Freedom in the Epic Poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Ahmed Shamlou According to Jean Paul Sartre's viewpoints

The concept of freedom is one of the most frequent concepts of modern epic poetry, which has found different meaningful dimensions due to the extensive social and political developments. With the growth of philosophical schools, especially the philosophy of existentialism, the concept of freedom became one of the most important categories in contemporary life, and the humanistic and existentialist approach provided the ground for intellectual and social revolutions. Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, one of the founders of existentialism had crucial role on the existential thoughts and had deep effects on the thoughts of literary writers. Mahmoud Darvish, Palestinian resistance poet, and Ahmad Shamloo, Iranian contemporary modernist poet, are prominent poets whose poems reflect the concept of freedom, the study of their poems reveals their philosophical an existential dimension. The present study with a glance to Sartre's theories, tries to do a comparative study of Darwish and Shamloo's ideas about freedom, in order to analyze the similarities and differences between their poems and express the manifestations of Sartre's thought in the viewpoint of these poets. According to the present study, the concept of freedom in the attitude of Shamloo and Darwish has a philosophical dimension that is not limited to individual freedom and includes the whole society. The concept of freedom in their worldview, is consistent with the categories of precedence existence over the nature, apprehension and responsibility, negation of metaphysical forces, the instability of nature, and the relationship between death and freedom in Sartre's theory.