خوانشی بر ساختار نگاره های مثنوی سوز و گداز (موجود در موزه والترز) (مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)
درجه علمی: نشریه علمی (وزارت علوم)
آرشیو
چکیده
در نسخه مصوّر منظومه «سوز و گدازِ» نوعی خبوشانی، موجود در موزه والترز، مضمونی داستانی واقع می شود تا خودسوزی زنی بیوه در مراسم سوزانده شدن جسد همسرش و همراهی او با عنوان «سنت ستی» ستایش شود. به همین ترتیب نگاره های این نسخه چنان مصوّر شده اند که پژوهش حاضر با این سؤالات مواجه شده است: نگارگر با بهره وری از کدام اصول و نشانه های تصویری توانسته بار معنایی نهفته در اشعار خبوشانی را بازآفرینی کند؟ آیا نگاره ها کاملاً بر اساس قواعد نگارگری ایرانی تجسم یافته اند؟ رسیدن به پاسخ، بی شک اثبات یا رد این فرضیه را در پی خواهد داشت: نگاره ها بر آن دسته از اصول و قواعد نگارگری ایرانی- هندی تجسم یافته اند تا در راستای پایبندی به متن شعری، نقش آفرینی دو دلداده را مصوّر سازند. نتایج مبتنی بر تحلیل های کیفی ساختارگرایانه نشان می دهند که هنرمند در تعاملی دو سویه از مکاتب نگارگری عصر خویش در ایران و هند بهره برده و در ساختار خطی، ترکیب بندی و تقسیمات طلایی آثارش تمهیداتی بصری را لحاظ کرده است. از جمله با عطف توجه به مربع شاخص، شخصیت های اصلی داستانی را در مرکز آثار قرار داده و با اجتناب از تزیین در کادر و بُعدپردازی در صحنه های داستانی سعی کرده است منتج شدن سرنوشت عشاق به ستی را مدلول سلسله رویدادهای پیش آمده بر سر راه عشق بنمایاند.Structural Reading of Miniatures in Masnavi Sūz va Gudāz (Preserved at the Walters Art Museum)
As love has been one of the most common and deep themes in Persian manuscripts in verse to create literary masterpieces, it is the narrative theme of Khabushani’s illustrated manuscript of Sūz va Gudāz, preserved at the Walters Art Museum, to praise the self-immolation of a window to be burned with her husband’s body in the practice of sati. Given the way the miniatures of this manuscript have been illustrated, the following questions were posed in this study: What pictorial principles and signs has the miniaturist used to recreate the hidden meaning in Khabushani’s verses? Are the miniatures illustrated completely based on the principles of Persian miniature? In this regard, the hypothesis of the study included that the miniatures have been illustrated based on a set of Persian-Hindu principles of miniature in order to depict the role of the lovers in their unification in line with faithfulness towards the versified text. The results of the qualitative structural analyses showed that the artist, following the literary nature of the manuscript, has used a mutual interaction between the contemporary miniature schools in Iran and India and included visual arrangements in the linear structure, composition, and golden divisions of his works. Highlighting the principle of golden square, he has put the main characters of the story at the center of the works and attempted to depict the fate of the lovers in sati as a result of the chain of events in the journey of their love by applying symbolic elements (dots, lines, surface, and color), creating a garden-like atmosphere, avoiding decorations in the frame, and dimensioning in the narrative scenes.
Introduction
Sūz va Gudāz [Burning and Melting] is a love masnavi composed by Muhammad Riza Naw'i Khabushani in 1019 AH on the Hindu practice of Sati. As described in the beginning of the manuscript, Khabushani asks for God’s help before composing this masnavi to make his heart a euphonious nightingale. Next, he praises the prophet Muhammad and states that one day the Mughal Akbar I sent a special courier calling him to his presence (Javani, 1390:3) and told him he was tired of hearing the same ancient tales such as Gol-o-Bolbol [Rose and Nightingale], Sham-o-Parvaneh [Candle and the Moth], Shirin and Farhad, and Layla and Majnun and wanted to hear new poems. Khabushani finds the Sati practice a new and interesting topic and thus composes a five-hundred-line poem in Persian (the language of Mughal India). The poet sees himself as the creator of a composition on an ancient and customary tradition among Hindus and indeed, based on a real event. Hindus believed that when a woman lost her husband, she would burn herself with his body to show that she would obey her husband even to humble death in any trial of loyalty and courage. A burning that was named Sati in Sanskrit to manifest concepts such as purity, chastity, loyalty, piety, and righteousness (Baba Safari and Salemian, 2008: 51). In this regard, many Persian poets praised the love and loyalty of these women and manifested it in the literary tradition of candle and the moth with a positive view and in the form of a voluntary death (Feizi Gilandeh et al., 2018). Accordingly, Naw’i Khabushani’s poem received much acclaim and artists, particularly Persian miniaturists, illustrated the story of the poem in the forthcoming Islamic centuries. One of these works is the illustrated manuscript of Sūz va Gudāz preserved at the Walters Art Museum located in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States (Walters W.649). In this manuscript, the overall structure of miniatures that narrate the versified scenes is formed in a way that raises these questions: 1) What pictorial principles and signs has the miniaturist used to recreate the hidden meaning in Khabushani’s verses? 2) Given the Hindu content of the story, are the miniatures illustrated completely based on the principles of Persian miniature?
1.1. Research methodology
This study aimed to analyze the miniatures of Sūz va Gudāz manuscript based on a structuralist approach. Such an approach provides the space to achieve the meaning of a work by interpreting the inner link between the components. Therefore, it is important to note that this study did not try to unveil the inner meaning of the work, but attempted to extract the structure of each miniature in terms of composition, geometrical proportions, linear structure, and golden ratio. Next, the meaning-making and the meaningful relations between components (visual signs) in each miniature were studied using a descriptive-analytical method citing reliable library-electronic sources. It should also be pointed out that the source of collecting pictorial data was the Walters Art Museum website.
Discussion
The illustrated manuscript of Sūz va Gudāz was written in black ink and Nastaʼlīq in forty-two pages. According to the Colophon, Ibn Sayyid Murad al-Husayni scribed it as a souvenir for Muhammad `Ali Naqqash Mashhadi who added eight 23.5×14.5 cm miniatures to it. The analysis of miniatures based on the events of the story in Naw’i Khabushani’s verses showed that the miniaturist has depicted the themes, from longing for unity with the lover to the unity in the practice of sati, in a particular visual quality. As the most crucial point in solving a visual complication is its composition and the realization of meanings and concepts of the story depend on the kind of composition, the miniaturist has used non-concentrated compositions in order to disperse different characters present in the narrated scenes in several points on the works and given each character a determining role in the overall structure of the story. In addition to creating visual balance, the order of characters does not fixate the viewer’s eyes on a particular point which leads to a harmonic circulation all over the miniatures. Nonetheless, in such dynamic and non-symmetrical compositions, there are equal and homogenous surrounding figures and the central figures govern the whole structure in each miniature. In fact, the miniaturist has made the central figures in each miniature the core of the story with all the elements subordinated to them. This kind of composition leads the audience towards unique experiences of coloring and color compositions. Regarding the color compositions, as the artist has considered the story events from the beginning of Sūz va Gudāz to its end in a chain format, rather than separate events, he has combined colors with a vast specter of derivatives of red, yellow, and blue to create a fitting company of warm and cold colors. In addition to increasing the variety of illustrated spaces, such a technique depicts excitement, happiness, melancholy, and longing for unity. Another point is the artist’s attention to breathing spaces in the miniatures which is related to the golden ratio. Accordingly, Muhamad Ali has formed the composition in the domain of golden square to achieve a desirable aesthetic effect and avoid crowded composition in his works.
Conclusion
According to the analyses and demonstrated tables, it could be concluded that as the story of Sūz va Gudāz turns into a tragic epic of love and loyalty based on the practice of sati with the non-unification of the lovers, Muhammad `Ali Naqqash Mashhadi, in line with the story events, has attempted to depict positive and admirable themes of sati in his miniatures and influence the dramatic representation of his illustrations. Therefore, by placing lovers as the heroes of the story, selecting symbolic colors, creating an allegorical atmosphere, using well-fitting visual elements (dots, lines, and surface) horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, utilizing a pattern of golden ratios, and avoiding perfect symmetry, he has considered some of the common visual principles in Mughal miniature in addition to depicting active and dynamic scenes of the rising and falling of the versified story in order to illustrate a more tangible and real representation of the beliefs in India.
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