Forbidden Fruit in Contemporary Poetry (Twenty Outstanding Poets from Nima to the Present

Quranic tales have always been used by Persian poets in order to create beautiful and unique themes and images. One of these tales is the tale of Adam and Eve and their Fall from Heaven due to eating the Forbidden Fruit. Following most Islamic commentaries, wheat has been considered as this fruit in classic Persian poetry, but the reading of contemporary poets of this tale is different. Sometimes, their reading is similar to classic poets but in other times, following the Old Testament, they consider the apple or the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as this fruit, and still in other times they have a mixed reading of Islamic and Jewish traditions. Also, some contemporary poets have proposed a symbolic reading of this tale. This article, initially provides a history of the tale of Forbidden Tree in the Quran, Old Testament and their commentaries. Then, this issue is investigated in the poems of twenty outstanding contemporary poets (from Nima to the present time) and their poems are compared with Quranic and Biblical narratives. The results show that those contemporary poets which have traditional views, have paid attention to Islamic narratives whereas modern poets have often used Biblical narratives.