Rudaki - The First Great Iranian Poet

Rudaki was born in the year 858, in Khorasan, Iran. His name is taken from the village of his birthplace, Rudak, which is now part of Tajikistan. He was contemporary with the Samanid ruler Nasr II and became his court poet and companion. His qasidas are written to the praise of this friend and sovereign.

Some 1,300,000 verses have been attributed to him, of which only 52 qasidas (elegies), ghazals and rubais (quatrains) are extant. His most important work was translating into Persian the Arabic version of Kalila and Dimna (Panchatanntra), an old Indian Fable book, which unfortunately has also been lost.

Though he was blind at the time of his death, it has been disputed whether he was born blind or lost his eyesight later, but what is certain is that his poetry displays an acute sense of colours and a refined taste. Rudaki was the first to perfect every form of epic, lyric and didactic poetry, and to develop the diwan, the alphabetical arrangement of a poet’s lyrical compositions, which has been used as the standard form since. His many contributions to Persian poetry and Iranian culture have rightly won him the title of the father of Persian Poetry.

Marriage. Community and Austen - Final Part

From the very beginning of the story, we are told how all the families wish to have their daughters “married well”, but based on evidence already presented, this “wellness” is clearly referring to worldly matters and social advantages, of which the society / community approves. Charlotte herself admits that she is not and has never been “romantic” and “considering Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life” she is sure that her “chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state”, which is clearly a criticism on the society and its attitudes regarding marriage. Therefore, we can claim that their marriage is completely approved by and based on social conventions and that “the relationship between Charlotte and Collins presents a complete abandonment of personal claims in favour of social claims”. On the extreme opposite we can claim that a marriage such as Wickham and Lydia’s has little social claims and may be based completely on their personal claims and so they are seen as “the violators of sacred convention”.

Between these two extremes, we have Darcy and Elizabeth, whose marriage shows a balance between personal and social claims, what Austen is advocating, in a sense. Both Elizabeth and Darcy have to give up part of their prior claims: Darcy his pride and Elizabeth her prejudice towards him. Before marriage Elizabeth is seen very much as an individual who both in attitude and action, denies and condemns the conventions of the society. She refuses to marry Mr. Collins or anyone else where there are no true affections involved. Her opinions regarding marriage extend to her sister and her friend Charlotte and hence she criticizes Charlotte on her choice. So she is a “headstrong foolish girl’ who will not be brought to reason in the light of the expectations of her community. Darcy, on the other hand, pays more heed to the customs regarding social class, financial situation, and the expectations and conventions involved in choosing a partner. Yet after their marriage things are different for both. After marriage they leave Longbourne and settle in Pemberley, which symbolically means that they withdraw from the community and its conventions. But they still receive their family and friends at their house, which would still get them involved in the community and its people rather than completely abandoning it.

It can be seen that “the Collins-Charlotte and Wickham-Lydia marriages help to dramatize the possible fate of a girl in Elizabeth’s social position”, but at the same time and most importantly they “show by contrast the desirability and integrity of the adjustment between Darcy and Elizabeth. Through this Austen is suggesting that neither a complete yielding to the conventions of society nor a breach of them will ensure happiness. This is probably the reason why the story did not finish with their marriage, so as to show the “desirability” of their life once they had achieved a balance between their duties as members of the community and their personal happiness.

[i] Mordecai, Marcus, “A Major Thematic Pattern,” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice, E. Rubinstein, ed. (New Jersey: Prentice – Hall, Inc., 1969) 87.

Marriage, Community and Austen – Part 3

Now let us consider what marriage meant for men in that society. It seemed that not only women with little fortune were limited in their choice of marriage, but also men had to be prudent in choosing a partner. Taking Mr. Wickham as an example will prove the point. On his entrance to Meryton, he becomes well acquainted with Elizabeth, showing perhaps a partiality toward her. Such that Elizabeth is warned by Mrs. Gardiner against falling in love with Wickham and getting involved “in an affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent.” Very shortly after this, we are told how his partiality toward Elizabeth is subsided and that now he is “the admirer of someone else”, a Miss King who had recently come into possession of ten thousand pounds. What here comforts Elizabeth is her belief “that she would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted it” and the fact that “The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most remarkable charm of the young lady” because after all “handsome young men must have something to live on”.

This matter is brought up again through Mr. Darcy who, despite loving and admiring Elizabeth, has “struggled” “in vain” against his better judgment and the expectations of his family to forget her because of the inferiority of her situation. Something else we can see in Darcy’s situation is that it is not only financial reasons that determine marriages, but also the society’s conventions regarding class and connections. But in this marriage formula there is no place for personal feelings. It is clear that love plays little role in the conventions of this society. It has little significance in the eyes of the people, though this is not the author’s view, which I shall present in the next post, and all these “rules” are defied through Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage.

Marriage, Community and Austen – Part 2

In the novel Pride and Prejudice Mrs. Bennet’s attitude toward marriage can be taken to be representative of her community’s, though not the author’s – the language used to describe Mrs. Bennet is clearly one of criticism (see previous post).

But perhaps we cannot totally blame Mrs. Bennet to have such a view of marriage, since that seemed the best and sometimes only option for a girl in that society. A girl with little fortune and no connections seemed to have few choices open to her, as is the case with Charlotte Lucas who, despite being a sensible and intelligent girl, accepts to marry a man who her friend for very good reasons refused. On a personal level, Mr. Collins is “a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man”, yet on a social level he fares better: he is the rector of a parish, he has a parsonage, connections and Lady Catherine de Bourgh as his patroness. So he can provide for Charlotte all that she could look for in a husband: someone to give her “a comfortable home” and security, which is probably the most important reason for her to want to marry such a man. What Austen is trying to show here is less a criticism on Charlotte’s character than on the society of 19th century England. A society which provides little security and almost no chance of happiness for women outside marriage and which makes its members give up their personal feelings in favour of worldly advantage.

Marriage, Community and Austen

Jane Austen is definitely one of my favourite authors, but her Pride and Prejudice has to be not only a favourite of mine, but also, I believe, her masterpiece. I cannot get bored of it and to prove that, I have watched the movie seven times as well as the TV series, and read the book three times! What follows is a closer look at one of the social aspects of the novel: marriage.

If we take Pride and Prejudice as representative of 19th century England, or even as a community on its own, Austen gives a clear picture of the conventions and customs established within this society or community. She also reveals her own views and judgments regarding these conventions. The subject of this and the following posts is to look at how Austen presents the conventions concerning marriage present in the society at the time the novel was written. The argument presented shows how she criticized some of the ways in which these conventions worked in the society.

The very first lines of the novel opening with the famous sentence “It is a truth universally known that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” serves to do just that: in this community daughters must be married off. This “truth” is “so well fixed” in the community that any man with such a fortune is “considered as the rightful property” of their daughters. The very tone of the narrative sets forth the attitude of the author toward this “truth”. The irony and satire with which this “truth” is presented indicates criticism. This criticism is further enhanced in the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, where the latter expresses how she wishes Mr. Bingley, whom she knows nothing about except that “he is a single man of large fortune”, to marry one of her girls. Mrs. Bennet, then upon Mr. Bennet’s apparent ignorance, goes on to say that though he has no “design” in settling in Netherfield, “it is very likely that he may fall in love” with one of the Bennet girls. These opening sentences, therefore, give us a feeling of the community, of which Mrs. Bennet may be taken as a representative, its ruling conventions, and the attitude of the writer. We are assured that it is not only Mrs. Bennet who holds such views and that it is truly a “universal” matter since it was Mrs. Long who told her the news and that “Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go”. Even all throughout the novel Mrs. Bennet’s attitude on the subject little changes and she remains determined to have all her daughters “well married”. And since we are told that “She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” with “manners so far from right”, we can rightly take it that her way of life was not much approved of by the author.

The Plane Crash in Iran

The tragic plane crash which happened on Wedenesday has left many mourning and bewildered. Unfortunately there were no survivors. Words cannot describe the depth and the pain of this tragedy.

Many facts are still unknown about this incident and the government is still investigating the matter.

My heart and prayers go out to all the families who lost their loved ones and may they have forbearance to deal with this hurtful incident.

God bless the souls of all those who were killed and may they find peace in the hereafter. Amen

Veiled Justice

Marwa Sherbini was brutally murdered by her offender in a German courtroom, but one cannot but wonder as to how anyone - let alone an offender to be tried - could be and should be allowed to bring in a knife; and how the stabber, identified as Axel W, was allowed to stab her 18 times before security or police interfered and shot her husband instead!

Surely security in a courtroom is much tighter than that and is expected to intervene and stop any such incident, should one at all occur, with the second or at most the third stabbing, it is usually...isn’t it?

Another thing which struck me as a surprise was the comparatively small number of articles which were dedicated to this matter (when I searched on Yahoo no more than a handful appeared; this came as a surprise since usually similar incidents of injustice are dealt with more meticulously).

Whatever the details, the mere occurrence of such an incident clearly marks it out as a tragic case of injustice which has been committed against humanity and should be a concern for all the world and not just Muslims, for as the saying goes: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

And also, what about the greater injustice: women abused and mistreated in their own countries and in most cases their stories never hitting the news and never getting heard? Especially in societies where even the law offers little or no protection for women, and is written to the advantage of men – in which case the crime against women is not even treated as a crime! What hope is there in such situations and where can a woman run to when her own government and people are turning a blind eye to a terrible injustice?