Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

The Seven Beauties

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Original title
  
Haft Peykar

Language
  
Persian


The Seven Beauties (Persian: هفت پیکر‎‎) also known as Bahramnameh (بهرام‌نامه, The Book of Bahram) is a famous romantic epic by Azerbaijani poet from city of Ganja Nizami Ganjavi written in 1197. This poem is a part of the Nizami's Khamsa. The original title Haft Peykar can be translated literally as “seven portraits” with the figurative meaning of “seven beauties.” Both translations are meaningful and the poet doubtless exploited intentionally the ambiguity of the words. The poem was dedicated to the Ahmadili ruler of Maragha, Ala-al-Din Korpe Arslan bin Aq-Sonqor. The poem is a masterpiece of erotic literature, but it is also a profoundly moralistic work.

Contents

Editions and translations

A critical edition of the Seven Beauties was produced by Helmut Ritter and Jan Rypka (Prague, printed Istanbul, 1934) on the basis of fifteen manuscripts of Khamsa and the Bombay lithograph. More recently, the poem was re-edited by the Azerbaijani scholar T. A. Maharramov (Moscow, 1987). There is also uncritical edition by Wahid Dastgerdi (Tehran, 1936 and reprints) and an edition by Barat Zanjani (Tehran, 1994).

The poetry German translation of a passage from the poem named Bahram Gur and Russian princess made by orientalist Franz Erdmann was published in 1832 in Kazan.

There are three complete translations in western European languages. First, in 1924 Charles Edward Wilson translated the poem to English in 2 volumes with extensive notes). Second, Alessandro Bausani in 1967 translated it to Italian. And finally an English version by Julie Scott Meisami published in 1995. The Russian prose version by Rustam Aliyev, which was published Baku in 1983, and by Vladimir Derzhavin published in 1959 in Moscow. The partial translations was also made by Rudolf Gelpke in German prose (Zurich, 1959). It should be noted that there is an English metatranslation by E. Mattin and G. Hill published in 1976 in Oxford.

Сultural influence

In the early 1940s Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov to mark the 800th anniversary of Nizami Ganjavi planned to write seven songs on Nizami poems accordingly to seven beauties of the poem. However Hajibeyov wrote only two songs: Sensiz (Without You, 1941) and Sevgili Janan (Beloved, 1943).

In 1952 Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev composed the ballet Seven Beauties based on motifs of Nizami Ganjavi’s Seven beauties.

In 1959 in Baku a bronze sculpture (fountain) Bahram Gur depicting the hero of the poem Bahram Gur killing serpentine dragon at his feet, was erected.

In 1979 the Nizami metro station in Baku was decorated by Azerbaijani painter Mikayil Abdullayev with mosaic murals based on the works of Nizami, whose name it bears. Three of these murals show the heroes of the Seven Beauties poem.

References

The Seven Beauties Wikipedia