The Analysis of the Discourse Systems of the Story “Pirchangi”

Action in mystical texts occurs under the influence of factors that provide a suitable space for mystical expression. These factors can be the result of inductive, prescriptive, incidental processes or the offspring of tension and state systems. The origin of these factors goes back to the binary oppositions on which the human system of thought is based, and the discussion about it dates back to the time of Aristotle and has continued in the 20th century in the structuralist and semiotic studies of scholars such as Saussure, Freud, Pierce, Morris, Greimas, etc. Therefore, it is based on these oppositions that in a semantic-semiotics approach, we can study the mechanisms of meaning production in discourse systems with different sensory-perceptual, cognitive and aesthetic dimensions. In the present paper, the author examines the discourse systems of the story “Pirchangi” as an example of poetic stories of Masnavi-i Ma’navi by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Rumi), in order to clarify the position of action, tension, existence and state systems in it and to show the transition of the main character from the initial disorder to the organized state at the end of the story. The result of the analysis indicates the prominent role of the state system in the main leap of the story in which the character moves into a state of belief through an “epiphany”. The attractiveness of this story for repeated reading, as Rumi himself points out at the end of the story, owes to the presence of the existential subject.