Analytical and Comparative Study of Iran Literary Return and the European Neoclassicism School

There are different opinions about the time in when the idea of Iranian Literary Return movement has emerged. Safaei states that "this great literary movement" raised before the time of Qajar, that is, the time of Karim Khan Zand, and he believes that it aroused in the Isfahan Literary Association. (See: Safaei, Undated: 2) Others, such as Shamisa and Arianpour consider it to be initiated at the end of the Afshari period. Another group, such as Shams Langroudi and Zarrinkoob, mention that the emergence of the idea of return originates in the Safavid period. Some researchers and scholars refer to it by different expressions, such as the School of Return (Langroudi, 1996: 76), Resurrection or Literary Return (Bahar, 2009: 311), Literary Renaissance (Ripka, 2016: 551), the new movement (Rezazadeh Shafaq, 1962: 377), and it is interpreted as the great literary movement (Safaei, Bita: 2). In contrast, the other group oppose to and disagree with the return flow, and introduce it as a mere emulator movement which has no originality and causes literary decadence. "Such poets are indeed caricatures of poets lived in the fifth and sixth centuries AH" (Shafiee Kadkani, 2016: 20). According to some researchers, Isfahan is the origin of poetry in the way of return approach and Mushtaq Isfahani and his followers are considered as those members of the Moshtaq Association who pioneered returning to the classic style of masters.However, it is obvious that the movement of returning to the style of those poets following Khorasani and Iraqi were not only the outcome of Isfahan poets' will, but there were other poets who experienced writing poems in the classic style before the members of the Mushtaq Association initiate it. Some poets followed the Literary Return turned to write ode poems in Khorasani style, for example, Saba, Qaani, Soroush, and Sheibani are among those poets. Poets such as Mujamar Esfahani, Foroughi Bastami,and Neshat Esfahani turned to the lyricism of the Iraqi style. Some of the poets of the return period, especially those of the first phase, were also under the effect of the Indian poets. (See: Khatami, 1995: 306)In some way, one can conceive neoclassicism as the school of return in Europe, considering it looks back to the artistic and literary traditions of ancient Greece and Rome in European literature. This literary school emerged as a result of the Renaissance cultural and social flourishi and the creation of the humanism idea, which are considered as the most important achievements of the Renaissance. The initial signs of the school of neoclassicism were found in Italy in the fourteenth century AD. Three prominent Italian authors, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, take consideration to the ancient Greek literature; on some grounds, however, this movement failed to continue there. Some reasons for the failure of neoclassicism extension in Italy include issues such as the lack of literary centers and coteries and the lack of theoretical foundation, occupation of this country by Spain (which has more medieval civilization), and rising of the inquisition by governors, weak economic status and subsequent production of literary and artistic works in pursue of material objectives and less attention to the aesthetic principles for producing works. On the other hand, in France, especially from 1643 to 1715 AD, it flourished "due to the well-established tradition of neoclassicism in this country and the absolute political superiority of France in Europe" reached at the highest completion, all resulted in release of brilliant works. Broadly extension of this school in France and the creation of prominent literary and theoretical masterpieces in this country caused the study of French classicism or neoclassicism to being considered as studying European neoclassicism. The school then extended from France to England, Germany, and other European countries. The neoclassicist poets and scholars believed that "the ancient times in Greeks and Romans were prosperous, successful, and very accomplished, additionally they claimed "our time, after thousand years of barbarism, is triumphant, civilized and accomplished, thereby we are the most truly descendants and the rightful heirs of the classical era."(Priestley, 1977: 64) Thus, they sought to extract the rules and principles included in those kinds of literature via examining the outstanding classical works of Greece and Rome and tried to introduce it as a guidance for neoclassical authors and poets. Boileau is one of the first theorists who provided the theoretical foundations of this school through publishing "The Art of Poetry". The school of neoclassicism has its own rules and principles that the principle of following intellect might be considered as the most important components. While there are different opinions about those neoclassical works following intellect. Shamisa interprets the rationalism of this school as good sense or common sense that its rules are commonly accepted. (See: Shamisa, 2011: 47) Milene is one of those authors who generally considers the neoclassicism era as a period in which rationalism predominates over emotions, he believes that neoclassical scholars such as the Greeks have the opinion that emotions disturb the balance of the social system and human relations, by contrast, intellect stabilizes them. (See: Millen, 2017: 246 -247). Accordingly, some criticized this principle and conceived it in opposition to the spirit of literature and literary works, which provide the necessary atmosphere for flourishing mental feelings. In contrast, Wellek rejects critics and states that "so far any reliable critics have believed that artistic expressions are limited to a process of self-conscious reason. Some elements such as the genius, inspiration, and passion of the poets are inseparable parts of the art of poetry in the Renaissance Period. These critics believed in the rational theory of poetry, but they didn’t assume poetry as being completely a rational subject. They, however, didn't consider poetry as an unconscious process. Indeed, in their view, imagination needs reason as a guiding and a deterrent factor." (Wellek, 1994: 50-51). Another group of researchers have rejected the claim of mere rationalism of this period and believe that although the 17th century is the age of attention and even faith in the intellect, it is also a period that compromises with the mood of analysis, and notice to the emotions and passion (see: Seyed Hosseini, 2015: 105 - 106, Nazari, 2011: 21 -23). Another feature of neoclassical works is holism. The aim of these literatures is to discover and represent a typical human being, not an extensional human being; thereby, spheres from ethics to education and politics, all goes along with holism. Other components of neoclassical works are the imitation of nature or according to Shamisa, description of characteristics of human beings, the principle of being moral and instructive, perspicuity and brevity, representation of the truth, the rule of three unities, that is "unity of time, unity of place, and unity of subject". Writers including Racine, Moliere, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, and Alfieri are prominent neoclassical authors. especially a symbolic expression of the myth of creation.

The Literary Return movement in Iran is analogous to the school of neoclassicism in Europe with respect to their nature in referring to the great works of the flashy literary periods. However, the first did not achieve success as great as the school of neoclassicism, which was so successful in the evolving process of European literature by using the works of classic masters. This study aims to study and examine the contexts and conditions which caused the formation of two aforementioned literary movements through a comparative approach. In this way, we contrast them to identify the reasons leading to their success or failure in the direction of literary evolution and renaissance.

According to the poets of the return movement, the degeneracy of Persian poetry happened in the time of Safavi, in their view, it was true especially about the second and third generation of Indian style poets, who had decreased the Persian poetry to raillery, imagery enigmas, and production of precious contents. They sought to free Persian poetry from this platitude and finally found the solution to return to the classic style. However, returning to classic style, and modeling classic Persian poetry developed in a way that neither created persistent and outstanding literary, nor developed new schools and literary movements. Eventually, it remained a mere imitation of old filatures. It seems that the poets of the return movement were only able to understand the crisis, but they failed to provide a true and effective solution. As a result, the crisis of mere imitation of the classic works, without any consideration to the efficiency of this modeling for the literature of that time aggravated the crisis of degeneracy and platitude of the poetry in the Safavi period. The main goal of the poets of this period was to bring back the original identity of Persian poetry that existed prior to the Indian style and to prevent the increasing trend of poetry language towards platitude; the return movement, however, didn't limit only to the language, but it made a return to the 4th and 5th centuries AH in terms of time and thoughts. In order to make their poetry more similar to the poems of the Qaznavi and Saljuqi periods, these poets tried to get distance from the prevalent language of the day, as well as the issues of that time, so they included the thoughts of imitated periods in their poems.  The mere imitation of the poems and poetic contents of classic poets is sometimes so monotonous that even the poets of the return movement themselves acknowledge it. On the contrary, the writers of the neoclassical school of Europe have taken the approach of returning to the impressive works of classic poets.However, taking consideration to the principle of return in this school is accompanied with an effort to identify and establish the theoretical foundation and innovation, even it leads to new literary movements. Fundamentally, this school writers' goal is not referring to past works, but they consider it as a strategy. In fact, they sought to see the present situation in the past and evolve it. The neoclassical authors do not limit and confine themselves to prevalent thoughts of the classical period, rather they try to make their works correspond to the ideas of their own time. Accordingly, many works of neoclassicism, Greek epics and myths have been revived in a way that reflect the issues and events of 17th and 18th century in Europe. "One might be fond of the past without cutting their feelings with present. A strong awareness of the past could strengthen the present." (Dilthey, 2015: 58)

Examining the produced works in Iranian Literary Return period reveals that the idea of Iranian poets of the Literary Return movement that the traditional style is able to free Persian poetry from the degeneracy of Safavi poetry did not succeed. The efforts of these poets were useful in decreasing some unfavorable elements of the Indian style, but it did not result in a favored evolving trend in Persian literature. Thereby, they created poems without originality and disproportionate to the requirements of their new period. Such failure originates from the lack of strong epistemological support and the decline of thinking that had bothered Iranian society since previous times due to the political and social turbulence. On the other hand, neoclassicist authors, due to their appropriate cultural condition, the systematic structure of thinking, and the integration and cohesion of all cultural and social entities, took steps towards evolution and eventually achieved independence in their style. Their works did not remain only as mere imitations, but by establishing a strong theoretical foundation, they created outstanding examples of poems in line with the relevant aspirations and plans of the Renaissance, which were in accordance with the principle of humanism and the spirit of their time. In fact, neoclassicism emerged in Europe in the sixteenth century. Contrary to the Iranian return movement, it resulted in a new and dynamic literary movement and even played a role as an intermediary loop for subsequent schools including romanticism.