Discursive Aspects of the Modernist Poet's Approach to Persian Classic Poetry

Persian poetry has been routinely divided into classic and modern. Such opposition that through emphasizing the existence of a historical discontinuity in Iran، puts aside many capabilities of Persian classic poetry and even rejects its prolific dimensions، can be studied as a discourse. The epistemological and socio-political backgrounds of this discourse، although observable in the ideas of many Iranian intellectuals، should best be traced out on the major theoretical writings of modernist poets. This article studies the discursive approaches of modernist poets، especially those of Nimā، Shāmloo، and Akhavān، to classic poetry and shows that these poets، in order to make firm their understandings of the nature and function of poetry، introduced a great number of strict ideas for devaluing the versatile aspects of classic poetry، negating its historical relevance، pretending it as being “some other” poetry، making multiple misconceptions، etc. Meanwhile، modernist poets، by making use of certain language strategies and aggravating the opposition between modern and classic poems، normalized the idea of the static nature of the classical poetry in a way that their presuppositions became dominant in the areas of Persian literary criticism and Iranian academic research.