MODELS OF DISTANT REPETITION IN SHAHRYAR’S DIVAN

Abstract

In literary texts, and especially in poetry, repetition functions as one of the leading stylistic devices playing an important role in the formation of semantic depth, emotional impact, and poetic rhythm. This article analyses the phenomenon of distant (long-range) repetition, which occupies a special poetic-functional place among repetition models, on the basis of the ghazals in Shahriyar’s Persian Divan. Distant repetition is defined as the use of identical or semantically related lexical units at different points in the text, at certain intervals and at some distance from one another. This model strengthens the poetic structure, preserves the ideological integrity of the text, and becomes a compositional mechanism that ensures thematic cohesion.
In the study, the main poetic functions of distant repetition are generalized in four directions: preservation of semantic unity, maintenance of thematic focus, creation of rhythmic and compositional balance, and enhancement of emotional depth and effect. The ghazals of Shahriyar show that distant repetition creates an associative field in the reader’s memory and keeps various emotional and philosophical layers of the central idea continuously actualized. The structural models of distant repetition in the article are divided into three groups: (1) intra-line distant repetitions, which include cases where the same words and expressions are repeated within a single line but in non-adjacent positions; (2) intra-couplet distant repetitions, where key lexical units occur in both lines or at the beginning of one line and at the end of the other, thereby creating semantic parallelism and emphasis; and (3) intra-ghazal distant repetitions, that is, the recurrence of lexical and syntactic units in different couplets, which ensures thematic integrity and the inner poetic “music” of the text.
Distant repetition in Shahriyar’s style is interpreted as a complex device carrying both artistic–aesthetic and semantic load: it consolidates the ideological centre of the ghazal, makes it possible to trace the trajectory of the development of the poetic thought, and renders the poet’s individual poetic worldview clearly visible at the structural level.