Sohrab and Rustum

by Matthew Arnold, John Tanner

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1853

About the author

Poems, such as "Dover Beach" (1867), of British critic Matthew Arnold express moral and religious doubts alongside his Culture and Anarchy , a polemic of 1869 against Victorian materialism.

Matthew Arnold, an English sage writer, worked as an inspector of schools. Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of rugby school, fathered him and and Tom Arnold, his brother and literary professor, alongside William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew...

Reviews

[Peiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب اقتباسی‌ست از داستان رستم و سهراب. اقتباس از داستان‌های شاهنامه زیاده اما نکته‌ی جالب توجه این کتاب اینه که نویسنده‌ی این کتاب انگلیسی‌ست. این که برداشت و اقتباس یک شاعر انگلیسی رو نسبت به یک داستان کهن ایرانی بخونی به اندازه‌ی کافی هوس برانگیز هست برای خوندن این کتاب. مقدمه‌ی مترجم کتاب بسیار جالب و روشنگر در مورد نویسنده و نحوه‌ی سرایش این اشعاره. ترجمه‌ی خود شعر‌ها هم به نظرم خیلی خوب بود.

سپس سهراب با چهره‌ای گستاخ چنین پاسخ داد:
با اینکه تو گمنامی بیهوده لاف میزنی. ای مرد خود پسند گزافه گو
تومرا نکشته‌ای، نه! نام رستم و این دل پر از مهر فرزندی مرا به کشتن داد.
چه اگر من با ده مرد چون تو هم‌نبرد میشدم،
و من همان بودم که تا به امروز بودم،
اينک آن ده تن بایستی اینجا افتاده باشند
و من آنجا ایستاده باشم.
اما آن نام گرامی زور از بازویم گرفت،
آن نام و چیزی که اقرار میکنم در تو هست،
که دلم را دردناک می‌کند و همین دو سبب شد که
سپر را رها کنم و نیزه‌ی تو از تن دشمنی بی سلاح بگذرد.
اکنون تو لاف میزنی و از بهر چونین
سرنوشت سرزنشم می‌کنی
اما تو ای مرد سنگدل اینکه می‌گویم بشنو
و از ترس بر خود بلرز:
رستم نیرومند کین مرگ مرا از تو بخواهد.
آری پدر من رستم، همانکه در همه جهان میجویمش!
وی به خونخواهی من بر خیزد و تو را کیفر دهد.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because of Lewis's "Surprised By Joy", and it swept me away on a tide of glorious language. I think I'll have to read it again, though the story itself glorifies the aspects I most dislike about chivalry.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read much epic poetry - I'm more of a long-form reader, really - but this year I'm working on broadening my horizons. I'm reading Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, and Lewis mentioned how he fell in love with this piece. Hence, I followed suit.

I enjoyed this. It's a good re-entry into the epic form, and I think it was a good primer for heading into Homer's The Odyssey next. Enjoyable. Classic, I think.

[Jeffrey Brannen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading CS Lewis “Surprised By Joy” and this poem was recommended. Read it and then shared it with my family for several nights after dinner.

The weight of longing from the son who wishes with all his might to be recognized by his father who doesn’t even know he exists. And the pain of a father wishing he had a son. All encapsulated by man-to-man combat in the darkness and dust. Two cultures clash on the border of Afghanistan where Persians and Tartars fight.

The tattooed symbol of a gryphon adorns both father and son, a beast bridging two beasts, as the Persian father married a Tartar princess and the son carries the two cultures in his blood.

The Oxus River cuts the divide between the two peoples, beginning the poem and ending it at the sea. Yellow, dirty, silty, and shallow, it cuts through the land.

A battlefield cut into a living cornfield so that blood can be shed. Pride and arrogance from a father who wants to defend the reputation of his people. Hubris on the part of the son who longs for greater victories in order to impress his unknowing father. Advice to not chase fame, but to choose a long life rather than sudden death.

Shades of Achilles and the quest for glory and honor, along with Patroclus hunger for knowledge of his missing father. Homer speaks, though yet dead.

Could this be seen today in a SpecOps father and a Jihadi son? Or a big city white police chief and a gangster son?

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sohrab and Rustum has been on my To Read list for a very long time. It seemed to me that reading it after readind Ballad of the White Horse might offer insights into both poems being attempts at epic poetry in the Iliad/Beowulf mode.
While Chesterton looks to English history as his source suggesting the "Matter of England" as a fourth subject for epic poetry to add to Jean Bodel's "three matters", Arnold sets his poem in Iran or on its border with Kazakhstan. I see this as an example of the Victorians' interest in Oriental subjects perhaps best shown in the popularity of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyan. I'm not sure though that this work fits into Edward Said's criticism of Orientalism, as Arnold's Characters would not be out of place in a Greek Epic or Anglo Saxon heroic poem. Is there, though a body of work in heroic poetry which could constitute a fifth matter, The Matter of the East? I think not. However, it does raise the question why Arnold chose this subject. The answer seems quite mundane. Arnold had read a summary of the original story by the Persian poet Abu'l-Qasem Ferdowsi Tusi and was taken by its tragic possibilities.
William Harmon and Hugh Holman give a list of ten features of an epic poem. I could count only four of them in use in Arnold's poem but he clearly is trying to write in the style of Homer. We have the use of archaic language "What prate is this of fathers and revenge?". "Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, else men". The use of epithets: 'the deep fixed spear", "a scarlet horse hair plume".
Did the Persians after conversion, copy the style of the ancient Trojans and "Hector of the horse hair plume"?
What is most obvious are the Homeric similes:
"As when some hunter in the spring hath found
A breeding eagle sitting on her nest,
Upon the craggy isle of a hill lake,
And pierced her with an arrow as she rose,
And followed her to find out where she fell
Far off, - anon her mate comes winging back,
From hunting, and a great way off descries..."
There is no doubt these are clever similes which draw on the lives and experiences of the main characters but after a while I found myself resenting them as they slowed down the pace of the narrative.
The speeches are not as long as the ones from Homer, so seem quite appropriate. Both Sohrab and Rustum also "embody the values of their civilisation". (Two more of Harman and Holman's characteristics).
Does all this attention to the features of epic poetry make for a good read? I assume that most contemporary readers of Sohrab and Rustum were expecting an epic poem and so will not be disappointed.

[Willow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sohrab and Rustum

Never coming to my knowledge until reading of it in C.S. Lewis's "Surprised by Joy," this poem paints a sorrowfully stirring picture of two warriors met on the field of battle. Lewis said this of it: "I loved the poem at first sight and have loved it ever since." Because of that compelling recommendation, I sought to read it.

Using many descriptive comparisons, Arnold's storytelling is vivid and enthralling. There were many names and places unknown to me; however, this somehow increased the beauty and mystique, not dimming my enjoyment of it at all.

This beautiful line I feel I have heard somewhere before:
"'But oh, let there be peace 'twixt thee and me!'"
...and is my heart's cry in all my relationships. It grieves me deeply to see and experience brokenness and irreparable rifts, and this poem makes me sad in its display of that.  A father and son, their familial connection unbeknownst to them, face anguish, death, and deep regret, and it's heartwrenching. Peace comes too late.

"For some are born to do great deeds, and live,
And some are born to be obscured, and die.
Do thou the deeds I die too young to do,
And reap a second glory in thine age;"

[Arash Ahsani · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poem that caused many orientalists like Robert Byron to cross the sea and visit the land of Rustam and the Oxus.

[Diyya · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite part of Shahnameh retold to me? I get to experience it in another new form? Yes, 5/5

[Sheila Metcalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Week 17 of ATY READ, I read Sohrab and Rustum by Matthew Arnold after catching it in Jack’s Life. This pre-1925 Persian epic—Rustum slaying his son Sohrab unknowingly—stabs deep in verse. Quick, tragic, and a jolt after Stones’s quiet. Solid, not stunning.

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arnold was a lover of classical Greek literature and many of his poems have themes relating to those well-known (at the time) stories. But this makes his poetry obscure to most modern readers. Helpful explanatory notes for each poem are in the back of book but were virtually unusable on my Kindle since it’s very difficult to page back and forth.

[Karen Marcum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because C.S. Lewis loved it. It meant very little to me.