A Comparison of Iraj Mirza’s Shah ´o Jaam with Schiller’s The Diver: A Case of Literary Adaptation (The Freest Form of Translation)

The interest in introducing foreign literature (especially the works of outstanding literary men) has always been the concern of the translators. Unfortunately, most of the critics think of the most direct and limited sense of translation, and ignore a wide range of literary works based on different forms of translation such as adaptation, appropriation, and so on. Even most educated people praise Iraj Mirza just as a competent poet; they are unaware of his mastery as a proficient translator. Fourteen poems in Iraj Mirza’s diwan are adaptations from western and eastern literature. The poem Shaah ´o Jaam is one of them; it is a free translation of The Diver by Friedrich Schiller. As creative rewritings of the original texts literary adaptations, the freest forms of translation, carry aesthetic features with themselves and fit socio-cultural norms of the target texts. Since adaptation belongs in the realm of translation, it reproves the interaction of literatures through translation. The aim of the present paper was to introduce Iraj’s poem as an adaptation of Schiller’s to show the integration of translation and art in his adaptations, and to make the audience be familiar with foreign literature from which some pieces of our literature are adapted. To do this first the characters, settings and themes of the poems were explained and compared, and then some verses in Iraj’s poem which were seen to be the correspondences of Schiller’s poem were extracted and shown. It was concluded that Iraj Mirza could succeed to convey the sense and message in a natural way that his audience can never perceive the idea not to be original. Iraj rendered his work in the form of verse and in accordance with Persian metrics. This lies in his mastery and command over Persian Literature. His verses are so melodious that make everyone enjoy hearing them. Of course the ultimate goal of literature is to provide the readers with a feeling of enjoyment.

Keywords:

Translation , Adaptation , Shaah ´o Jaam , The Diver