Dramatic Features of Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow’s Poetry

 Drama as a means of expression has always been used in Arabic and Persian poetry. The prevalence of drama in the poetry of Arab and Iranian poets traces back to them being influenced by Greek philosophy and literature. Translation of Greek works into Arabic and Persian paved the way for the literati to get familiar with the ideas of their Greek counterparts. Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow are two Iranian-born poets who composed poems in Arabic and Persian respectively. Despite living in a different time, place, milieu, and having diverse beliefs, they are both among forerunners of composing dramatic poetry with lots of conflicts. They reflect the struggles of their times in their poems. The present article is a comparative study to examine and analyze the dramatic poetry of the two. As the research has revealed, both of the poets have applied different types of dramatization (horizontal, vertical, dynamic) in their poetry. Religious and tribal prejudice prevailing at that time of Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow have resulted in horizontal drama in their poetry. However, while Abū Nuwās’s temperament and taste has brought about vertical drama, one cannot find any such drama in Nasser Khosrow’s poetry. On the contrary, dynamic drama is abundantly found in Nasser Khosrow’s poems and rarely in Abū Nuwās’s.

What is the status quo of drama as a means of expression in poetry? And how many types of drama are there? What are the dramatic motifs in Abū Nuwās’s poetry? How drama is illustrated in Nasser Khosrow’s poetry? To what extent the poetry of the two poets can be literary compared and contrasted? 

The present article is a comparative study to examine and analyze the dramatic poetry of Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow to reveal the actuality of both vertical and horizontal drama in their works. 

 Translation of Greek works into Arabic and Persian paved the way for the literati to get familiar with the ideas of their Greek counterparts. Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow are two Iranian-born poets who composed poems in Arabic and Persian respectively. Despite living in a different time, place, milieu, and having diverse beliefs, they are both among forerunners of composing dramatic poetry with lots of conflicts. They reflect the struggles of their times in their poems

The personal condition and social milieu differences between the two dramatists has brought one of them to national opposition and the other to religious, while the language and choice of words of the two throughout their struggle and clash is befouled with humiliation and burlesque. In the works of Abū Nuwās and Nasser Khosrow, horizontal drama is more salient, for both of them are challenging and protagonist characters in the field of culture. Their challenge is more frequented in the cultural and religious fields – i.e. vertical drama – and less in the other fields such as social.