Places: Sohrab and Rustum

Central Sohrab and RustumAsia. Scene of the battle between the forces of Persia and their Tartar enemies. Arnold wrote this poem in part to illustrate his theories concerning the superiority of the classical, objective, and affirmative epic over the Romantic, lyric, and melancholy poetry of his own time. By placing his poem in Central Asia, among Persians and Tartars, he achieves an emotional distance and objectivity that removes the poem from the Romantic intensity and lyrical sadness of the typical poetry of his age. Set in a distant and ancient place, the tragic tale of a warrior father who unwittingly kills his warrior son can be treated not as an occasion for sentimental tears but as an illustration of fate and its inevitability. Moreover, Arnold uses the places, landscapes, and customs of Central Asia as materials for the complex epic similes that are crucial to the poem’s epic style.

*Oxus River. River upon whose plain Sohrab and Rustum fight. When Rustum slays Sohrab on the banks of the Oxus, Arnold ends with an elaborate and symbolic account of the Oxus, describing its origins, its troubled but continuous flow, and its final absorption into the tranquil Aral Sea. In this way, Arnold allows the setting of the action to comment on that action. Rustum’s killing of Sohrab is only one event in human destiny, which itself flows like a river. Human life persists, and every human life ends in the quiet Aral Sea of death.