Yassi Mazandi: Language of the Birds

This kinetic sculptural work takes its name and theme from a twelfth-century Persian epic poem by Farid al-Din ‘Attar. The text is a parable of a mystical quest for God, a spiritual home, or even our own highest good, undertaken by a group of one hundred birds seeking a worldly ruler—the mythical Simurgh. Many of the birds perish along the way until just thirty remain, only to realize that they themselves are the Simurgh (in Persian si murgh means “thirty birds”).

 

The bird sculptures are stark, abstract forms cast in bronze, suspended from the north side of the Resnick Pavilion. Stripped of their feathers, Mazandi’s dramatic birds in flight carry with them a multiplicity of meanings. They not only evoke ‘Attar’s powerful mystical poem, which universalizes the quest for meaning in life, but call to mind global warming, a key contemporary issue, and the ways in which it threatens many avian species and contributes to human migration and the often-dangerous journey and inhospitable reception these immigrants face.

Listen to an excerpt of Farid al-Din ‘Attar‘s poem read by the artist in English.

Farid Ud-Din Attar, "The Birds Discover the Simorgh," in The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis, revised edition, 2011, pg. 234

 

The thirty birds read through the fateful page

And there discovered, stage by detailed stage,

 

Their lives, their actions, set out one by one –

All that their souls had ever been or done:

...

Their souls rose free of all they’d been before; 

The past and all its actions were no more. 

 

Their life came from that close, insistent sun

And in its vivid rays they shone as one.

 

There in the Simorgh’s radiant face they saw

Themselves, the Simorgh of the world – with awe

 

They gazed, and dared at last to comprehend 

They were the Simorgh and the journey’s end.

 

Listen to an excerpt of Farid al-Din ‘Attar‘s poem in Persian.

 

چون نگه کردند آن سی مرغ زار

در خط آن رقعه ی پر اعتبار

 

هر چه ایشان کرده بودند آن هم

بود کرده نقش تا پایان همه

...

 

باز از سر بنده ی نو جان شدند 

باز از نوعی دگر حيران شد

 

کرده و ناکرده ی ديرينه شان 

پاک گشت و محو گشت از سينه شان

 

آفتاب قربت از پيشان بتافت

 جمله را از پرتو آن جان بتافت

 

 هم ز عکس روی سيمرغ جهان

 چهره ی سيمرغ ديدند از جهان

 

 چون نگه کردند آن سی مرغ زود

بى شك اين سی مرغ آن سيمرغ بود