Analysis of anima in the sonnets of Hafiz Shirazi

    
Carl Gustav Jung believes that anima is a feminine symbol in male’s unconscious. It is a image of a woman as a comprehensive (general) phenomenon and does not represent the woman’s genuine personality. It is manifested in literary and artistic works and particularly in dreams. Hafiz doesn’t portray a very clear image of the beloved in his poetry. However, by pondering over their general attributes and features, the beloved can be conceived as the symbol of anima, possessing such positive aspects as a) antiquity b) indescribability and inaccessibility c) youth and beauty d) inspiring attitudes e) piety-fighting and lovemaking nature f) tempting-ness, emotionality and wisdom as well as g) creativity. Describing the characteristics and motivations of anima displayed in the poems of Hafiz, this research depicts some features of the lover character in the poems of Hafiz as well as the inclination of man in the position of the lover to the beloved, so that it can be said that appearance of anima in poems of Hafiz is basically manifested at an exalted level. It is, in fact, his hidden half and the old twin .This study has been conducted by the use of descriptive-analytic method and the library resources have been used for data collection.
      
Keywords:Hafiz, Jung, anima, antiquity, indescribability, inspiring.
 
1.1.Introduction
 
Out of the Persian poetry forms, the sonnet is the most appropriate and favorite form for describing love feelings and emotions. Although the position of beloved in the Persian sonnets has not been the same in different eras, in the Iraqi style, the protagonist of love subject matters and themes has always been the beloved. Therefore, discovering the identity of the beloved more precisely, finding out whether the beloved was material/worldly, or spiritual/heavenly love, especially in the sonnets of the 12^th and 13^th centuries AD, was one of the fundamental motivations of lovers of Persian poetry. Finding out who the beloved was had been so important that it could trigger multi-layered interpretations and analyses and could lead to a determination of the poet’s style. It was the effort to find out who the beloved was that created terms such as “literary beloved”, “ideal beloved”, “heavenly beloved”, “spiritual beloved” and “theological beloved”, and for justifying the motifs behind creation of such a beloved, it was linked to the hidden aspects of human spirit and soul, like the collective unconscious, animism, etc. From this very point, Carl Gustav Jung divided human spirit into two parts of personal unconscious and collective unconscious, and by explaining capabilities and tendencies of each one of them, he introduced archetypes which were precursors of advent of self/individuality/mandala as the types of collective unconscious.
 
In the sonnets of Hafiz Shirazi, the beloved is the only elevated and excelled character and is the only hero; it can be said that as in the psychology, behaviors are divided into two types of conscious and unconscious, Hafiz’s sonnets, too, are divided into two types of conscious and unconscious groups; and from the psychoanalytic perspective, description of the beloved in Hafiz’s poetry is considered a type of “free association” or a type of “dream”; it is considered as one of the effective tools of identifying the poet. Therefore, it can be claimed that love is one of the utmost important elements of internal solidarity, spiritual unity, and coordination between consciousness and unconsciousness; and sonnet, too, as the stage for love, is the narrative of individuality of the lover/poet. In this process, as the most outstanding archetype, anima has a fundamental role. Hence, the research question in this survey is that: what are the features of Hafiz’s beloved as the representative of anima in Jung’s analytical psychology?
 
1.2.Research methodology
 
This survey is descriptive-analytical, and for data collection, library studies method has been used. The data collection unit was the lines related to animain the sonnets of Hafiz Shirazi. After presenting a description of Jung’s archetypes, the authors mention five highly applied archetypes which according to him are: mask, shadow, anima, animus, and self. Then, they describe the archetype anima as the womanly image of the beloved. In the next part, they describe and analyze anima in the sonnets of Hafiz.
 
1.3.Discussion
 
According to Jung, “man falls in love once in the external world, he finds a woman whose characteristics conform what he has in his collective unconscious. In this state, the person is a lover and huge and wonderful force existing in his unconscious blindly draws him to the beloved without his intention. In this way, every beloved –and not every woman or girl- is an image of anima” (Sarfi, 2008: 65). The features Hafiz counts for his beloved is mainly like the ones mentioned by other poets, especially Persian sonnet writers. In the sonnets, the beloved has cedar-like height, arched eyebrows, arrow-like eyelashes, narcissus eyes, mole, is flower-faced, bud-mouthed, honey-lipped, hyacinth-haired/lash-haired, long-haired, stone-hearted, articulate sweet-tongued, pretty delicate-faced, stretched-eyed, etc. and in the meantime, speaks sweetly, rarely and teaches points in the sonnets of Hafiz. According to some researchers, the old model of anima has backgrounds as a beloved in the Iranian culture and different prototypes have been mentioned for it; for example, the Turkic Soldier, statues of Buddha in the temples of the Eastern and northeastern Iran, goddesses in the ancient times, Anahita, beauty of women of Khurasan and Transoxiana, and angels and fairies (Kia, 1992: 210-212; Shamisa, 1997: 125). However, by studying all lovely descriptions of the beloved in the Persian poetry, Alireza Muzaffari believes that Anahita is the prototype of Iranian beloved or the image of anima as a beloved (Muzaffari, 2002: 83-100). The important point about anima generally is that “anima has two aspects: light and darkness, both of which are related to different features and types of women; on the one side, it appears in a goddess-like, chaste, virtuous and pretty form, and on the other side, it appears in the form of a sorceress, enchanter and lewd; this happens when the man oppresses his womanly instinct, underestimates womanly features and ignores them, or behaves with them disdainfully” (Fordham, 1995: 57-58). Therefore, both the assumption of Anahita as the prototype and the beloved in the sonnets of Hafiz have luminous and positive images. Under the effects of this collective unconscious i.e. the “king-like, moon-faced, Venus-foreheaded” beloved (Hafiz, 2008: 128), Hafiz Shirazi reaches harmony of spirit, the unison of mind, and balance of personality i.e. self/mandala and shows it in the form of “rend”.
 
1.4.Conclusion
 
In Hafiz’s sonnets, the beloved has a luminous face and is the positive image of anima. Its most important features are: 1) antiquity 2) indescribability and inaccessibility 3) youngness and beauty 4) inspiring-ness 5) anti-asceticism and romanticism 6) thoughtfulness, tempting-ness and emotionality; and 7) creativity. Antiquity of Hafiz’s beloved is the most documented reason for its being anima, and indescribability, as well as inaccessibility of the beloved, refers to its ideal and super-natural character. Youngness and beautifulness of the beloved make the world beautiful and happy in Hafiz’s eyes, and in this sense, nature is the image of the beloved, not the beloved image of nature. As the source of inspiration and by playing the role of mediator between his conscious and unconscious, it has introduced Hafiz to the depths of his unconscious; on the one hand, it makes his poetic genius as well as his pure feelings and emotions bloom; and on the other hand, by providing wise guidelines, it leads Hafiz to "essence" of his "real self". The beloved, as the one who reveals unconscious doing, by informing Hafiz about the positive aspects of shadow and breaking down the mask, makes him abandon consciousness and links him to his unconsciousness; in this way, it provides him with the adjusting doorway to his real internal values. Tempting-ness, emotionality, and thoughtfulness are the qualities that picture different faces as well as contradictory tendencies of the beloved and introduce the beloved as the meeting point of contradictions. In many aspects, in these faces, Hafiz's beloved has a rend character, just like the poet himself; and it can be stated that in the image of anima, his beloved is, in fact, his own hidden half and old empathetic person. Therefore, it has convergence, confluence, and association with Hafiz; and it is no longer anima, but is Hafiz's "self", and by finding "him", Hafiz finds "himself".