Persian literature

“ The intelligent study of Persian literature compels an examination of the early myths and legends where her poetry and romance found their sources—compels the study not only of the inscriptions of Persian kings, but of the tablets which have brought down to us the idols of a primitive people. Therefore, it is the province of this chapter to give a brief yet comprehensive outline of the principal deities and legends which seem to form the basis not only of Persian mythology, but of the luxuriant growth of myth and fable which has permeated India, Greece, and Rome, as well as Northern Europe. ”

“ HISTORIC OUTLINE. ORIGIN OF PERSIAN LITERATURE—ACCAD AND SUMER—LITERATURE OF NINEVEH—BABYLON—ĪRĀN OR PERSIA—PHYSICAL FEATURES—PERSIAN ART—MANUSCRIPTS—EARLY LITERATURE—THE ARABIAN CONQUEST—LITERATURE OF MODERN PERSIA—PERSIAN ROMANCE.
Every nation has a literature peculiarly her own, even though it may find its sources in foreign fields. As Persia was founded upon the ruins of more ancient monarchies, as she gathered into the halls of her kings the spoils of conquered nations, so also her literature was enriched by the philosophy and science, the poetry and mythology of her predecessors. ”

“ There are three principal love stories in Persia which, from the earliest times, have been the themes of every poet. Scarcely one of the great masters of Persian literature but has adopted and added celebrity to these beautiful and interesting legends, which can never be too often repeated to an Oriental ear. ”

“ The terrible contrasts of life and death—the unyielding resentments and jealousies—passionate loves and hates, which are so distinctively Arabian, began to fill the pages of Īrānian romance with tragedy.
Even the vivid description of the Moslems could scarcely add to the gorgeousness of Persian fancy, where Oriental lovers wandered in the greenest of valleys, while around them floated the soft perfume of the orange blossoms. It could not add to the fabulous wealth of their nobles, where camels were burdened with the choicest of gems, and vines of gold were laden with grapes of amethyst. ”

“ The walls were hung with pictured annals of earlier thrones, and draped with the richest tapestries of Persian looms, while silver urns gleamed here and there, bearing fragrant fires fed with costly sandal wood, or the spicy rods from more distant lands.
Beside this marble city there flowed the river Pulwār. Springing from the dark mountains in the distance, it came down to water the gardens of kings; the sunlight tinted its waves with gold, the blossoms opened their velvet hearts upon its banks, and rich odors were wafted from clusters of pink and purple. ”

“ Persian literature, while scanty, embodied poetical conceptions, and several of the ancient poems possess much art. "The Persians had fancy and imagination, a relish for poetry and art, and they were not without a certain power of political combination. Yet we cannot justly ascribe to them any high degree of intellectual excellence. ”

“ The under-current forces, which determine our own civilization of to-day, are in a general way the same forces which were at play during the heyday of Persian literary production. We owe to the Hellenic spirit, which at various times has found its way into our midst, our love for the beautiful in art and in literature. We owe to the Semitic, which has been inbreathed into us by religious forms and beliefs, the tone of our better life, the moral level to which we aspire. The same two forces were at work in Persia. ”

“ The development of Persian poetry under these first native dynasties was slow. Arabic language and literature had gained too firm a footing to be supplanted at once by a new literary idiom still in its infancy; nevertheless the few poets who arose under the Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids show already the germs of the characteristic tendency of all later Persian literature, which aims at amalgamating the enforced spirit of Islamism with their own Aryan feelings, and reconciling the strict deism of the Mahommedan religion with their inborn loftier and more or less pantheistic ideas ”

“ Not only their books of polite literature, but their histories, ethics and science, nay, even their mathematics and grammar are written in rhyme. There are many volumes of these productions that cannot be dignified by the name of poetry, but their literature is tropical in its development and their annals bear the names of many illustrious poets. Firdusī, author of the great Epic, must always stand at the head of Persian poetry; but Sā’dī with his Būstān and Gūlistān, will ever be a favorite with his own people. ”

“ Persian civilization was to a great extent the product of Babylonian elements, and her mythology was born of that type of sensual idolatry too gross for description. But the Persians were a poetic people, and in their hands these ancient myths were refined and somewhat elevated. The hideous idols called sun-images, which were used in the worship of Chemosh, gave place to the adoration of the sun itself, as the great source of all physical light. It was by the hand of Persia that the sacred bull of Egypt was smitten down, and also the golden couch of Baal, with all its attendant horrors. ”

“ History, however, has some splendid exceptions to this rule, and Persia has had three successive periods of intellectual prosperity,—three times has the national spirit awakened as from a torpor, and for a season it has gleamed like a star in the Orient, but three times it has either died out, or been crushed beneath the storm of conquest. ”

“ But where the Persian artist shines is in his readiness to undertake any style or subject; geometrical patterns—and they are very clever in originating these; scroll-work scenes from the poets; likenesses, miniatures, paintings of flowers or birds; in any media, on any substance, oils, water, or enamel, and painting on porcelain; all are produced with rapidity, wonderful spirit, and striking originality. In landscape, the Persian is very weak ”

“ The Shah Nameh the original source of the story, and which purports to narrate the exploits of Persia's kings and champions over a space of thirty-six centuries, bears the same relation to Persian literature as the Iliad and Odyssey to the Greek, and the Aeneid to the Latin, though in structure it more nearly resembles Morte d'Arthur, [p.150] which records in order the achievements of various heroes. ”

“ From the time of Nadīr Shāh up to the present, Persia has suffered many revolutions, wars and famines, and although they could not destroy the admiration still bestowed upon their great poets, the genius of the race appears to have become extinct. The poetry of the eighteenth century is of little value, and the dominant spirit of the nineteenth is pure mysticism, as embodied in the doctrines of the Sufis.
Nations, as well as individuals, have their periods of mental growth and decay, and when once fallen they seldom rise again. ”

“ The achievements of the Persians in art, literature and religion are by no means contemptible, but somewhat mixed and cosmopolitan. Owing to its position, the Persian state, when it from time to time became a conquering empire, overlapped Asia Minor, Babylon and India, and hence acted as an intermediary for transmitting art and ideas, sending for instance Greek sculpture to India and the cult of Mithra to western Europe. ”

“ It would be indeed absurd for an English writer to attempt to conform, in an English version, to the vagaries of Persian idiom, or even to attempt a literal rendering of the Persian trope. The manner of a poet can never be faithfully reproduced in a translation, but all that is really valuable, really affecting, in an epic poem will survive transfusion into the frank and natural idiom of another tongue. ”

“ Hence the heroes in the Shāh-Nāmah exhibit many of the traits of the Vedic deities—traits which have lived through the Zoroastrian period, the Achæmenian dynasty, the Macedonian rule, the Parthian wars, and even the Arabian conquest, to be reproduced in the poem of Firdusī.
The modern phase of their literature is emphatically an age of poetry; the Persians of these later centuries seem to have been born with a song on their lips, for their poets are numbered by thousands. ”

“ But it did add the element of fierce revenge and the tragedy of violent death, represented by the pitiless simoon and the shifting sand column, the hopeless wastes, the bitter waters, and the dry bones of perished caravans. It added the life-springs of the oasis, as well as the rushing whirlwind; it added the palm tree of the desert, with her feet in 28the burning sand and her head in the morning light—a symbol of the watch-fires of faith above the desert places of life. The best literature of Persia in our own age is largely the reproduction in various forms of her standard poets ”

“ The love for literature and poetry, which it principally expounded, developed in the people the more agreeable qualities which have made the Persian probably the most polite man on this earth. The clerical education, indeed, worked first upon the heart, then upon the brain ”

“ England possesses some of the best, if not the best, of Persian scholars (alas! he who was here in my mind, Lord Strangford, is no longer among us) , yet there is no chair for Persian at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of the charms of its modern literature, and the vast importance of the ancient language of Persia and Bactria, the Zend, a language full of interest, not only to the comparative philologist, but also to the student of Comparative Theology. ”

“ Persian romance, as well as Persian poetry, is burdened with florid description, and the redundancy of style which is everywhere found in the works of even their best authors makes them tedious to the reader. In these books of Oriental romance, it often happens that a new story is begun before the first is finished, being introduced as a narrative by one of the characters, and the second is in turn interrupted by a third, when the author apparently forgets to finish any one of his fables except the last. ”

“ During this period Persia had many men of culture, and, indeed, she boasted of one literary king.
Sultān Ahmed Ilkhāni, who reigned over Bagdad, Azerbaijān, and some parts of Asia Minor, conducted his court with great pomp and splendor. He was one of the most accomplished men of the age, being an artist and illuminator as well as a musical composer. His beautiful calligraphy, in various languages, was highly celebrated, and his poetical productions, in both the Persian and Turkish tongues, were considered very meritorious. ”

“ THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS. EARLY LITERATURE—HISTORIC TABLETS—THE INSCRIPTIONS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR—THE FALL OF BABYLON—CYRUS, THE ACHÆMENIAN—BEHISTUN INSCRIPTIONS—DARIUS AT PERSEPOLIS—INSCRIPTIONS OF XERXES—ARTAXERXES—A LATER PERSIAN TABLET—RÉSUMÉ.
The early literature of Persia takes root in ancient soil, and the foundation of her world of letters must be sought for amidst the graven stones of forgotten tribes. ”

“ Finally, after the conquest, and when Persia was thoroughly made over into a province of the Moslem empire, arises, in the tenth century, the modern Persian, and becomes during several centuries, and even to our own day, the vehicle of an abundant and admirable literature, rich in every department, in poetry, fiction, history, philosophy, science. ”

“ In the field of literature, which is so little known in the western world, the influence is even greater than in the visual art with which we are concerned. Muhammadan literature, be it Arabic, Turkish, or Persian, is Persian in spirit and feeling. [7]
The fusion of Muhammadan doctrine with this Aryan (Persian) culture of old, [8] is an important event in the history of Art. ”

“ The pupil, after he has learned the alphabet, reads the Koran in Arabic; next, fables in Persian; and lastly is taught to write a beautiful hand, which is considered a great accomplishment. The Persians are fond of poetry, and the lowest artisans can read or repeat the finest passages of their most admired poets. For the education of the higher classes there are in Persia many colleges and universities where the pupils are taught grammar, the Turkish and Arabic languages, rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry. The literary men are numerous ”

“ To the same type of literary monuments we have to add the vast field of story literature. Although a considerable portion of it belongs to the province of migratory subjects, and although to Persia belongs often only the rôle of the transmitter, nevertheless, collections of stories of this class undoubtedly had their assigned place in the Sasanian epoch and the dependence of the core of the Thousand and One Nights on the Persian stories collected in the Hazar Afsan [1] is indisputable. ”

“ It is probably true that even after the people had lost much of the original purity and simplicity of their manners, the noble youth of Persia were still educated in the severe discipline of their ancestors, which is represented as nearly resembling that of the Spartan, but gradually the ancient discipline became either wholly obsolete or degenerated into empty forms. ”

“ Not only does their literature present seven leading poets, but this number appears to have a peculiar charm for the Persian literati, and hence we find in this field of Eastern fable, the “Seven Evil Spirits” of Anū, the “Seven Labors of Rustem,” the “Seven Great Feats of Isfendiyār,” “The Seven Fair Faces” of Nizāmī, the “Seven Thrones” of Jāmi, and various other combinations of the same number.
In this as well as previous works, the author wishes to acknowledge the great value of the Chicago Public Library, where a wealth of Oriental lore is ever at the service of the student ”

“ A FEW NOTES ON PERSIAN ART.
The limner's art in Persia has few patrons, and the professional draughtsman of the present day in that country must needs be an enthusiast, and an art-lover for art's sake, as his remuneration is so small as to be a mere pittance; and the man who can live by his brush must be clever indeed. The Persians are an eminently practical people, and buy nothing unless it be of actual utility; hence the artist has generally to sink to the mere decorator ”