Characteristics of Lover and Beloved in the Odes of Attār and Mowlānā : A Comparative Study

Love is one of the main concepts and themes in Persian literature. Attār and Mowlānā (Rumi) who are both nobles of romantic mysticism, prefer suffering in love to ascetic life. In the present article using comparative method, the manifestations of the lover and the beloved is analyzed in the odes of two poets and their views is extracted and expressed from one hundred verses that contain common and different views of them. This article aims to study the manifestations of the lover and the beloved in the odes of Attār and Mowlānā in order to describe similarities and differences between these two poets. This study is done through descriptive-analytical method. Findings of the study reveal that although there are differences between Mowlānā and Attār views in the issue of love, Mowlānā is greatly influenced by Attār, but has numerous abnormalities. Attār in his description of love, focuses more on bodily and external aspects rather than the mystical and spiritual aspects of the lover and especially the beloved. So that the bodily descriptions are more frequent. In Mowlānā odes, the descriptions of the beloved are totally mystical and even in the verses in which the poet, if necessary, describes the appearance of the beloved, they are accompanied with the mystical odour, so that the reader feels that the appearance of the beloved in these descriptions is rather symbolic.