Poetry
طلسم حیرت
Not translated into English
Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil · 1669
Synopsis
A long allegorical poem in couplets, on God, creation and the bond between soul and body. Modelled on Attar's The Conference of the Birds, it follows the journey of King Rūḥ, the Spirit, through the worlds of creation. The poet reviews the faculties that serve the soul, seeks the causes of the troubles that assail it and the remedies that free it from them, in mystical reflections laden with unexpected metaphors; none of his other allegorical narratives is as carefully worked.
Context
The poem dates from 1669, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, and comes second among his long poems in couplets, after a first devoted to the unity of being. It belongs to the so-called Indian style, which sets images one within another to the point that each verse must be unfolded. Its complete works were published in Kabul from 1962 to 1965. Long neglected in Iran, Bidel remains read in Central Asia, where he was learned at school, and above all in Afghanistan, where circles meet every week to read and comment on him; Iran only rediscovered him in the eighties.
Who it is for
A very dense poem, in Persian, with no French translation. Best read with a commentary, as the Afghan circles do.
Prizes and reception
Recent Persian studies place it first among Bedil's four great poems for rhetoric. No prize.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.