An Analytical-Comparative Study of Spiritual Journey Stages in the Works of Attar and Schmitt

The story of “Oscar and the Lady in Pink” by the famous French novelist and fiction writer “Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt” concerns the spiritual journey of a little boy named “Oscar”, who suffers from leukemia and has been living in a French hospital for a long time. Oscar, being guided by an incredible nurse called “Mamie-Rose”, decides to write letters to God. In this story, Oscar and Mamie-Rose play the role of a naive spiritual traveler and a mentor, respectively. In Persian literature, also, there are some stories on spiritual journeys. The book Mantegh-al-tair (the language of birds), the classic work of the Persian poet Attar, represents a superb example in this case. The seven stages of spiritual journeys, mentioned in the book, include “quest, love, wisdom, independence, monotheism, amazement, indigence and death”. The present article aims at comparing the stages of spiritual journeys in the aforementioned great works. The major reason why the two works share several points of similarity, as far as the stages of spiritual journeys are concerned, is their religious background.