Bidel’s Poetic Imagery of Permanent Archetype (Ayane-Sabete)

Abstract

Ibn-Arabi disapproves of the concept of Otherness (i.e. differentiation from God) in the world of existence; therefore, in the creator-creature puzzle, he explicates the existence of creature in such a way that it leads to personal pantheism. By coining the term “permanent archetype”, he considers a new identity for “everything but God”, which, though not identical to divinity, is not different in nature from that. Creation results from the creator’s self-awareness, which is the cause of the permanent archetype. Bidel was strongly influenced by Ibn Arabi’s mystical conceptions, so far that he can be considered as the last of the commentators of Ibn Arabi. Bidel meticulously recites the teachings of philosophical mysticism in the form of poetic wisdom in his imaginative poetry. Bidel’s explication of Ibn Arabi’s mystical teachings is irreplaceable, at least in the poetical works of sufism literature. Employing the great capacities of Persian poetry as well as semantic and lexical figures of speech, Bidel attempted to symbolize the mental and abstract teachings of mysticism. By expounding the concept of permanent archetype and the issues thereof, this study investigates Bidel’s poetic imagery of this bewildering concept from a comparative perspective.