The following is the full text of the speech by Ayatollah Khamenei the Leader of the Islamic Revolution to officials of the Moshfeq Kashani commemoration congress. The speech was read out on July 1, 2013 by Mr. Hosseini, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
First of all, you did a very appropriate and good thing by holding a commemoration congress for Mr. Moshfeq Khashani, our dear poet. Appreciating the value of outstanding personalities and bringing them into prominence will definitely help our youth and those people who are talented and who have many capabilities to move forward. When poets are praised, this will build more poets. As you can see, when great poets were encouraged and praised by rulers in the past, this led to the emergence of more poets and more literary personalities. This is a fundamental issue. Therefore, encouraging great poets and bringing their personality into prominence will help literature and poetry to make progress.
Mr. Moshfeq Kashani is one of our good poets. Of course, I have been familiar for a long time with a number of poems composed by him and I used to read his poems in newspapers. During the early years after the Revolution, I met Mr. Kashani, Mr. Hamid, the late Mr. Shahrokhi and other such personalities many times. And I used to listen to and benefit from their poems. His ghazals are sophisticated and meaningful and they benefit from a good style. Mr. Moshfeq Kashani is one of our outstanding personalities in the area of ghazal. His ghazals are often in Iraqi style, they are meaningful and the words that he uses are powerful and to the point. Of course, he has other kinds of poems as well. He has a number of ghasidas and ghetas. However, his ghazals are particularly outstanding. Whenever I managed to be present in such meetings and listen to a number of poems, [I came to realize that] his poems were always particularly sweet, outstanding and beautiful. Therefore, it is necessary to truly praise and appreciate him.
Besides the issue of form, there are two other characteristics in the poetry of Mr. Moshfeq Kashani which are noteworthy: one is that his poetry is at the service of goals - religious and revolutionary goals. Since the beginning of the Revolution, all his poems - whether the religious and ayini eulogies that he composed in praise of the Imams (a.s.) or the poems that he composed about revolutionary issues - have been valuable and influential. In my opinion, the first couplet of the poem that he recited in this meeting is more valuable than many other poems and writings. As such poets say, during a time when the enemy and some ignorant friends try to paint things as dark and gloomy, if there is any vigilance, windows [of wisdom] are open. These are very important points. One can always see such points in the poetry of Mr. Kashani.
The second characteristic is his own personality. He is viewed as an honorable person who behaves in a moral and appropriate way. We - who are familiar with him, who have been in contact with him and who have sometimes socialized with him - have always seen this behavior in Mr. Moshfeq Kashani.
I hope that God will bestow a long life on him. We should appreciate the value of Mr. Kashani and Mr. Hamid - who are the veteran poets of our contemporary poetry. By Allah's favor, the future of Persian literature and poetry will witness as much progress.
Greetings be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings