Narrative Arrangement, Processes of Transmutation and Internalization in Attar's Mystical Poems

The allegorical and embedded structure of the three poems—Elahi-nameh (The Ilahinama), Mantiq al-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds), and Mosibat-nameh (The Book of Affliction)—by Attar is not merely a narrative device or formal technique. The nested construction of these works shifts the textual relations from the horizontal level of sequence and syntagmatic association to the vertical level of substitution and paradigmatic relations. By creating multiple narrative levels through the multiplicity of narrators and the interruption of the main narrative line through the insertion of subsidiary, allegorical, and interpretive anecdotes, the text's movement takes on a vertical dimension, enabling the substitution of various units within the narrative system. The narrative, as a system of signs, thus acquires its meaning and identity through the fabric of relationships between elements on both horizontal and vertical axes.
This article endeavors to examine the narrative devices, processes of transformation, and internalization of narrative elements—particularly character as one of the most important plot-forming components—in Attar's mystical poems, and to analyze how these elements generate meaning within the semantic domain of mysticism in the narrative.
The internalization of agents in the ultimate progression (the transformation of subject into object), the circular structure, object-centeredness, the integration and transformation of agents into the object-agent, the narrative movement from multiplicity and diversity toward unity and annihilation (fana)—all these are manifestations of narrative meaning in Attar's poems.