Pushkin, the Young Sa'adi of Russia (The Position of Saadi in the Poetry of Pushkin)

Document Type : scientific-research

Authors

1 Professor in Russian language and Literature, University of Tehran

2 Student in Russian language and Literature, University of Tehran

Abstract

Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon in Russian and also the world literature with works on which the global ideas shine in. Nobody is able, just like Pushkin, to demonstrate a man of other nations and to speak on behalf of him so authentically.  His ability in describing Iranian culture and also Iranian genius poet, Saadi, was so that Prince Shalikov, the publisher of “Damskii zhurnal”, called him “The Young Saadi” in 1824, after publishing “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” poem with a frontispiece of Saadi's words, because for the first time in Russian literature, Pushkin showed, through his fascinating poems, the way one should describe the Iranian genius poet Saadi. Pushkin and Saadi are being compared with each other, in present essay, and the valuable and key role of Saadi’s words in Pushkin’s expressing his ideas in his poem “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” and some of his other works are studied. Some of Saadi’s ideas like those in frontispiece to “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” are adopted from the first chapter of his masterpiece Boostan, and have been repeated frequently in many of Pushkin’s works and correspondences, in addition to his novel “Eugene Onegin”, and have been used by Russians as proverbs. These ideas, in Pushkin's works, recalled the memory of his Decaabrist friends and also expressed a sense of the poet's nostalgia as a result of separation or losing them.

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