Minimal and Maximal Ghazal and Their Comparison with the Characteristics of the Minimalist School

Abstract

The transformations of the modern world in art, literature, poetry, and the ghazal—the national poetic form of Iran—have brought about significant shifts. Attention to the issue of meta-form and its subcategories, including maximal and minimal ghazals, represents one of the neo-formal developments in contemporary ghazal poetry. Both types of ghazal are word-centered and grounded in a belief in the word–human relationship. In both forms, changes have emerged in form, content, language, and structure. The maximal ghazal, in its movement toward becoming increasingly word-centered, has drawn upon the tools of narrative fiction, philosophical prose, drama, and other genres, generating through inter-generic synergy a unified text. It is a polyphonic ghazal in which each character possesses its own distinct voice, yet all serve the integrity of the whole. The minimal ghazal draws upon the mental forms of the fragment, quatrain, allegorical ghazal, volumetric ghazal, documentary ghazal, and the cut-section ghazal. It is transparent, with bare vocabulary, and characterized by minimal use of literary devices and rhetorical embellishments. By employing characteristics of maximalism and minimalism in art, these two types of ghazal have managed to establish an independent style of composition, and some contemporary poets, in response to individual developments and societal changes, experiment with both forms. This dual mode of composition can be considered a sign of balance in today’s ghazal and of preserving the maximal aesthetic integrity of the genre.