A comparative study of axial themes in Ahmad Shâmlu and Charles Baudelaire’s Poetries

Ahmad Shâmlu is considered as the founder of the “White poetry” in Persian literature. A wide range of themes are treated in his poetry, from love and woman to liberty and egalitarianism, as well as death and existential issues. Charles Baudelaire is not only known to be the pioneer of a school called “Decadence” but also a forerunner of Symbolism in French poetry. The principal themes used in his works are city and urban life, woman and love, death and spleen, liberty and modernity. Despite a hundred years dividing Shâmlu and Baudelaire, we could still search some similarities between their works and personalities. In this paper we will try to study some examples of these essential topics. Besides that, we shall try to point out to the resemblances and the differences between the conceptual approaches of the Iranian and the French poet in regards to these themes. The method used in this research is a thematic one, borrowed from the approach of Philippe Chardin in his article “Thématique comparatiste” (1989).