The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women

The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women PDF Author: Rabe`eh Balkhi
Publisher: Mage Publishers
ISBN: 1949445607
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 600

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women

The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women PDF Author: Rabe`eh Balkhi
Publisher: Mage Publishers
ISBN: 1949445607
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 600

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz

Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz PDF Author: Mohammad Hafez-e Shirazi
Publisher: Mage Publishers
ISBN: 1949445593
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Get Book Here

Book Description


Persian Poets

Persian Poets PDF Author: Peter Washington
Publisher: Everyman's Library
ISBN: 0375411267
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Middle Ages saw an extraordinary flowering of Persian poetry. Though translations began appearing in Europe in the nineteenth century, these remarkable poets--Omar Khayyam, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafiz, and Jami--are still being discovered in the West. The great medieval Persian poets owe much to the mystical Sufi tradition within Islam, which understands life as a journey in search of enlightenment, and, like their European contemporaries, they combine religious and secular themes. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine, and poetry itself, or telling humorous anecdotes of everyday life, they use these subjects to symbolize deeper concerns with wisdom, mortality, salvation, and the quest for God.

Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets

Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets PDF Author: J. R. LeMaster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

A Two-Colored Brocade

A Two-Colored Brocade PDF Author: Annemarie Schimmel
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807856208
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry

The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry

The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry PDF Author: Reza Taher-Kermani
Publisher: Edinburgh Critical Studies in
ISBN: 9781474448178
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

A Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry

A Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry PDF Author: Wheeler McIntosh Thackston
Publisher: Ibex Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 0936347503
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A Millennium Of Classical Persian Poetry" is a guide to the reading & understanding of Persian poetry from the tenth to the twentieth century.

Persian Love Poetry

Persian Love Poetry PDF Author: Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
Publisher: Interlink Books
ISBN: 9781566569552
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Shahnameh

Shahnameh PDF Author: Abolqasem Ferdowsi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101993235
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 1041

Get Book Here

Book Description
The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran—now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition A Penguin Classic Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern readers. Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the tenth century, the Shahnameh is among the greatest works of world literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Persia, from the mythical creation of the world and the dawn of Persian civilization through the seventh-century Arab conquest. The stories of the Shahnameh are deeply embedded in Persian culture and beyond, as attested by their appearance in such works as The Kite Runner and the love poems of Rumi and Hafez. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Seven Persian Poets

Seven Persian Poets PDF Author: Albert Shansky
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1524504750
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ever since my three visits to Iran in the years 1973, 1976, and 1978, I fell in love with Persian poetry. Poetry was everywhere in Iran in those years; one could simply walk into a bookstore and buy a copy of a poem of a favorite poet or the work of a new entry which are sometimes illustrated and displayed on walls. Poetry was always an important expression of life in Persia (Iran) beginning with Hakim Ferdowsi's great historical/ mythological epic, Shahnahmeh (The Book of Kings) to the well-known Rubaiyat (Odes) of Omar Khayyam and the magnificent love poems of the three Sufi poets, Jalaluddin Rumi, Muhammad Hafiz, and Saadi Shirazi. This book includes the five poets above as well as two relatively modern poets Forough Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamloo.