WorkFerdowsī

Shahnameh [Book of Kings]

Shahnameh [Book of Kings] (c. 977–1010); trans. James Atkinson, The Shah-Nameh of the Persian Poet Firdausi (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1832)

Ferdowsī (c. 940–c. 1020) · c. 977–1010

InferredMargaret Fuller engages with Firdausi's epic poem, the *Shahnameh* or *Book of Kings*, by explicitly invoking it to describe the gentle cadence of her own prose, stating, "So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh." Her reference suggests familiarity with the foundational Persian work, even as she playfully dismisses less familiar linguistic comparisons ("My Persian and Arabic you love not").

AnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1840

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Letters

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1840—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p121

analyzed · read

“So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh. Gentle Sanscrit I cannot write. My Persian and Arabic you love not.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Fuller names 'the Shah Nameh' explicitly; Hudspeth identified this as Firdawsi's Persian epic and identified the most likely edition as Atkinson's 1832 translation. Fuller has just written an elaborate Oriental tale (the desert wanderer / palm tree / oasis passage) in the idiom and spirit of the Shah Nameh, and then explicitly attributes it to that source: 'So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p82

read

“So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh. Genuine Sanscrit I cannot write. My Persian and Arabic you love not.”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.

Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Firdausi's epic poem, the Shahnameh or Book of Kings, by explicitly invoking it to describe the gentle cadence of her own prose, stating, "So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh." Her reference suggests familiarity with the foundational Persian work, even as she playfully dismisses less familiar linguistic comparisons ("My Persian and Arabic you love not").