Page:Persian Literature (1900), vol. 1.djvu/20

iv of the two civilizations is the true signature of Persian history. The likeness which is so evident between the religion of the Avesta, the sacred book of the pre-Mohammedan Persians, and the religion of the Old and New Testaments, makes it in a sense easy for us to understand these followers of Zoroaster. Persian poetry, with its love of life and this-worldliness, with its wealth of imagery and its appeal to that which is human in all men, is much more readily comprehended by us than is the poetry of all the rest of the Orient. And, therefore, Goethe, Platen, Rickert, von Schack, Fitzgerald, and Arnold have been able to re-sing their masterpieces so as to delight and instruct our own days—of which thing neither India nor Arabia can boast.

Tales of chivalry have always delighted the Persian ear. A certain inherent gayety of heart, a philosophy which was not so sternly vigorous as was that of the Semite, lent color to his imagination. It guided the hands of the skilful workmen in the palaces of Susa and Persepolis, and fixed the brightly colored tiles upon their walls. It led the deftly working fingers of their scribes and painters to illuminate their manuscripts so gorgeously as to strike us with wonder at the assemblage of hues and the boldness of designs. Their Zoroaster was never deified. They could think of his own doings and of the deeds of the mighty men of valor who lived before and after him with very little to hinder the free play of their fancy. And so this fancy roamed up and down the whole course of Persian history: taking a long look into the vista of the past, trying even to lift the veil which hides from mortal sight the beginnings of all things; intertwining fact with fiction, building its mansions on earth, and its castles in the air.

The greatest of all Eastern national epics is the work of a Persian. The “Sháh Nameh,” or Book of Kings, may take its place most worthily by the side of the Indian Nala, the Homeric Iliad, the German Niebelungen. Its plan is laid out on a scale worthy of its contents, and its execution is equally worthy of its planning. One might almost say that with it neo-Persian literature begins its history. There were poets in Persia before the writer of the “Sháh Námeh’’—, the blind (died 954), Zandshi (950), Chusravani (tenth century). There were great poets during his own day. But Firdusi ranks far above them all; and at the very beginning sets up so high a