Nima Believed Non-Political Poetry Never Existed

IBNA Literature Service – Marzieh Negahban Marvi: On the occasion of Nima Yooshij’s birthday, the father of modern Persian poetry, a review of his life and thoughts recalls the revolution he brought about in Persian poetry and language. Ali Esfandiari, born on November 12, 1897, in the village of Yoosh, Mazandaran, was a poet who, with awareness and courage, challenged the foundations of ancient poetry and, with the publication of the epic poem “Afsaneh” in 1922, changed the course of Persian poetry forever. He took the name “Nima” from one of the Ispahbads of Tabaristan; a name that later became a symbol of transformation and modernism in Iranian literature.

In his works, Nima spoke of life, society, and nature, freeing poetry from the confines of traditional forms. Among his most important works are “Qoqnoos” (Phoenix), “Ghorab” (Raven), “Shahr-e Sobh” (City of Morning), and the collection of Tabari poems “Roja”; works that demonstrate his deep connection to his homeland and mother tongue. He wrote poetry in the Tabari language to keep his cultural and identity roots alive.

Nima’s sensitive and justice-seeking spirit was nurtured amidst the political transformations of the Constitutional Era and the Jungle Movement, and his social and freedom-loving ideas were reflected in his poetry. Until the last days of his life, he sought a connection between humanity, nature, and truth. Nima Yooshij passed away on January 6, 1960, but his thoughts and style continue to inspire generations of poets after him.

On the occasion of Nima Yooshij’s birthday, we had an interview with Mehdi Aliyayimoghaddam, a faculty member at the University of Tehran. He recently published the poetry collection “Az Gharib-e Man” (From My Stranger) with the Academy of Persian Language and Literature. This collection includes the third volume of Nima Yooshij’s unpublished poems along with anecdotes by him in the style of Saadi’s Gulistan.

Dr. Aliyayimoghaddam, was Nima Yooshij, despite introducing a new style of poetry, in a way a continuator of tradition, or the founder of a radical break?

Nima’s poetic career has different aspects, and each of these aspects requires a specific evaluation. If we consider his free verse in terms of prosody and meter, his prosody, according to Shamloo, is a logical continuation of traditional prosody. So, by your interpretation, Nima’s work in this respect perpetuates the tradition of poetry’s adherence to meter. However, if we assess his work at the level of language and expression, or as he called it, ‘method of work,’ there is a distance and a break from tradition. He considered traditional poetry to be descriptive, and he made changing this expression his agenda or project, seeking to achieve a language and expression that was descriptive and pictorial.

What is the role of “Afsaneh” in the formation of modern Persian poetry? Can this poem be considered Nima’s poetic manifesto or the starting point of his experimentalism?

The atmosphere, language, and expression of “Afsaneh” were considered new by Nima himself and many of his contemporaries, including Mohammad Zia Hashtroudi, who first brought the values of this poem to public attention. Nima was proud of writing it throughout his life and considered it the starting point of his transformation. This poem was considered a success in Nima’s career, and it even captivated poets like Shahriar, though it is naturally not without the rawness of Nima’s youth.

To what extent was the linguistic evolution in Nima’s poetry conscious and theoretical? Did Nima derive his theory of poetic language from experience or did he have a coherent plan from the outset?

What can be said with a great deal of certainty about the particular language of Nima’s poems is that this strange and sometimes ambiguous and abstruse language was deliberately crafted. He consciously made his poetry sometimes ambiguous or at least strange; just as in ‘Harfhay-e Hamsayeh’ (Neighbor’s Words), he advised young poets to express the ambiguity of their poetry more clearly. Nima liked to create poetry that would invite various interpretations and where meaning would not be easily accessible. He stated this explicitly. This statement does not mean that this quality exists to the same extent in all his poems. But generally, his goal was to create such poetry.

What is the role of the nature and climate of Mazandaran in Nima’s worldview and poetic imagination? How does the local environment transform into a poetic and philosophical world in his works?

The nature of Mazandaran, especially the regions of Noor and Yoosh, as we know, primarily appeared in his poetry through the use of specific names from the Tabari language and is one of the stylistic features of his poetry. If we were to attribute a philosophical foundation to such features, it would be summarized in the principles of romantic naturalism that Nima learned from French Romantics, who were his primary sources of acquaintance with foreign poetry.

In Nima’s view, what responsibility does a poet have towards society and truth? Can it be said that his poetry carries a kind of social mission, or is it merely artistic and aesthetic?

Nima’s poetic career, the product of nearly four decades of persistent and diligent activity in introducing a new form of composition, has almost never been devoid of a so-called ‘social mission.’ This point has found even more evidence and documentation, especially after the publication of his unpublished poems. Nima, except in his later years, was always a Marxist-Leninist, sometimes even a Stalinist, and his newly published poems attest to this claim.

It goes without saying what kind of commitments art and literature entail in ideologies of this nature. Nima believed that non-political poetry never existed.

How should Nima’s position in the course of contemporary Iranian poetry be defined? Is he the initiator of a new era or one of the links in the chain of Persian poetry’s evolution?

There is no doubt that Persian poetry underwent a profound transformation after Nima, and he is considered the most influential figure among poets after the Constitutional Revolution. If I were to express Nima’s contribution using your analogy, I would say that among the links in the chain of modern Persian poetry, Nima is one of the most prominent.

What is the relationship between Nima’s poetry and global modernism? Can similarities be found between his views and Western literary movements?

The term ‘global modernism’ is too broad to measure Nima’s poetry against it. Modernism or the modernization of poetry and literature has appeared in different ways in various parts of the world. For example, the modernization of poetry in China, Japan, Arab and Iranian cultures, as well as African and Latin American cultures, differs from the modernization in European countries and cultures (with the diversity that can be found in each European language) and North America.

The type of modernism that Nima brought to our poetry, inspired by European and Western modernism, and crafted in terms of form through his own efforts, is similar to the modernism that emerged in Arab and Middle Eastern cultures. Both were more or less born from shared needs and a somewhat similar cultural background. For example, the work that Ali Ahmad Bakathir created in Arabic poetry in Egypt is comparable to Nima’s work. In any case, changing the ‘method of work,’ or what Ezra Pound said about poetry and which became the slogan of literary modernism: ‘make it new,’ along with diverse and varied experiences of free verse that appeared in each literature according to its cultural context, is the common denominator of all modernist movements, and our Nima, in this respect, stands alongside other modernists of the world.

How are the roles of meter and music redefined in Nimaic poetry? Does ‘New Poetry’ mean the elimination of meter or a new perspective on the internal music of language?

As I said, Nima achieved a specific and unique prosody in Persian poetry and considered adherence to it necessary. Although Nima did not always succeed in realizing his ideas and beliefs in poetry, he sought to write in what he called ‘metrical prose,’ meaning writing in a way that meter would not remove the language from its natural state, the state that prose usually has. This quality is less frequently found in Nima’s own poetry, and generally, such a quality is very difficult and hard to achieve, requiring great skill and practice.

Nima considered only a handful of poems in his oeuvre to possess this characteristic, although we may not always agree with him on this. That is, a quality where the presence of meter does not prevent the creation of natural, conversational sentences. I should add that this very approach to natural and conversational language is one of the universal principles of modernism.

Regarding the second part of your question, I must say that as far as the history of New Poetry is concerned, both metrical and non-metrical experiments took place in this type of poetry. However, it seems that in our culture, poetry that lacks any kind of verbal music will probably have a lesser chance of long-term survival. There are no precise statistical estimates to allow for an accurate assessment of current poetic tastes, but it seems there is at least a renewed interest in metrical poetry among some young poets.

How can Nima’s influence on poets after him (Shamloo, Akhavan Sales, Forough, Sohrab) be explained? Which aspect of Nima’s thought or language did each of these poets continue or criticize?

Among the poets you mentioned, as we know, some remained faithful to the Nimaic form until the end of their lives, while others, like Shamloo, distanced themselves from it. Sohrab Sepehri can generally be considered a Nimaic poet, although he also had non-prosodic experiments. It can be said that in the Nimaic poems of each of these, the influence of Nima’s ideas is completely evident. Shamloo, in most examples of his Nimaic poetry, like most of Sepehri’s and Forough’s poems, managed to use today’s natural language to express contemporary life issues and also adhered to prosodic meter. In my opinion, some examples of Shamloo’s metrical free verse are superior to some of his non-metrical free verse, despite him having composed brilliant poems in the latter genre.

These poets were able to provide successful examples for Nima’s suggestion of creating a prose-like naturalness in metrical poetry. Akhavan showcased the various capabilities of Nima’s prosody with some of his masterpieces and elevated this form to the standard of the best Persian poetry of our time.

What was Nima’s influence on the formation of Volume Poetry (She’r-e Hojm), New Wave, and other modern poetic movements? Can we also see Nima’s influence on avant-garde poets?

The answer to such questions can amusingly be both ‘none’ and ‘a lot.’ That is, in the sense that Nima maintained a kind of balance in his innovative career, which helped him carve out a place for his form among Persian poetic forms, leads us to separate his poetry from groundbreaking or, as they say, avant-garde poetry. In his time, experiments with ‘Nathm’ (woven prose and verse) by Tandaraki were even published slightly before Nima’s free verse poems appeared in Sokhan magazine, and they were never taken seriously.

Nima’s poetry was published in ‘Khorous-e Jangi’ magazine, belonging to so-called progressive and groundbreaking artists and poets, but Nima’s work differed from theirs. Although each of the modernist movements after Nima wished to consider him their pioneer, or at least respect him in some way. The movements you mentioned, in my opinion, are not very compatible with Nima’s specific principles, one of which is adherence to prosodic meter, just as Shamloo’s non-metrical free verse is not. However, if we consider the phrase ‘changing the method of work’ in a much broader sense than Nima intended, these movements are influenced by Nima in this principle, but it should not be forgotten that every change of method, or simply changing the method, does not necessarily lead to longevity.

If Nima were alive today, what relationship would he establish with the state of contemporary Iranian poetry? Has the path of Persian poetry diverged from his intellectual perspective or moved closer to the maturity of Nimaic thought?

Honestly, I cannot accurately estimate what relationship Nima would have with contemporary Iranian poetry if he were alive today, or how he would interact with poets. He was warm and supportive in his encounter with Shin Parto’s non-metrical free verse, but cold and opposed to Shamloo’s non-metrical free verse. Parto’s poetry is not considered particularly noteworthy by us today, but Nima went to great lengths for him in his famous letter.

Based on the evidence available from his lifetime regarding his reactions to innovations distinct from his own work, one can imagine that Nima was not in agreement with every innovation. However, based on the ‘states and positions’ we know of him, we cannot be certain of his judgment. He did not approve of Shamloo’s non-metrical free verse but liked Parto’s poetry. Yet, Shamloo’s poetry later gained widespread acceptance among readers of New Poetry, while Parto’s did not and faded from memory.