Shards of Infinitude: Neoplatonist Relics in Modern Persian Poetry

Abstract

Expressions of the complex of ideas manifestly inherited from, or demonstrably related to, Neoplatonism began to be seen in Persian poetry as an integral part of the shift that occurred in that tradition through the twelfth century, a shift marked initially by a steady interiorisation of poetic apparatus toward various gnostic visions and grand metaphysical aspirations, and later demonstrable as an integral part of poetic metaphysics. Though more fragmented in modern times, the tendency remains alive in certain important poetic expressions, mostly of a contrarian type, making visible an important process of distancing and divesture. This chapter will be concerned primarily and ultimately with the various manifestations of Neoplatonic ideas in modern and modernist traditions in Persian poetry, as they began to appear in the latter part of the twentieth century. More significantly, it will point out the diverse ways in which ideas with an ancient pedigree are recast by each generation as relics of antique thought seeking to be integrated into modern and contemporary poetic traditions. The chapter’s main emphasis remains on the latest visions of a diffuse and unbound spirituality in the works of poets such as Bījan Elāhī (1945–2010), Sohrāb Sepehrī (1930–80), Forūgh Farrokhzād (1935–67), and ʿAbbās Kiārostamī (1940–2016), as they articulate genuinely novel visions of, and pathways to, an unknowable Absolute, and strive to reconcile or transcend not just the heritage of Peripatetic and Platonic thought, but rise above all dogma to present glimpses of a secular spirituality whose aesthetic and moral worth has yet to be fully recognised.