واکاوی «تقابل»، در «عدم‌قطعیت» معنای پست‌مدرنی «من و انکار شراب این چه حکایت باشد؟!» از حافظ

 
Abstract
      Postmodern poetry or lyric is one of the contemporary poetic styles in which the poet uses various literary and rhetorical techniques to express his meanings poetically. It abounds in contradictions, and the audience faces multiple meanings and wanders in a world of contrasts. Since contrasts form the basis of the human mental structure, examining them can help to better understand literary works. The study of contrasts and their deconstruction is somehow related to the postmodern style of poetry and sonnet. In other words, contrasts introduce different meanings in the poem. The present descriptive-analytical research seeks to find out what tricks these contrasts play in sonnets and how they lead to semantic and, consequently, the uncertainty of meaning. It is concluded that contradiction, ambiguity and humor are among the consequential functions of contrast. Also, all of these cases alone or when overlapped push Hafez's sonnets close to postmodernism.
 
Keywords: Postmodern sonnet, Contrast, Figures of speech, Uncertainty of meaning, Hafez Shirazi.
 
 

Introduction

So far, countless pieces of research have been done about postmodernism in the form of books, articles, and theses, and a significant part of them has been dedicated to the field of fiction, especially novels. In the field of classical literature, however, there are two opinions: some are generally opposed to the search for postmodern components in traditional and classical literature, and some look for the roots of these components in traditional literature through a kind of postmodern reading of some past literary texts. Some researchers have observed anti-traditional components in the ancient texts of Persian literature. A kind of duality can be seen in these favorable opinions. Considering that postmodern components are often viewed to be specific to the novel genre and due to the nature of the novel as a platform for postmodernism, a group of postmodern components are found in certain stories in the literature. Those researchers have looked for classics and do not pay attention to other literary genres lik poetry. There are also a few scholars who have this kind of approach in poems, especially mystical poems. They call such poems the cradle of such an approach, and they consider the slipperiness of meanings to be the result of this kind of author's view. However, in this view, the scope of work is more limited, and the work becomes farfetched and difficult as a result. In the meantime, in some mystical literary texts such as the poems of Hafez Shirazi, who also gave great importance to the language, the nested relationships of the verses in his sonnets are obvious to everyone, and it is easy to follow the components of postmodern literature in them. Therefore, the present study is a postmodern reading of one of the well-known sonnets by Hafez (sonnet 158).
 
 

Methodology

The data in this article have been extracted through data mining and the use of library sources. They are also analyzed with a descriptive-analytical method.
 
 

Results and discussion

Historically, postmodernism emerged in the years after World War II. Postmodern has a very wide range of applications; in all areas, its features can be observed, with which one can understand to a large extent what this approach is, Due to the lack of a systematic way of thinking, it is not possible to apply it comprehensively.
Among the characteristics of postmodernism in writing, critics have mentioned features such as incoherence, the decline of meta-narratives, fabrication, playful writing, highlighting the role of the media, combining genres, and loss of meaning. Some others have considered components such as the absolute absence of reality, image instead of reality, uncertainty, contradiction, displacement, lack of rules, excess, short circuit, fascination, strange writing, and verbal games as characteristics of postmodern works, especially novels. As for postmodern poetry, it is a poem that breaks and sets aside the traditional lyrical poetry and focuses on the topic of subjectivity, theorizing, and textual meaning. The emphasis of this type of poetry is on language and form, which is also evident in the works of postmodern philosophers.
Contrast is one of the components that pulls a literary text towards being postmodern. Here, regarding the topic of this article, which is a review of one of Hafez Shirazi's sonnets with a postmodern approach, many postmodern components can be seen, but it should be noted that dealing only with rhetorical techniques has been a common way of analyzing Hafez's poems. Therefore, in the present study, some literary devices are examined which are more consistent with the goals and characteristics of postmodern poetry.
Among those devices, some are more obvious in Hafez's poetry. Especially in the examined sonnet, almost none of the verses are free of one or two of such techniques as doubt, ambiguity, irony, contradiction and irony.
In many verses of this sonnet, Hafez seems to have tried to create "ambiguity" in the sonnet by choosing words, especially "dual-meaning words", and he has deliberately repeated this in almost all the verses. Secondly, all these ambiguities have been in line with the "uncertainty of meaning", in such a way that the reader does not get a correct understanding of the meaning of the verses even after reading the sonnet several times. Each time he reads it, he notices one of the meanings that Hafez has intended to impart. Lexical contrasts are, indeed, a means of creating ambiguities and uncertainties.
 
 

Conclusion

One of the signs of postmodernism in Hafez's poetry is the use of double contrasts. In fact, by this technique, the poet has been able to put the concepts of the verses behind a curtain of ambiguity, doubt or contradiction, thus leaving the end of the game to the audience. He has resorted to veiled speech or double- and multi-faceted utterances, and the audience gets lost in the multiplicity of meanings through his sonnets. The reader is sometimes bewildered by the semantic ambiguity, and the power of choosing a single meaning is taken away from him. In this sense, Hafiz is like today's postmodern poets; he uses techniques such as ambiguity, contradiction and humor to bring the audience to the uncertainty of meaning. In this regard, one can imagine a wealth of contrasts, rhetorical strategies, and uncertain meanings in some of the poet’s sonnets. With denials and oppositions as well as proofs and rejections, Hafiz creates doubts and, at the same time, humor, which has no result other than the plurality of meaning. Finally, one can see bold streaks of postmodern lyric in Hafez's anthology, such as the sonnet examined in this article.