Ирандық ақын Нима Юшиж: Жаңа поэзияның әкесі

Iranian poet

Nimā Yushij (نیما یوشیج; 12 November 1895 – 6 January 1960), also called Nimā (نیما), born Ali (علی), was an Iranian poet. He is famous for his style of poetry which he popularized, called she'r e now (شعر نو, lit. "new poetry"), also known as She'r e Nimaa'i (شعر نیمایی, lit "Nima poetry") in his honour after his death. He is considered as the father of modern Persian poetry. He died of pneumonia in Shemiran, in the northern part of Tehran and was buried in his native village of Yush, Nur County, Mazandaran, as he had willed.

He was the eldest son of Ibrahim Nuri of Yush (a village in Baladeh, Nur County, Mazandaran province of Iran). He was a Tabarian, but also had Georgian roots on his maternal side. He grew up in Yush, mostly helping his father with the farm and taking care of the cattle. As a boy, he visited many local summer and winter camps and mingled with shepherds and itinerant workers. Images of life around the campfire, especially those emerging from the shepherds' simple and entertaining stories about village and tribal conflicts, impressed him greatly. These images, etched in the young poet's memory waited until his power of diction developed sufficiently to release them.

In general, Nima reformed the rhythm and allowed the length of the line to be determined by the depth of the thought being expressed rather than by the conventional Persian meters that had dictated the length of a bayt (verse) since the early days of Persian poetry. Furthermore, he emphasized current issues, especially the nuances of oppression and suffering, at the expense of the beloved's moon face or the ever growing conflict between the lovers, the beloved, and the rival. In other words, Nima realized that while some readers were enthused by the charms of the lover and the coquettish ways of the beloved, the majority preferred heroes with whom they could identify. Nima actually wrote quite a few poems in the traditional Persian poetry style and as critiqued by Abdolali Dastgheib, showed his ability well. However, he felt the old ways limit his freedom to express his deep feelings or important issues faced by society. This led him to break free and create a whole new style for modern poetry. Furthermore, Nima enhanced his images with personifications that were very different from the "frozen" imagery of the moon, the rose garden, and the tavern. His unconventional poetic diction took poetry out of the rituals of the court and placed it squarely among the masses. The natural speech of the masses necessarily added local color and flavor to his compositions. Lastly, and by far Nima's most dramatic element was the application of symbolism. His use of symbols was different from the masters in that he based the structural integrity of his creations on the steady development of the symbols incorporated. In this sense, Nima's poetry could be read as a dialogue among two or three symbolic references building up into a cohesive semantic unit. In the past only Hafez had attempted such creations in his Sufic ghazals. The basic device he employed, however, was thematic, rather than symbolic unity. Symbolism, although the avenue for the resolution of the most enigmatic of his ghazals, plays a secondary role in the structural makeup of the composition.455

Essays on Nima Yushij: Animating Modernism in Persian Poetry, edited by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak and Kamran Talattof. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Dastgheib, Abdolali. 2006. The Messenger of Hope and Liberty: Critical Review of poems by Nima Yooshij. 2006. Amitis Publishers, Tehran, Iran. (Farsi title: پیام آور امید و آزادی)