The Rose and the Nightingale: Allegorical Gardens in the Debate Poetry of Parvīn E’tesāmī

Abstract

The significance of Parvīn E’tesāmī’s poetic garden as a complex allegory, constructed out of several smaller metaphors, has received little detailed treatment. The present study proposes to explore this garden as an instance of classical Persian allegorical gardens that generally have didactic functions. As this study will argue, Parvīn’s allegorical garden is most often rendered into a number of debates between conflicting characters selected from a vast array of entities and endowed with particular ‘moral’ qualities interacting without being subordinated to the authorial voice of the poet. The metaphorical pair of lovers, ‘the rose and the nightingale,’ with a range of earthly and divine meaning, is at the heart of this ‘garden clash’ motif, confronting other figures of this garden, notably the thorn, water (both as raining cloud and as stream), the ant and the moon. Though the garden represented through these debates can be seen to function within a religious framework, it does not lead to spiritual quietism and suppression of human efforts.

Keywords

• personification
• didactic
• fatalism
• mortality
• gnosis
• carpe diem