Literary Arts (Sep 2024)
A New Understanding of the Linguistic Skills of Hafez
Abstract
Poems composed by Hafez can be considered the most complex and enigmatic ones in the Persian language in terms of the use of artistic, rhetorical, and semantic capacities and functions of language. In this regard, Hafez goes to the point that it would be impossible to comprehend the intellectual world of his speech without reflection and hesitation. Hence, he has intelligently, fluently, and consciously used all the subtleties and capacities of the language to present his thoughts and draw his worldview taking advantage of them all with remarkable dexterity. It is because of the use of these clever linguistic tricks that his poetry has always been the subject of literary studies by scholars from different perspectives. On the other hand, since one of the most important stylistic and artistic features of his poems is the amazing use of amphibology and its different types, especially proportional amphibology, many researchers and poets have tried to examine the different layers of meanings and linguistic mystery of his art by extracting evidence of amphibologies and its various categories in his poetry in order to reveal the wonders of prismatic relations of words in his poetry. The present study has used the methods of description and analysis to examine the idea of new proportional amphibologies in the poetry of Hafez. These proportional amphibologies have not been considered in previous research and studies of the poetry of Hafez. Keywords: Hafez, Amphibology, Proportional Amphibology, Rhetoric Multi-layered. IntroductionThe most frequent and eloquent feature of the poetic style of Hafez is considered to be proportional amphibology. Basically, multi-facetedness and multi-meaning are the constituent elements of literary discourse. By using this feature, Hafez not only displays his literary eloquence but also conveys his intelligent thoughts beautifully and in the most artistic way. Amphibology means complexity of images, or in other words, multi-dimensional images that are created by combining words with multiple meanings at the level of a verse.One of the strengths of the poetry of Hafez compared to the poetry of many formalist poets or even poets who have created amphibology is that aside from making maximum use of multiple paralinguistic capacities of language, Hafez has also grown the semantic and intra-linguistic aspects of the language in various ways. This issue has made the audience draw different meanings and interpretations from the linguistic and semantic layers of words and their artistic relation with the content proportionate to the amount of their feelings, emotions, awareness, and knowledge in the face of his poetry to be satisfied and enjoy from this artistic pleasure.Undoubtedly, through his awareness and competence over linguistic delicacies, Hafez himself has played a role in the choice and combination of the lexicon based on their artistic and semantic relations. However, based on the theory of “death of the author”, the role of the reader of poetry in discovering and extracting the semantic and linguistic layers of words and their deliberate and stable musical connections is undeniable. Following the same line of research, the present study investigates some aspects of the artistic capabilities of Hafez and his awareness of the prismatic relations of the lexical items in light of the linguistic and rhetorical subtleties of his poetry. Materials and MethodsThe present study is conducted using a descriptive-analytical method through the use of library resources and extracting files from related sources. Many researchers and poetic scholars have tried to show the different layers of meaning and linguistic mysteries of his art by extracting the amphibologies and their different categories from his poetry in order to reveal the wonders of the prismatic relationships of the words in his poetry. However, by studying the language of Hafez, novel artistic and rhetorical relationships can be found among the words that other researchers have not noticed or discovered yet. In the present study, novel proportional amphibologies in the poetry of Hafez have been examined. These proportional amphibologies have not been considered in other studies and annotations written on the poetry of Hafez. Research FindingsOne of the obvious and at the same time effective components of Hafez's poetry is the multidimensionality of the verses and the layers of meaning embedded in them “in such a way that the audience, after reading it several times, still makes discoveries in the field of form and meaning, and this issue makes the text finished does not know and always has the motivation to return to it as a dynamic and generative text” (Azizi Habil, 2019, p. 8). The use of amphibology and more specifically proportional amphibologies in Hafez's poetry is usually made with awareness and a special style, and while Hafez tries to bring his words closer to the pure essence of poetry, he also tries to make his art reflect the social issues of his time. A time when hypocrisy and sanctimony of the people could not be described except via a multi-faceted and multi-layered language. Although from the perspective of "the death of the author", the issue is acceptable as the poem is a musical note that is performed by the singer and the author no longer has control over it. When words are written, they turn into an instrument that anyone can use based on their taste and the tools they have at their disposal; it is not guaranteed that the author can use them better than others. “Hafez's artistry in his special way of using language has caused his poetry to be a mirror so that everyone can see themselves in it and imagine that this is the true image of Hafez; Minds that are familiar with the words and meaning of Hafez's words, whenever they look at his words and reflect on them, they learn new things about form and meaning and discover new subtleties and points” (Agha Hosseini, 2004 p. 124).The present study investigates the use of proportional amphibologies in lexical items that have not been noticed by commentators and researchers and have been neglected in the annotations of the poetry of Hafez, as well as in previous linguistic and rhetorical studies regarding their lower layers of meaning and their harmony and compatibility with other words in which these lexical items are used. In examining the aesthetics of the poetry of Hafez, in many cases, neglecting the rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions of a letter or a word can collapse the artistic structure and stunning beauty of the verse and sometimes destroy the value and the content and semantic position of the verse and even the whole sonnet. This attention and awareness to the multiple semantic layers of a word, as well as his unique awareness and knowledge of the coexistence and replacement of words, has turned the poetry of Hafez into the purest poem in the history of Persian literature and the most artistic poetic language. Discussion of Results and ConclusionsThe precision and obsession in choosing words is one of the distinctive and artistic features of the poetry of Hafez. The poetry of Hafez is like a mirror every time you look into its clarity and transparency, you can see more wonderful and different aesthetic aspects that lead to the artistic pleasure of the readers. That is why his collection of poems, which is a masterpiece of the artistic subtleties of Persian literature, refreshes as time passes and the mysteries hidden beyond its literary level reveal themselves upon each reading. The secret of the immortality of Hafez and his poetry should also be sought from this perspective. The present study was an attempt to shed light on some of the hidden proportional amphibologies in the verses and poems of Hafez which had so far escaped the keen eyes of scholars. To discover these amphibologies, one should pay attention to the sometimes obsolete and forgotten meanings of some lexical items as used by Hafez; synonyms that can sometimes only be searched and found in Persian dictionaries.The following are some of the lexical items whose forgotten meanings and synonyms have been examined in this study and it has been shown that paying attention to these meanings helps us discover the proportional amphibologies that have been neglected so far: ISHRAT (a type of tree), HASRAT (the name of a flower), AN (Wolf's nest), Bud (well), QAROON (a type of flower and herbal plant), JAN (wind), SHAHID (Friday), BI (butterfly), SHARAB (a type of flower), GOL (A musical note), HOOR (A tree), KHEJEL (A valley full of flowers and plants), TOBE (rainbow), FARAGH (Arrow and hot summer wind), PARVANE (leader and frontrunner), SU (An arrow), AREZ (leader of the corps), NAM (sleep), HOBAB (one of the names of the devil), BAD (pride), TALIB TA LAB HAD (looking at the corner of the eye). It is as if these words are like actors present on the stage, each wearing a different costume underneath their outer clothes, having them sit together with other actors (words) in the lower layer of the play (poetry). Undoubtedly, we should not suffice to what has been said so far about the art of Hafez by researchers and scholars, and by meditating and delving into this ocean of art and rhetoric, we can catch new and valuable oysters and reveal other mysteries of the magic of his speech.
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