Nima’s viewpoint toward Sa’adi based on Harold Bloom’s “The Anxiety of Influence”

Harold Bloom, in his most important work: “The Anxiety of Influence”, emphasizes on the dialectic and confrontational relations between contemporary and past poets. Based on Bloom’s theory, there has always been a tense relationship between these two groups of poets. This relationship in majority of cases has not been sympathetic and has been revolved round the power of poetical influence. Through these relations, the contemporary poets create new works by the misprision of the literary works of previous generation of poets. Bloom has named Clinamen process as an approach for misprision. This approach is a type of misrepresentation which belittles the poetic ability of the past poets. To elaborate his theory, Bloom makes use of Freud’s theory, Oedipus Complex, pointing out that the contemporary poets negate past poets in order to overcome them. Bloom’s theory can up to a large extent detail the confrontations which had surfaced among the intellectuals and poets as of the Constitutional Movement era on the literary domination of the renowned poet, Sa’adi. The critical viewpoint of contemporary poet, Nima, on the works of the classical Iranian poet, Sa’adi, is an example of misprision which Bloom presents, as a means to get rid of the absolute influence and domination of Sa’adi on the public opinion of that period of time. The criticisms leveled by Nima on the works of Sa’adi, irrespective of their correctness or incorrectness, mainly aim to undercut the literary power of Sa’adi, who had turned into the symbol of traditional world and literature. Nima criticizes the poems of Sa’adi for their shallow romantic sentiments and hollow mysticism. These criticisms, even in case of correctness, are not just attributed to Sa’adi’s poems and include the majority of works of classical poets. Nima, under the cover of these criticisms, battles with the symbol of classical poets, to facilitate the establishment of his new literary system, based on Bloom’s theory, via undermining the credibility of classical poets.