Persianate Verse and the Poetics of Eastern Internationalism

Samuel Hodgkin is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His articles have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Iranian Studies, Philological Encounters, Cahiers de Studia Iranica, and Cahiers d'Asie centrale.

'A groundbreaking account of the intertwinement of Persianate poetics and Soviet politics from the transregional revolutionary days of early 20th-century Russia, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire to the fragmentation of the Persianate zone through the Soviet state-building projects in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, the collapse of the USSR, and the post-Soviet era in Eurasia. … 'Persianate Verse' addresses a long-standing need in world literature studies for alternative models of 'worlding' literature and is a timely reminder of the enduring power of poetry to bridge divides and create a sense of shared humanity across borders and ideologies.' Kayvan Tahmasebian, International Journal of Middle East Studies

• Introduction. Persianate/Eastern/International: Geographies, forms, periodizations; 1. Tribunes: the newspaper poetry of Eastern revolution, 1905–1925; 2. Canons: Classical Persianate voices in national and international literary institutions, 1921–1948; 3. Occasions: context collapse in the multinational system of socialist realism, 1934–1938; 4. Translations: sentimental internationalism and its Eastern love languages, 1941–1972; 5. Recognitions: persianate internationalism at the ends of Soviet empire, 1958–2023; Conclusion. Old verses for a Persianate internationalist future.