghazals, see Kaveh Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” in A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems by Simin Behbahani, ed. and trans., Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa (Syracuse, 1999), 143; and Mahbub, Ahmad Abu, Gahvara-yi sabz-afra: zindagi u shi'r-i Simin-i Bihbahani (Tehran, 2003), 315–329Google Scholar. Behbahani also mentions pre-modern poets (and sometimes quotes from their ghazals or reworks bayts from them) in her poetry; see Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 145–46, and Abu-Mahbub, Gahvara, 174–190. Abu Mahbub comments that—however modern Behbahani's poetry may be—one can often detect a ‘whiff’ of ‘oldness’ in her expressions (bayan-i u gah-gah bu-yi kuhna-gi mi-girad); Abu Mahbub, Gahvara, 314.
6 Behbahani, Rastakhiz, 6. It would be a mistake to think that Behbahani writes in the colloquial or that she has in any way ‘dumbed down’ the vocabulary she uses in her poetry.
7 Behbahani, Rastakhiz, 6.
8 Behbahani, Rastakhiz, 6.
9 Behbahani, Rastakhiz, 10:
10 See Nafisi, Majid, “Tazagi va dirinagi dar shi ‘r-i Simin-i Bihbahani,” in Zani ba damani shi'r: jashnnama-yi Simin-i Bihbahani, ed. Dihbashi, ‘Ali (Tehran, 2004), 435Google Scholar:
11 See Behbahani, Ja-yi Pa, 11.
12 Behbahani, Ja-yi Pa, 13:
13 Behbahani, Ja-yi Pa, 7.
14 Behbahani, Ja-yi Pa, 13. This demographic is in some sense mirrored in Behbahani's choice of characters, which include some of the most marginalized in society, including prostitutes, gravediggers and malnourished children.
15 Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 140.
16 Milani, Farzaneh, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse, 1992), 234Google Scholar. As Milani comments elsewhere (Milani, Farzaneh, “Mushti pur az sitara: zindagi u ash'ar-i Simin-i Bihbahani,” in Zani ba damani shi'r: jashnama-yi Simin-i Bihbahani, ed. Dihbashi, ‘Ali [Tehran, 2004], 189–190Google Scholar), Behbahani has not sought to battle with the traditional ghazal, but rather she has sought to make the genre more relevant to contemporary life. Milani notes that Behbahani has in no way sought to sever herself from the Iranian literary and cultural heritage. See Milani, “Mushti pur az sitara,” 191. Some have rightly argued that the fact that Behbahani has been able to adapt the meters of the ghazal (and create/employ new ones) is proof of her technical skill as a poet who has a great affinity with the tradition, see ‘Abidi, Kamyar, Tarannum-i ghazal: bar-rasi-yi zindagi u athar-i Simin-i Bihbahani (Tehran, 2000), 36Google Scholar.
17 See, e.g., ‘Abidi, Tarannum, 35.
18 See Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 134.
19 See ‘Ali-Muhammad Haqqshinas, “Du-bara misazamat, ghazal!,” in Zani ba damani shi'r, ed. Dihbashi, 567.
20 See Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,”135.
21 Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani.”
22 Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 138.
23 Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 142–143.
24 Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 135.
25 See, e.g., Nafisi, “Tazagi va dirinagi,” 436–37.
26 Nafisi, “Tazagi va dirinagi,” 438.
27 Haqqshinas believes Simin Behbahani's achievement has been to turn the Persian ghazal from an inward-looking genre focused largely on the individual to one which is outward-looking, i.e., one concerned more with the collective society. See Haqqshinas, “Du-bara misazamat,” 564.
28 On the use of the ghazal and the qasida for the expression of social and political comment in the Constitutional period, see Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,”137; Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (Salt Lake City, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 2–5; and Nafisi, “Tazagi va dirinagi,” 434–435. Nafisi notes that this use of the ghazal declined soon after the Constitutional Revolution with the emergence of shi'r-i nu, which was considered much more suitable for the expression of social and political comment and criticism. ‘Abidi argues that in the Constitutional period those who used the ghazal for the expression of socio-political comment took the genre out of the realm of poetry (shi'r) into that of slogan (shu 'ar); see ‘Abidi, Tarannum, 81.
29 See, e.g., Safa, “Translating Simin Behabahni,” 140: “We are referring here to the thematic autonomy of lines…, each line expressing a complete thought or feeling, without any necessary connection to the line above or below—of course with the possibility of a deep resonance or structure connecting these manifestly disparate parts. Simin Behbahani has made manifest this structure, thematically shaping many of her ghazals in the form of a narrative, a drama, or philosophical meditation, or argument, with aesthetic and rhetorical punch-lines.”
30 These ‘monothematic’ ghazals are often panegyric, bacchic or celebratory in nature; see, e.g., Hafiz, ghazal 147 which opens with this bayt:
Or Hafiz, ghazal 219 which starts:
31 E.g., Hafiz, ghazal 199, bayts 1–2:
And Hafiz, ghazal 200, bayt 10:
Baha' al-Din Khurramshahi, “Sha ‘iri mandagar bar safha-yi in u har ruzigar,” in Zani ba damani shi'r, ed. Dihbashi, 497. Baha’ al-Din Khurramshahi believes Hafiz brought about a revolution in the ghazal because he used the genre as a vehicle for the expression of socio-political matters. Even in the poetry of Hafiz, however, the expression of topics or themes other than love or praise of the beloved are generally of secondary importance. In the case of Behbahani (especially from Rastakhiz onwards), this is no longer the case; see Abu Mahbub, Gahvara, 94–95. Khurramshahi considers Hafiz to have been a ‘social reformer and critic’ (muslih va muntaqid-i ijtima'i); see Khurramshahi, “Sh'iri mandagar,” 499. He similarly considers Behbahani's innovations to constitute “a revolutionary development” (tahavvul-i inqilab-guna) in the evolution of the Persian ghazal (Khurramshahi, “Sh'iri mandagar,” 496), and that she took up the mantle of Hafiz and has continued the work that he started (Khurramshahi, “Sha'iri mandagar,” 500–501). Khurramshahi believes Behbahani to be the poet who has had the most success to date in terms of making the genre capable of concinvingly conveying socially relevant messages, what he terms ‘socialising’ the ghazal (ijtima'i kardan-i ghazal) (Khurramshahi, “Sh'iri mandagar,” 502.).
32 See Behbahani, Majmu 'a-yi ash 'ar, 1194.
33 Milani views Rastakhiz as the first of three collections (together with Khatti zi sur 'at u az atash and Dasht-i Arzhan) which heralded the start of a new era for Simin Behbahani; see Milani, “Mushti pur az sitara,” 188. It is in Rastakhiz, argues ‘Abidi, that Behbahani begins to successfully break out of the walls of the ghazal; from then on her ghazals are increasingly concerned with concepts broader than the personal experience of love; see ‘Abidi, Tarannum, 77. Nafisi, on the other hand, acknowledges that in Rastakhiz, Behbahani built upon her previous poetry, but he does not consider the collection a major turning point in her literary career; Nafisi, “Tazagi va dirinagi,” 425.
34 See Nafisi, “Tazagi va dirinagi,” 424.
36 This English translation and the subsequent one are those of Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa.
35 Behbahani, Simin, Rastakhiz (Tehran, 1973), 21–22Google Scholar.
37 The image of the womb in this poem is not of a sterile womb (as it is in some other poems), nor is it a positive one (as it is in “Shayad ka Masiha-st” [“Perhaps it is the Messiah”], where the womb is a sign of salvation and is ‘filled with light’), but one of an infected one, one which only gives birth to ‘whores and louts’. See Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 149. On references to animals in the poems of Behbahani, Safa notes, “What is not obvious to the reader of the poems only in translation is the extent to which these uses—and others, of botanical, astronomical, and technological figures—achieve their aesthetic or rhetorical effect by going with the grain of literary and cultural conventions or against it, by repeating the familiar and/or elaborating it in less familiar directions;” see Safa, “Translating Simin Behbahani,” 150.
38 See, e.g., Hafiz, ghazal, 155, bayts 1–3:
See also Hafiz, ghazal, 326, bayts 3–5 for a similar pattern. See also Hafiz, ghazal, 204 in which every bayt opens with the phrase yad bad [long the memory of…].
39 See, e.g., Hafiz, ghazal, 231 in which in the first bayt both misra's start with guftam [I said] and contain a reported response from the beloved prefaced by gufta [s/he said]. Every subsequent bayt opens with guftam and every second misra' with gufta. This poem has an overriding amorous tone, not dissimilar to that of Behbahani's poem “Guft u gu”:
40 Milani, “Mushti pur az sitara,” 193–194.
41 Pre-modern woman poets such as Mahsati and Jahan did compose poetry in praise of males, but their poetic voice is essentially male, not female, see Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz, “Odes of a Poet-Princess: The Ghazals of Jahan-Malik Khatun,” in Iran XLIII (2005): 173–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hammond, Marlé, “Literature: Ninth to Fifteenth Century,” in Encylopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, ed. Joseph, Suad, et al. (Leiden, 2003), 1: 42–50Google Scholar.