Azerbaijani Poetry
Mohammad Hariri-Akbari and Behrooz Aazbdaftari
Mohammad Hariri-Akbari and Behrooz Aazbdaftari
Iranian Azerbaijan is the region, where the greatest number
of the wor1d's ethnic Azerbaijani Turks live.
Sharing a particular language and culture, in Iran they
constitute the second major ethnic group after Persians. The region
enjoys a highly critical status due to historical and geographical factors.
It is bounded on the north by the republics of Armenia
and Azerbaijan. The majority of people in the republic of Azerbaijan have
a language and culture similar to that prevalent in Iranian Azerbaijan.
To the west lies the Kars region of eastern Turkey, which is inhabited
by various ethnic groups, most of whom share the same language and culture
as the Azerbaijani people in Iran and Azerbaijan. In the past, because
of obvious differences in the political systems of these Neighboring regions,
there were obstacles to establishing and expanding communication in general,
and cultural ties in particular. Furthermore, the lack of one common
orthographic system among Azerbaijanis in these regions has served as a
great impediment to their cultural development.
With regard to these problems, during the past few decades
it has been the primary concern of the Iranian government to see that the
development of Persian language and culture cover every region, even the
remotest parts of Azerbaijan. Consequently, Iranian Azerbaijanis
have become both bilingual and bicultural. Persian, the national
official language generally is used by the literate social strata for communication
in administrative institutions and educational circles.
Mohammad Hariri-Akbari is associate professor of socia1
sciences, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran. Behrooz Aazbdaftari is
associate professor- of English language and Literature, Tabriz University.
However, due to the high rate of illiteracy in Azerbaijan,'
Turkish Azerbaijani is used as a native language by the peasants and people
living in low-income urban areas. These people constitute the majority
of the Azerbaijani population. Thus, the flourishing of art and literature
in Azerbaijan has been affected by both Azerbaijani, Persian, most of the
literary works and artifacts have been created under the influence of these
two languages and cultures. The mutual interaction in linguistic
and cultural domains has been occurring for centuries and has helped to
enrich both languages.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran gave a great impetus
to the development of educational and artistic endeavors in Azerbaijani
culture, leading to the creation of many literary works, especially in
poetry. Several poets have emerged in the social and literary arena,
and a few, because of the ideas and expressions in their poem, have won
their readers' admiration. The intellectual maturity exhibited in
their poetical works is rich and broad, defying any comparisons with trends
during the pre- revolutionary decades. We perhaps are justified in
calling the post revolutionary period one in which there is a renaissance
in Azerbaijani literature.