The Question of Modernism


In the realm of poetry creation and especially in his literary scholarship, Gheisar Aminpour was caught up in a highly conflictual situation about modernity and tradition which formed his main concern in the last decade of his life. The conflict was rooted in his attachment to tradition and the inevitability of modernity. The dominance of modernism over the literary trends intensified Aminpour's emotional crisis. Modernism which influenced intellectual and artistic contexts of the time was not appealing to Aminpour and his fellow thinkers. During the past three decades after the revolution, the predominant view, especially that of the pioneers of the Islamic revolution, attributes modern art with the following characteristics:

1. Belonging to the contemporary.
2. Inimical to and rejecting tradition.
3. Inclined with western civilization.
4. Carrying disbelief and atheism within it.
From this point of view, modernity means achieving originality through rejecting the past and tradition. In a discourse in which Aminpour grew up modernity was conceived as a counter value. On one hand, Aminpour could not accept the idea of modernity because at the core of modernity, lies rebellion against traditional and conservative values. On the other hand, the academic modernists discourse for him, opened doors to the realm of modern poetry. He could not ignore modernism and the role it played in pushing the horizon of literature further. Therefore, he was caught up in a conflict which was rooted in his ideological fundamentals of the Islamic revolution and the actual reality of the history of literature. The only way out of this conflict to him was to create an in between half modern half traditional ground. This entanglement is the reason to his conservatism both in his scholarship and his poems. To escape this entanglement and to clear the name of originality from charge of modernism which has come to mean western, anti tradition and, atheist, he offered three explanations:

Reducing the controversial subject of modernity to innovation:
By proposing that the originality is at the heart of tradition, In Tradition and Originality in Modern Poetry (2004), Aminpour offers a different perspective. It is as if he was trying to escape the modern/traditional conflict by re-defining common terminologies. Reviewing originality in modern poetry, he categorized it as follows:
- Radical originality: to copy cat western trends and absolutely reject tradition including poets such as Tondar Kia, Mohammad Moqadam…)
- Conditional originality: including poets such as Bahar, Parvin, Rashid Yasemie
- Moderate originality: lingering on the edge of the old and new. (Aminpour, 2004)
His ideal is the third type of modernism which is moderate and conservative. However, one wonders, where does all this conservatism come from? He was the child of the revolution literature whose manifesto is basically written by Ali Mo'alem (in the epilogue of the Red Return of the Star). Although, his ideas changed in the 1990s, he was still after finding a modernist eastern pattern in order to find a moderate way to resolve this conflict. On his path he discovered a contemporary Syrian poet who believed that modernity in eastern countries is just an illusion.

Aminpour sees it necessary for originality to work from within tradition. Therefore, in a paradoxical interpretation he calls innovation a tradition. Inviting the readership to welcome a new definition of tradition he encouraged them to re-pledge allegiance to tradition:
If his tradition is to be original
Let us look at tradition with new eyes
Do not say that the pledge to primordial tradition is old now
Come and let us re-pledge allegiance
Drawing attention to originality in order to look over the concept of "modern" attests to the fact that Aminpour could not accept modern philosophical and theoretical fundamentals. Or perhaps he was not even interested in exploring them. He took contemporary for modern. It seems that reducing "modern" to only one of its aspects, original, put him off from trying to understand cultural and philosophical fundamentals of "modern".

Confusing the concept of modern:

To give a historical dimension to originality, Aminpour had to clear away a fundamental aspect of modern. Take a look at the following propositions: "Being modern does not necessarily mean being contemporary.", "Art works of the past are still contemporary because they are influential." (Aminpour, 2004: 16) "Although the past is past, it has not passed away and one cannot simply pass it by." (Ibid. 61) Although these propositions are certainly poetic, they do not make any sense. In fact, they are confusing two concepts of contemporary and modern. Only if we deny the changes after modernity and the conflict between modernity and tradition, then it can be acceptable to us to say that a 700 year old poem is contemporary, only if we believe in a static unchangeable aesthetics. On the other hand, great literary works are timeless because they are "influential at all times". Then how can we describe the timeless in terms of the contemporary which is a quality specific to time?

A dialectic conceptualization of tradition and modernity
With an introduction which goes as: "Any new thing will eventually become old and a part of tradition. Therefore, being new is relative." Aminpour concludes: "Not only tradition does not stop one from being original, but also, it is an indispensible part of being original." (ibid. 63, 65) This is the point at which he creates a poetic oxymoron which he often repeats and emphasis in his works, the tradition of being original. He extends this originality/tradition or new/old dialectic to Persian poetry.
On one hand, the idea of "the historical persistency of the originality/tradition dialect" is the result of the revolutionary discourse in which Aminpour grew. This discourse encompassed the ideology of a revolution with slogans such as returning to the self and the idealizing the past. On the other hand, this idea is also rooted in the inevitability of the modernist thinking trend which emerged after Nima, the poet. Aminpour accepted the necessity of originality. However, he did not approve of the modern ideas of the constitutional era, romantic originality and other avant-garde trends in Persian poetry. In fact he considers these trends to have no spirit or character. 
Under the influence of the idea of returning to the past and re-reading tradition, Aminpour tried to put modernity aside. He was after re-pledging with tradition. However, he did not always seek asylum in tradition like his fellow thinkers. In fact, he believed that "art is the result of the clash between originality and tradition" (ibid. 56). The oxymoron of "the tradition of originality" was the result of the poet's personal experience, not a critique of modernity or tradition. Believing in "the tradition of originality" poses him right against the essential idea behind modernism. Nietzsche, a pioneer modern thinker, asserts that to be creative one should forget history.
In his poem, he again insisted on originality within the framework of tradition. He did not want to break the traditional framework of aesthetics. Aminpour's ideas are closest to Sa'adi whose poems were attacked by the modernist constitutionalists who thought of Sa'adi as the pioneer of traditionalist poets. In Amipour's poems, there is no sign of ambiguity and interpretability which is the most significant attribute of modern poetry and Nima'i style. Artistic ambiguity, in Nima's style, is the key element with which the poem transgresses the aesthetic tradition of Persian poetry. Aminpour, himself, admits that this style was a response to meet the demands of that period of history. It was only Nima who understood that need and responded to it. Ambiguity, which is not a notable element in Aminpour's works, basically opens room for freedom of the readership. In other words, what Aminpour calls "aesthetic freedom of how to write" (ibid. 378) does not flourish in his own works.
Artistic ambiguity is the secret to interpretability. It allows the text to open a dialogue with history. And this is how, in Aminpour's words, a work stays perpetually contemporary. And this is exactly what Aminpour's work lacks. As the language evolves, the linguistic games which Aminpour plays with speech will eventually become old. These games are subject to the theory of the credibility.

Mahmood Fattahi
Translated by: Jairan Gahan

Source: Tajrobeh Monthly, No.1



 
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