The transformation of Farsi poetry brought
about by Nima Youshij, untying it feet from the fetters of the prosodic
measures, was a turning point in the long tradition of our poetry. It opened a
huge vista in the perception and thinking of the poets that came after him.
Nima offered a different understandings of the principles of classical poetry.
His artistry was not confined to removing the need for a fixed length hemistich
and dispensing with the tradition of rhyming. Above, and overseeing these
changes, and going beyond altering the formation of the old poetry, he was
focusing on a broader structure and function based on a more contemporary
understanding of human and social existence. His aim in renovating poetry was to
commit it to a natural identity and also to achieve a modern discipline in the
mind and linguistic performence of the poet.
Nima rightly recognised that the formal and literal technique dominating classical poetry interfered with its vitality, vigour and progress. Although he accepted some of its aesthetic properties and extended them in the new poetry writing, he never ceased for a moment to widen his poetic experience by emphasising the singular distinction of this art, and in returning a natural order to it. What Nima Youshij founded in contemporary poetry, which confirmed an entire era in the conviction that the traditional order of poetry could be challenged, his creative successor, Ahmad Shamlu, kept in our horizon by imparting a more innovative experience.
The “white poem”, which draws its sources from this great poet, avoided
the compulsory rules which had entered the Nimai’ school of poetry and adopted
a freer structure. This allowed a more direct relationship linking the poet
with his or her emotional roots. In previous poetry, the qualities of the
poet’s vision as well as the span of the subject could only be expressed in general
terms and were subsumed by the formal limitations imposed on poetic expression.
Nima’s poetry transgressed these limitations. It relied on the natural
function inherent within poetry itself to portray the poet’s solidarity with
life and the wide world surrounding him or her in specific and unambiguous
details and scenes. “White poetry” continues the poetic vision as Nima
underlined and avoids the contrived rules imposed on its creation. However its
most distinct difference with Nimai’ poetry is to move away from the rhythms it
employed. Nima Yioushij paid attention to an overall harmonious rhyming and
created many experimental examples to achieve this end.
Ahmad Shamlu discovered the inner characteristics of poetry and its
manifestation in the literary creations of classical masters as well as the
Nimai’ experience. He offered an individual approach. By distancing himself from
the obligations imposed by older poetry, and some of the limitations that had
entered the Nimai’ poem, he recognised the role of prose and music hidden in
the language. In the structure of “white poetry”, in contrast to the prosodic
and Nimai’ rules, the poem arms itself entirely with the natural ability of
words and incorporates a prose-like process without losing its poetic
distinction.
Night with a bleeding throat
Has sung awhile
Cold sits the sea
In the blackness of the
forest a branch towards the light
Cries out
Sketch (tarh) from The mirror garden - baghe
ayeneh)
This was a cry both choked back and expressed that shows all its inner
designs clearly in a prose-poem. What stands out in this form of expression is
poetry and the intellectual flight of the poet. Ahmad Shamlu, by insisting on
the inner beauty of prose and the twists and turns of its expressive logic,
broadens the poet’s intellectual process. Based on the needs of poetry and its
emotional world, Shamlu rearranges the order, the succession and some of the
rules of the language of prose to create a phenomenon in accord with verse and
poetry. The poet performs this event and the structural development with the
help of the emotional self which, in the most personal moment of creation, carries
a world that is compassionate-humane in his thoughts:
This is no crown
That you could lift from
between two lions
It is a kiss on the sun’s
crest
that your life is called for
And the ashes of your bones
are its reward
[From: The knife on the dish - deshneh
dar dish]
Whatever the interpretation, “white poetry” is a development over the
Nimai’ poetry - a large branch of that. It is a poetry created upon Nima
Youshij innovations. Nima thought that any change in the construction and the
tools of a poet’s expression is conditional on his/her knowledge of the world
and a revolutionised outlook. “White poetry” could not take root outside this
teaching and a sincere application of it
Death ineffectually
With
piercing eyes
We in truth have for the
moments
not born witness
but in the form of these
pains
Which from many tinted love
of humans
we have a portion.
[From the Phoenix -Qoqnus]
In the absence of Shamlu, whose name will forever remain in our poetry,
“white poetry” has opened an established and productive territory in
contemporary Farsi poetry
August 1, 2000
Mansur Khaksar is poet and critic and an influential member of the Iranian literary scene both while he was in Iran, and in exile. He edits Daftarhaye Shanbeh in the USA. He has translated Farrokh Afrooshteh, Dena PO BOX 3953, Seattle Wa 98124-3953, USA.