On World Poetry Day, Some Verses Straight From Persia’s Heart · Global Voices
Azerbaijani folk art based on the <PERSON> and <PERSON> novel by <PERSON>. CC BY 3.0.
How might someone in Tajikistan, the only Persian-speaking republic in the former Soviet Union, describe a beautiful and lively night spent in the company of family and friends?
Perhaps he or she would use the word dilafruz, which literally means ‘firing the heart’.
If that person spent the night alone in a depressed state, however, the word chosen might be diltang, which would indicate a ‘narrowing of the heart’.
In a country where poetry runs in the blood, falling in love can be described in a dozen different ways. One can be dil bastan (heart-tied), or have a dil gum zadan – a racing heart.
Correspondingly, the person that triggers this state might be called a dilrabo (heart stealer), while freezing someone's heart is dil khunuk shudan, a somewhat dramatic take on getting dumped.
Languages full of heart – and verse!
The Tajik language is closely related to the Indo-Iranian languages spoken in Iran (Farsi) and Afghanistan (Dari). 148
In Farsi, the literary word for heart is closer to del in pronunciation. Dari's dil is like the Tajik.
World map adapted by Mani1 to show areas where Persian is spoken. Creative Commons.
Moreover, across the Eurasian sub-region indicated above, dil (written “дил” in the Cyrillic alphabet Tajikstan still uses) is the heartbeat of a rich poetic tradition stretching back at least as far as the first milennium AD.
One of the most famous proponents of this tradition was <PERSON>, the roaming 13th century wordsmith and philosopher beloved by all Persian-speaking peoples.
Ҳар чӣ дар дил дорӣ аз макру румуз,
Пеши мо расвосту пайдо ҳамчу рӯз
Whatever secret and lies you have in your heart,
We see them all like a day with our eyes,
The heart has no country…
<PERSON>'s romanticism is eclipsed however by <PERSON>, a bard writing in the century before him.
<PERSON> hailed from Ganja (his name literally means <PERSON>) which is part of modern-day Azerbaijan.
Here are some couplets from his epic Khosrow and Shirin, in which the Sasanian ruler (<PERSON>) engages in a poetry battle with his love rival <PERSON> over the heart of an Armenian princess, <PERSON>.
Бигуфт: Аз дил шудӣ ошиқ бад-ин сон?
Бигуфт: Аз дил ту мегўӣ, ман аз ҷон.
Бигуфто: Ишқи Ширин бар ту чун аст?
Бигуфт: Аз ҷони ширинам фузун аст!..
Бигуфто: Дил зи меҳраш кай кунӣ пок?
Бигуфт: Он гаҳ, ки бошам хуфта дар хок…
Бигуфт: Аз дил ҷудо кун ишқи Ширин.
Бигуфто: Чун зиям бе ҷони ширин?
Asked: Did you fall in love from the heart?
Answered: You talk about the heart, I talk about the soul. 990