ABSTRACT
Date of composition unknown; first identified as S.’s by Davidson Cook (see TLS below) from the ascription in a file of MSS contributed to The Keepsake for 1828. Garnett knew of this ascription (Labout S 36), but there is no evidence that he or any other editor actually saw the MS, which was bought by J. Dykes Campbell at the Dawson Turner sale, and had been abstracted from the file by 1936. Although in the absence of the MS S.’s authorship cannot be certainly authenticated, forgery or misattribution is unlikely at a date as early as November 1827, when the Keepsake material was sent to press, and the internal evidence favours S.’s claim. S.’s interest in volcanoes, etc., dates from at least as early as 1805 (Sir John Rennie, Autobiography (1875) 2); in 1810 at Oxford S. ‘perused with more than ordinary eagerness … the translations of the marvellous tales of oriental fancy’ (Hogg i 108), but Hogg shows no knowledge of this poem, whose provenance must lie outside the S. circle. Just possibly it was the poem on ‘an excellent subject’ promised to J. T. Tisdall on 7 April 1809 (L i 4). The happy ending foreseen after separation might then reflect S.’s hopeful situation in relation to Harriet Grove in spring 1809. The episode is taken from Tale VII, ‘Sadak and Kalasrade’, of the popular The Tales of the Genii; or the Delightful Lessons of Horam … translated from the Persian by Sir Charles Morell [i.e. written by Rev. J. Ridley] (1764). There was an edition in 1805. Sadak’s wife, Kalasrade, is abducted to Sultan Amurath’s harem. She feigns willingness to submit to his desires if he will procure for her the Waters of Oblivion, to enable her to forget her husband, from a volcanic island ‘fortified by inaccessible precipices’ in the Pacific. Amurath sends Sadak himself, who survives fearful hardships to bring a goblet of the Water back to Amurath, who drinks it himself in order to forget his perfidy, and dies. Some favourite Shelleyan themes are introduced in this Tale: Adiram’s overshadowing pinions (‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ (Text B) 1–12; Mask of Anarchy 110–17), and the fountain in the cave; Sadak foreshadows Ahasuerus (WJ; Q Mab vii 49–275; Hellas 738–861), as Amurath foreshadows the tyrant Othman in L&C; and the quest within the volcano suggests Asia’s visit to Demogorgon in PU II.
