Italo Pizzi Quotes

We, long bred in the ideas of classical culture, because we know that the Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon, at Thermopylae, at Salamis, we also aged ourselves to consider these people as a bunch of cowards taken to the slaughter by the ambition of a tyrant, while it is also known that they, in those battles, fought as va Herodotus himself makes it, with praise, beautiful and open testimony, nor, bear in mind that, they were all Persians or Iranians the soldiers that Darius and Xerxes were then with them; he was, on the other hand, an infinite bevy, ill-ordered, of distant and very different people. Alexander, it is true, took the kingdom from Dario Codomanno, but and Darius and his people, while yielding, yielded as valiant; and the Arabs who in the seventh century of our Era invaded Iran and destroyed the ancient empire in 650, certainly did not enter without a blow injuring the rich and glorious country, even if the kingdom was torn.

The Book of Kings can be divided into two parts, one of which is all heroic and legendary, while the other is historical, wandering around the exploits of Iskender or Alexander the Great in the East and telling with many fairy tales the story of the Sassanids until the 651 of the V The first part begins with the first man and first king, Gayumers, and has as its main subject a centuries-old war of the Iranians with the Turani, peoples of North Asia, and with the Devi or demons, creatures of Ahrimane, that is, of the genius of evil. There is no doubt that under this name of Devi there is not a very ancient population that the Iranians found in the long run when they descended into Iran, and that they had to subdue and exterminate in part. But this war against the Devi and against the Turani in the eyes of the Iranians had a truly great meaning. It visibly represented on earth the great struggle between evil and good, between the creator, Ormuzd, and the enemy of all good, Ahrimane, in which all men, for a moral duty, are obliged to take part. As evil one can and must fight with pious and good works, so it can also fight with weapons, and the heroes of Iran, when they take the field against Devi and Turani, they do nothing but satisfy this moral obligation.

He has few dogmas, but he brings to the faithful very high teachings; he admits the future life, he promises the coming, at the end of the world and when the dead will rise again, of a Savior, he announcing the prize that will touch the good, and the penalty of the wicked.

Dahaka means the snake that bites. In the naturalistic sense, it is the aerial monster that, according to the primitive concepts of a naturalistic religion, contends the celestial spaces to the Gods of light, and yet rejoins his brother of the Rigveda who is the serpent Ahi. L<nowiki>'</nowiki>Avesta', adjoining the frightening and horrible traits due to the imagination of the vulgar, designates it from time to time as the worst and most eliitial Drugia that Anra Mainyu has created, and describes it with three heads, with three jaws, with six eyes; but then, rising

Ingenuously made pomp of their native beauty, and it is told of Aisha (she was shei of Muslim time, of the first however) who, reproached by her husband for not wearing a veil, replied: "God has marked me with the seal of beauty, and it 77].</ref>

Anra Mainyu tries by all means to destroy, to annihilate the work of Ahura Mazdao, and there, in the bottom of the cold and gloomy north, stands the seat of the demons he procreated, while under the shining plague of the southern sky, there is the way traveled by the alone, there is the happy seat of the blessed.

With Yezdeghird the series of Persian monarchs closes, and the conquest of the Arabs marks the entering Iran of a new faith, a new law and new rulers.

It is not [...] to wonder if the memory of the Achaemenids has completely disappeared from the minds of the people who did not know them and did not love them; and if their names, their exploits and the order of their succession are now known, this is due to the diligence of the Greek and Latin historians and especially of Herodotus, and to the care 71)

His work [...] in addition to being essentially evil, is also a kind of deliberate contamination of the good created by the adversary, just as for example [...] that, if Ahura Mazdao created fire, he induced ashes and smoke.

Talking about the merits of Firdusi is certainly not light and easy; but having to keep our word about it, we will start with the language which by the Persian writers who came after him, was increasingly corrupt with Arabic words. Firdusi instead knew how to use the real Persian language by abstaining, as much as he could, from the Arabic words that were introduced into Persia after the conquest of the Arabs. His way of expressing himself is robust, nervous and devoid of those games of words and those uncertain grigami that we so often encounter in the imitatory poets of the Arabs, such as Hâfiz, Khâkâni, Saadi and Giâmi. They met again often in their songs, figures and really grandiose similarities, which, however, never touch the monstrous like those that are needed in Indian poems, especially if of old age, as are the Purâni, nor do they go to the ridiculous and the silly like some of the Arabic and Persian poetry that imitated it on. (pp. 121-122)

The Book of Kings is a faithful image of the ingenuity, soul and heart of the Persian people, if not of our times, at least of that age when he had not yet been impregnated by the Muslim doctrines, and still felt the beneficial strength of the ancient religion of Zoroastro, infiant, energetic and, after Christianity.

The '[Avestā|Avesta]]' is not an organic book, it is not the work of a single creative and thinking mind, yes well the collection of several works, indeed of fragments of several works that have been lost. It therefore, due to the varied nature of the parts that compose it, can interest the public and scholars in two distinct and different ways. It may interest the philosopher and the theologian as the sacred code of a religion already famous in antiquity; it may interest the historian, the literate, the poet, in that part of it that touches life and customs, the ideas of people lived in remote ages, and expresses, maxims in the poetic part, thoughts, affections, vows, aspirations.

Firdusi describes the miserable state of Iran under the scepter of Dahàk. Every guilt, every sad work, was lawful then, while every virtue was persecuted.

Three moments of maximum splendor had the Iranian culture and civilization, and these are pted and added up, so to speak, in three equally glorious and illustrious names that are Zarathustra, Dario, Firdusi. The first two belong to the ancient age, and one is a great legislator, also the founder of a novel religion; the other is a great prince, unifier of the patrio kingdom. He belongs to the third to the Middle Ages, and is a great poet, worthy of standing next to the majors of the West.

It belongs to the historian to say worthily of this great prince and to judge him in political and warrior, administrative and civil respect. It is enough for us to note how all antiquity praises it very high, not excluding the Greeks, as can be seen from the pages of Aeschylus and Herodotus.