In Memories of an Impossible Future: Mehdi Akhavān Sāles and the Poetics of Time Marie Huber traces the quest for a modern language of poetry through different figurations of temporality in the works of one of Iran’s foremost poets. Akhavān is placed in dialogue with European thinkers and emerges as an original voice in world literature.
Chapters examine aspects of rhythm and metaphor, messianism and historicity, and functions of time in Akhavān’s lyric and epic poems. Through a range of close readings Huber seeks to understand Akhavān’s texts as crystallisations of a historical moment, both rooted in the Persian tradition and pointing beyond it. Her analyses combine attention to philological detail with meditations on the philosophical significance of Akhavān’s poetics.
Author(s): Marie Huber
Series: Iran Studies
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 174
Tags: Iranian, Iran, Persian, Farsi, Literature, History, Literary
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Introduction......Page 11
Chapter 1 An Emancipation of Rhythm......Page 23
Isochronies of Night......Page 24
The Immanence of Perception......Page 31
Metrical Spaces......Page 35
Embodied Rhythm......Page 41
Measures of Seeing......Page 45
Time and Song......Page 48
Chapter 2 Images of the New......Page 55
The Screen of Nature......Page 57
Porous Images......Page 60
Objective and Subjective Realities......Page 67
The Two Mirrors......Page 76
Chapter 3 Time-Spaces of Poetic Narration......Page 80
The Most Intimate Relation......Page 82
Dream Time......Page 90
Syncopations of Desire......Page 94
The Immobilised Now......Page 101
Embedded in Time......Page 107
Unmappable Spaces and Spaces of Myth......Page 112
Chapter 4 The Depth of Time: Voices......Page 118
The Broken Cogito......Page 121
La parole scindée......Page 128
The End of the Book of Kings......Page 142
Bibliography......Page 161
Index......Page 172
