Nima Yushij's "Afsaneh" as a Striking Exemplar of the 'Greater Romantic Lyric'

Abstract

Persian poetry lingered upon the old classical Persian prosody for more than a thousand year that it stagnated and stopped flowering new concepts and forms. However, Nima broke the dull and monotonous routine of Persian poetry by writing the first true modernist poem. When Nima's "Afsaneh" appeared, traditionalist adamantly opposed its new artistic and aesthetic view due to revealing some similarity with great European romantic examples. The similarity can never be considered as a weak point of "Afsaneh" because Nima has masterfully used European romantic elements to refresh the long-standing tradition of Persian poetry. In this respect, Nima has written his poetry consciously or unconsciously in the same poetic style of great European romantic poets. M. H. Abrams has labeled this poetic style "the greater romantic lyric". As a result, it is tried to examine Nima's "Afsaneh" with respect to Abrams's definition of "the greater romantic lyric" so as to prove that Nima's "Afsaneh" closely conform to this new poetic genre.