A Poet Confined Between Poetry And Reality: Nima Yushij

Abstract

The founder of modern Persian poetry, Nima Yushij has been subjected to criticism during the formation of his poem. However, he did not hesitate to shape his sense of poetry and fought for that for the rest of his life. The negative attitudes towards him caused him to be introvert and in pessimistic mood. Nima Yushij, who found peace in the village life, away from people, nestled in his childhood memories.
In his early periods, Nima Yushij was in tendency of romance poetry. During the reign of Reza Shah, when Nima Yushij published his first poems, there seems to have been an interest in the romanticism movement in Iranian literature. The romanticism that is meant here is not exactly a romanticism in the Western sense, but a romantic understanding that begins with Nima Yushij and takes shape in the historical process. Reza Khan, who seized power with a coup in 1921 and silenced all dissident voices, confiscated the administration with the military regime in 1925. During this period, all kinds of criticism and insinuations about the government and the state of the country were restricted, as the publications were under surveillance. After the constitutional revolution, political poetry, the most developed style, became indistinct. Thus, Iranian romantic poetry, which Nima Yushij shaped under the influence of French romantics, became idiocratical. It is possible to see the trends seen in Nima’s romantic poems, such as despair due to social problems, introversion, taking shelter in solitude and nature, as well as in other poets of the period. In particular, these features, which coincide with the spiritual and intellectual dimension of the poet, appeared in his poem “Efsane”. The “Efsane” is almost the manifesto of Romantic poets during this period.
Nima Yushij has placed his romantic poetry on one side in 1941 and moved towards social and political poems. He used a symbolic language in these poems. At the stage of transition to symbolic poetry, Nima imitated the poems in classical Iranian poetry, where there was a suggestive narrative that provided sermon, moral and allusive messages. These poems, which he wrote in the 1940s, are often in the fable type. Later, he tried to express the realities of society with an indirect narrative in his symbolic poems. The poet, who did not use direct critical language in his symbolic poems with a story-like dimension, revealed the existing situation by depicting the environments formed as a result of social and political events. In this way, the use of symbolic language in social issues in Iranian literature began with Nima’s poetry. Under the influence of French symbolic poetry, Nima took advantage of the different characteristics of admirers to reflect their different characteristics in his poems, which would express the personality and spiritual state of man. In his poems, Nima, who worries about the troubles of the people, expressed their poverty, deprivation, and injustice they suffered. The poet, who thought that real poetry should reflect the society, wanted to create awareness in the public with his poems.