page_title: Peri
section_title: Western representations
hierarchical_section_title: Peri / Western representations
caption_attribution_description: Sculpture exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA. There were no prohibitions against photography in the museum. This artwork is in the public domain because the artist died more than 70 years ago.
context_page_description: Peri are exquisite, winged spirits renowned for their beauty. Originally from Persian, Turkish, and Armenian mythologies, Peris were later adopted by other cultures. They are described as mischievous beings that have been denied entry to paradise until they have completed penance for atonement. Under Islamic influence, Peris became benevolent spirits, in contrast to the mischievous jinn and divs.
context_section_description: It has been noted by Western writers that the character of the Peri, as a supernatural wife, shares similar traits with the swan maiden, in that the human male hides the Peri's wings and marries her. After some time, the Peri woman regains her wings and leaves her mortal husband.
  The term peri appears in the early Oriental tale Vathek, by William Thomas Beckford, written in French in 1782.
  In Thomas Moore's poem Paradise and the Peri, part of his Lalla-Rookh, a peri gains entrance to heaven after three attempts at giving an angel the gift most dear to God. The first attempt is "The last libation Liberty draws/From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause", to wit, a drop of blood from a young soldier killed for an attempt on the life of Mahmud of Ghazni. Next is a "Precious sigh/of pure, self-sacrificing love": a sigh stolen from the dying lips of a maiden who died with her lover of plague in the Mountains of the Moon  (Ruwenzori) rather than surviving in exile from the disease and the lover. The third gift, the one that gets the peri into heaven, is a "Tear that, warm and meek/Dew'd that repentant sinner's cheek": the tear of an evil old man who repented upon seeing a child praying in the ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Balbec, Syria. Robert Schumann set Moore's tale to music as an oratorium, Paradise and the Peri, using an abridged German translation. 
  French composer Paul Dukas's last major work was the sumptuous ballet La Péri (1912). Described by the composer as a "poème dansé", it depicts a young Persian prince who travels to the ends of the Earth in a quest to find the lotus flower of immortality, finally encountering its guardian, the Péri.
  Gilbert and Sullivan's 1882 operetta Iolanthe is subtitled The Peer and the Peri. However the "peris" in this work are also referred to as "fairies" and have little in common with peris in the Persian sense.
  A peri, whose power is in her hair, appears in Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's 1984 novel The Harem of Aman Akbar.
caption: Peri at the Gates of Paradise, by Thomas Crawford (after Moore), Corcoran Gallery of Art
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