Pierre Jaubert, who visited Iran and wrote his “Travels to Armanistan and Persia in 1821″, suggests that the word of “Honor” in English and “Honneur” in French are derived from the Persian word “Honar”. (Pierre Jaubert, Travels to Armanistan and Persia)

(It is interesting to know that the Farsi word “barid” or postilion found its way into European languages as Verda in Latin, Paard in Dutch and Pferd in German).

One also notices many similarities in the sayings and proverbs at the two nations.

1. In the wrestling matches in Iran, the wrestler who has to surrender normally throws his towel in the arena, admitting by this token that he has lost. In modern boxing, in England, the loser’s coach throws the towel inside the ring. In both cases “to throw the towel in” has the same connotation.

2. The same saying “Pot calling the kettle black” exists in both languages.

3. For the Persian carrying “cumin to Kerman” one finds the following English version: “to carry coal to Newcastle”.

4. When the cook (which normally is a female) makes a dish salty, the Iranians say: “It appears that the cook wants a husband” and in English they say “the cook is in love.”

5. When two people resemble each other very much the Iranians say: “They are like two halves of an apple” and we find in Twelfth Night of Shakespeare the following expression:

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons. An apple cleft in two is not more twine.

6. When an Iranian wants to show in his speech that he was excessively ashamed he says: “I wish the floor would have opened and swallowed me up.” The same expression is used in English.

7. For the Iranian saying “to hit two targets with one arrow”, there is an English counterpart, “to kill two birds with one stone.”

If we looked carefully we could find many other similar sayings in English and other European languages that has an old counterpart in Farsi.

As it was said in the case of England, 19th century France was only interested in Oriental languages to further its own colonial designs. They were interested in Iranian language and literature, so long as they had designs on India, but after the defeat of Duplex from Clive they looked to North Africa and Syria for furthering their colonial plans.

There, they were more in need of Arabic than Farsi. However, the work of Iranian poets that were already known in literary circles in France could not be completely forgotten and they persisted to play their part in the vast French literature of the 19th century. We find still traces of French interest in Iran and Iranian poets, religion and history. But whatever traces there are of Persian literature in the French literature of the period they are not the type of sincere and spontaneous effort one feels present in Goethe’s “West-Ostlicher Diwan.”

Although Victor Hugo in the preface to his “Les Orientals” states that “all the world was Hellenist, now it is Orientalist” and although he confessed to strong poetic sympathies for the Orientalist art and wrote that “there, all is vast, rich, productive, as in the Middle Ages, that other ocean of poetry was,” Professor Gibb believes that:

with all that he states, he was using it for the artistic effect of its glowing colors as De la Croix painted Algerian subjects. The same can be said of almost all the French romantics. (Gibb, opt. cit.)

However, going through the French literature of the 19th century and first-half of the 20th century, one feels that quite a great deal of Iranian literature is gradually finding its way into the French language by the efforts and good offices of individual poets and scholars interested in the East and Iran for its own sake.

For example we see the works of Attar, Nizami, Sa’adi, Hafez and Jami, appear in French. Silvestre de Sacy translated in 1805 Attar’s Pand-Nameh into French. Several translations of Gulistan appeared in France. From 1838 to 1877 Jule Mohl gradually translated Firdowsi’s Shahnameh into French and volume after volume was published.

This book impressed the literary circles of Europe to such an extent that most of the great writers found it necessary to make their comments on this voluminous and magnificent epic of the Kings of Persia. Ernest Renan called it:

A great document showing the genius and creative power of Aryan race….

J. J. Ampere called Ferdowsi:

One of the greatest poets of the human race…

and in comparing ShahNameh with Niebelungen, Iliad, Odysseus and other similar epics of the Indians, considered it the greatest of them all. Barbier de Maynard translated Bustan of Sa’adi in 1880. Renan, in praising the book in the Journal Asiatique wrote:

Sa’adi is not a stranger among us, indeed he is one of us…

www.mihanfoundation.org/literature/17th.html

Part IV Part VI