Considering the Alteration of Zulaikha's place from Reality to Imagination Emphasizing on Positive and Negative Features of Zulaikha in Some Poets' allusions

 
    In the romantic poems which have been written in the name of Yusuf and Zuleikha and also the verses that refer to this topic, the poets use the story as a way of conveying their message and impress the audience, Inspired by an external reality and relying on their own imagination. In the present paper, in addition to mentioning the differences in Quran and Torah's narrations of Yusuf and Zuleikha's story, the poets' descriptions of Zulekhia's personality in their poetic allusions have been studied. There are two main views, the objective negative view which introduces her real personality, and the positive view which although is not a valid one and in fact demonstrates her imaginary place in Persian poetry because of her relationship with Prophet Yusuf and his influence on her, the poets have paid attention to it. The importance of this study is that no independent survey has been conducted about the view of the poets about Zuleikha's personality. The research method was descriptive-analytical and it has been attempted to consider all poetry styles, although this matter has received more attention from the poets of Hindi style, specially Saib Tabrizi
 
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      Key words:  Zuleikha, positive and negative features, poets' allusions
 
 
 
1.1.Introduction
 
Zoleikha’s story is a wonderful and surprising story, not because she is a young and beautiful princess who despite having a highly-ranked but apparently sexually disabled husband, falls in love with her modest, quiet and in the meantime, most beautiful slave despite the fact that she was supposed to love the boy motherly and take care of him as a lovely son, shamelessly calls him to herself, but because of the fact that magicians of the words and the old alchemists have done alchemy; out of Zoleikha’s impure lust, they have produced the pure gold of love; out of an ugly monster, they have produced a beautiful angel; therefore, this study tries to answer the following questions: 1. What was the poets’ perspectives towards Zoleikha? 2. What is the effect of using books other than the scriptures on the poets’ perspectives on Zoleikha?
 
1.2.Research methodology
 
This survey has been carried out by the use of descriptive-analytical methodology. For this purpose, initially, the story of Yusuf (A) and Zoleikha has been studied in the scriptures of the Quran and the Bible, and their similarities and differences have been elaborated. Then, poets’ allusions to the story of Yusuf and Zoleikha and the types of the alterations they have made in the story are analyzed.
 
1.3.Discussion
 
On the one hand, because the story of Zoleikha is placed in the heart of that verses of the Quran where it is called “the best of the stories” and also because of its background in the Bible, it is attractive for interpreters and “this story has been interpreted and developed according to the Hebrow sources” (Zavari, 2009: 38), and on the other hand, by the use of these sources and also by the use of their own imagination, poets have made a lot of changes to the story and have praised Zoleikha’s love. Everyone knows that our whole literature is depleted with poems in praise of love and the remarkable roles of women in these romantic stories, sometimes as lovers and sometimes as beloved ones; this is an undeniable fact. Love is usually a mutual relationship; however, we sometimes witness that it is confined only to a one-sided relationship of the lover without being responded from the side of the beloved. In this regard, Farhad’s love of Shirin could be mentioned in which despite a lot of expressing love from Farhad’s side and even the self-sacrifices he makes for the beloved, he cannot win her attention. The story of Yusuf and Zoleikha, too, is one type of these one-sided loves where against the traditions, love is expressed by the woman to a man who is her slave and socially is in a very lower rank than the woman. “In fact, Zoleikha’s falling in love with her slave, her bravery in swimming against the current and opposition to the values of her environment are a type of de-familiarization” (ibid: 54); and this is one of the reasons this story is placed in the cannon of poets’ attention. The happy ending of the story and the transformation of Zoleikha’s love from worldly love to a true love is all because of the emission of the virtuous sun of truth shining in Yusuf’s person and its projection on the unvirtuous person of Zoleikha which cleanses her soul.
 
1.4.Conclusion
 
  The achieved result of this survey is that by relying on the scriptures, especially the Quran, some poets have had a critical view in describing the real character of Zoleikha; whereas on the contrary, another group of poets rely on the interpretational sources and on their imagination and not only believe that Zoleikha’s love of Yusuf is a pure love but have considered that spiritual progress of Zoleikha was because of this pure love; they even have placed her in a position higher than that of Yusuf, although there is no mention of these issues in the scriptures. They believe that Yusuf’s popularity is because of Zoleikha’s love of him and by the help of this positive perspective, they have presented an imaginary character of her. The remarkable point in comparing these two positive and negative perspectives to Zoleikha’s position in Persian poetry is that the positive cases are more than the negative ones. It seems that poets’ positive look on Zoleikha is originated from the fact that in this story because Zoleikha’s beloved i.e. Yusuf is a prophet, the pure spirit of Yusuf cleansed the impurities of Zoleikha’s spirit and gave her a specific position in Persian lyrical literature, especially theosophical literature. In this way, it has led to the formation of one of the most attractive and most applied stories both independently and also in the poetic allusions.