Seven beauties (epic)

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Bahram sees the portraits of the seven beauties. 1479. Nizami Museum of Azerbaijani Literature, Baku

(The) Seven Beauties or Persian Haft Peykar ( Persian هفت پیکر, "Seven portraits", "Seven portraits", "The seven pictures") is the fourth epic by the Persian poet Nezāmi , which he wrote in 1197 on behalf of the ruler of Maragha , ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Körpe-Arslān bin Aq-Sonqor.

Seven beauties are contained in the novel by the Sassanid king Bahrām Gur , also called Bahram Nameh , in the seven stories that were written to the king on seven days in seven different, domed pavilions by seven princesses from seven different countries (most recently by the Persian princess under the white dome) are woven in. The reason for its creation was that Bahrām Gur once had a locked cabinet opened in the magnificent Chawernak palace built for him as crown prince on the orders of his father Yazdegerd I by the famous builder Senamar , in which he found the pictures of seven world-famous beauties. He fell in love with all seven at the same time. Impressed by the stories of the princesses, Bahrām Gur examines his kingdom. He finds out that his vizier rules as a tyrant without his knowledge. Therefore he eliminates the vizier and takes over the rule himself.

A concept of the seven colors is also connected with the work, which (similar to the four elements of humoral pathology ) corresponds to the colors of different planets, days, elements, archangels, metals, seasons, textures, countries, properties, daily cycles, life cycles, movements and symbols assigns. Each princess is assigned a color, planet, country, etc., which appear again in the stories. All of this serves to put the king (and the reader) one after the other in moods that make him mature from a party animal to a responsible ruler. At this level the evil vizier stands for the king's egoism and he eliminates it in order to be able to act sensibly with a view to the whole.

This work by Nezāmi is the basis for the play Turandot , which Carlo Gozzi ( Turandot ) and Friedrich Schiller ( Turandot ) staged. In 1952 the ballet Seven Beauties by the Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev was created based on motifs from Nezāmi's Seven Beauties .

literature

  • Nizami: The seven stories of the seven princesses. (Prose translation by Rudolf Gelpke ) Manesse, Zurich 1959.
  • Nezami: The Haft Paikar (The Seven Beauties). Translated by CE Wilson. London 1975.
  • François de Blois: Detention Peykar. In: Encyclopædia Iranica .
  • Karl Schlamminger: Introduction. In: Karl Schlamminger, Peter Lamborn Wilson : Weaver of Tales. Persian Picture Rugs / Persian tapestries. Linked myths. Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0532-6 , pp. 9-13, here: pp. 11 and 13.
  • Peter Lamborn Wilson , Karl Schlamminger: Weaver of Tales. Persian Picture Rugs / Persian tapestries. Linked myths. Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0532-6 , pp. 46-77 ( Die Liebesdichtung ), here: pp. 56 f. ( Behram Gur under the white dome ) and 76 f.

Web links

Commons : Seven Beauties  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Iranica.
  2. Franz von Erdmann (trans.): The beautiful from the castle of Muhammed Nisameddin the Gendscher. (Persian and German). University typography, Kazan 1832, pp. 12, 14f
  3. Karl Schlamminger: Introduction. 1980.
  4. Wilfried Fuhrmann: Gara Garayev (Kara Karaev). . November 14, 2008