Italo Pizzi Quotes

The religion of the Vedi for the Indians and that of Homer and Hesiod for the Greeks was but the expression of the ideas of the people, often subject to change and contradict each other because they were never fixed or determined by any sacred book of the nature of the Bible or of the <nowiki>'</nowiki> The Iranian religion is on the contrary the work of philosophers and priests, founded, he is true, over the popular idea of the continuous struggle between good and evil, but reduced in a system by elected and speculative minds and confirmed with a sacred code, immutable, which was said to be revealed by Ormuzd to his prophet Zarathustra or Zoroaster. (p 26)

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.

The<nowiki>'</nowiki> Hadesta' which we now have it, is far from what it was supposed to be at one time when it formed as a wide and vast encyclopedia. Nor was it the sacred code, the sacred book of all Irans, yes good of a single part of the nation. He was not of the Persians in antiquity, because from what Herodotus says about their religion, and from what is evident from the inscriptions of the Achaemenids, it appears that they professed a very similar religion, but not that of the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Avesta. The Persians, on the other hand, embraced it much later, that is, after the Vulgar Era, when the Sassanids solemnly proclaimed it, with the 'Avesta', the official religion of the kingdom.

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.

However, the Iranian ingenuity was not extinguished; which on the contrary, as always happens when a civilized people is subject to a stronger, but still barbaric and crude, those crude and barbaric inhabitants of the desert all, or almost everything, had to learn what is about political, military and literary art.

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

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.

He was, on earth, propagator of faith and initiator among the men of agriculture.

[...] was peculiar Persian doctrine that of Sufism, a doctrine more philosophical than religious, more mystical than devout and believing, pantheistic, although in words he professed monotheism and used the terms of the Koran, atheistic and skeptical in substance, although he professed the most ardent and eviscerated divine And, really strange thing! This gloomy doctrine that longed for the annihilation of the individual being in the universal Being, assumed the most splendid and dazzling poetic form that makes the Persian lyric, even with many nonsense and fainting, an inimitable jewel!

While the Arsacids and Sassanids specially cared for the prosperity and good condition of their people, and the Sassanids put on the ancient religion in honor, thus awakening the memory of the ancient myths and ancient heroes, the Achemenids were instead like strangers to their people. Who did not know the king of kings who sat in Persepolis, except for the tributes he was to send him; and because the tributes were burdensome, and because the youth was sometimes obliged to leave the native country to go to fight in distant countries, where the repugnant the ardor of conquest of the king was repugnant; so the king was hat.

His reign began on a day when the sun entered Aries, and lasted thirty years. To him were submissive not only all the men, but also all the beasts of the campaign that paid homage to him.

The pârsi has not accepted any words from foreign languages and differs little from the language of Firdusi, of the greatest Persian epic poet who lived around the thousand of the vernacular era, who can be considered as the first who with an immortal work, as Dante did for the Italians, has honored the language of Persia of his From then on the Persian went more and more corrupting with accepting Arabic words; and nowadays in the works of modern Persian writers it is nothing but a jargon, of which two thirds are Arabic, while the language has been preserved much purer in the countryside and in the villages, where it is not uncommon to meet some good farmer who in his pure Persian dialect, which by some was 17.)

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)

If the Homeric poems are a faithful mirror of the heroic life of the Greeks, of the feelings and ideas of that age, the Book of Kings is no less the faithful image of the soul, heart and ingenuity of the Persian people. (pp. X-XI)

As for breadth, all other epics yield by far to the Book of Kings of Firdusi, finding that the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Iliad' and the<nowiki>'</nowiki>'Odyssey are restricted to two single facts, one before, the other after the This same thing can be said of the Nibelungen of the Germans and the Kalevala of the Finns; and only the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Edda' of the Scandinavians could be an exception, starting from the origin of all things and descending then to narrate the facts of the Gods, the Giant [...] But the greatest value of the Book of Kings, for which it acquires great importance, is to be a national epic, an epic that is, the subject of which was not found and elaborated by a poet in the silence of his room and with the escort of his books, such as the Jerusalem and the <nowiki>'</nowiki>