Persian Impressions (English) (Paperback)

Persian Impressions is author Ramin Jahanbegloo’s third volume of poetry dedicated to his memories and feelings of Persia. In these poems Jahanbegloo relives his own exile from his homeland, as he takes an imagined voyage home. What these poems reveal to the reader is that, for the poet, Persia is an idea before anything else. Jahanbegloo’s idea of Persia is not a homogeneous time-space, but more of an imaginary landscape beyond all forms of historical consciousness. Reading Jahanbegloo’s poetry one gets the feeling that this imaginary landscape constitutes the image of eternal Persia as the epitome of continuity. Yet, this is an imaginary landscape that is not contained in a historical place and time. It is a concrete reality in the mind of the philosopher-poet. As such, Ramin Jahanbegloo’s poetry nurtures the idea of Persia as a sense of belonging which transcends any historical time and space. Thus, in the Persian Impressions the question of Persianness is one neither of race, nor of religion, but that of a world view and a culture. Therefore, these poems can be read and understood by anyone who can think or live with the Persian culture. As a result, what these poems show us is that the idea of Persia is unconscious and meta-historical. For sure, poetry is the conceptual vehicle par excellence for this task, since it can fully express the meta-historical process of the idea of Persia. All for all, from Ramin Jahanbegloo’s point of view, Persianness, as a sense of belonging, is an existential impression that one could relive as a journey into the unknown. This is how one can be Persian without being Iranian. There are always impressions which remain with the traveller after a journey into the unknown.