پژوهشنامه ادبیات کردی
سال هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 12، پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Folklore is an integral part of every nation’s literature, with a remarkable diversity in type and inclusion. A large part of this literature includes tales, legends, myths, songs, ballads, adages, riddles, and versified games transmitted orally from generation to generation over the centuries. All-important literary genres can be seen in folklore. One of these literary genres is Pastoral literature, which has been specially addressed by western scholars yet a new subject for analysis in the folk literature of the Iranian people with its various languages and dialects. Pastoral literature includes creative works presenting rural life and its landscapes in an ideal way for the audience. In this research, the authors studied the Pastoral literature of the rural areas of Khavmirabad district of Mariwan city based on the lifestyle, particular geographical region, rich language and culture, and literature of the Kurds. The study aimed to provide a background for more familiarity with Pastoral literature and examine its status in Kurdish oral literature, more specifically in Kurdish folk literature. The study results showed that ordinary people had created Pastoral literature in their lives and social failures, regrets, and desires. Research data was collected through library and field studies, and the descriptive-analytical method was adopted.

Kelileh and Demna, written by Nasrullah Munshi and translated into Kurdish by Ahmad Ghazi, is significant due to its specific translation techniques and features. Being familiar with the translation techniques, the translator tried to create a literary and artistic work in form and content. The present study adopted a comparative-analytical method to evaluate the Kurdish translation of Kelileh and Demna and sought to introduce it as an artistic translation of a literary work. Findings showed that the translator followed Nasrullah Munshi’s style in translating the meanings and concepts of the work and, more specifically, in all kinds of allusions, metaphors, sentences, and phrases. He also gave authenticity to his translation by applying some additions and omissions, changing the meanings and concepts of Arabic expressions, and adopting the equivalents of words and terms from the target language. At the same time, ignoring the nature of literary language and some translation principles, such as unjustified omissions and inconsistency, his work has some shortcomings in conveying both the form and the content.

Literary works mirror a society’s social situation, habits, traditions, and customs. Analyzing and re-reading the literary works reveals considerable cultural, social, personal, and psychological aspects of the people of a society. In the meantime, archetypal images are man’s individual and collective unconscious heritage throughout history actualized in literature through artists’ creative and sensitive minds. Based on Jung’s theories, the present study intends to examine the novel, The Yard and the Dogs of My Father, one of Sherzad Hassan’s outstanding works. This study analyzes the story based on Freud, Lacan, and Campbell’s theories, emphasizing Jung’s archetypal theory. The qualitative content analysis is adopted to analyze the selected themes and sentences of the novel based on Jung’s archetypes. In this research, the archetypes of self, anima, and animus, mask, shadow, hero, father, myth, mother, moon, sun, castration, virginity are analyzed in the story, and it is indicated that the plot and the role of the characters can be examined based on Jung’s theory. The novel’s bold archetypes include death, shadow, myth, and hero. The role of “myth” and “mythical hero” is so ingrained in human belief from the past to the present that even after the protagonist’s death, we can see the function and effect of this archetype. Father’s shadow (the dictator) is observed in the lives of the people residing in the yard. They do not even believe his death and think he will return soon to retake his yard.

Abstract From the traditionalist perspective, sacred art is manifested in spiritual and intuitive wisdom. Sacred art, in any form, intends to reveal the inherent truth of objects, phenomena, and events. The Yarsan religion also believes that the manifestation of God's essence in humankind is like an open window to God or a mirror that does not reflect anything but him. The present study seeks to analyze the sacred arts of architecture and poetry in the Yarsan religion regarding Prof. Seyed Hossein Nasr and Traditionalists' ideas adopting a descriptive-analytical method. Study results indicated that although Prof. Nasr has not directly addressed the sacred arts of Yarsan religion in his works, considering his conceptions and definitions of the sacred art, especially in the field of poetry and architecture, his ideas are in harmony with the beliefs and practices of Yarsan. Prof. Nasr assumes traditional art as an art that tries to display the origin of being, based on religious principles and divine tradition; and, therefore the most transcendental art in the traditional society, i.e. "becoming sacred" means polishing the soul, so that it can reincarnate in the form of artistic work, to be merit the Divinity. The same view is evident in the beliefs of Yarsan, and everything goes back to God in it.

Khayyam’s quatrains have been translated into many languages ​​and have brought worldwide fame to this poet and a great honor for Iranian literature. Khayyam’s quatrains have been translated several times into Kurdish. One of the most successful translations is the translation of the famous Kurdish poet, writer and translator, Abdul Rahman Sharafkandi, nicknamed “Hejar”. While faithful to the structure and content of Khayyam’s poetry, this translation is a kind of free and conceptual translation. The translator tries to convey Khayyam’s view of the world inside and outside, his main message, and his poems’ general spirit to the Kurdish audience. He attempts to transmit the semantic and formal features of the original poem such as meter and form, tone and firmness of Khayyam’s speech, and its external and internal music in his translation. The present study critically analyzes this translation formally and semantically, adopting a descriptive-analytical method and relying on library and documentary data. It explores the translator’s method in translating Khayyam’s poetry. The results of the study indicated the following factors led to the translator’s success in his translation: the poet being a translator himself, his complete mastery of the source and target languages, his correct understanding of the content of the source text, and the intention of the original author, avoiding literal translation, choosing tone and words appropriately and recreating the internal and spiritual music of Khayyam’s poetry.

Sharafnameh is a historical, literary Persian prose text, and one of its prominent features is combining history with poetry. Bidlisi has used 554.5 lines of poetry in Sharafnameh while mentioning the poets of only 148 (26.69 %) lines. Thus, the poets of 406.5 (73.3%) lines of the Persian poems of Sharafnameh are unknown. This study aimed to identify the sources of these seventy-three percent and present the necessary documentation. The applied research method was descriptive-analytical. The data was collected using library and documentary research, analyzed using the content analysis method, and compared analytically with Bayhaqi's History and Nafsat al-Masdoor. One of the present study results is identifying and introducing the sources of 187 (33.72%) other lines of the Persian poems in Sharafnameh. Therefore, the number of lines of poetry with recognized sources reaches 335 (60.41%). Accordingly, the present study could introduce the unknown sources of 33.72% lines of poetry in Sharafnameh. The results also indicated that Sharaf Khan relied on divans and works of at least 44 poets to find these 355 lines. Therefore, the present study also pointed out the broadness of his readings and the richness of his resources.

One of the topics in the sociology of language is the linguistic taboo, which imposes varying degrees of restriction and prohibition on the speakers of each language. Accordingly, language users avoid using taboo words and expressions by applying methods regarding the types of commitment, concern, or necessity of social order, which is called euphemism. The present study adopted a descriptive-analytical approach to classify, signify, and interpret aspects of euphemism in Central Kurdish based on the Warren model. According to the socio-cultural context of the Central Kurdish speakers, the result showed that linguistic taboos mainly include moral, religious, political, and customary issues, and the sexual and physical aspects were more prominent. Therefore, Central Kurdish speakers tended to construct different avoiding techniques to euphemize the linguist taboos by using semantic and formal constructions. Due to their specific nature, metaphor, metonymy, ambiguous words, allusive expressions, synonyms, and neutralizing words were more common. In some cases, a great social action was initiated because of semantic conflict, resulting in the names of six villages being changed. Regardless of its form and quantity, linguistic euphemism avoids verbal violence, creates security and empathy, and ultimately understands the presence of others.

The unreliability of many historical and literary sources is one of the serious obstacles facing researchers working on the history and histography of Kurdish literature. Many Kurdish poets’ works have also been lost in the past centuries. There remained only their names and parts of their poems, giving us incomplete information, such as many of the classical poets of the Kurdish Gurani. The 11th century AH was the beginning of a Kurdish poetry movement in large parts of Kurdistan, and at this time there were many poets who wrote in Kurdish. Yusuf Yasekah was a poet in the 11th century AH. The similarity between his name and the character of Yusuf in Seir Al-Akrad caused some researchers to consider both characters as one. The present study introduces this poet based on historical and literary sources and tries to quell misgivings about the similarity between his name and the character in Seir Al-Akrad. Based on some literary references in Yasekah and Mullah Mustafa Bisarani’s poems, the historical events, toponyms, and proper nouns in historical books and sources, this study determined that Yusuf Yasakah had lived in the late eleventh century AH, adopting an analytical methodology. The historical and literary evidence and documents also clarified that this poet has nothing to do with Yusuf’s story in Seir Al-Akrad.

Nali is one of the prominent and creative classical Kurdish poets of the nineteenth century. He used many Persian words and compounds in his Kurdish poems. He was one of the leading poets of classical Kurdish poetry in this area. In this research, all the poems of Nali’s Divan were studied, Persian words, nouns, and verb compounds were extracted, and their frequency was determined statistically. Nali presented a new method to create sentence structure and word formation in classical Kurdish poetry using the Persian language. In this way, Nali developed new meanings in Kurdish poetry. He used the capacities of both Persian and Kurdish languages in composing powerful metric poems. The data analysis showed the high frequency of Persian words and noun compounds in Nali’s poetry.

Proverbs are among linguistic chains that are metaphoric in nature which should be studied cognitively. In this research, 41 Kermanshahi Kurdish (Kangavari variant) proverbs containing animal names were collected in a field study. They were then compared with their modern Persian counterparts extracted from Dehkhoda’s (1995) Amsal va Hekam and analyzed based on Lakoff and Turner’s (1989) Great Chain Metaphor model and Mendoza and Diéz (2002) conceptual interactional patterns between metaphor and metonymy framework. According to the findings, Kurdish proverbs make use of animal names more than Persian counterparts because of the geographic conditions, Kurds lifestyle, and their general profession that is farming. According to Great Chain Metaphor model, when animals play the main role in proverbs, the conceptual metaphor “PEOPLE ARE ANIMAL” is applied to conceive human behaviors by animal traits. As to the findings, although there are cultural differences between language speakers in creating proverbs, the same cognitive mechanisms are used in proverb perceptions and this confirms the linguistic universalities among all languages.

Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967) and Jila Hosseini (1965-1997) wrote poetry in two languages – Persian and Kurdish – and lived in different cultural contexts and historical periods. However, both are considered contemporary Iranian female intellectuals whose poetry in line with the post-feminist discourse, following the acceptance of “human totality,” and in parallel with a kind of “feminist transition” moves from negative to positive feminism in a tragic and non-theoretical context; Passing the “nihilistic transition” it finally reaches the moment of the superman “creation” that is the same as Nietzsche’s “will to power” in “Dionysian woman,” against the dualistic dogmas of “traditional patriarchal culture” and the extremism of “modern feminism” both violating the human totality. The present study adopted an analytical-descriptive method to explore the “tragic insight” of these two poets in the way they encounter “metaphysics” in their rebellious attitudes, as well as the final concept of “love of destiny,” which distinguishes Jila as a late poet of the so-called “influence anxiety” from Forough as an earlier poet. Their struggle against the catastrophes and sufferings of life following Nietzsche’s “metamorphosis” and, more specifically, an aesthetic justification and gratifying affirmation of the totality of life makes these women the creative superman.

For all nations, classical literature in general and classical poetry, in particular, are recognized rich sources of social, cultural, ethnic, and even historical information about past events and facts. Hariq is one of the famous poets of the Central Kermanji school of poetry who lived in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hariq’s Divan has been revised and published several times; however, despite the revisor’s attempts, it suffers from many shortcomings such as misspellings, incorrect readings, changes, and missed letters and words resulting in making mistakes in most of the lines. On the other hand, the new revision of Hariq’s Divan by Nawzad Kalhor, in many cases, did not alleviate the problems of previous editions. Yet, it includes more mistakes compared with the earlier publications. Therefore, revising the Divans of classical poets is not complete without following scientific methodology, recognizing appropriate criteria for correction, and a critical analysis of the text. This study adopted an analytical-critical approach to correct some lines of Hariq’s Divan, based on the existing manuscripts. It seeks to show that revising the Divan’s of classical poets, apart from reading the original manuscripts as the base of correction, needs the knowledge of stylistics, prosody, and rhetorics. Recognizing these mistakes can help future revisors and prevent similar mistakes.

Throughout history, mysticism and Sufism have been criticized by scholars and even mystics themselves. Some scholars, who can be called “Salafis,” have not accepted mysticism and Sufism and have constantly rejected them from the past to this day. Still, some scholars criticized them logically, mentioning their advantages and disadvantages. The Kurdish community is a Muslim community, and, like other Islamic communities, Sufism is practiced in it. Without being ungrateful to some of the Sheikhs and Sufis and their efforts, in many Kurdish literary texts, especially poetry, they have been regarded as obstacles to the Kurdish people’s progress and have been sharply criticized. The present study aims to examine the views of Kurdish intellectual poets scientifically regarding mysticism, and Sufism in Kurdistan, especially during the time of Haji Qadir and shortly after that. It seeks to find the reasons behind the hostility and harsh criticisms of Kurdish intellectual poets towards the mystics and Sufis of Kurdistan - especially Sufism, which has deviated from its path - adopting the content analysis method and using library resources. The results of the research indicates that based on the views of intellectual poets, laziness, unemployment, carnal inclinations, considering themselves an exalted position, exploitation of people, self-conceit, and hypocrisy of many Sufis, were factors contributing to the ignorance of people and created some obstacles in the way of the development of Kurdish society.

The Kurdish dialects are known by various names such as Kurmanji, Sorani, Kalhuri, etc. Some of them are named after their speakers’ tribe, region, or city, such as Jafi, Souzchi, Khoshnawi, Sulaymaniyaie, Arbili, Garmiani, etc. As the main Kurdish dialect, Central Kurdish has been known as “Sorani.” From the beginning of its development as a literary language in the 18th century in the Baban emirate, this dialect has been mentioned differently. In the early poems of the Baban emirate poets, this dialect was named “Kurdi” while Northern Kurdish was called “Kurmanji” and Gurani was called “Guran” and sometimes “Kurdi.” In the 1920s, the Central Kurdish dialect got a new name “Babani,” and Southern and Central Kurmanji later. In the second half of the 20th century, it was called by another new name, “Sorani,” which is the most frequent name for this Kurdish dialect. This study investigated the historical roots of these names, their emergence, and dissemination. It also explained why “Sorani” is not appropriate for this dialect. This name has no historical background; it has been the name of the Kurdish emirate in the past, and it is the name of a local variety of Central Kurdish. Therefore, it is not an appropriate name for the large size of its speakers inhabited the southern and eastern parts of Kurdistan, between the two main Kurdish dialects: Northern and Southern Kurdish. If we look at the map of greater Kurdistan, this dialect is located in the central part of it. Thus, the most appropriate and scientific name for this Kurdish dialect is the Central Kurdish.