Comparative comparison of the components of love in the thought of Maulana Jalaluddin Balkhi and Ervin Yalom

Subject Areas : Comparative Literature Studies

Masoome Ghasemlo qaidari ¹ (Ph.D. student, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran)
Morteza Razakpour ² (Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature Department, Hamedan branch of Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran. (corresponding author))
Mohammad Ismail Ebrahimi ³ (Professor of the Department of Persian Language and Literature, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran)

Received: 2023-04-16 Accepted : 2023-04-16 Published : 2023-05-22

Keywords: Islamic Mysticism, comparative literature, love, Masnavi, Molana, Yalom,

Abstract :

 Love is one of the most important and fundamental mystical topics that is prominently raised in Islamic mysticism and in the works and thought of Rumi; In the way that in Masnavi, love is one of the ways to reach God's connection and perish in His essence and survive in Him. In Rumi's mystical thought, the ultimate goal of love is the unity of the lover and the beloved; But in Yalom's opinion, love is one of the meaningful components of life. He acknowledges the power of love in transforming a person and giving meaning to life. Although he likened love to religious ecstasies; But due to not believing in the supernatural and not paying attention to spiritual matters among the types of love, he has only paid attention to earthly love. Among the types of earthly love, his attention is mostly focused on carnal and somehow moral love. This research aims to investigate the components of love in the thought of Rumi and Yalom in a descriptive-comparative way. The result of the research shows that Yalom believes that love should be mature and developed and believes that love brings with it responsibility and the person in love should be responsible for the physical and psychological needs of the beloved and for his/her uniqueness, be valued Like Yalom, Rumi believes that love gives meaning and warmth to life, and also that love brings responsibility; In such a way that his alignment with Yalom in this theory is clearly visible in his poems.