SOURCE: “The Imperial Epic of Iran: A Literary Approach,” in Iranian Civilization and Culture, edited by Charles J. Adams, McGill University, 1972, pp. 133-44.

[In the essay that follows, Wickens examines the portion of the Shah-Nama dedicated to the Sasanid period of Iran's history, offering a synopsis of this section and emphasizing its dramatic form and themes.]

Many of the ideas presented here have undoubtedly been maturing in my mind since I was first compelled, some thirty-four years ago, to read a portion of the Shāh-nāmah not for its own splendid sake but as a tool on which to practice my elementary grasp of the Persian language. They are thus very personal ideas, very much a part of my life; but they have been sharpened and brought to the point of public utterance as the result of several recent discussions on literary and related matters with my colleague and friend, Dr. Rivanne Sandler. It is, therefore, only fitting that I make at this point a grateful, if necessarily somewhat imprecise acknowledgement of Dr. Sandler's part in this enterprise. She may yet have other things to say on her own account, or we may say them in collaboration; but meanwhile, the following speculations are offered in their own right as a tribute to some of the imperfectly appreciated versatilities of Iran's great singer of the royal saga.

Like most other works of Persian literature, the Shāh-nāmah has received very little analysis in purely literary terms, and even less in the context of really modern literary criticism. It is of course a commonplace among students of Persian literature that, in Iran itself, the traditional literary ‘appreciation’ is confined to generalities or to technicalities of exegesis, prosody and figurative style, or tends to pass rapidly into biographical and anecdotal narrative. In the case of the Shāh-nāmah, moreover, the would-be modern critic's problems are compounded by a virtually unique element—namely the work's long-standing pious prestige as the classic literary affirmation of the Iranian sense of identity, particularly as that identity reveals itself in a consciousness of historic destiny embodied in both a royal personage and a masterly wielding of the Persian speech-form as such. Even a readable and valuable work like Firdawsī w shi‘r-i ū, published in 1346 s./1967 by that eminent man-of-letters Mujtabā Mīnuvī, still very largely concerns itself with such aspects as these to the virtual exclusion of any validly literary analysis.

Non-Iranian evaluation (which of course connotes primarily Western studies) is in even less satisfactory case. At least no one can doubt that the Iranian tradition itself is one of both reverence and delight; but it would be next to impossible to point to a single Western scholar who has either approached the work with real respect or laid it aside with keen pleasure. All have at times commented on what they felt to be its inordinate length, its wearisome repetitions, its stock situations, its stylized language, its dullness and lack of humour—and so on and so forth. Those who have at least taken the work at all seriously (like Windischmann, or Geiger or Noeldeke, or their few modern successors like Wolff) have looked upon it primarily as a text for critical source research or as a component in comparative studies in language or history or mythology. Perhaps the most favourable treatment the work has received in the West has been at the hands of art historians, who have valued it—along with Nizāmī's Khamsah—for the superb illustrations that have often accompanied the best manuscripts. Virtually no one, however, up to and including Reuben Levy's 1967 précis in prose, has treated the work as a great piece of literature, much less as literature to be assessed in literary terms.

In this paper it is hoped to make some small beginning towards a literary appraisal of what might be termed Iran's ‘royal work’ par excellence. It might be appropriate for several reasons to base myself primarily, though not exclusively, on the early Sasanid period, specifically the reigns of Ardashīr I and his son Shāpūr I. In the first place, this was the portion I was obliged to read all those years ago in 1937; and I have read it many times since, so it is perhaps the one on which my thoughts about literary matters in the Shāh-nāmah have been most concentrated over the years. Secondly, it is—as most people will surely agree—far from being one of the most obviously literary portions of the Shāh-nāmah; for it is only loosely woven of threads that ostensibly neither match nor contrast—among them, rather flat narrative, both factual and apocryphal, from the historical period, grotesque magic and fantasy from the realm of the timeless, and didactic material that is of classic social significance but, by any immediate standards, of only limited literary merit. If such a portion of the work can plausibly be shown to contain several features of genuine literary significance, the case will have been fairly adequately suggested for the rest. My final reason for this choice is that the early Sasanid period is perhaps peculiarly fitted for consideration on this occasion, being—like the present—one of the notable ages of Iranian national resurgence after a lengthy period of decline and stagnation.

At this point it would be well to summarize the themes of the main subdivisions of this portion.

At the opening of the narrative for this period, the five hundred years following Darius' death and Alexander's succession are dismissed in a few lines; and we are told how the true royal stock survived in hardship and obscurity until a descendant, working as a shepherd in south Persia, is recognized as kingly by his master in a dream and married to the latter's daughter. From this union is born Ardashr, who is sent by his grandfather to the Parthian court of Ardavān for his education and advancement. Before long, Ardashīr offends Ardavān by surpassing the Parthian ruler's sons in his accomplishments; and he also attracts Ardavān's mistress, who, in her roles as royal confidant and treasurer, keeps him informed of Ardavan's anxieties and initiatives for his family's succession. When matters become dangerously critical, she aids Ardashīr, materially and otherwise, to make his escape back to Fārs. Ardavān pursues them without success, and in subsequent battles he is progressively reduced to the support of his immediate family and entourage, while more and more forces gather to Ardashīr. Ardavān is finally killed and his line almost obliterated on the male side. As the first of his many struggles to maintain himself. Ardashīr now engages in a long-drawn war with the Kurds, at length obtaining victory.

There follows here the episode of the Worm of Kirmān. A Worm found in an apple is reared by a girl of poor family. Eventually it becomes an enormous dragon in whose service the girl and her family achieve great power. Ultimately, the Worm presents a serious threat to Ardashīr, who is not only at first defeated but finds his homeland attacked and plundered in his rear by other enemies as well. At last he obtains access to the Worm, disguised as a grateful merchant come to pay tribute; he kills the creature by feeding it a diet of molten metal and goes on to defeat and kill its cohorts in battle. On the site of the Worm's stronghold, as one of his many measures to restore and strengthen the Zoroastrian faith, he erects a fire temple and makes provision for worship in the old religion.

At this date begins officially Ardashīr's reign of ‘forty years and two months,’ and he establishes his court in Ctesiphon, near the modern Baghdad. He now seeks in marriage the daughter of his old enemy Ardavān, primarily so that she can be induced to reveal the whereabouts of her father's great treasure. Whatever her own feelings towards him, she is pressed to kill him by her elder brother, who has escaped to India and now sends her poison and reproachful admonitions to use it forthwith. King-favouring fate intervenes before the Shāh drinks the poison; and when her treachery becomes apparent, Ardashīr gives orders for her to be killed despite her claim to be now pregnant by him and his own keen desire for an heir. But his loyal first minister, conscious of the desperate need for established succession, shelters the girl in his own home. In a macabre side-incident, this faithful servant avoids scandal by castrating himself and depositing in the royal treasury a sealed and dated receptacle containing his manhood. Shāpūr I is born of Ardavān's daughter, and is eventually recognized (a very common occurrence in the epic) by his father from among several youths playing in a polo match. Ardavān's daughter, still alive, is forgiven and restored to a position of honour.

At this point, Ardashīr, anxious like Ardavān before him, sends to an Indian sage for advice on the future and for some encouragement to believe he will soon find rest from his constant struggles against enemies. The answer comes that peace and tranquility may be expected only when Ardashīr's line is joined with that of Mihrak, one of the several treacherous rivals the Shāh has had to eliminate in the course of his rise to power. Ardashīr is outraged and vows to seek out and kill the one child of Mihrak, a daughter, who has hitherto eluded him. Fate once again intervenes, and the heir-apparent Shāpūr accidentally meets and falls in love with Mihrak's daughter, who is living in obscurity with a village headman's family. From their union is born Ohrmazd, and he is reared secretly until (once again) his grandfather picks him out at a polo match by his kingly skill and daring. The Shāh accepts the workings and wisdom of fate, recalling that since Ohrmazd's conception he has known peace and contentment as promised by the Indian seer. Here follows a long, and classic passage on Ardashīr's political sagacity and administrative ability; then an encomium upon Ardashīr by a certain Kharrād; next a discourse on the ultimate faithlessness of fate, at least in its dealings with human beings as individuals; Ardashīr's last injunction to Shāpūr before dying; and finally a short section in praise of God and in commendation of the poet's prospective patron, Mahhmūd of Ghaznah.

Shāpūr's historically eventful reign of thirty-two-odd years is dealt with in about one-seventeenth of the space given to his father. There is a passage of conventional exhortation to the great administers of the realm, and an account of Shāpūr's wars with the Romans and the capture of their general. Peace comes at last.

So much for a bare synopsis of the material in this section of the Shāh-nāmah, some mere three percent of the whole work. In what ways may one interpret this section as a piece of work revealing a high degree of literary skill? The Shāh-nāmah is commonly referred to, at least in the West, as an epic: in Iran itself there is no genuine, indigenous word for the genre to which this work might loosely be said to belong. However, as there is no clear agreement, even in the West, on the essential nature of the epic, and since the Shāh-nāmah is in all sorts of ways in a class apart—in both Persian and world literature—the term epic is not altogether enlightening; but it is convenient and handy, and there seems little point in trying seriously to replace it. However, one feature the work displays quite unmistakably, in the first place, is the tension of great drama—a tension, moreover, not only of language and the confrontation of persons with persons or with events, but one of overall conception. At no point in this vast cavalcade are we in any serious doubt that the true line of kingship, as distinct from the individual kings, will survive—certainly until the coming of Islām, and perhaps even beyond that. At the lowest mechanical level, to demonstrate this theorem is the avowed purpose of the work as a whole. But on a higher literary plane also, throughout the course of the narrative, the bearer of kingship is constantly recognized, helped and protected by a whole series of figures—some of them gigantic and heroic and enduring like Rustam, others obscure and ephemeral (shepherds and boatmen are the commonest representatives from among the people), while still others—though ostensibly folk figures—carry a shadowy suggestion of the supernatural and the angelic. Of course, for any with what Firdawsī would call clarity of eye and heart, the true king carries around him a royal aura, the farr, that is both physically and psychologically palpable. Nevertheless, if all is due to come out right in the long run, there are many tragic failures along the way, and even more frequent examples of the royal figure's veritable human nature threatening to impede the ultimate success of his cause, to say nothing of instances where his weaknesses help it along. In many and varied ways, this long line of princes interacts (to use the modern terminology) with the end-purpose of fate and of their own loyal followers, but by no means do they always dovetail with it. These rulers are, in other words, realistically enough conceived to be often unwise, headstrong and hubristic—sometimes almost comically so. A few are almost constantly thus (e.g. Kay Kā'us), some only in spells (like Ardashīr), while others begin well and end irrevocably badly (like Jamshīd). From one point of view, the whole massive sub-epic of Rustam is a prolonged instance of such dramatic tensions, though it has many subordinate tensions besides.

Let us consider some examples of this sort of situation as they work themselves out in the cases of Ardashīr I and Shāpūr I. Dramatic tension, often associated with irony and humour, will be my main concern, but I shall seize the opportunity to touch briefly on several other literary and related features which seem to me to have been largely ignored by others so far. It may be that I shall attempt too much, and so produce a measure of mental and emotional congestion; but I would plead that it is in a good, and even a desperate, cause; and I certainly propose to develop each of these ideas elsewhere, as suitable opportunities arise, in more disciplined and rigorous categories.

The opening passage, where the defeated royal line endures centuries of poverty and obscurity in India and Iran, is a low-key masterpiece of Firdawsī's technique. Not only do we here have tension, but also—lightly but significantly introduced—the constantly present feature of dramatic irony: we ourselves know the true identity of these honest labourers, but virtually nobody else does, and even they themselves seem at times but dimly aware of their royal heritage and destiny. Even when the action starts to move again, the unknown prince is still busily playing his natural (if symbolic) part as a shepherd. When he takes service under the landowner who finally recognizes him in a vision, there are no heavy, mechanical portents, only the simple—practically colloquial—question: ‘Could you use a hired hand, passing this way, down on his luck?’ …

And when, after consecutive dreams revealing the young man's, or his descendants', glorious future of temporal and spiritual power, the landowner summons him, there is still no forcing of the action: ‘He ordered the head-shepherd should come to him from the flocks, on a day of wind and snow; who came to him, panting, in his cloak—the woollen garment filled with snow, his heart with fear.’ Anyone who has spent a winter's day among the nomads of Iran will appreciate this as a vignette of high artistry (even in my version); but it is more—it holds off the great movements of fate, forcing them to play themselves out in the business of daily living. Again, as Bābak tries to persuade the young man to speak of his background and family (for even inspired dreams must be tested in the Shāh-nāmah), the shepherd is silent and ultimately speaks, in very restrained language, only after obtaining a sworn guarantee for his security. No instant recognitions here, no ringing declarations, no bold decisions. And Bābak, despite his tearful joy at confirming the survival of the true royal line, is nevertheless abruptly practical in his dismissal of the smelly young shepherd to the bath …

before proceeding further. Throughout the poem royalty is associated, in high symbolic drama, with a pastoral aristocracy, and there is no indignity in honest labour in such pursuits, but the earthy realities of the pastoral life are never ignored.

Even later, when the royal figure has married Bābak's daughter and lives (somewhat improbably) in elegance and splendour, there is no rapid restoration of the right order of things. All must work itself out through human motivation, even where humanity is at its weakest. When Ardashīr is born and grows to young manhood, he is sent by his wise old grandfather to the Parthian court of Ardavān in North Persia. (As an aside, we may here point out other subordinate tensions in the work, such as the fruitful ones between grandfathers and grandsons: those between fathers and sons—of which Rustam and Suhrāb offer the best-known example—are often highly destructive.) Now Ardashīr is sent at Ardavān's own request, for the latter has heard of his ‘accomplishments and wisdom.’ Preceding lines also dwell on his appearance and his true descent, and in later passages other gifts are mentioned. The decisive action is sprung by none of these aids to greatness, but rather, by the natural often unbridled, urges of a young man in high health and prideful spirits. The ironies and tensions lie thick hereabouts, though never obtruded. Here are a few.

The old grandfather, whatever his secret knowledge and his high hopes for his grandson, is on excellent and respectful terms with the Parthian usurper, who is in effect precipitating his own downfall by his desire to embellish his court with gallant youths like Ardashīr. Again, Ardavān persuades Bābak to relinquish his beloved grandson with vows (which he inevitably, because of Ardashīr's nature, will not be able to keep) to treat him exactly as one of his own sons. The grandfather, on his side, plays a part entirely in character by giving the young prudent advice about his conduct, which Ardashīr at the time may well intend to follow, but which—if actually put into practice—would effectively rule out his future greatness as purposed by fate. For the moment, at any rate, all goes well; and the ironies are evident, as they should be, only in the reflection of what follows. Neither Ardavān's figure and character nor those of his family are at this time presented in anything but a dignified and generous light: their only real defect is that fate cannot be on their side, for they are not of the true royal line. (Only much later do two mysterious young men speak of Ardashīr as having escaped ‘the palate and the breath of the dragon’; but this is less a designation of Ardavān's character than a clear casting of him for the malevolent role in a quasi-cosmic drama.)

When the crucial quarrel erupts between Ardashīr and Ardavān—over the fact that the former not only surpasses Ardavān's son on the hunting-field, but refuses graciously to back down and even calls the Parthian prince a liar who makes false claims—Ardashīr is sent to be Ardavān's head groom and odd-job man …

This is not quite ‘clogs to clogs in three generations’ (as the old Lancashire saying has it), but it is a sufficiently ironical come-down to make what follows not merely plausible but inevitable. Ardashīr chafes and plots (as the poet puts it, his head is ‘full of alchemy’), and he complains to his grandfather, who writes back, still very much in character: ‘O youth, little-wise, part-ripe … you are his servitor, not his relative; he showed not you the enmity in malice that you have shown yourself by your unwisdom!’ But he sends him money and supplies and bids him lie low in hopes that time will heal the quarrel. Ardashīr goes his own way, putting his mind now to nayrang w awrand, the ‘craft and deceit’ without which even fate cannot bring the royal aspirant to his rightful end, and which are in no way seen as a detraction from his character or his felicitous auspices. Outwardly he lulls suspicions by adopting the life-style of a frivolous playboy.

The events that follow, leading to the ultimate confrontation, are brought about and directed, however, not by any scheming on Ardashīr's part but by the resourcefulness of Ardavān's girl-Friday, Gulnār—one of a line of remarkable female characters that form one of the poem's most striking features. This spirited girl's one weakness is a passionate obsession with Ardashīr (which gives Firdawsī the opportunity to write some rarely tender and emotional lines. Ardashīr, by contrast, is cool and detached, even peevish—a mood set by his first words when he awakes to find her at his pillow: ‘Where have you sprung from?’ …

So much for her weakness, but in all other respects she is calm, intelligent, practical and strong-minded. It is no accident that the great Ardavān not only needs her constantly by him, but is described as unable to begin his day unless—another supreme irony!—she shows her auspicious face at his bedside each morning. At any rate, she establishes a liaison with Ardashīr at considerable risk to herself, she skilfully manages Ardavān's affairs while keeping Ardashīr fully informed of them and of her master's troubles and anxieties, and she plots and plans and urges various courses of action. Eventually she brings the critical news that astrologers, employed by Ardavān, have forecast the affliction of a great man in consequence of the revolt of a subordinate destined for greatness. (No ominous judgments of this kind, astrological or otherwise, are ever couched in the Shāh-nāmah, in anything but vague—and sometimes ironically reassuring—terms.) This, she indicates, is Ardashīr's moment, but he greets her—totally in character, but with what must be seen as an ironic resistance to destiny—with the following words: ‘Can't you do without Ardavān for a single day?’ …

she has been absent for three days, busily following the full cycle of the astrological processes. Even when she convinces him that it is now or never, he is clearly ‘lost’ rather than grateful, and promises her a share of his greatness if only she will accompany him on the flight to Fārs. She, poor girl, needs no urging, staying only to say, ‘I will never leave you so long as I live!’ …

she hastens back to her quarters to organize all the material and other necessities for the escape. One of the most significant silences in the work touches her eventual fate, for she drops out of the narrative completely after playing her usual important role on the return journey. Like Homer, Firdawsī sometimes nods, but his shuttling back and forth of his personae is normally very skilful and thorough. Accordingly, I think we must regard this fade-out as deliberate, a further stroke in delineating the character of Ardashīr himself.

In this portion of the work there are four major feminine figures: this girl; Ardavān's daughter (who, after marriage to Ardashīr, tries to poison him); Mihrak's daughter (who secretly marries Shāpūr); and Haftvād's daughter (the girl who finds the Worm in the apple). The characters and the actions of these women illuminate not only Firdawsī's skilful management of the fundamental tensions between the sexes, but also his ability to pass to and fro between delicate irony and outright comedy—I say this in the belief that the humorous side of the poet's work has hitherto been underestimated, if not virtually ignored. We have seen how Ardavān's daughter, in peril of her life, still manages to circumvent Ardashīr's hot-tempered decree, and this for his own ultimate and inevitable good—one of the most fateful events in the whole work, for the true line is about to die out. In the cases of Gulnār and Mihrak's daughter, however, the events—though almost as portentous—are more lightly handled. On his flight from Ardavān's court, Ardashīr (supported as he is by all sorts of earthly and supernatural phenomena, including a spectral ram—a sort of pastoral symbol of his farr) is, as usual, in danger of committing all manner of fateful imprudences, including that of delaying for rest and refreshment. Two mysterious young men exhort him to press on, and for the first time, even if in an ironically misguided context, he begins to feel his authority. Turning to Gulnār, as though the idea of halting had been hers, he says sharply: ‘Mark these words!’ …

and on several occasions throughout his subsequent career (notably after the two events he has done his utmost to thwart, i.e., the birth of his heir, and the marriage of that heir to Mihrak's daughter), he will seize the opportunity to read back at some length, to both fate and his loyal followers, the moral in all that has come to pass so wondrously.

The first encounter of Shāpūr with Mihrak's daughter strikes an even more absurd note. In her disguise as a village maiden, she is drawing water from a well. The enamoured Shāpūr orders one of his retinue to relieve her, and when the man fails to raise the bucket, shouts: ‘O half a woman! Did not a woman wield this pail and wheel and rope, raising no little water from the well, where you are full of toil and call for help?’ He then tries his own hand, barely succeeding; and this domesticated version of the drawing of Excalibur enables each young person to recognize the other as royal. Yet the girl, whose royal title is only partial, emerges—humanly speaking—as the victor in the exchange. While Shāpūr blusters and puffs over the pail, she sits to one side and smiles. When he covers his embarrassment with an abrupt, brief outburst to the effect that she must be something more than ordinary to cope so easily with the bucket, she counters with an elegant reply, fully delineating his identity and qualities and suggesting that the water will now turn to milk by the grace of his intervention. All in all, she is shown as not only most beautiful, but stronger and wittier than the man she will marry. It is important to realize, however, that the royal figure remains great on an entirely different scale from the purely human; and the use of these gifted, but ultimately less than ideal, human instruments to bring out the essential greatness of royalty (or sometimes of sainthood) is a staple of Persian literature. Gulnār (the ex-mistress of a hated rival, and a girl whom some would regard as a forward, bossy hussy), Ardavān's daughter (of part-impure stock, and a would-be poisoner), and Mihrak's daughter (a show-off and descended from a traitor)—all these parallel, in one way or another, that classic female figure in Persian literature, Zulaykhā, Potiphar's wife, who (driven by unlawful passions) demonstrates Joseph's inner greatness by contrast and relief. Yet, at the human level, few poets have missed the formal beauty and the pathetic dignity of the Zulaykhā figure, rather than of Joseph, so that—while he may be virtuous—it is she who, by an only seeming paradox, becomes the symbol of the helpless self-sacrificing mystic. Similarly in the Shāh-nāmah.

In the case of Haftvād's daughter, the Worm-girl, there is no direct confrontation with the royal line, and here Firdawsī builds his tensions, and displays his literary skills generally, in a somewhat different manner. Broadly speaking, the effects are achieved by emphasizing at the outset, and reminding us throughout, that the girl who rises to ultimately sinister fortune and power is, originally and essentially, a hardworking, natural, kindly person. Likewise, what eventually becomes a monstrous and baleful dragon is but a gradually developed projection, again with frequent flashbacks, from a rather cute, helpless, tiny creature. Even the girl's father, who soon becomes a boastful layabout and finally a tyrant, is depicted at first as a natural victim of life's handicaps and of other men's greed and callousness.

To make these points somewhat clearer, it is worth quoting the low-key opening passages from this fantastic episode at some length:

A town there was, cramped, the people numerous, each person's eating by effort only; many girls there were therein, seeking their bread without fulfillment. On one side the mountains came closer, and thither they would all go together, each carrying cotton weighed out by measure and a spindle-case of poplar-wood. At the gates they would gather, striding from the city towards the mountains. Their food they pooled in common, in eating there was neither more nor less. There was no talk there of sleeping or eating, for all their efforts and endeavours were towards their cotton. In the evening homeward they would return, their cotton to a long thread turned. In that city, having nothing but of serene disposition, was a man named Haftvād … who had but one beloved daughter …

The action opens one day, at the lunch-break, again most unportentously, or at least with such portents as are realized later to be delicately ironical:

… It befell that this girl of good fortune had seen on the road, and swiftly picked up, an apple cast down from its tree by the wind. (Now hear this marvellous tale!) That fair-cheeked one, into the fruit biting, saw a worm lodged inside; with her fingers she lifted it from the apple and gently placed it in her spindle-case. Then, taking up her cotton from the case, she said: “In the name of the Lord, with no mate or companion, I today by the Star of the Apple-Worm will show you a terrible prodigy of spinning!” All the girls took to merriment and laughter, open-cheeked and silvery of teeth. So she spun twice what she would spin in a day, and marked its quantity on the ground …

So is laid the foundation of the family's enormous wealth and authority throughout the land, until even the up-and-coming Ardashīr feels threatened. But events move with anything but unnatural swiftness. The girl constantly increases her intake of cotton and her output of thread, while feeding the Worm bigger pieces of apple and other delicacies and moving it to ever more spacious quarters as it grows bigger and more strikingly beautiful. Her parents are pleased, but at a loss. They wonder if she has, as they put it, ‘become sister to a fairy-being,’ and Firdawsī begins a series of skilfully ambivalent references to her: ‘spellbinding’ (pur-fusūn) as against ‘industrious’ (pur-hunar), and so on. There is as yet no clear suggestion of evil, not even of evil of which the agents themselves are unaware, merely the suspicion of some supernatural or magical intervention. When she tells her parents how matters stand, they are ‘augmented in brightness’ (rawshanā'ī), a term the poet always uses in auspicious and rational contexts. Yet, in the very next line we meet a bad omen ironically arising from what is taken to be a good one: ‘Haftvād took this affair for a good sign, giving no further thought in his mind to work, and talking of nothing but the Star of the Worm.’ Like Mr. Micawber in his Australian days, he becomes a man of substance and a local wiseacre. Eventually the regional governor falls foul of him, still through no fault of his own, thinking to put down and rob this newly-risen one ‘of evil stock.’ (In using this latter term, Firdawsī again preserves a measure of ambiguity, for bad-nizhād could also be rendered merely as ‘baseborn’: the whole series of shifting degrees of pejorative connotation is, of course, fully comprehensible only within the poet's own social and literary ambiance.) The outcome is victory for Haftvād, who betakes himself with his mascot the Worm, and his great treasure and retinue, to one of those mountain-top fortresses which often figure as the great focal points of Persian literature and Iranian history.

Even at this point the Worm continues to be described in terms that present him as a creature of impressive beauty. The daughter, now become the Worm's chief keeper and executive agent, is still spoken of as ‘serene’ or ‘cheerful’ (hereafter there is no specific mention of her, though we may presume her destruction together with that of her monstrous pet); and Haftvād himself continues to be spoken of, in terms that are at least neutral and possibly even complimentary, as a ‘combative captain.’ Or again, ‘And such was illustrious Haftvād's fortress that the wind dared not to move around it.’ Only when hostilities are initiated by Ardashīr, do we begin to hear a different note: for example, one of Haftvād's seven sons is described, in a threefold denunciation, as ‘impudent, a doer of evil, ill-natured.’ Even so, after sharp fighting, the upstart Haftvād is still in a position to spare Ardashīr's life when he has him at his mercy, albeit he does so insultingly, warning him that he is out of his depth, Shāh though he be, in tangling with the domination of the Worm. In his dejection Ardashīr is counselled, by two more of the mysterious young men we have referred to earlier, as to the true nature of the Worm and the conditions on which alone he can hope to subdue it: ‘A worm you call him, but within his skin there lives a warlike devil, shedding blood … You, in battle with the Worm and with Haftvād, will not be adequate if you swerve from Justice.’ Ardashīr's undoubted success in this venture may be attributed, by reference to these words, to his subsequent record as a just and efficient ruler. But this is to miss a characteristic leitmotiv of the Shāh-nāmah: we are no longer dealing at this point in normal human motivation, and that type of dramatic tension is suddenly snapped: what the Shāh is being told is that he is face to face with the fatal and the supernatural, and the Justice he is to put himself in service to is not so much that of the ministry and the courtroom as the eternal archetype, the ultimate principle of all Being and Doing.

To emphasize this point perhaps, Ardashīr says: ‘So be it! My dealings with them, for good and evil, lie with you,’ and the two young men are by his side throughout the operation of his stratagem to kill the Worm. As if to escape the relatively undramatic, or melodramatic, situation into which he has now come, Firdawsī makes much less of the foregone dénouement than of the wealth of incident leading up to it: Ardashīr's disguising himself and a small band of followers as merchants, their accumulation of goods of all kinds, their departure for the fortress and the arrangements made to keep in communication with the main force of the royal army, the approach—with subservience and blandishments—to Haftvād's retinue, the initiatives to make the Worm's staff drunk and to take over their duties—and so on. When the climax comes, it is brief and has elements of both the comic and the pathetic: ‘When from the wine-cup their minds were drunken, came the World-Lord with his sponsors, bringing lead and a brazen cauldron; and a fire he lit, all in the white of day. (When it came that Worm's feeding-time, its nourishment was of boiling lead.) Towards the pit, Ardashīr the hot lead carried, and the Worm gently raised its head. They saw his tongue, coloured like a cymbal, thrust out as when he earlier rice would eat. Down, the hero poured the lead, and in the pit the Worm lost all its strength. From its gullet there arose a rattle, at which the pit and land around did tremble.’ That's all there is: in the common phrase, ‘It's all over bar the shouting’—and, of course, the fighting.

On the present occasion, time does not allow a lengthier development of our theme that Firdawsī—no matter where his variegated materials came from or how unreliable they may be as history—was a supreme literary and linguistic artist in the use he made of them. We have seen him developing a wide range of characters and throwing these characters into tensions of personality and of role, both with each other and vis-à-vis fate itself. We have seen also how he controls the rate and force of his action so as to ensure the maximum use of dramatic effect. And finally, we have seen how he shades off a melodramatic situation until it becomes firmly integrated in the commonplace; and how he relieves, for those who will accept such relief, solemnity and high drama with the ironical, and sometimes even with the comic. In all of these technical virtuosities, however, the most significant thing is perhaps that he operates, despite his virile and athletic style, not as a teller of tales or an epic poet, but as a dramatist. This may well seem a rash statement to make in reference to a culture which—at least until modern times and under Western influence—has never developed a genuine, full-blown drama as such. But I would suggest that we have in the Shāh-nāmah all the elements of the dramatic form except the formal structure itself, and that this can be supplied by little more than a typographical rearrangement and a little judicious editorial cutting. By this means some of the most important themes in the work could be set out in such a way as to alternate between dramatically significant speeches by the personae and commentary by the poet and/or others. If that should make you think of the Greek drama on the one hand and Bertolt Brecht on the other, that may only go to indicate the timelessness and the topical relevance of the first great figure in the literature of Islamic Persia.