Comparative literature, Resistance Literature, Mohsen Motlagh, To Be Alive Komeil, Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun

Boland al-Heydari is one of the famous modernist poets of Iraq and Siavash Kasraie is one of the most famous contemporary Nimaei poets of Iran. Both of them lived in a period of chaos. On one hand, the heavy atmosphere of tyranny of Iran, then dominated by an authoritarian government, influenced on Sivash Kasraie’s thoughts; on the other hand, the outbreak of the second World War and the dictatorship of the Baathist Regime have greatly influenced Boland al-Heydari’s life. These events along with other bitter events strongly affected their political and social positions particularly their attitudes towards the concept of death and life in their poetry. Al-Heydari has a negative outlook towards life, so that his pessimism over life and his severe tendency to death are obvious in his poems. However, unlike his viewpoint, Kasraie has a positive view towards the social life insofar as when he expresses the social instabilities, the optimism is reflected in his poems. Nevertheless, the pressures and the social and political problems of life sometimes make him complain and express dissatisfaction with life. Kasraie in comparison with al-Heydari has a hopeful outlook towards life. Both poets treat life as unsustainable and regard death as the fate of all human beings, they present a grim picture of death and they find their welfare in embracing it. This study attempts to analyze the common themes as well as different positions about the most widely used concepts of death and life in the poems of these two contemporary poets due to their poetic evidences.