Locating the World in Metaphysical Poetry: The Bardification of Hafiz

Discussions on world literature often imagine literary presence, movement, and exchange in terms of location and prioritize those literary traditions that can be easily mapped. In many regards, classical ghazal poetry resists such interpretation. Nonetheless, a number of nineteenth century writers working in Urdu and English reframed classical ghazal poetry according to notions of locale that were particularly underpinned by ideas of natural essence, or genius. This article puts two such receptions of the classical ghazal in conversation with one another: the naičral shā‛irī (natural poetry) movement in North India, and the portrayal of classical Persian poet Hafiz as a figure of national genius in the scholarship of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both these examples highlight the role that discourses of nature and natural expression played in nineteenth-century literary criticism, particularly with regards to conceptions of national culture. They also demonstrate how Persianate literary material that had long circulated in cosmopolitan ways could be vernacularized by rereading conventionalized tropes of mystical longing in terms of more worldly belonging

Strategies of Sound and Stringing in Ebenezer Pocock’s West–East Verse

In an effort to capture how Orientalist translations, imitations and criticism of Asian poetry came to inform the idealization of lyric as a universal genre, this paper focuses on the practice of poetic metre in the nineteenth century. How did Victorian conceptions of recitational communities, bounded by shared ‘national’ metres, square against the wealth of translated works that were a major component of Victorian print culture? The amateur Orientalist Ebenezer Pocock explained various metres and musical practices associated with ‘Persian lyrics’ in his book Flowers of the East (1833) and offered equivalent metres in English before replicating these shared English/Persian metres in his own imitative poem ‘The Khanjgaruh: A Fragment’. This article sketches how Pocock's casting of this hybrid material in metres that would already have been recognizable to his English readers seems to have the intended effect of both orienting his work towards his domestic audience and grounding such a flexible approach within the Persian tradition itself. Pocock's poem sits amongst a range of accompanying materials including translations of Sa‘dī and scholarly essays on comparative philology and Persian literary history. Each of these different pieces supports the collection's greater effort – best encapsulated by ‘The Khanjgaruh’ – to both remember and imagine the shared poetic history between Asia and Europe. Pocock's writing thus emblemizes how the nineteenth-century ‘West–East lyric’ was a product of both historical and philological recovering as well as the willed creation of poets and poetry enthusiasts. As a category, lyric performs a binding function in Pocock's work to pull together a linguistically and professionally diverse community of writers

The Inside Outdoors: Return(s) to Nature in Urdu and Anglophone Poetry

This dissertation examines the reception of Urdu and Persian ghazal poetry in primitivist scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While seventeenth and early eighteenth-century poets writing in Urdu or Persian would have regarded the Indo-Persian ghazal as a cosmopolitan literary tradition, starting in the eighteenth century, scholars begin to represent ghazal conventions in ‘naturalistic’ terms that seek to imagine it as a folk tradition. I highlight the discourses of ‘nature’ in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Anglophone and Urdu literary scholarship to illustrate the particular challenges that writers faced in assessing the ghazal by primitivist standards of authentic expression. I demonstrate how the reengineering of the ghazal towards more ‘natural expression’ sought to transform ghazal poetry into a literary tradition that represented its ‘people’

The Inside Outdoors: Return(s) to Nature in Urdu and Anglophone Poetry

This dissertation examines the reception of Urdu and Persian ghazal poetry in primitivist scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While seventeenth and early eighteenth-century poets writing in Urdu or Persian would have regarded the Indo-Persian ghazal as a cosmopolitan literary tradition, starting in the eighteenth century, scholars begin to represent ghazal conventions in ‘naturalistic’ terms that seek to imagine it as a folk tradition. I highlight the discourses of ‘nature’ in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Anglophone and Urdu literary scholarship to illustrate the particular challenges that writers faced in assessing the ghazal by primitivist standards of authentic expression. I demonstrate how the reengineering of the ghazal towards more ‘natural expression’ sought to transform ghazal poetry into a literary tradition that represented its ‘people’

Combining Topical and Oral Botanicals for Skin Redness, Pigmentation, Sleep, and Mood: A Randomized Controlled Study

External and internal stressors have been found to adversely affect skin health and overall wellness. There is growing interest in the use of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant plant-derived ingredients, such as ashwagandha, saffron, l-theanine, and tocopherol, to mitigate the impact of these stressors. In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of oral and topical products (InnerCalm and SuperCalm, respectively) that contain naturally derived ingredients on skin redness, skin pigmentation, sleep, and mood in healthy females with Fitzpatrick skin type 1−4 and self-perceived sensitive skin. Subjects were randomized to an oral (oral group), a topical (topical group), or a combination of both the oral and topical interventions (combined group). Standardized photography-based image analysis was used to assess skin redness and pigment. Self-assessments of mood and sleep were measured with the abbreviated profile of mood states (POMS) questionnaire, and the Pittsburgh sleep-quality index (PSQI), respectively. Assessments were made at the baseline, 1-week, 4-weeks, and 8-weeks of the intervention. The average facial redness decreased in the topical group at 8-weeks (p < 0.001) and in the combined group at 4-weeks (p < 0.05) and 8-weeks (p < 0.001), relative to the baseline. The average facial pigmentation decreased in the oral (p < 0.05) and combined (p < 0.05) cohorts at 8-weeks, relative to the baseline. The oral group exhibited an improvement in sleep quality at 1-week relative to the baseline (p < 0.05) and at 8-weeks relative to the baseline (p < 0.05). Finally, the combined group demonstrated improvement in fatigue (p < 0.01) and confusion (p < 0.05) at 8-weeks relative to the baseline, though total mood disturbance increased in all 3 groups over the course of the study. Measured outcomes relating to mood may be confounded with the timing of the study, which ran during the COVID pandemic. Overall, we demonstrate the role of oral and topical herbs and of nutraceuticals for skin health and wellness. Further research will be needed to elucidate synergistic effects in oral and topical combination regimens

Combining Topical and Oral Botanicals for Skin Redness, Pigmentation, Sleep, and Mood: A Randomized Controlled Study

External and internal stressors have been found to adversely affect skin health and overall wellness. There is growing interest in the use of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant plant-derived ingredients, such as ashwagandha, saffron, l-theanine, and tocopherol, to mitigate the impact of these stressors. In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of oral and topical products (InnerCalm and SuperCalm, respectively) that contain naturally derived ingredients on skin redness, skin pigmentation, sleep, and mood in healthy females with Fitzpatrick skin type 1–4 and self-perceived sensitive skin. Subjects were randomized to an oral (oral group), a topical (topical group), or a combination of both the oral and topical interventions (combined group). Standardized photography-based image analysis was used to assess skin redness and pigment. Self-assessments of mood and sleep were measured with the abbreviated profile of mood states (POMS) questionnaire, and the Pittsburgh sleep-quality index (PSQI), respectively. Assessments were made at the baseline, 1-week, 4-weeks, and 8-weeks of the intervention. The average facial redness decreased in the topical group at 8-weeks (p p p p p p p p p < 0.05) at 8-weeks relative to the baseline, though total mood disturbance increased in all 3 groups over the course of the study. Measured outcomes relating to mood may be confounded with the timing of the study, which ran during the COVID pandemic. Overall, we demonstrate the role of oral and topical herbs and of nutraceuticals for skin health and wellness. Further research will be needed to elucidate synergistic effects in oral and topical combination regimens

Ventilatory function and cardiovascular disease risk factors: A cross-sectional study in young adults

© Garcia-Larsen et al.Background: The association between impaired lung function and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors has been shown in adults. However, there is little evidence of such an association in young adults, particularly from South America, where the burden of CVD and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is as high as that observed in more developed countries. We therefore investigated the relation between CVD risk factors including metabolic syndrome (MS), and lung function status in young adults from Chile. Methods: 970 subjects from a sample of 998 adults born between 1974 and 1978 in Limache, Chile, were studied. A Spanish translation of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) questionnaire was used. Forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) were measured. Weight, height, waist circumference (WC), blood pressure, Homeostatic model assessment (HOMA-IR), triglycerides, high density lipoprotein (HDL), glyca

Prevalence of chronic cough, its risk factors and population attributable risk in the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study : a multinational cross-sectional study

Background Chronic cough is a common respiratory symptom with an impact on daily activities and quality of life. Global prevalence data are scarce and derive mainly from European and Asian countries and studies with outcomes other than chronic cough. In this study, we aimed to estimate the prevalence of chronic cough across a large number of study sites as well as to identify its main risk factors using a standardised protocol and definition. Methods We analysed cross-sectional data from 33,983 adults (&gt;= 40 years), recruited between Jan 2, 2003 and Dec 26, 2016, in 41 sites (34 countries) from the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study. We estimated the prevalence of chronic cough for each site accounting for sampling design. To identify risk factors, we conducted multivariable logistic regression analysis within each site and then pooled estimates using random -effects metaanalysis. We also calculated the population attributable risk (PAR) associated with each of the identifed risk factors. Findings The prevalence of chronic cough varied from 3% in India (rural Pune) to 24% in the United States of America (Lexington,KY). Chronic cough was more common among females, both current and passive smokers, those working in a dusty job, those with a history of tuberculosis, those who were obese, those with a low level of education and those with hypertension or airflow limitation. The most influential risk factors were current smoking and working in a dusty job. Interpretation Our findings suggested that the prevalence of chronic cough varies widely across sites in different world regions. Cigarette smoking and exposure to dust in the workplace are its major risk factors