The idea for organizing this panel came about after this author was unexpectedly unable to present a paper at the 2009 MESA meeting because of illness. The present study is a revision and an expansion of that original paper; it has yet to be presented or published. It is part of a larger monographic project on the 11th century thinker Nasir-i Khusraw that seeks to unravel his theory of sukhan--speech, language, Logos, or the Word--particularly with respect to poetic language and the poet's use of it. Central to the paper at hand is Nasir-i Khusraw's unique engagement of the self, a subject of enonciation wholly different from the ingenuous observer of his Safarnama (The Travelogue), for example, or the meticulous rationalist of Gushayish u Rahayish (Liberation and Freedom). By setting his philosophy, teachings and autobiography in a poetic/intuitive language, Nasir frees himself to reveal a depth of emotion and awareness of self absent in his other writings. The result, this paper argues, is a radical rendering of self: the conscious self, the knowing subject, transformed into a creating self with the possibility of emotional, as well as intellectual, transcendence. Poetry for Nasir-i Khusraw thus transforms both knowledge of things and the knower himself into a privileged creator; in that vain, as a sort of literary tessellation of didactics and self-vindication, Nasir's odes become his collective apologia. This paper utilizes the language and analytic perspectives of classical and modern European critical theory to explain how and why N?ir-i Khusraw places himself in his poetry. N. ir-i Khusraw's notion of composition and composer was indeed unique to Persian poetic composition at his time, and this paper also marks his divan as the provenance for the technical, allusive language that would become one of the defining features of classical Persian poetry.

By the 7th/13th century, the image of the Sufi aesthete had gained noticeable currency in Persian literature, often depicted as the earnest lover of God whose disdain for good repute took shape in his enjoyment of poetry, music, and the company of beardless youths. Not only did this image find poetic expression as the "qalandar," the antinomian vagabond-mystic, but also in hagiographic accounts reporting that some from among the greatest saints flouted decorum in their pursuits of divine beauty. Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi (d. 688/1289), Persian mystical poet and initiate of the Indian Suhrawardi Order, stands as an exemplar of this qalandar/saint image. Not only does the poetry of 'Iraqi ponder the thematic framework for disregarding reputation, but the poet's biographical legacy serves later Sufi writers as a prime model for the ethical victory of love over propriety. While historical sources do indicate that 'Iraqi was at one time of "qalandar " or "jawaliqi" loyalty, historical realities are of less concern in a tradition that often emphasizes thematic truths in lieu of factual details. Rather, the super-historical figure of 'Iraqi, an embodiment of the qalandar persona, emerges from the poetry attributed to him and a number of legendary accounts, the most important of which - written anonymously less than a century after the poet's death - constructs its narrative by claiming contexts for 'Iraqi's verses. This paper considers erotic and antinomian themes in the poetry of 'Iraqi, and the manner in which those themes, when fused with hagiographical accounts, helped elevate the qalandar persona from mere image to inherited saintly patrimony. Later reception indicates that biographies of saints and their remembered verse both served a common and often complementary purpose: the consolidation of the "Sufi aesthete" identity, one that was associated with the antinomian poetic persona and found spiritual legitimacy in its self-perceived marginalization.

The rend persona created in Hafez's ghazaliyat is a study in ambiguity. He combines elements of the epicurean, the Sufi gnostic, the materialist agnostic, the hedonist, the mystic, the iconoclast, the sage, and the revolutionary. Although even Omar Khayyam has been subjected to critical readings that attempt to reconcile his most materialist rubaiyaat with Sufi teachings, the ambiguity apparent in Hafez's ghazals provides ample material even without forced allegorical interpretation and exegesis. This richness has allowed the rend a constantly renewing contemporary relevance matched by few other poetic personas. In the post-Revolutionary era, the rend has been appropriated as a counter-revolutionary: a champion against religious hypocrisy and tyranny. Contemporary writers such as Hushang Golshiri and Shahriar Mandanipour have brought the rend alive through innovative usage of Hafez's ghazals in their short stories, making Hafez, the rend, and the poems themselves characters within their literary scenarios. In Golshiri's Fathnameh-ye moghaan, Hafez's ghazals become the poetic conscience of a group of young boys participating in the early days of the Revolution. The ghazals, Hafez's rend, and the rend-like character who functions as the boys' leader/martyr-figure are brought together by Golshiri to reflect a theme of revolutionary disillusionment. In Mandanipour's Sharq-e Banafsheh, two young students studying in the Hafeziyyeh in Shiraz use classical Persian texts in their library to transmit secret love letters. The setting of the story, Hafez's ever-present shadow, and the interplay between the text itself and the referenced classical works work together to form a meditation on religious hypocrisy and taboo. In this paper, we will examine how these authors have used Hafez and the poetic lexicon of his rend to create a literary counter-discourse to the post-Revolutionary Islamist narrative. First, however, we will look briefly at the construction of the rend in Hafez's ghazals. We will pay particular attention to how modern critics have taken advantage of the ambiguity and complexity of Hafez's discourse to enable multiple contradictory and complementary readings of the rend.

The idea of literary commitment (ta'ahhud-i adabi) dominated much of Persian literary discourse in the 1960s and 1970s. Of the poets who both theorized on the need for poetry to be committed to the struggles of the lumpen masses and who composed verses that claimed to exemplify this commitment, Ahmad Shamlu (1925-2000) remains among the most popular and critically-acclaimed. This paper presents a close reading of Shamlu's committed poetry from the period between the 1953 Coup d'etat and the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In considering examples from Shamlu's more overtly political or ideologically charged poetry, the paper will investigate how the lyric voice imagines itself, the oppressor, and the masses for whom it professes to sing. From a historical perspective, a number of critics have shown how Shamlu expressed, though periodically interrupted by moments of revolutionary optimism, his growing disillusionment with the Iranian society in the decades before the Revolution. This paper will offer a critical reading of Shamlu's poetry to further investigate the assumptions that allow the narrative voice to characterize its society as oppressed and the assumptions that lead the poet to imagine himself as a revolutionary figure vis-a-vis the struggling masses. The theory of commitment demands that the poet configure himself and his poetry in service of the struggle. The readings presented in this paper will ultimately ask if Shamlu's poetry itself, despite the poet's ideological stances, in fact fulfills its theoretical demands. The paper is part of a larger project that revisits discourse on commitment in modern Persian and Arabic literary culture and intellectual history. In analyzing the purportedly political or social poetry of one of modern Iran's most popular "committed" poets, the paper also raises the larger question of how and why commitment became the buzzword of Persian literary criticism of the pre-Revolution period and how and why it fell from favor among critics and poets in the years that followed the Revolution. The paper will put Shamlu's poetry in dialogue with Frankfurt School aesthetics and Theodor Adorno's writings on commitment in particular to work towards a deeper historical and critical understanding of Iranian poetry in the 20th century and the discourse of commitment that dominated its production and reception for at least two decades.