Old Age and Greed in Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī’s Ghazals

Abstract

Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī is one of the most well-known figures of 17th century Persian poetry. His poems are considered typical examples of Indian Style, a poetry movement that was marked with the use of imagery that deviated from established norms of the past centu- ries. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Ṣāʾib’s imagery and show its differences and similarities with traditional imagery of classical Persian poetry. To this end, Ṣāʾib’s ghazal couplets that focus a particular subject, that is, greed in old age, are scrutinized. Elderliness was one of the recurring themes in Persian poetry even before Ṣāʾib so this topic is suitable for comparing his imagery with that of his predecessors. The review of Ṣāʾib’s couplets show that novel and surprising ideas do permeate his poetry and are a distinguishing feature of his style but in most cases his ideas are not entirely original. His innovation is based on taking metaphors from tradition and giving those metaphors new meanings that is not entirely detached from its former meaning. Ṣāʾib also uses unique imagery that is not seen in the works of any other poets but this happens very rarely. Hence, Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī’s poetry retains its connection with tradition and achieves freshness through this connection rather than representing a style that is completely cut off from past.

Keywords

• Saeb Tabrizi
• Indian Style
• Sabk-e Hindi
• Persian poetry
• metaphors
• im- agery
• old age
• greed.

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