The Aesthetics of Bijan Arjan's Quatrains from the Perspective of Formalist Criticism

The school of formalism in literature is one of the schools of criticism that addresses the external form of literary works without paying attention to various factors influencing the literary text such as political and social phenomena. In line with the developments in the recent century, the quartet is a literary format that has been affected by its influences and witnessed many deviations from common traditions. Hence, the theory of the school of formalism can be applied for the criticism of the aesthetics of this type of poetry. Bijan Arjan is a modernist quatrainist who has been able to use modern elements and techniques in his work in addition to remaining faithful to traditions. The present essay tries to analyze the aesthetic aspects of Bijan Arjan's published quatrains using a descriptive-analytical method informed by the theory of the school of formalism. The findings of the research show that the use of form elements such as non-normativeness, regularization in the use of music and the use of the element of dominanance play the most significant role in the impact and beauty of his poetry. Norm deviation in both lexical and compositional domains, along with highlighting the forms, has made a better transfer of meaning possible in his text. regularization in the use of musical contour is accomplished in his work with the help of phonetic balance between consonants and vowels, use of puns, lexical balance through complete and incomplete identical repetitions at the level of words and sentences. In addition to adding musical richness to the work, this has helped his successful rendition of special concepts and feelings for the audience. As for music accompanying his work, his use of auditory, visual and grammatical rhymes along with the use of special versification is significant. Among the technical and formal elements, the one that is clearly more frequent than other elements is the element of dominanance. The dominant element in Bijan Arjan's quatrains is the use of image because of its high frequency of use. The aesthetic examination of Arjan's quatrains from the perspective of formalist criticism shows how the form of his quatrains plays a significant role in their sensory and semantic impact.