Diwan (poetry)

Diwan () () is a collection of poems.

Etymology

The English usage of the phrase Diwan Poetry comes from the Arabic word diwan (دیوان), which is loaned from Persian means designated a list or register.Alain Rey et al., Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, new ed. (Robert, 1995), vol. 1, p. 617. The Persian word derived from the Persian dibir meaning writer or scribe. Diwan was also borrowed into Armenian, Arabic, Urdu, TurkishDīvān In Persian, Turkish and other languages the term diwan came to mean a collection of poems by a single author, as in selected works, or the whole body of work of a poet. Thus Diwan-e Mir would be the Collected works of Mir Taqi Mir and so on. The first use of the term in this sense is attributed to Rudaki.

The term divan was used in titles of poetic works in French, beginning in 1697, but was a rare and didactic usage, though one that was revived by its famous appearance in Goethe's West-Östlicher Divan (Poems of West and East), a work published in 1819 that reflected the poet's abiding interest in Middle Eastern and specifically Persian literature.

This word has also been applied in a similar way to collections of Hebrew poetry and to poetry of al-Andalus.

Mode

Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly ritualized and symbolic art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings...
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