Understanding Iran: Importance of Poetry (Part III)

By: Muhammad Ali Mojaradi*

The concept of moral evolution by definition makes our ancestors immoral, rendering the Persian practice of consulting letters of old for moral guidance a fool’s errand. In any case, the rapid change of the English language complicates efforts to connect with the English canon. Every generation of English speakers is further disconnected from the past, both linguistically and spiritually. This was noted as early as the 17th century by the English politician and poet Edmund Waller, who lamented that Chaucer’s 14th century poetry was already archaic by his day:

“Poets may boast, as safely vain,
Their works shall with the world remain;
Both, bound together, live or die,
The verses and the prophecy.

But who can hope his lines should long
Last in a daily changing tongue?
While they are new, envy prevails;
And as that dies, our language fails.

When architects have done their part,
The matter may betray their art;
Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
Soon brings a well-built palace down.

Poets that lasting marble seek
Must carve in Latin or in Greek;
We write in sand, our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o’erflows.

Chaucer his sense can only boast,
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defaced his matchless strain,
And yet he did not sing in vain …”

In what amounts to a fulfillment of his foretelling, readers will notice that Waller’s poem is, ironically, already archaic. The changes in pronunciation have disrupted the rhyme scheme, proving his prophecy (pro-feh-sigh, not pra-feh-see). These different approaches to language and the past mark a fundamental difference between English-speaking and Persianate (and generally Islamic) societies. Iranians are keenly aware of, and deeply connected to, their past, which continues to leave a mark and affect the present.
With the rare and local exception of the recent conversation surrounding reparations for African Americans, Westerners largely view themselves as individuals as opposed to inheritors of past grievances and relationships. Every generation appears with a clean slate: Americans would not suggest that America’s relationship with Germany, Japan and Britain should be negotiated in light of World War II and the Revolutionary War. Iranians place more importance on the communal (and national) memory and consequently view themselves as inheritors of their ancestors’ grudges and friendships. When talk of renegotiating relationships with the West arises, the 1953 CIA-backed coup is invariably invoked, and Iranians similarly skeptic of Russia make references to the Treaties of Turkmenchay and Gulistan, two early 19th-century land secessions from Qajar Iran to Imperial Russia.
These sensitivities are not only found in Iran. It’s not an accident that the recent “peace” deals with Israel and some Arab states were called the Abraham Accords. A proposed Iranian equivalent would be called the Cyrus Accords, named after the Persian king lauded in the Jewish Bible for freeing the Jews from bondage in Babylon. When emphasizing the danger Iran poses to Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyanhu frequently invokes the story of Purim, when the Jews escaped the plot of an ancient Persian king’s viceroy to kill the Jews living in the Persian empire. Though Western observers mocked his rhetoric, it is familiar to Iranians, who often draw parallels between Iran’s current enmity with the Saudi state and the fighting between the Arabian tribes and the Sasanian Empire. The Saudis in turn compare the modern Iranian state to the expansionist Safavid (ṣafawī) Empire or even the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian (majūsī) Empires.
*Muhammad Ali Mojaradi is a University of Michigan graduate, translator and founder of persianpoetics.com.