A Hermeneutic Reading of a Rumi’s Ghazal based on Gadamer’s Theory

Hermeneutics is an attempt to get the meaning of a text and a methodology to derive meaning from various elements of the universe by presenting different methods. Gadamer is one of the contemporary theorists of hermeneutics, whose views and ideas in this field are a turning point in modern hermeneutics. The historicity of understanding, the centrality of language, the role of prejudgments in understanding the text, the discourse communication between the text and the interpreter, and the integration of horizons of vision are the basic principles of Gadamer’s approach that could be used to interpret texts. The present study, with a descriptive-analytical approach, provides a hermeneutic reading of one of Rumi’s lyric poems (Ghazals) based on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. For this purpose, an interpretation is presented specifically based on the reader’s point of view with an emphasis on cryptic verses as well as the real meaning and understanding of Ghazals. The results of this study showed that understanding and interpretation of a text always has a historical and temporal state and it plays an undeniable role in the interpretation of Rumi’s Ghazals. Studying the referential function of language revealed various meanings of Rumi’s symbolic language, which has always been considered in hermeneutics, and therefore it is believed that there is another world beyond language. In the section of integration of horizons of vision and the discourse communication between the text and the audience, Rumi’s mystical thought causes the interpreter and the audience to initially have preconceptions and prejudgments towards Ghazals which depend on the horizon of semantic and cognitive implications of the interpreter’s time, and at the same time, the limits of the efficiency of intellectual and cultural tradition in which the interpreter lives.