| Romanticism is a literary movement that developed in Europe in the late 18th century and had a considerable influence on the literature of various countries around the world. This movement emerged in Iran after the coup d'état of 28 Mordad, 1332. Prominent features of this movement in literature include an interest in the past, nature-oriented themes, imagination, and fantasy. However, "Black Romanticism" is slightly different from these features. Among the most striking characteristics of this trend, we find pain and despair, poverty and hardship, sin and hell, thoughts of death, opium, and so on. For this reason, it sometimes happens, when studying literary works from different cultures, that the poems of certain poets bear a striking resemblance to each other. For example, one can mention Charles Baudelaire, a 19th-century French poet, and Nosrat Rahmani, a 20th-century Iranian poet. Reading the poems of Nosrat Rahmani evokes certain verses of Charles Baudelaire, which attests to his influence from this famous French poet. Charles Baudelaire and Nosrat Rahmani are both famous as "poets of the black city" because they were primarily influenced by the social and political conditions prevailing in the society in which they lived. In fact, both poets provided a platform to express the suffering, sadness, and melancholic atmosphere of their time. The purpose of this article is to examine the salient and common features of "Black Romanticism" in the poems of two French and Iranian poets in order to show why these two poets are recognized as the "poets of the Black City". |
