Elegies for Contemporary Martyrs in the Verses of Aḥmad Šāmlu and Simin Behbahāni

The elegy (mars̱iye) is a genre that has been present in Neo-Persian literature since its beginnings, and it was further developed in Safavid Persia in reference to the subject of the martyrdom of Imām Ḥoseyn and his companions. The elegy is still used in con-temporary literature, but religious martyrs are no longer the main subject of such po-etic works; indeed, two worthy poets who have carried forward the tradition of this genre are the secular poets Aḥmad Šāmlu and Simin Behbahāni, whose works differ from traditional elegies in both theme and formal characteristics. Šāmlu and Behbahāni write of their friends or comrades killed in the struggle for patriotic-nation-alist or socialist ideals. Still, in doing so, they present an original style and approach, often intending to decry social injustices, at times explicitly and, more often than not, through veiled imagery. As these poets had to avoid censorship, they used a strongly metaphoric and allusive style, another innovation compared to traditional elegies. In this article, after an introduction to the genre and its later developments, a discussion on the elegiac verses of Šāmlu and Behbahāni will follow, two authors that, although different, share a poetics imbued with a strong civil and political engagement.