Translation Cannot be the only Variable (A Critical Reading of Shafiee Kadkaniʼs With the Lamp and the Mirror)

There are lots of works which have dealt with the contemporary Persian literature; however, Shafiee Kadkaniʼs Ba Cheraq-o Ayeneh (With the Lamp and the Mirror) is more significant due to the reputation of its author and its new hypothesis. In this book, the author claims that all the evolutions of Modern Persian poetry have been influenced by the translation of European poetry into Persian, This work, though it is a scholarly book, can be criticized for a few points: lack of coherent relations between its chapters, lack of definition of theoretical concepts and contextualization and too much emphasis on the role of translation in the emergence of Persian modern poetry. More than translation, it was the rejection of traditional literary discourse which opened the way for the formation of modern Persian poetry. At this stage, translation was a facilitator rather than the ultimate factor.