Download or read book The Mirror of My Heart A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women written by Rabe`eh Balkhi and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe’eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society’s social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries – Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesn’t; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart – the poems in Persian and English on facing pages – is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.
Download or read book Faces of Love Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz written by Mohammad Hafez-e Shirazi and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shahnameh written by Firdawsī and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of the late-tenth-century Persian epic follows its story of pre-Islamic Iran's mythic time of Creation through the seventh-century Arab invasion, tracing ancient Persia's incorporation into an expanding Islamic empire. 15,000 first printing.
Download or read book Persian Poetry Painting and Patronage written by Marianna Shreve Simpson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commissioned by Prince Sultan Ibrahim Mirza in 1556, five Iranian court calligraphers devoted nine years to transcribing the poetic text of the great Persian classic, the Haft awrang (Seven Thrones), by the mystical poet Abdul-Rahman Jami. Then a team of gifted artists undertook the illumination and illustration of the manuscript. The masterpiece they created—housed today in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and known as the Freer Jami—is a sumptuous volume of some three hundred folios of elegant cursive script with richly decorated margins, thousands of multicolored section dividers, nine illuminated headings and nine colophons that begin and end the main divisions of the text, and twenty-nine full-scale paintings. This gorgeous book reproduces to scale the Freer Jami paintings, discusses each in detail, and introduces the manuscript’s patron and the artist’s painting style and meaning. Marianna Shreve Simpson describes the cultural and artistic milieu in which Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s great manuscript was created and explores the special style and imagery of the illustrations. She then considers the poetic content and mystical significance of the related passages, how the paintings interpret the passages, and the unique and innovative aspects of each painting. In the themes and images of the paintings, Simpson finds, are clues to the message of the manuscript as a whole. This book also includes a timeline of milestones in the prince’s life and in the production of his Haft awrang. Copublished with the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Download or read book Ancient Persian Sculptures written by Kāvaśjı̄ Dı̄nśāhjı̄ Keās and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry written by Reza Taher-Kermani and published by Edinburgh Critical Studies in. This book was released on 2022-02-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry surveys the variety of ways in which Persia, and the multitude of ideological, historical, cultural and political notions that it embodied, were received, circulated and appropriated.
Download or read book Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets written by J. R. LeMaster and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did Walt Whitman get his religious ideas? This book follows in detail the similarities of the religious beliefs of the American writer/humanist and two major classical Persian poets, Hafez and Rumi. Other books have tried to explain Whitman's religion, but none so far has done justice to the topic. Some critics have labelled Whitman a pantheist and let it go at that. Others have dismissed the topic of religion in Whitman's poems as posturing to gain a readership. This work contends that Whitman took religion very seriously. His poems are full of religious references. He knew the Bible well. He also had read Emerson on the poets of the East as well as some of the same poets in translation. This book postulates that the counterparts of Whitman's ideas about religion are best found in the Orient and that his ideas on religion have much in common with those of the Sufis. The book focuses on the works of the three poets. Lines from Whitman are quoted and compared with lines from Rumi and Hafez to illustrate that the three poets conveyed their message through very human actions and emotions. Their message, which is mystical, is conveyed through a secular language, and their symbolism is unconventional. They attract the reader through their humanness and in doing so attempt to lead the reader to recognition of the divine existing both inside and outside of themselves. Like Whitman, Rumi and Hafez realise that God is both transcendent and immanent and as a result encourage their readers to seek the Divine everywhere, especially within themselves. Man's "true home", they contend, is his Divine origin. Man is infinitely bound up with God, is never separate from God. Whitman's long poem titled "Song of Myself" has created much controversy over the years, and Whitman has often been labelled an extreme egotist. Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets illustrates that all three poets see their egotism as a result of their complete faith in God's omnipresence and their ability to recognise Him in every aspect of creation. As did Emerson, all three hold a belief in the simultaneous transcendence and immanence of God. In short, they see themselves as God-intoxicated, as reflections of God in the phenomenal world. Therefore, as do the Sufi poets, Whitman sees man and God as one.
Download or read book Persian Love Poetry written by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and published by Interlink Books. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love is a major theme in Persian poetry and can be interpreted in various ways—as mystic love, the basis of the relationship between humans and God, or as passionate or affectionate love between lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children, family and friends, or even as patriotic love of Iran. The literary style and indeed the Persian language itself are floral and elaborate, but the themes differ little from our preoccupations with love and romance today. This collection of extracts has been selected from the best of traditional and contemporary Persian poetry. Each poem is illustrated with a fine example of Persian art from the collections of the British Museum. With a brief introduction to the Persian poetic tradition and a short biographical note about each of the poets, this beautiful anthology is the perfect way to discover the treasures of Persian literature and art.
Download or read book A Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry written by Wheeler McIntosh Thackston and published by Ibex Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 1994 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Millennium Of Classical Persian Poetry" is a guide to the reading & understanding of Persian poetry from the tenth to the twentieth century.
Download or read book Metaphor and Imagery in Persian Poetry written by Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains ten chapters on Persian metaphors, tropes, rhetorical figures, and poetic forms and genres, by some of the world's foremost scholars in the field of classical Persian poetry.
Download or read book Father of Persian Verse written by Sassan Tabatabai and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abu 'Abdollâh' Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (c. 880 CE-941 CE) was a poet to the Samanid court which ruled much of Khorâsân (northeastern Persia) from its seat in Bukhara. He is widely regarded as 'the father' of Persian poetry, for he was the first major poet to write in new Persian language, following the Arab conquest in the seventh and eighth centuries, which established Islam as the official religion, and made Arabic the predominant literary language in Persian-speaking lands for some two centuries. This book presents Rudaki as the founder of a new poetic aesthetic, which was adopted by subsequent generations of Persian poets. Rudaki is credited with being the first to write in the rubâi form; and many of the images we first encounter in Rudaki's lines have become staples of Persian poetry.
Download or read book Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry written by Leonard Lewisohn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-02 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The romantic lyricism of the great Persian poet Hafiz (1315-1390) continues to be admired around the world. Recent exploration of that lyricism by Iranian scholars has revealed that, in addition to his masterful use of poetic devices, Hafiz's verse is deeply steeped in the philosophy and symbolism of Persian love mysticism. This innovative volume discusses the aesthetic theories and mystical philosophy of the classical Persian love-lyric (ghazal) as particularly exemplified by Hafiz (who, along with Rumi and Sa'di, is Persia's most celebrated poet). For the first time in western literature, Hafiz's rhetoric of romance is situated within the broader context of what scholars refer to as 'Love Theory' in Arabic and Persian poetry in particular and Islamic literature more generally. Contributors from both the West and Iran conduct a major investigation of the love lyrics of Hafiz and of what they signified to that high culture and civilization which was devoted to the School of Love in medieval Persia. The volume will have strong appeal to scholars of the Middle East, medieval Islamic literature, and the history and culture of Iran.
Download or read book Essential Voices Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora written by Christopher Nelson and published by Green Linden Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Essential Voices series intends to bridge English-language readers to cultures misunderstood and under- or misrepresented. It has at its heart the ancient idea that poetry can reveal our shared humanity. The anthology features 130 poets and translators from ten countries, including Garous Abdolmalekian, Kaveh Akbar, Kazim Ali, Reza Baraheni, Kaveh Bassiri, Simin Behbahani, Mark S. Burrows, Athena Farrokhzad, Forugh Farrokhzad, Persis Karim, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Sara Khalili, Mimi Khalvati, Esmail Khoi, Abbas Kiarostami, Fayre Makeig, Anis Mojgani, Yadollah Royai, Amir Safi, SAID, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlu, Solmaz Sharif, Niloufar Talebi, Jean Valentine, Stephen Watts, Sholeh Wolpé, Nima Yushij, and many others. Praise Between arm-flexing states, the U.S. and Iran, the past burns and the future is held hostage. In a twilight present tense, the poets emerge, sure-footed and graceful, imagining another way, another vision of being. The range of these Iranian poets is prodigious and dizzying. Sometimes they "consider the saga of a bee / humming over minefields / in pursuit of a flower," sometimes they "bring your lips near / and pour your voice / into my mouth." Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora is a place where heartbreak and hope gather. At the shores of language, drink this bracing, slaking music. —Philip Metres, author of Shrapnel Maps Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora takes the extraordinary position that poetic arts from the homeland and diaspora should be read alongside each other. This vital book invites English-language readers to step into a lineage and tradition where poems—from playful to elegiac, prosaic to ornate—are fundamental to everyday living. It is the kind of book that requires two copies: one to give to a beloved, and one to keep for oneself. —Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora offers a profoundly satisfying journey into the poetic canon of my homeland—an anthology with an ambition, expanse, depth, and diversity that truly earns its essential tag. So many poets I was hoping would be in here are here, from contemporary icons to new luminaries, plus I got to explore several poets I had never before read. Everyone from students of poetry to masters of the form should take this ride through the soul and psyche of Iran, which endures no matter where the border, beyond whatever the boundary! —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity Iranians rely on poetry to give comfort, elevate the ordinary, and illuminate the darkness. Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora layers the work of the masters with fresh voices, using sensual imagery to piece together a society fractured by revolution, war, and exile. Let the poets lead you into an Iran beyond the news reports—a place where tenderness and humor and bitterness and melancholia balance together like birds on a wire, intricately connected and poised to take flight. —Tara Bahrampour, author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America
Download or read book Persian Words of Wisdom written by Bahman Solati and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the secret of happiness? What is the nature of love? What makes us good hosts or good guests? What traits should we seek out in friends and seek to embody as friends ourselves? How should we approach the sensual beauties of this world- when do they induce us to error and when are they signs of God? The poets and bards of many traditions have long sought answers to such questions, but perhaps no culture has taken up this challenge with more passionate urgency than that of Persia, from the ninth century AD to modern-day Iran. These eleven centuries of poetic tradition include poets who have become well-known in the West, such as 'Umar Khayyam, Rumi, and Hafiz, as well as many others whom Westerners have yet to discover. In Iran these poems remain part of everyday popular culture, with people of all classes and levels of education able to recite them from memory, even if they may not always be sure who the poets were, where they came from, or what precisely was the spiritual intent behind the verse. In Persian Words of Wisdom, the US-based Iranian scholar Bahman Solati has compiled hundreds of examples reflecting his country's religious and spiritual traditions, especially the Shia branch of Islam and Islamic Sufism, but also the Zoroastrian faith. This bilingual edition with his own English translations further illuminates the sometimes enigmatic poems with parallel Western proverbs, as well as comparison quotations from Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist scripture and secular sources ranging from Mark Twain to Dale Carnegie. One of Solati's goals in this anthology is to build a cultural bridge through poetry between the West and Iran, making these treasures of Persian culture more available both to Westerners generally and, most specifically, to young people of Iranian descent who have grown up in the English-speaking world, perhaps without fully understanding the wealth of their heritage. For them and all readers, this will be a book of discovery.
Download or read book Sa di in Love written by Homa Katouzian and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In the breath that I die, for you I'll be longing/ Wishing to turn into the dust of your belonging' - Sa'di, Expressions of Love. With poetry which speaks across the ages, Sa'di (1210-1281) is a vital classical poet and a towering figure of the medieval Persian canon. Comparable in skill and stature to other Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Hafez, Rumi and Omar Khayyam, Sa'di's verses--best known through his 'Bustan' and 'Golestan' address universal themes of passion, love and the human condition in works which are both psychologically perceptive and beautifully crafted. His mystical writings, contemporaneous with Rumi, reveal a degree of depth, wisdom and insight which have placed Sa'di in the pantheon of world literature. In this essential new translation of Sa'di's work, leading expert on Iranian studies Homa Katouzian seeks to bring the poet's lyrics to a new readership. The book provides the Persian text and Katouzian's English translation side-by-side, creating an indispensible tool for students and enthusiasts of Iranian history, literature and culture.
Download or read book Beholding Beauty written by Domenico Ingenito and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry, Domenico Ingenito explores the unstudied connections between eroticism, spirituality, and politics in the lyric poetry of 13th-century literary master Sa‘di Shirazi.
Download or read book The Divan of Hafiz written by Hafiz and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Connoisseurs of world literature need to spend some time acquainting themselves with the Divan of Hafiz, one of the foremost collections of Persian verse. Scholars agree this volume has exerted a singularly important influence on Middle Eastern culture, akin to Shakespeare's role in the sphere of Western letters.
