‘Sohrab and Rustum’

This chapter approaches Matthew Arnold’s poem from various angles: it first considers the poem’s Persian origin, looking at Firdausi’s background, his Shāhnāmeh, the history of its composition and the political context in which it was created. It then focuses on the episode of ‘Sohrāb’. Knowledge of Firdausi’s ‘original’ is crucial in this context not because Arnold knew it, but because he did not. Arnold never read Firdausi. He wrote his version of ‘Sohrāb’ after he read, in French, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve’s ‘Le Livre des Rois’ (1850), a review of Julius von Mohl's translation of Firdausi’s Shāhnāmeh. In the chain of interpretation from Mohl to Sainte-Beuve to Arnold, only Mohl had read the Persian text. Arnold’s appropriation of Firdausi’s characters, setting and mythical substance is conditioned by this complex transmission, in which Mohl’s poetics, and Sainte-Beuve’s cultural politics, play a significant role. The aim here is to unravel and explore the complexity of this process of literary appropriation, exposing the paradoxical nature of Sainte-Beuve’s role, since he both enabled Arnold to write the poem and implicitly challenged the ‘authority’ of any modern poet to rival a ‘primary’ epic poet such as Firdausi.