Omidi Tehrani, Modernist Archaist (A Study of Life and Poetry of One of the Unknown but Influential Poets of the Tenth Century)

This idea that the poetry and poetic style of preceding poets was disregarded in the Safavid period and only the poets of Regression School started this movement in order to promote the Iranian literature seems to be void of truth and precision when we explore literary tazkirehs and manuscripts of this era, particularly the divans of the tenth and eleventh centuries’ poets and also some treatises in literary criticism by Iranians and Indians. Omidi’s divan is the most important document refuting this idea to the extent that most of his poems have been mixed with sixth-to-eighth-centuries poets like Sanaei and Salman Savoji in many manuscripts and even in the memory of literary men. While keeping the classic style of ode-composing, he has created some novel nuances in this genre to the extent that he backgrounded old patterns and made future poets follow his style in ode-composing. Unfortunately, his poems were scattered and uncompiled some years after his death and only one of the Shah Safi’s jesters attempted to prepare a manuscript of his divan following the order of Shah. However, most of his poems have been recorded here and there within literary anthologies and sometimes under the name of another poet or vice versa causing many difficulties for understanding and reaching his poems. This research which has been done by exploring various original literary and historical texts as well as seeking his poems from within almost forty manuscripts of anthologies aims to elucidate different aspects of Omidi Tehrani’s life as much as possible and a generic analysis of his poetry is provided. Consequently, his stylistic and rhetorical features are revealed to some extent and finally his position in the history of literature is identified.