Antropological Concept in Mystical Poetry of Parvin Etesami

The essay reflects on the creativity of Parvin Etesami (1907 – 1941), a distinguished Persian poet, little known abroad. We highlight anthropological teaching based on the religious worldview as one of the aspects of her mystical poetry. Created in the era when Persian literature and its classical tradition were breaking, Parvin’s poems affirm loyalty to the mystical tradition and the ways of self-creation of an individual laid down in it. The article shows that the Muslim science of behavior guides a person striving for wisdom and determines their path. The preaching of morality in Parvin’s poems, coupled with her mystical enlightenment, attempts to return her contemporaries to the classical world of their tradition. This research investigates the concept of man and is based on the only collection of 60 poems published in Russian (Journey of Tears, 1984), as well as on the new poetic translations. Two of the poems translated by M. Yahyapour and M. L. Reysner are introduced to the readers for the first time. The paper describes different facets of personality and fate, found in poetic self-reflection, the most significant of which is Parvin’s Auto-Epitaph. The values corresponding to Parvin’s spiritual personality are revealed: purity of soul, strictness, restraint, intellectualism, moral seriousness. Following the Sufi teachings about men, Parvin criticizes deviations from the true path —such as susceptibility to passions and pride. The poet considers them the destroyers and believes that they occur because of the evil forces distorting the human soul. The poet proposes a way out for the soul captured by the world — the knowledge of the Truth and the appeal to the experience of the righteous. The essay demonstrates that in Parvin’s poetry, fidelity to a thousand-year-old spiritual tradition and individual creativity appear as an organic unity. In the era that leads a person of the West and the East away from the spiritual roots of culture, the poet becomes a gnostic and a mystic in his individual creative life and, abandoning modern trends, consciously takes the path of mystical enlightenment and brings to her readers the wisdom found on these paths.

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