Persian Literature

Fluidity of Motifs in Saeb Tabrizi's Poetry and Indian Style (A Case Study of Cypress and Cuckoo Motif)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Saeed Rahimi 1
Alireza Emami 2

1 Assistant Professor in Persian Language and Literature, Language and Linguistics center, Sharif University of technology

2 Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22059/jpl.2023.351034.2123
Abstract
Motifs are one of the most important structural and unifying elements in artistic and literary works. In the field of literature, motifs are among the important elements of many texts, both poetry and fiction, as recurring stylistic elements. Of course, there are differences in the definition and role of motifs in poetry and fiction, and in this research, motifs are considered in their poetic function. In the history of Persian poetry, from the beginning, poets have used various motifs; For example, "candle and butterfly" and "flower and nightingale" are among the oldest motifs of Persian poetry. Some poets are more related to the use of motifs, and some have a special relationship with one or more specific motifs. With a more detailed study of the poetry of the Safavid period, known as Indian style poetry, we find that the use of motifs in the works of most of the poets of this period has a high frequency and significance. In addition to using this literary element a lot, the poets of this era also made some changes in the motifs in order to differentiate between their poems and the tradition of Persian poetry. One of the most important of these poets is Saeb Tabrizi, a poet of the 17th century and one of the most famous poets of the Indian style. He has a great tendency to thematize through the use of poetic motifs. Apart from that, the other characteristic of his poetry is the changes he makes in the meanings of the themes compared to their common and conventional meanings in the previous poems. In Persian literary research, these symbolic meanings are referred to as associations. In the present research, an attempt has been made to examine the evolution of poetic themes from a new perspective by matching the concept of the term association with the term motivation in the works of Gérard Genette, a contemporary French theoretician. In the end, by basing the theme of cypress and lunar/cuckoo in Saeb Tabrizi's sonnets, it has been concluded that one of the characteristics of Saeb's individual style and on a more general level, his period style is that his great desire to create new and original motivations for Poetic themes have caused a feature that was called "fluidity of motifs" in the present research. In many cases, this feature has led to the abstraction of multiple and sometimes chaotic and contradictory motivations for a single motif. In fact, the fluidity of the motifs can be seen as the excess of thematization and unbridled imaginations in the poetry of the period in question and a reaction to the possible loss that the poets of this period felt when looking at the great poets before them.

Keywords

Key Words: Persian Poetry
Indian Style
Saeb Tabrizi
Motif
Association
Motivation
Subjects
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