Nima Yooshij

Emergence as a poet

Nima first came to public attention in 1921 when he published the long poem The Tale of the Pale-Colored One (Qesse-ye Rang Parideh), composed the year before, in the weekly newspaper The Twentieth Century edited by Mirzadeh Eshghi. The poem provoked sharp criticism from prominent traditionalist poets, including Malek o-Sho'arā Bahar and Mehdi Hamidi Shirazi, who mocked him for departing from classical conventions. Literary critic Abdolali Dastgheib later argued that even in his early poems—written largely within traditional forms—Nima displayed an originality of thought and introduced themes that were strikingly new.

In the autumn of 1922, Nima published the poem “O Night” (Ey Shab) in the weekly newspaper Nowbahar. Reflecting on this period, he later wrote: “In the autumn of 1922, I saw ‘O Night,’ another example of my work—written earlier, was passed around but repeatedly rejected—printed in the weekly Nowbahar.” Each of these early pieces was, especially at the time, a pointed challenge to the defenders of classical poetry.

After a period of teaching at various schools—including the Tehran Polytechnic—Nima also collaborated with journals such as Majalle-ye Musiqi and Majalle-ye Kavir. His poetic revolution is widely understood to have begun with the publication of “The Phoenix” (Qoqnoos, February 1938) and “The Crow” (Ghorāb, October 1938), both printed in the state-sponsored journal Musiqi.

During the journal’s publication years (1939–1940), Musiqi continued to print his more mature works. In addition to earlier poems such as “The Sound of the Harp,” “The Swan,” “The Boatman’s Candle,” and “The Realm Without Form” from the 1920s, the journal featured his later compositions from 1937–1939, including “Moonlit Blossom,” “The Phoenix,” “Bird of Sorrow,” “The Fairies,” “The Spider’s Hue,” and “The Cold Laughter.”

Over the course of his sixty-four years, Nima succeeded in transforming the millennium-old norms of Persian poetry—rules long regarded as fixed, sacred, and immutable—laying the foundations for what would become modern Persian verse.

Contributions

In general, Nima reformed the rhythm and allowed the length of the line to be determined by the depth of the thought being expressed rather than by the conventional Persian meters that had dictated the length of a bayt (verse) since the early days of Persian poetry. Furthermore, he emphasized current issues, especially the nuances of oppression and suffering, at the expense of the beloved's moon face or the ever-growing conflict between the lovers, the beloved, and the rival. In other words, Nima realized that while some readers were enthused by the charms of the lover and the coquettish ways of the beloved, the majority preferred heroes with whom they could identify. Nima actually wrote quite a few poems in the traditional Persian poetry style and as critiqued by Abdolali Dastgheib, showed his ability well. However, he felt the old ways limit his freedom to express his deep feelings or important issues faced by society. This led him to break free and create a whole new style for modern poetry.

Furthermore, Nima enhanced his images with personifications that were very different from the "frozen" imagery of the moon, the rose garden, and the tavern. His unconventional poetic diction took poetry out of the rituals of the court and placed it squarely among the masses. The natural speech of the masses necessarily added local color and flavor to his compositions. Lastly, and by far Nima's most dramatic element was the application of symbolism. His use of symbols was different from the masters in that he based the structural integrity of his creations on the steady development of the symbols incorporated. In this sense, Nima's poetry could be read as a dialogue among two or three symbolic references building up into a cohesive semantic unit. In the past only Hafez had attempted such creations in his Sufic ghazals. The basic device he employed, however, was thematic, rather than symbolic unity. Symbolism, although the avenue for the resolution of the most enigmatic of his ghazals, plays a secondary role in the structural makeup of the composition.

Literary style

Nima Yushij is regarded as the father of modern Persian poetry. He pioneered a new poetic school called Sheʿr-e Nimaʾi (Nimaic verse), also known in English as New Poetry or Nimaic free verse. Nimaic verse deliberately breaks the rigid patterns of classical Persian poetry. Whereas traditional verse relied on the quantitative ʿarūż system of fixed meters and couplets (beyts) with uniform length and mandatory rhyme, Nima introduced irregular verse paragraphs of varying line-lengths and flexible rhyme. In Nima’s words, each poem may use one metrical pattern (as in classical practice) but allow “quality” of feet to remain fixed while “quantity” (the number of feet per line) varies freely.

Influence

Nima’s innovations had an immediate and enduring impact on Persian poetry. As Iranica notes, "Nimaic verse has had indisputable and unprecedented impact on the style of many Iranian poets", from highly experimental younger writers to mainstream modernists. In particular, most major mid-century Iranian poets adopted elements of Nimaic verse. Notables include Mehdi Akhavan-e Saless (M. Omid) (1928–1990) and Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000), who employed freer metrics and symbolic imagery; Forough Farrokhzad (1935–1967), whose powerful female voice and unrhymed lyrics clearly echo Nima’s example; and Siavash Kasraʾi, Sohrab Sepehri, Nader Naderpour, Houshang Ebtehāj (Sāyâ), Mohammad-Reza Shafii Kadkani and others. Younger poets and critics continued to regard Nima’s approach as a starting point for modernism. His influence also spread beyond Iran: for instance, the Afghan poet Wāsef Bakhtari (b. 1942) was directly inspired by Nimaic verse, and literary historians note that in Afghanistan Nima’s style “resulted in the dominant formation of contemporary [Afghan] literature and culture”.

Other sources

• Essays on Nima Yushij: Animating Modernism in Persian Poetry, edited by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Kamran Talattof. Leiden: Brill, 2004.
• Dastgheib, Abdolali. 2006. The Messenger of Hope and Liberty: Critical Review of Poems by Nima Yooshij. 2006. Amitis Publishers, Tehran, Iran. ISBN 964-8787-12-3. (Persian title: پیام‌آور امید و آزادی)