پروانه

The Persian moth-and-candle is genealogically connected to the same image in Arabic, Turkish, and Urdu Sufi poetry, and the image traveled with Sufi orders across the Persianate world. In modern Iranian wedding traditions the bride is sometimes described in poetic language as a پروانه, and the marriage as the lover's union with the beloved. The persistence of the image in song lyrics, films, and personal names shows how deeply the Sufi figure has soaked into ordinary Iranian sensibility. Even speakers who have never opened Hafez know the image and use it.