Poetry and Revolution

The Poets and Poetry of the Constitutional Era of Iran

Homa Katouzian, Alireza Korangy, Homa Katouzian, Alireza Korangy

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000595857
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Letteratura
• Thema: Critica letteraria mediorientale

Compiled by experts on the works of each individual poet, this book covers the poetry and poets of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.

Following a two-pronged approach, this volume studies both those who were influenced by the Constitutional Revolution in their works and those who addressed the Revolution with their work, influencing it directly. Through the analysis of their works, this volume explores influential poets and writers from the period, including Iraj, Vaziri, Afr?shteh, Yazdi, Bah?r and 'Eshqi. It covers female poets who are often overlooked, as well as the major satirical poets whose work educated and entertained the readers and criticized socio-political events. Analysing the mainstream and marginal poets, this volume argues the margins initiated the evolution of Persian poetry. As Persian poetry and its multifunctional legacy became the standard-bearer of the Constitutional movement, this volume is an important contribution to an understanding of Iran.

This volume will be of interest to historians of the Constitutional Revolution and Iranian poetry, as well as to students and scholars of comparative revolutions. It is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses on Iranian history, Middle Eastern history and comparative studies of literature and revolution.

1 Iraj, the Poet of Love and Humour¹

Homa Katouzian

DOI: 10.4324/9781003243335-2

Iraj Mirza Jalāl al-Mamālek, popularly known as Iraj (1875–1926), the name and title which he himself preferred, was the son of Gholāmhoseyn Mirzā, grandson of Malek Iraj Mirzā and a great-grandson of Fath’ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834). Fath’ali Shah himself was a poet of note and has a published divan. Both his son Malek Iraj Mirzā and many of his other sons, daughters and grandchildren—including the important and influential E’tezād al-Saltaneh (d. 1880), Minister of Science under Nāser al-Din Shah (r. 1848–1896)—were private or professional poets. Iraj’s own father was a professional poet and had been given the title of Sadr al-Sho’arā. Another grandson of Fath’ali Shah, son of Mohammadqoli Mirza Molk Ara was a professional poet: Shams al-Sho’arā, from whom descend the Qajar families, Shams and Shams-e Molk Ārā. Apart from Iraj, two other descendants of Fath’ali Shah became famous poets: Abolhasan Mirza, Sheikh al-Ra’is I and Mohammad Hāshem Mirza (Afsar), Sheikh al-Ra’is II. Both latter poets were Iraj’s contemporaries, and Iraj was a personal friend of Hashem Mirza. In an ekhvāniyeh or poetical fraternity, he said, addressing ‘Āref-e Qazvini:

نمی پرسی چرا احوال ما را	بگو شهزاده هاشم میرزا را
عجب چیز بدی باشد وکالت ^2	وکالت گردهد تغییر حالت

Ask Shahzādeh Hashem Mirza,

Why he does not get in touch.

If being an MP changes one’s mood,

Then being an MP is no good.

But among all these Qajar family poets, including the two Sheikh al-Ra’is’s, Iraj far outdoes all of them as one of the most able and most eloquent Persian poets of all time. He did not write much. The whole of his divan is no more than 4,000 distiches. But much that he has written is of the highest quality, including in terms of social and political impact, and deserves to be preserved in the annals of Persian poetry. He belonged to a generation of poets, who, although not modernists, modernized neo-classical poetry within the existing classical structures and so have been designated by this author as, not modernists, but modern.³ They chose forms which were most appropriate for the expression of contemporary themes and ideas, and they often employed wholly new metaphors, puns, asides, allusions, imageries and other figures of speech and literary devices. Reading the poems they wrote after the Constitutional Revolution, it would be difficult for anyone familiar with classical and neo-classical Persian poetry to mistake them as such, in spite of the fact that they retained the basic neo-classical structures. There were, of course, many other poets, such as ‘Ebrat Nā’ini, Adib Pishāvari and ...