چکیده :
بیان مسئله: مرصادالعباد اثری بدیع و ممتاز در پهنۀ ادب فارسی است؛ زبان و بیان آن گوشنواز و گاه شاعرانه است و ازنظر تصویری ـ بلاغی کتابی شگرف به شمار می‌آید.
با توجه به شناختگی و شهرگیِ تمثیل در علوم بلاغیِ ما، مطالعۀ تصاویر مرصادالعباد اغلب متمایل به بررسی جنبه‌های تمثیلی آن بوده است و استعاره‌های آن در قالب دیدگاه‌های کهن بررسی شده است؛ حال آنکه مرصادالعباد خوشه‌های استعاریِ مبتنی بر نگرش سیاسی ـ اجتماعی دارد و با توجه به پراکندگی و گستردگی این خوشه‌ها می‌توان با نظریۀ استعارۀ مفهومی، نگاهی تازه به این اثر داشت.
روش: روش تحقیق تحلیلی ـ توصیفی است و دامنۀ پژوهش مبنی بر متن مرصادالعباد است.
نتایج و یافته‌ها: این تحقیق نشان داد رشته‌های استعاری در پیوند با یکدیگر، در متن تأمل‌برانگیز است و می‌توان آنها را خُرداستعاره نامید.
شبکۀ خرداستعاره‌های به‌‌هم‌پیوسته از این قرار است: «هبوط روح در تن به‌منزلۀ جلوس پادشاه»، «خزانه‌داری خداوند به‌منزلۀ گنجینه‌داری پادشاه»، «ابلیس به‌منزلۀ مجرم و محکوم‌شده ازسوی سلطان»، «پرورش روح به‌منزلۀ پروردنِ باز شکاری»، «تبلیغ دین به‌منزلة تشکیلات اطلاع‌رسانی پادشاه».
این پنج استعارۀ خرد، هریک دارای زیرمجموعه‌هایی بوده‌اند که در متن تحقیق با ذکر شاهدمثال و ترسیم نمودارهایی تبیین شده‌اند.
همچنین، دقت در خُرداستعاره‌ها نشان می‌دهد که می‌توان مجموعۀ آنها را ذیل کلان‌استعارۀ «خداوندگاری به‌منزلة کشورداری» قرار داد.
mersād al-‘ebād is an important work in the field of persian literature.
its language and expression are eloquent and sometimes poetic, and it is a wonderful book in terms of visual-rhetoric aspects.
given the recognition of allegory in our rhetorical sciences, the study of the images of mersād al-‘ebād has often been directed towards its allegorical aspects and its metaphors have been examined from ancient perspectives.
notwithstanding that this work has metaphorical clusters based on a social and political attitude.
due to the dispersion and extent of these clusters, the present study uses the theory of conceptual metaphor to examine this book from a novel perspective.
the research method is analytical-descriptive, and the scope of the research is the text of mersād al-‘ebād.
the results of this research show that small metaphorical threads that are connected with each other can be recognized in the text and can be called micro-metaphors.
these nets of metaphors in the text are as follows: the descent of the soul into the body as the enthronement of a king, god's treasure as the king's treasure, the devil as a criminal and condemned by the sultan, cultivating the soul as raising a bird of prey, and propagation of religion as an organization to inform the king.
each of these five micro-metaphors had its own subcategories, which are explained in the text of the research by mentioning the examples and drawing diagrams.
also, the accuracy of the metaphors shows that their unification can be placed under the grand metaphor of ‘god as a king’.
introduction
mersād al-‘ebād is a magnificent work.
its language is special and distinctive, and one of its characteristics is the use of mystical concepts with the help of terms related to government, state management, and court.
this distinctive feature attracts the attention of the audience and raises the question of whether the existence of the metaphor of “god as a king” is a unique feature of mersād al-‘ebād, or whether we can find evidence for it in other mystical and religious texts.
there are verses in the holy qur'an that can be analyzed based on the intended metaphor, and some of them are briefly mentioned in the text of the article.
it can be definitely stated that this metaphor has an ancient history.
however, research about its antiquity in religious and mystical texts is beyond the scope of the present study.
a brief look at some mystical prose books shows that this attitude exists in other mystical texts in a scattered form.
among the four books kashf al-mahjūb, kashf al-asrar, asrar al-tawheed, and tazkarat al-awaliya, a more significant presence of this metaphor could be found in kashf al-asrar.
for example, in one of its parts, it is stated that:
each king in the past had his own horse and marked it with a special sign so that others would not follow it due to the presence of that mark.
nobody would seek the ownership of a horse that would have the special sign of the king.
but any horse that does not have this special mark, will always be harmed by the people.
this is the example of god's servants (as cited in rokni, 1996, p.
155).
as can be seen, this example can be examined under the metaphor ‘god as the king’.
therefore, the use of this metaphor in other important mystical books is not unprecedented, but definitely, this topic is more elaborated in mersād al-‘ebād than in other texts, and it can be considered an obvious and impressive feature of this work.
this has motivated us to examine it with the help of conceptual metaphor theory in the present article.
the most creative metaphors of mersād al-‘ebād are related to the second and third parts of the book.
the concepts used in these two sections are more about religion, human creation, creation, the kingdom of god, and descriptions of the system and order of god's court.
therefore, in the present study, it has been assumed that in mersād al-‘ebād, metaphors are connected like a chain, and some conceptual micro-metaphors can be analyzed under a macro-metaphor.
the relationship between allegory and conceptual metaphor is one of the topics and questions that can be raised in this field, but the allegory is analyzed within a paragraph.
however, a conceptual metaphor sometimes flows in several chapters of a work and sometimes throughout it.
therefore, there exists a relationship between conceptual metaphors, whose similes can be included under a macro metaphor and explain it.
the research question posed in the study is the following: which macro-metaphor can be explained in this work and what are its subcategories? to answer this question, the theory of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metaphor is used.
metaphorical concepts have been extracted and their relationships have been examined separately to determine the link between metaphorical concepts in each metaphoric cluster and finally their position in the macro metaphor.
the authors of this study have determined the conceptual metaphors by carefully examining the language of lumât and found that the four conceptual metaphors of god is love, love is the king, love is the sun, and love is a mirror are the main pillars of lumât's worldview.
the researchers of this study have compared the conceptual metaphors of love in the language of poetry and everyday language, and for this purpose, they have extracted and compared the metaphorical expressions from the everyday language and the persian poems of the 80s.
based on kovecses's point of view, they have shown that both language types of love metaphors as well as the main mappings between the destination concepts about love and the origin domain concepts have been used equally.
another article titled "research on the conceptual metaphor of mysticism is a pub in divan hafez" (anonymous, 2017) has been published, in which the authors, by examining the metaphorical mappings derived from may and the tavern, have finally reached the point of view that "mysticism is a tavern".
thus, it is not easy to understand metaphysical concepts in mysticism.
review of the literature
in terms of research background, although the conceptual metaphor is a relatively new topic, many research projects have been conducted in this area.
some of the fundamental studies in this field are as follows: in the book metaphors we live with, george lakoff and johnson (2015) have addressed the theoretical issues and the introduction of the theory of conceptual metaphor and how to use it.
this work, which is very well-known in iran and played an important role in the spread of this theory, tries to show that in conceptual metaphor, a more familiar and often concrete domain is used to understand the conceptual relationships of an abstract domain.
kovecses (2013) in his book metaphor: a practical introduction introduced the conceptual metaphor, mental spaces, metaphorical images and its basic concepts with scientific prose and away from complications.
another work in this field is published under the title metaphor written by hawkes (2015).
this book examines the views of aristotle and the works of contemporary linguists and anthropologists.
hashemi wrote the book sufis love in the mirror of metaphors (2014) about the sufis' perception of love.
in this book, she first explains and analyzes the conceptual metaphor and related matters in detail.
then, by explaining the micro and macro metaphors, she elaborates on the concept of love in the minds of mystics and how they perceive this concept.
the book metaphorical language and conceptual metaphors by davari et al.
(2013), contains a collection of articles on topics such as language and metaphor, epistemology and conceptual metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors in the verses of the qur'an, the emergence of conceptual metaphorical language for the future, and the analysis of the art of religious and mystical speech from the perspective of critical discourse.
articles have also been written in this field, which include some examples that are more related to the topic.
the article "linking politics with mysticism in mersād al-‘ebād of najmuddin razi" by safari and zaheri abdevand (2009) is one of the useful works related to the present study and perhaps the closest research to this present text.
the authors have tried to explain najmuddin razi's political point of view and one of the important points expressed is razi's special attitude about the superiority of the position of the king over prophecy and knowledge, which generally shows the importance of the monarchy system and the special position of the king in his intellectual system.
the authors have also analyzed razi's special view on the relationship between mysticism and politics.
in "system of conceptual metaphors of lumât " by bakhtiari nasab and mahmoudi (2018), the authors have determined its conceptual metaphors by carefully examining the language of lumat and found that the four conceptual metaphors of god is love, love is the king, love is the sun, and love is a mirror are the main pillars of lumaat's worldview.
and finally, in the article "a comparative study of the conceptual metaphor "love is war" in the conceptualization of "fana" in diwan shams and the qur'an" (2018), mobasheri and valizadeh pasha stated that "fana" is a spiritual matter that is conceptualized with the objective domain of "war".
in this way, by understanding the conceptual metaphor of "love is war", it will be easier to understand some transcendental concepts.
however, the investigation of conceptual metaphor in mersād al‘ebād as done in the upcoming research is new and fresh, and this research can provide the reader with a new perspective on conceptual metaphor in this work.
methodology
the method of this research is based on library and analytical-descriptive approaches.
in this way, the views of theorists such as lakoff and kovecses were first studied and what could be used in the research from their point of view was understood and taken into account.
in the second step, the examples from the book mersād al-ebād were extracted, discussed, and analyzed based on the theory of conceptual metaphor.
conclusion
the present study showed that the macro-metaphor of god is the king is extensive.
razi used the metaphor "the descent of the soul into the body as the enthronement of a king" when he intended to depict the descent of the soul into the human body.
since enthronement was familiar to him and the people of his time, this metaphor could depict the degrees of a glorious descent that he believed in.
on another occasion, he intended to depict the heart as a rare gem in the universe and described the value and distinctive position of the man with the help of it.
following the mystics' beliefs, for this purpose, he used the metaphor of "god's treasury is like the king's treasury".
therefore, these two first metaphors were both used to describe the descent and status of the soul.
razi has also used the story of adam and iblis.
accordingly, the well-known enemy of man is iblis, and his enmity with man and the story of his soul and the punishment that followed it can be understood with the help of the metaphor of "iblis as a criminal".
in this metaphor, the punishment of iblis is exactly like the punishments of criminals in the past ages.
on the other hand, it has elevated the position of man - as is common in religious thinking - as much as possible.
on another occasion, he used the metaphor "cultivating the soul as raising a bird of prey" to express this separation of the soul and its descent.
this metaphor could well express the need for the soul to return to its origin and destination.
in addition to these four metaphors, another metaphor has been used from the laws of state administration, and it is as follows: "propagation of religion as an organization to inform the king" is adapted from the laws of state administration, which express the duties of the soul during separation, and letters from god sent to him.