Madkhal-e She’r-e Mo’aser-e Farsi (1285–1392) [An Approach to Contemporary Persian Poetry 1906–2013]. By Shahriar Khosravi. Tehran: Fatemi Publishing, 2020. Second printing. Pp. 332. ISBN: 978-964-318-951-8.
Shahriar Khosravi’s provocative survey of contemporary Persian poetry announces its original approach in its very title. In Persian, the book presents itself as a madkhal—an entry point into contemporary Persian poetry—rather than merely an introduction to it. The title is therefore best rendered in English as An Approach to Contemporary Persian Poetry. What makes the book even more striking is that, however original and well-conceived its project of approaching contemporary Persian poetry may appear to professional scholars in the field, it is also written and designed for readers with little or no prior knowledge of the subject. The book’s organisation serves its dual ambition. In the Introduction, Khosravi sets out his analytical lens; Chapter One explains established approaches and examines their shortcomings; Chapter Two applies his alternative framework to a survey of contemporary Persian poetry; and Chapter Three offers an accessible account of the field for readers approaching it for the first time.
One significant feature of Khosravi’s lens for surveying contemporary Persian poetry is its focus on the “ideas” prevalent in Persian poetry rather than on the “poets” themselves. This feature, indeed, provides the foundation for the book’s highly original project. By foregrounding the pathbreaking ideas of contemporary Persian poetry rather than its towering figures, Khosravi cuts across the diachronic history of modern Persian poetry to reveal its principal strands in a synchronic configuration. The result is a “conceptual formulation of the historical currents that constitute contemporary Persian poetry”: a deliberately non-linear arrangement in which, for instance, poetry from the 1980s is discussed alongside currents that flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, while strands that emerged as early as the 1920s may not be taken up until considered alongside more recent poetic movements of the 1990s.
Even though Khosravi consistently attends to innovations in the formal features of Persian poetry, such as mesraʿ (hemistich), the poetic line, and vazn-e ʿarūzī (prosodic meter), it is his conceptual framework that contributes more substantially to the synchronic construction of the history of modern Persian poetry. The intellectual criterion encompasses three axes, each defined by two opposing poles. These three axes are what he later refers to as the “Triple-P” framework: the Poetic, the Political (or Ideological), and the Philosophical. The Poetic axis concerns the tension between formalism and content-orientation, distinguishing poetry according to the relative emphasis it places on formal features and on content. The Political (or Ideological) axis ranges from commitment to purism, marking the tension between poetry understood as socially and politically engaged and poetry conceived as autonomous from such concerns. The Philosophical axis opposes objectivism and subjectivism, distinguishing between poetry oriented toward the external world of objects and poetry centred on the poet’s subjective and individual experience.
The intersection of these axes produces a multidimensional configuration in which a poem or poetic current can occupy a distinct position along each continuum—for instance, being formal in its poetics, committed in its ideological orientation, and subjectivist in its philosophical orientation. Working within the framework of the Triple-P thesis, Khosravi identifies two extremes in the categorisation and theorisation of modern poetry in Iran, distinguished by whether poetic creation is primarily immanent to poetry or oriented toward what lies beyond it. At one end of this continuum is the conjunction of content-orientation, ideological commitment, and objectivism; at the other is the conjunction of formalism, ideological autonomy, and subjectivism. The transition of Persian poetry from the former extreme to the latter, from the 1940s to the 1990s, on either side of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, constitutes the book’s first thesis—what Khosravi later refers to as the paradigm shift in Iran’s modern poetry.
Although the book adopts a synchronic and conceptual approach to the development of modern Persian poetry in the twentieth century, its selection of Nima Yushij as the “forerunner”—or, as becomes clear by the end of Chapter Two, the most important “forerunner”—of modern Persian poetry provides a diachronic anchor for its otherwise synchronic organisation. The book’s simultaneous diachronic and synchronic construction of the various poetic strands is reflected in its treatment of Nima himself, whose innovations serve as both the historical and the conceptual centre around which other currents are organised. In other words, Nima is not considered the organising centre of the different poetic strands in contemporary Persian poetry merely because he was the most influential forerunner of the innovations that transformed modern Persian poetry, but also because both his theoretical and poetic work is open to various interpretations, as if it encompasses the two opposing poles of each of the three components of the Triple-P rubric. As Khosravi emphasises, it is as if Nima’s poetry “philosophically brings objectivism and subjectivism together, poetically brings formalism and attention to content together, and ideologically brings commitment and aesthetic autonomy together” (92).
More important than this, however, are Nima’s well-considered formal innovations—what Khosravi calls his “moderate” innovations—which enable a dialogue between classical traditions and radical innovation and make Nima the figure among the forerunners of modern Persian poetry best suited to serve as the centre around which its various poetic currents can be organised. At the same time, Nima serves as a historical point of departure, dividing the history of modern Persian poetry into what came before him and what followed in his wake. In this way, his position at the centre of Khosravi’s framework accommodates both its synchronic and diachronic dimensions: the various currents can be organised conceptually around his innovations while also being situated historically in relation to the decisive break that his poetry represents.
Chapter Two outlines the three major currents in modern Persian poetry: the conservatives, the Nimaic poets, and the radicals. The first section examines the conservatives, who seek to preserve literary traditions while allowing innovation within their general principles. Khosravi distinguishes between poets who return to classical forms and those he calls “neoclassicists.” The second section focuses on Nima and the two major currents that developed from his poetry: committed poets, who regard art as socially and politically engaged, and purists, who defend the autonomy of art and its aesthetic principles. Khosravi uses this distinction to organize his discussion of several strands of modern Persian poetry from the 1920s onward. The third section turns to the radicals, who call for more fundamental innovations in poetic practice. It covers four currents: modernists contemporary with Nima, the New Wave (Mowj-e Now), post-Nimaic poetry, and the conservative and radical reactions to post-Nimaic poetry. While the New Wave pursued radical formal innovation, post-Nimaic poets placed greater emphasis on language, defamiliarisation, and relativism. The chapter concludes with the emergence of performance poetry as a radicalisation of post-Nimaic poetry, a movement to which Khosravi himself, as a poet, belongs.
Having mapped the main currents of modern Persian poetry through a synchronic construction of its development in the twentieth century, in Chapter Three Khosravi reconstructs the material, this time in a purely diachronic manner. In the absence of intermediary institutions between the state and society in contemporary Iran, the cultural sphere has reflected the political sphere. The claim is that the strong correlation between political changes and literary strands calls for explanation. For example, modern trends flourish when the political sphere is functioning well, as in the Constitutional Revolution era, the developmental era of the 1960s, and the reformist era of the 1990s, whereas reactionary movements take over during the World War I era of the 1910s, the post-coup era of the 1950s, and the era of terror in the 1980s, when the political sphere is unfavourable. According to Khosravi, this correlation is a result of the weakness of what he calls civil society which is defined as the sphere of voluntary associations and institutions that operate with relative autonomy from the state. As a result of this weakness, culture does not show a high degree of independence from politics; rather, it is a reflection of it. The second purpose of this chapter, however, is to present these currents in a manner more accessible to readers approaching the subject for the first time. In this respect, the chapter’s only weakness is the relatively restrained treatment of the poetic currents themselves. Perhaps taking their discussion in Chapter Two as sufficient, Khosravi places greater emphasis here on political and historical events, introducing the literary and poetic currents only insofar as they are relevant to the historical narrative. The chapter would nevertheless benefit from a more comprehensive presentation of the currents, even at the cost of some repetition for readers who have already read Chapter Two. The “Further Reading” materials in each section, together with the bibliography at the end, serve as useful guides for further research. Its pedagogical orientation, together with these features, makes the book of particular interest to librarians, bibliographers, and curators responsible for Persian, Iranian, and broader Middle Eastern collections.
Nader Nasiri,
University of Victoria