Transformation of a Concept: Death from “Resting Place of Love” to “Beauty’s Solitude”

…

After you, death is better than life;

from your grief, death is the way to salvation.

…

Death! O you, the melody of my liberation!

Death! O you, the essence of my contentment!

Death! O you, the cure of the wounded hearts!

Death! O you, my antidote, while life (is my) poison!

Death! O you, the steed of glory and grandeur!

Death! O you, the auspicious-winged bird!

Come swiftly, I am awaiting you!

Embrace me warmly in your arms!

Death, like a fresh and youthful girl,

appeared before him suddenly.

Warmly, (she) embraced him in her arms,

Purifying his body from the suffering of life.^[25]

From couplets 308 to the end of the section, Bizhan considers death as a way out of a joyless life. These couplets can be interpreted as Sepehri’s attempt to embody death. Death is the ‘antidote’ to the ‘poison’ of life. It is something that heals injured hearts; it is the glorious steed that can carry the broken-hearted Bizhan away from his sorrows. It is the auspicious bird that can pull him out from the abyss of grief. The final image is the ultimate form of embodiment: a young girl whose embrace relieves his pain. In the rest of the poem (section eleven, couplets 387-407), death appears as a dismal and unpleasant experience couched in metaphors and images of mourning:

…

Tableau 11

The moon raised (its) head from the mountains.

It is autumn and spring has passed.

…

It is the season of autumn and the meadow is yellow-coloured.

The nightingale’s heart (is) mournful from the situation.

…

It was the grief-filled season of autumn.

It was a moon-lit autumn night. As the mother of nature was in mourning, her skirt was full of weeds and thorns. The rays of the moon shone on the meadow and made the ill-omened scene of the grave visible. There, on the bank of the stream, was the burial-place of the two unfortunate ones’ love.

…

At the foot of the aged elm tree, the life of the two has now perished. The lover and the beloved in each other’s arms are in the heart of dust, in the sleep of nothingness.

…

Death arrived in the season of youth.

(It) cut off the buds of the two unfortunate ones’ lives.

Life is a toil-full fiction.

Life is an incoherent story.

Except for grief and toil, and sorrow and suffering, there is nothing in this temporary lodge.^[26]

The autumn imagery, as the setting and time, re-emerges to depict death. In his seminal study on Layli and Majnun, Nezami’s epic romance, Seyed-Gohrab discusses the significance of time and setting in a romance. Merging the time and setting with the character is a powerful technique that Nezami exploits. In this process, the character and setting become essential components of each other, and this close relationship makes the poem more powerful. In his Layli and Majnun, Nezami used spring and autumn not only for the time and setting, but also as allegories to depict human conditions.^[27] Sepehri borrows the technique from classical Persian poetry when conceptualising death in this section. He starts by announcing the end of spring and the arrival of autumn, then continues to express the magnitude of death by depicting nature in autumn as a mother in mourning. The graveyard and the graves, the tangible references to death, are described as ill-omened. Sepehri refers to death as khvab-i ‘adam (sleep of nothingness). This metaphor may not sound very unpleasant, since ‘sleep’ implies that there may be some hope for waking up. However, for the two lovers, death is their zaval (perishing); it is their end. Death is the force that disrupts the anticipated flow of life. Before concluding the poem, Sepehri refers to the bud of life cut off by death, which, as Seyed-Gohrab mentions, is a recurrent motif associated with autumn in Persian classical poetry.^[28] Although the final two couplets in this section are about life, they contribute to the image of death, represented as the disruption or end of life. Here, life in this world is regarded as an afsanah (fiction), an unreal story, or an imaginary tale. Life is an incoherent story, and this world is a temporary lodge full of pain and sorrow. Death, the bitter ending of life, merely deepens the incomprehensibility and confusion of life.

Death in “Va” (And)

وآری، ما غنچۀ یک خوابیم.– غنچۀ خواب؟ آیا می شکفیم؟

• یک روزی، بی جنبش برگ.
• اینجا؟– نی، در درۀ مرگ.
• تاریکی، تنهایی.
• نی، خلوت زیبایی.
• به تماشا چه کسی می آید، چه کسی ما را می بوید؟

 … –

• و به بادی پرپر…؟

 … –

• و فرودی دیگر؟

 … –

And

Indeed, we are the bud of a dream.

• The bud of the dream? Will we blossom?
• One day, without the leaf ’s motion.
• Here?
• No, in the valley of death.
• Darkness, loneliness.
• Nay, beauty’s solitariness.
• Who comes to see? Who inhales us?
• …
• And scattered by a wind …?
• …
• And another descent?
• …

The poem ‘‘va’’ can be considered as a full-fledged example of Sepehri’s innovative language in poetry. This poem now appears in “Book Four: Sharq-i andūh (East of Sorrow),” in The Eight Books.^[29] It first appeared with the same title, Sharq-i anduh, as a separate volume in 1341/1962-3.^[30] Sepehri wrote this book years after making his acquaintance with shi‘r-i naw in 1327/1948-9, through the poetry of Nima Yushij and Fereidoon Tavallali (d. 1985).^[31] The poem includes examples of Sepehri’s novel metaphors, which are not built upon the previously established poetic models in the literary tradition.^[32] Here, we see Sepehri ‘‘estranging everyday language by subtle distortions and ambiguous metaphors.’’^[33]

The title of the poem is the first element that whets the readers’ curiosity. In Persian, the word va (and) is a conjunction, used to connect sentences or phrases of equal grammatical value. It is normally used between two parallel parts, and not as a standalone unit of meaning. It may imply that some thing or event is not yet finished. It can also imply expectation for an explanation of what happened, or is going to happen. Sepehri’s use of such a word for the title makes the reader think about what the possibilities are, and what elements are to be connected. One starts to imagine what the previous parts of the conversation were. Another implication of the title may be that the poem is going to describe an ongoing process.

The story is just as engrossing. It starts with an affirmative sentence about what we are, expressed within a novel metaphor, namely a dream that grows us as its buds, just as a plant sprouts flowers.^[34] The story then takes shape within a conversation in an unknown space.^[35] This conversation can be read as a monologue between the speaker and his own inquiring mind, or between the speaker and another fellow participant. As readers, therefore, we are in the middle of a conversation that starts with a word, signalling a non-stop flow, and an affirmative answer to an unasked (or unpronounced) question. The answer merely adds to the ambiguity of our existence, and of our essence: we exist, but as transient apparitions, within no specific time or place. The next implication of the line is that the conversation is between “us.” Therefore, there is a sense of intimacy between the speakers. The first-person plural pronoun also offers the possibility that the readers are included in the conversation. Therefore, there is intimacy between those involved in the conversation and the readers. In fact, Sepehri’s use of the first-person pronoun creates a seamless connection between the characters in the poem and the reader. It becomes impossible to distinguish between the conversation in the poem, and the conversation that comes to life when we read the lines.

Sepehri’s innovative metaphor captures not only the reader, but also one of the voices in the story. From the second line, the second participant joins the conversation by turning the opening sentence into a yes/no question. S/he expresses surprise at being a ‘bud of a dream’, as one of the functions of such a question is to express surprise, rather than asking for information. However, the possibility of birth interests the second speaker more. Following with a second yes/no question, this time asking for information, the curious speaker swiftly moves on to consider the possibility of blooming: ‘Will we blossom?’ The first speaker replies that we will, one day, but not here. The answer to the second participant’s next question, about the location of birth, is the climax of the story. The birth will happen in the valley of death. Therefore, the ‘here’, where the conversation takes place, is an unknown location in the middle of an ongoing conversation between birth and death. The image of a valley to depict death may imply the depth of that concept for the poet. Death is not only the birthplace of birth, but it is also incomparable to birth in magnitude and essence. Birth is merely a vague possibility. Death, however, is painted as an entity outside the realm of the dream that the bud depends on for its birth.^[36]

The speakers’ different perspectives intersect in the couplet with the description of the location for birth. The second speaker’s tone implies disappointment. For him/her, what characterises the valley of death is darkness and loneliness, but nothing more. The other participant’s answer, however, implies more than talking about the space of the valley. It is as if s/he is talking about the intertwined experience of being born in death, which is far from being a gloomy experience. While the first speaker’s words, “Darkness, loneliness,” refer to death, the second speaker talks about beauty and its solitariness. For him/her the twin experience of birth and death is beauty, and it happens in a state of solitariness. These two lines, therefore, separate the worldviews of the two speakers.

The ambiguity of silence rules the rest of the poem. From this point on, the conversation continues within the metaphor of blooming, but with words expressed only by the second participant. Since we are buds, the questions “Who comes to see? Who inhales us?” may be interpreted as “Who will praise us? Who will acknowledge us?” The other party’s reply is mere silence – as if s/he is already mesmerised by the beauty, or as if s/he is already immersed in solitariness. Therefore, the next two questions implying death are also answered by silence. The second participant continues by visualising it all: blooming into a flower only to lose the petals to the wind, and descending to death. The poem and the conversation fade away in silence. Silence, as the open end to the poem and the conversation, leaves the reader in suspense. Was the conversation about being buds of a dream, itself part of the dream? Were the speakers also dreaming? Where are we in this dream? Through novel metaphors, Sepehri challenges the reader’s mind to recognise death, as if, for the first time.^[37] This is a vivid example of Sepehri’s creation of a new perception of death, instead of regarding it as a disgusting phenomenon.

Conclusion

This brief article is an attempt to examine how the concept of death changes in Sepehri’s poetry. The comparison of the metaphors painting death in Sepehri’s first book of poetry, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” and in his later poem “Va,” reveals several interesting shifts. “Dar kinar-i chaman” is Sepehri’s only poetry collection available from the years before he became acquainted with shi‘r-i naw, as founded by Nima Yushij. In “Dar kinar-i chaman,” Sepehri’s representation of death is embedded in several metaphors recalling similar ones from classical Persian poetry. Death is painted as the end to life, or the unpleasant interruption of life’s anticipated flow. Death is represented as khvab-i ‘adam, in which the two lovers perish. Using the binary opposition of autumn versus spring, Sepehri expands the imagery from nature to express his thoughts and emotions about death. In addition to metamorphic allusions to death, Sepehri makes direct references to things associated with death, such as graves or mourning. In this poem, Sepehri tries to capture the concept of death as the bitter ending to life. He does this by going around the concept, without entering the realm of death.

In the later poem, “Va,” death is represented in a totally different manner. Here, Sepehri depicts death, not as an entity separate from life, nor as a negative phenomenon to be detested. In “Va,” we do not exist to be terminated by death. The other difference is the metaphor of a dream in this poem. In “Dar kinar-i chaman,” khvab-i ‘adam is the point where the characters perish. In “Va,” we are apparitions dependent on a timeless, placeless dream for our probable birth. We are a possibility, although as ambiguous and vague as the buds of a dream. Death, however, exists outside that vague and vulnerable realm. Death is painted as a valley, deep and endless, in which we might someday be born.

In both poems, Sepehri uses metaphors to conceptualise death. In “Dar kinar-i chaman,” he walks around death, representing it in terms of the absence of life, the lack of freshness, and spring turning to autumn. It can be seen in terms of tangible and familiar objects such as graves and yellow-coloured leaves in the meadow. He employs poetic techniques from classical Persian poetry to merge the elements of time and setting with the emotional state that death generates. In contrast, the conceptualisation of death in “Va” depicts Sepehri’s vivid contemplations on death. It is as if he has explored death, and is familiar with it in terms of its different dimensions and magnitude. That is why his representation of death as the valley, something that already exists, sounds more certain than the vague possibility of birth.

[1] This article is part of the ERC-Advanced Grant project entitled Beyond Sharia: The Role of

Sufism in Shaping Islam, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101020403).

[2] Discussions of Sepehri’s poetic innovations appear in numerous works on his poetry. For the most recent example, see the translators’ introduction by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Prashant Keshavmurthy to Sepehri’s The Eight Books: A Complete Translation, trans. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Prashant Keshavmurthy (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 1-25. See also Fatemeh Pourjafari, “Defamiliarization in Sohrab Sepehri’s Poetry,” Canadian Social Science 1 (2012): 200-203.

Zhinia Noorian is a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC Advanced Grant project “Beyond Sharia: The Role of Sufism in Shaping Islam” in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. She has published Parvin Etesami in the Literary and Religious Context of Twentieth Century Iran (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023). She is currently working on the gender-related aspects of the Qalandariyya movement in the thirteenth century. z.noorian@uu.nl

[3] See, for example, Siroos Shamisa, Nigahi bih Sepehri (Tehran: Sada-yi mu‘asir, 1382/2003-4), 36, 124.

For more recent studies, see Behnam Mirzababazadeh Fomeshi, “The Concept of Death in John Donne and Sohrab Sepehri: A Comparative Study,” Kata 2 (2013): 77-84. See also Nurollah Nawruzi Davudkhvani, “Ma‘ani, tasavir-o ta‘abir-i marg dar ash‘ar-i Sohrab Sepehri-o Fereidoon Tavallali,” Pazhuhish-namah-i adab-i ghana’i 18 (1391/2012), 185-198, and Parviz Sajidin, “Hamrah ba musafir,” in Raz-i gul-i surkh: naqd-o guzidaha-i Sohrab Sepehri (Tehran: Bihnigar, 1375/1996-7), 226-230.

[4] The book is not easily accessible. My references to the poem are based on an article in which the entire work appears for the first time. See Omid Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman ya aramgah-i ‘ishq,” Iranshahr-i imruz 2, 2 (1396/2017), 29-54. In the electronic version of the article available to me, pages are numbered from 1-26.

[5] The translation of the cited couplets from “Dar kinar-i chaman ya aramgah-i ‘ishq’ is mine. I translate the couplets literally to convey the meaning as close to the original poem as possible. For the other poem, I use Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy’s translation because of its refreshing smoothness while maintaining conformity to the original text. In their introduction, the translators elaborate on their choices of literal equivalents for Persian words for maintaining fidelity to the original. See Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Prashant Keshavmurthy, “Introduction,” The Eight Books, 24. For the title of this poem, however, I choose to make a small alteration in the translated title, ‘‘And’’. As seen later in the interpretation of the poem, I suggest that using the conjunction va, as the title evokes the non-ending process of birth and death. One of the implications of the title is that there is no end or beginning, in either the process depicted in the poem, or in the poem itself. Both the process and poem are slices of a never-ending flow, which can be expressed in the formal structure of the poem by evading the rules of capitalisation in English, and starting the title with a small letter.

[6]For the sake of brevity, I shorten the name of the poem to “Dar kinar-i chaman.”

[7]Paridokht Sepehri, Sohrab, murgh-i muhajir (Tehran: Tahuri, 1375/1996-7), 62.

[8]Sohrab Sepehri, Hanuz dar safaram: Shi‘r-ha-o yad’dasht’ha-yi muntashir nashudah az Sohrab Sepehri, ed. Paridokht Sepehri (Tehran: Farzan, 1384/2005-6), 18.

[9]She also mentions that Sepehri returned to Kashan after he finished his two-year college education in Tehran. In this period, he recited his poems, mostly ghazals, in weekly sessions of literary gatherings that he attended in Kashan. See Sepehri, Sohrab, murgh-i muhajir, 62.

[10]Tabibzadeh states that Sepehri never referred to Dar kinar-i chaman in the account that he wrote of his life events and publications, or in his other works of poetry. Interestingly, he also mentions that Sepehri never attempted to collect or destroy the printed issues of this book, as his contemporary poet Ahmad Shamlu later did with his collection of passionate poetry, Ahang-ha-yi faramush shudah (The Forgotten Melodies). See Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 2-3.

When talking about Dar kinar-i chaman, however, Kamyar Abedi mentions that Sepehri “always hid” the poem. See Kamyar Abedi, Tapish-‘i sayah-i dust: dar khalvat-i ab‘ad-i zindagi-i Sohrab Sepehri (Tehran: Kamyar Abedi, 1377/1998-1999), 42.

[11]Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 3.

[12]Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, in Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. Iraj Mirza.

[13]Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 3.

[14]In a meeting where Lili Golestan showed Sepehri the book Dar kinar-i chaman, he laughed and said that “I needed to start somewhere!” See Abedi, Tapish-i sayah-i dust, 101.

[15]Abedi, Tapish, 42.

[16]Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 2-3. One of the poetic forms that came into vogue in the cultural milieu after the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 was the manzumah, with its narrative verses in masnavi or rhyming couplets. Iraj Mirza, one of the most popular poets of the Qajar period, wrote several of his works in this form. See Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, in Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. Iraj Mirza. For more on the transformation of Persian literature after the Revolution see Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, ‘‘Poetry as Awakening: Singing Modernity,’’ in A History of Persian Literature: Literature of the Early Twentieth Century: From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah, ed. Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 30-132.

[17] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 2-3. The natural scenes described in this story share many similarities with the scenes where Sepehri grew up, as his sister describes in her memoir. See for example, Paridokht Sepehri, Sohrab, 41-45.

[18] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 2.

[19] For the complete manzumah, see Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 13-26.

[20] For more about this technique and its application by Nezami, see Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, “The Time of Falling Leaves,” in Laylī and Majnūn: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 311-336.

[21] Tabibzadeh believes that Sepehri’s story shares similarities with Romeo and Juliet, the tragic romance written by Shakespeare, but it lacks any “ups and downs or suspensions.” See Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 6.

[22] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 16.

[23] Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, “The Time of Falling Leaves,” 323.

[24] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 21-22. In my translation, I use parentheses to indicate the words I add to compensate for the ellipses.

[25] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 23.

[26] Tabibzadeh, “Dar kinar-i chaman,” 25-26.

[27] Seyed-Gohrab, “The Time of Falling Leaves,” 311-313.

[28] Seyed-Gohrab, “The Time of Falling Leaves,” 323.

[29] Sepehri, The Eight Books, 192-193.

[30] Sepehri, Hanuz dar safaram, 141.

[31] Abedi, 101.

[32] Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy, “Introduction,” 9.

[33] Shabani-Jadidi and Keshavmurthy, “Introduction,” 24.

[34] The word khvab can also be translated as “sleep.”

[35] Apart from the question-answer mode of the poem, the dashes in the beginning of the sentences indicate that the lines are probably a dialogue.

[36] Fomeshi believes that death in this poem ‘‘is depicted as a peaceful beginning’,” probably indicating religious, or more particularly, Islamic beliefs. See Fomeshi, “The Concept of Death,” 81.

[37] Fatemeh Pourjafari, “Defamiliarization,” 203.