Matn/Pizhūhī-i Adabī (Sep 2023)
Rumi's Innovations in Three Poetic Forms: Ghazal, Ruba'i, and Stanza
Abstract
The study of Rumi's storytelling in the form of Masnavi has neglected the study of his narratives in other forms of poetry. In this article, through a descriptive-analytic method, we study the capacity of Rumi's storytelling in the poems of Ghazal, Ruba'i, and Stanza. We found that although Persian poets had the most constraints in the field of poetry, a creative poet like Rumi could have been in the same number of Persian poems, depending on the circumstances in which the narrative was viewed as a whole, to formulate the narrative in an artistic form appropriate to get help. On this basis, he chose the ghazal to represent the events that were followed by the emotional effects of his emotional revelations. With a cohesive, unique structure, he has adapted his wisdom and mystical wisdom. From the narrative of his storytelling in the form of stanza, which consists of 17 Stanza of his poem and 15 pieces in the expression of the narrative stories, the unity of the theme in these pieces, is the cause of unity in the totality of his spiritual experiences. Therefore, the specific structure and style of his stories have revealed how these stories appeared in particular story forms. Also, in comparison to 2.84%, his storytelling is in a ghazal, while he has 10.27% of the quatrains and 7.05% of the story, and this shows that after the Masnavi, Maulana has said more than any figure in the Ruba'i.Keywords: Rumi, Storytelling, Ghazal, Ruba'i, Stanza. IntroductionThe form of Persian poetry has been considered the most inflexible aspect of poetry in classical Persian literature, which, unlike its two other aspects, language and meaning, remained almost unchanged throughout the classical period. Whatever the reason for this immutability, a closer examination of the poems of some mystical poets shows that sometimes genius and unconventional poets like Rumi have shown innovations in this limited system due to necessity and to be more effective, which are very important and original in their own way.Rumi is famous for his innovation and creativity in different fields of Persian poetry, such as language, and imagery, and his defamiliarization in many of the fields that have been studied so far. But his innovations in the field of poetic forms are no less than his linguistic deviations. The freshness of mystical experiences that he has reached in the world of revelation is his main motivation for escaping from all the literary norms before him and his new searches for different literary elements.In the field of poetic forms, original mystical experiences have forced Rumi to escape from the closed system of poetic forms to defamiliarize himself in this field as well. A poet like him has considered the proportions between form and content of mystical experiences and the correlation between the two for the success of a narrative. Paying attention to this important point has made him act very intelligently in choosing the appropriate form of the poem for the content of the experience in which he tells the story and uses each poetic form for its own purpose, so that in most of the less-known forms of storytelling in Persian literature, such as Ghazal and quatrain, he has written a significant number of mystical stories.Despite Rumi's innovations in the field of poetic form, this aspect of his poetic initiatives has not been considered and analyzed in detail or statistically. Was Rumi's motive for telling stories in a form other than the Masnavi, just for entertainment, or is the choice of the form of the poem consistent with his mystical experiences? In which of the poetic formats did Rumi tell the most stories how many of these stories are in each format and what are their features? We have tried to find answers based on statistics to these questions and analyze each one in detail in this article to analyze the innovation and initiatives of Rumi in the field of Persian poetic forms. Literature ReviewResearch into the story in the works of Rumi in the contemporary era has especially focused on the form of Masnavi. Thus the research on Rumi's story-telling in non-Masnavi forms has been very limited. Nevertheless, in the last few decades, especially in the research of Rumi, the narrative Ghazal has been discussed in the Divan-e Shams. Narrative Ghazal is considered the second form studied among contemporary researchers after the form of Masnavi. Apparently, for the first time, Dr. Shafiei Kadkani mentioned the narrative Ghazal in the Divan-e Shams in the introduction to Shams' Ghazaliat. Dr. Pournamdarian, in the story of the prophets in Divan-e Shams, has elaborated on Rumi's story about divine prophets in the form of a Ghazal. Also, in the book "Meeting with Simorgh" and the article " Research in a Ghazal of Attar", he provides valuable information about the experience of the poet's meeting with himself in the form of Ghazal, which can be generalized to the narrative Ghazals of other Persian-speaking mystics. Another book, which was collected by Mohammad Daneshgar from the collection of articles of the Rumi Conference (2008), has several articles in which Rumi's story-telling in Divan-e Shams and its dimensions (point of view, characterization, time and place, etc.) are discussed. "Narrative and Story in Shams' Ghazalyat", "Shams Divan's Narrative Ghazal" and "Reflection on the Perspective of the Stories of Shams' Ghazalyat" are among these articles that focus on examining the story in Shams' Ghazalyat. Ali Garavand has discussed in detail the types of stories in Shams' Ghazalyat in the book "About narration in Shams Ghazaliat". Articles "In the Presence of Faraman; Interpretation of Rumi Narrative Ghazal", "Storytelling in Shams's Ghazals" and "Examination of Narrative Ghazal Structure from Shams's Ghazals" by different authors are among other research that have not revealed any new words on the study of Rumi's narrative form.The research on other forms of narration is much less than this amount; for example, despite the age and popularity of quatrain in different periods of Persian poetry from the past and present, there is very little research on the narrative quatrain. There is no mention of storytelling in quatrain in either of the two books "Raba'i and Raba'i Writers until the End of the 8th Century" and "Evolution Raba'i in Farsi". Seyyed Ali Mirafazli neither in his collection of articles nor in his book "Charkhati; Research in the History of Persian Quatrains" which is all about the formal characteristics of quatrains, did not mention the story-telling of mystics in this format. In the article "Mulana's Artistic Behaviors in Ruma's Quatrains" the story narrative in Rumi's quatrains is mentioned and examples of his quatrains are given. In the article "Analysis of Rumi's Quatrains from a Narrative Point of View", storytelling in Rumi's quatrains has been discussed more extensively. Therefore, despite some scattered research, a comparison has not been made between the storytelling formats in Shams and the characteristics of each format in storytelling. MethodThe research method in this article is the descriptive-analytical method and the use of library resources. First, we have checked all the forms of Persian poetry available in the Divan-e Shams (based on Forozanfar's edition). With the definition we have given of narration, we have analyzed and compared the presence of narration and different elements of the story in different poetic formats. We have also tried to show the relationship between the form and the content of the story narrated by Rumi. ResultsContrary to the relatively common belief that Rumi is a poet with the largest number of stories in the form of Masnavi and that his short narratives in the Divan-e Shams were only from entertainment, we have shown that the dynamics and attention to form in Rumi's stories are such that there is the greatest match between the narrative form and the content of the story that it is intended to represent.It is true that Ghazal's stories are formed as a result of strong emotional impressions and the symbolic expression of his mystical experiences. But due to the special structure of Ghazal in Farsi, it is possible to show his vivid and unified experiences as much as his quatrains-tales, which are more in number than his narrative Ghazals.The dominance of mystical experiences in Rumi is so great that even in the form of Stanza, which is mostly told to tell real stories and with the intention of education, Rumi has turned into a form for showing secret stories in which the lover and the beloved meet in a symbolic space.This research shows that Rumi has more narrations in quatrain than Ghazal.
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