Poetry and Poets in Persia – Viorel Olaru

Persian poetry represents one of the oldest and most refined lyrical traditions of humanity, constituting a privileged space for the encounter between history, spirituality and artistic expression. Classical Persian poetry is characterized by a rigorous harmony of form and a stable symbolic universe. The dominant themes are love, destiny, wisdom and the relationship of man with divinity.
In modern Persian poetry, the poet is no longer just a mediator of universal truths, but an individual aware of his own subjectivity and the alienation of the contemporary world.
The god of Sufism that infuses Persian love poetry is a being of heavenly goodness, from whose creative essence the human soul was born, whose feelings and experiences of life on earth are meant to prepare it for re-entry into the circle of light and for its reabsorption into the primordial source of existence. According to the beautiful and pathetic imagery of the mystic, life is but a journey with many stages and every manifestation of life that the traveler encounters or experiences on this road is a manifestation and a gift from God. Every stage in the journey to God that the soul travels through in its religious experience is like a roadside inn where the tired and sometimes disoriented traveler rests for a while before resuming the course towards the goal of the journey. The pleasures of life, everything that charms the eyes, everything that delights the senses, every intoxicating drink and every fruit that pleases the taste are, in the pantheistic doctrine of the Sufis, considered to be equally good, because in each and in everything God is found and to partake of them means to approach and merge even more with the Divinity. Never has there been a theology so well thought out to soothe the pangs of doubt or the forebodings of the pleasure seeker. This theology is the very essence of Persian love poetry.
This work is a source of learning and inspiration for lovers of beauty, as well as the wonderful culture of Iran. Those who are intrigued by poetry, history, and unique literary writings will find joy and enlightenment in the classical and modern Persian poets, scholars, scientists, and philosophers who emerged in the Persian poetic landscape of Persia in the wake of the Persian Renaissance movement that began in the 8th century CE, nearly two hundred years after the Arab invasion of Iran; the so-called "Two Hundred Years of Silence."