The Comparative Study of Jesus Christ in the Adonis and Ahmad Shamloo's Poetry

Since the earlier times, stories on prophets, miracles and their adventurous and instructive life have received special attention as effective elements in the literature domain, embellished literary works and attracted attention of huge number of readers. One of the most enticing, influential and noteworthy of these stories is on Jesus Christ. In the literature of the past, most of the poetical interpretations of him are more under the influence of Islamic point of view and less on Christian one, which in most part is in conflict with Islamic trend of thought on some significant issues. In the modern literature and specially the contemporary Arabic and Persian poetry, the Islamic interpretation of Jesus is encountered by a considerable Christian turn and some concepts like Jesu's sufferings, his crucification, his sacrifice for redeeming the human’s sins and his resurrection after death derived from Gospel find their way into poetical works. These concepts have been converted into mythical and symbolic ones in the Christian art and considerably aid poets in expression of internal anxieties, victimized nations’ suffering, cruelty of governors, cruel governments and so on. Adonis and Ahmad Shamloo are two modernist and experimentalist poets that some parts of their poetry are devoted to symbolic and mythological depiction of Jesus Christ. Relying on American school in comparative study, this comparative study attempts to investigate the motif of Jesus in Adonis and Shamloo’s poetry in a comparative manner and analyze some considerable issues in their poetry including Jesus’ Christian or Islamic aspects, the styles of these two in depicting him, their points of commonality and difference in Jesu's symbolic interpretations and success or failure of each in applying these symbols.