A Formalistic Reading of the Kurdish Emra al-Gheith's Ode Lamiya al-Kurd

It is not literature which is the subject matter for Formalists but literariness. It means examining those aspects of the text which distinguish its language from everyday speech and which separates it from exterior contexts. The present paper endeavors to study Sheik Salim Takhtee’s ode “Lamiya al-Kurd.” Born in 1855, he has become the Kurdish Emra al-Gheith among Kurdish men of letters. The poet applies a beautiful equilibrium, in its different types, and defamiliarization, at the paradigmatic and syntagmatic layers, in order to express his feelings for his object of praise. The paper concludes that the dual oppositions of heart and reason comprise the large part of the ode in a sort of dialectics. At the end of the first stanza, it is the heart which is the triumphant side. However, in the second stanza, when the poet deals with the main subject of the poet, i.e. praising Sheik Zia al-Din, we observe a decrease in the text’s aesthetic beauty.