Fathers and Sons: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, Vol. 2 - Hardcover

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0934211531 ISBN 13: 9780934211536

Publisher: Mage Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Volume 2 opens and closes with tales of tragic conflict between a king and his son: Prince Seyavash and Prince Esfandiyar are both driven from the court by their foolish fathers to confront destiny and death in distant lands. Interwoven with Seyavash's story is the tale of his stepmother Sudabeh's lust for her young stepson, and of his escape from her tricks by the famous trial by fire; Esfandiyar's story involves the last combat of the great Rostam, a fight to the death which leads to Rostam's own demise at the hands of his evil brother Shaghad. Between these two stories the reader travels through a wondrous landscape of romance, demons, heroic despair and mystical renunciation of the world.

About this title

About the Author

FERDOWSI was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus, in 940. His great epic the Shahnameh, to which he devoted most of his adult life, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who were the chief instigators of the revival of Persian cultural traditions after the Arab conquest of the seventh century. During Ferdowsi's lifetime this dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Turks, and there are various stories in medieval texts describing the lack of interest shown by the new ruler of Khorasan, Mahmud of Ghazni, in Ferdowsi and his lifework. Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 in poverty and embittered by royal neglect, though confident of his and his poem's ultimate fame.

DICK DAVIS was born to English and Italian parents in 1945 and educated at King's College, Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature). In 1970 while pursuing a career in poetry and literature and teaching in Greece he visited a friend in Iran. While there, he fell ill and was nursed to health by a Persian woman, whom he eventually married. Davis fell in love with the country as well, and stayed for eight years, learning Persian and teaching at the University of Tehran. After the revolution in 1979 the Davis family returned to England where he pursued his love of the Persian language, earning his Ph.D. in Medieval Persian Literature from the University of Manchester.

Since then, he has emerged as the foremost translator of Persian as well as having published numerous volumes of his own poetry to critical acclaim, including: Touchwood, A New Kind of Love, Devices and Desires, and Covenant. He is currently professor of Persian at Ohio State University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His other translations from Persian include the forthcoming Fathers and Sons: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, Vol. II (Mage, 1999), Borrowed Ware (Mage, 1997), My Uncle Napoleon (Mage, 1996), The Legend of Seyavash (Penguin Classics, 1992), and with Afkham Darbandi, The Conference of the Birds (Penguin Classics, 1984). He has also written a groundbreaking analysis of the Shahnameh, Epic and Sedition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Seyavash is Killed
Garsivaz and Gorui dragged him away from the army and the city to a wasteland on the plain. Gorui took the dagger from Garsivaz, and when they had reached the appointed place they threw the prince's mammoth body to the ground. Knowing neither fear nor shame, they held a gold dish at his throat to catch the blood and severed the head of that silver cypress tree. The prince's head sank into endless sleep, never to awake. Gorui took the dish to the place that Afrasyab had ordered, and emptied it. A wind rose up, and darkness obscured the sun and moon; people could not see one another's faces, and all cursed Gorui.

I turn to right and left, in all the earth
I see no signs of justice, sense, or worth:
A man does evil deeds, and all his days
Are filled with luck and universal praise;
Another's good in all he does-he dies
A wretched, broken man whom all despise.

Seyavash's palace resounded with lamentation; his slaves cut off their hair, and Farigis too cut her musky tresses and bound them about her waist and clawed at her cheeks' roses. Loudly she cursed Afrasyab, and when he heard her cries he ordered Garsivaz to drag her into the streets, and there to strip her and have her beaten, so that she would miscarry the seed of Iran, saying, "I want nothing to grow from Seyavash's root, neither a tree nor a bough nor a leaf; I want no scion from him worthy of a crown or throne."

Edition details

• Publisher: Mage Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0934211531
• ISBN 13: 9780934211536
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 311