Arnold, Edwin 1832-1904

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ARNOLD, Edwin 1832-1904

PERSONAL: Born June 10, 1832, in Gravesend, England; died March 24, 1904, in London, England; son of Robert Coles Arnold (a Sussex magistrate); married Katharine Elizabeth Biddulph, 1854 (died 1864); married Fannie Maria Adelaide Channing, 1864 (died 1889); married Tama Kura Kawa, 1897. Education: University College, Oxford, B.A. (with honors), 1854, M.A., 1856.

CAREER: Poet, journalist, and translator. King Edward's School, Birmingham, England, master, 1854-56; Deccan College at Poona, Bombay, India, principal, 1856-61; Daily Telegraph, London, England, writer, subeditor, then editor, 1861-88.

MEMBER: Order of the White Elephant of Siam (officer), Third Class of the Imperial Order of the Medjidie, Royal Asiatic and Royal Geographical Societies (fellow), Société de Géographie (Marseilles, France).

AWARDS, HONORS: Newdigate Prize, 1852, for The Feast of Belshazzar; Companion of the Star of India, 1877; Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire, 1888.

WRITINGS:

The Feast of Belshazzar: A Prize Poem, Macpherson (Oxford, England), 1852, [New York, NY], 1868.

Poems, Narrative and Lyrical, Macpherson (Oxford, England), 1853.

Griselda, a Tragedy, and Other Poems, Bogue (London, England), 1856.

The Wreck of the Northern Belle: A Poem, Bacon (Hastings, England), 1857.

Education in India, Bell & Daldy (London, England), 1860.

The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, two volumes, Saunders, Otley (London, England), 1862-65.

The Poets of Greece, Cassell, Peter & Galpin (New York, NY), 1869.

A Simple Transliteral Grammar of the Turkish Language with Dialogues and Vocabulary, Trübner (London, England), 1877.

The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation—Mahâbhinishkramana; Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (as Told in Verse by an Indian Buddhist), Trübner (London, England), 1879, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1880.

Poems, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1880.

Indian Poetry, Dutton (New York, NY), 1881.

Pearls of the Faith; or, Islam's Rosary; Being the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah (Asmâ-elhusmâ) with Comments in Verse from Various Oriental Sources as Made by an Indian Mussulman, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1883.

The Secret of Death, with Some Collected Poems, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1885.

Edwin Arnold Birthday Book, Compiled from the Works of Edwin Arnold, with New and Additional Poems Written Expressly Therefor, edited by Katherine Lilian Arnold and Constance Arnold, D. Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1885.

India Revisited, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1886.

Death—and Afterwards, Trübner (London, England), 1887.

Lotus and Jewel, Containing "In an Indian Temple," "A Casket of Gems," with Other Poems, Trübner (London, England), 1887.

Poems, National and Non-Oriental, with Some New Pieces, Trübner (London, England), 1888.

With Sa'di in the Garden; or, The Book of Love; Being the "Ishk" or Third Chapter of the "Bostân" of the Persian Poet Sa'di—Embodied in a Dialogue Held in the Garden of the Taj Mahal, at Agra, Roberts Brothers (Boston, MA), 1888.

In My Lady's Praise; Being Poems, Old and New, Written to the Honour of Fanny, Lady Arnold, and New Collected for Her Memory, Trübner (London, England), 1889.

The Light of the World; or, The Great Consummation, Funk & Wagnalls (New York, NY), 1891.

Japonica, Scribners (New York, NY), 1891.

Seas and Lands, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1891.

Sir Edwin Arnold's Poetical Works, eight volumes, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner (London, England), 1891-1909.

Potiphar's Wife and Other Poems, Scribners (New York, NY), 1892.

Adzuma; or, The Japanese Wife: A Play in Four Acts, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1893.

Wandering Words, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1894.

The Tenth Muse and Other Poems, Longmans, Green (London, England), 1895.

Victoria, Queen and Empress: The Sixty Years, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1896.

The Queen's Justice: A True Story of Indian Village Life, Burleigh (London, England), 1899.

(Translator) The Gulistan; Being the Rose-Garden of Shaikh Sa'di. The First Four "Babs," or "Gateways," Harper (New York, NY), 1899.

The Voyage of Ithobal: A Poem, Dillingham (New York, NY), 1901.

SIDELIGHTS: Edwin Arnold was a well-known British journalist and poet of the late nineteenth century.

Although much of his work did not endure into the twentieth century, Arnold enjoyed tremendous public and critical popularity throughout his lifetime.

Early in his career, Arnold lived in India and studied several languages of the Eastern world: Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Turkish. As a result of his studies, he gained an appreciation for the culture, literature, and philosophy of the East, and he strove to bring Western readers into contact with these exotic worlds through his writings and translations. In particular, Arnold had a great love and respect for India, which is evidenced by his most popular work, The Light of Asia: or, The Great Renunciation—Mahâbhinishkramana; Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (as Told in Verse by an Indian Buddhist). In the introduction to this book, Arnold wrote: "[It] is inspired by an abiding desire to aid in the better mutual knowledge of East and West." He further stated: "I hope . . . [that] this book . . . will preserve the memory of one who loved India and the Indian peoples."

During his undergraduate studies, Arnold was awarded the Newdigate Prize in 1852 for his poem The Feast of Belshazzar. This piece, which was based upon the Old Testament story of the prophet Daniel and King Belshazzar, was later published in Arnold's first collection of poetry, Poems, Narrative and Lyrical.

After his graduation from Oxford, Arnold married Katharine Elizabeth Biddulph. He then began to work as an educator, teaching for two years at King Edward's School in Birmingham, England. In 1856 he received a job offer from Deccan College in Bombay, India. Shortly thereafter, he and his wife moved to India, where Arnold worked as the principal of the government school. They lived in India for six years, during which time Arnold studied Eastern languages, customs, and culture.

Arnold returned to England in 1861. This move was precipitated by his wife's illness (she subsequently died in 1862) and the death of their only child. Upon his return to his homeland, Arnold embarked upon a new and different career. He began to write for the London Daily Telegraph, and continued employment with that newspaper until 1888. His journalistic skills were highly regarded and Arnold graduated from writing articles and editorials to a position as the newspaper's editor. Despite his highly demanding career, Arnold found time to pursue his other writing interests.

In 1879 he published his most well-known work, The Light of Asia. This poetic rendering of the life of Siddhartha Gautama (who would later become the Buddha) was an immediate success. Sixty editions of the book were published in England, while eighty editions appeared in the United States. The book's popularity was so great that it was also translated into other languages. These stories proved fascinating to European readers, for the life and teachings of Buddha were nearly unheard of in Europe before the publication of Arnold's work.

The Light of Asia relates the life of Prince Siddhartha from his birth and youth to his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and subsequent ascendance to the status of Buddha. The eight books, written in blank verse, are told in the voice of an Indian Buddhist. According to Arnold in the book's introduction, he employed that technique "because, to appreciate the spirit of Asiatic thoughts, they should be regarded from the Oriental point of view." Oliver Wendell Holmes, as quoted by Bernard R. Kogan in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, described The Light of Asia as: "a work of great beauty. It tells a story of intense interest, which never flags for a moment; its descriptions are drawn by the hand of a master with the eye of a poet." Holmes also wrote: "its tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to compare it but the New Testament." A writer for the London Times, also quoted by Kogan, noted: "The verse flows easily and is rich and luscious with oriental imagery; the thought never rises into heights where it is hard to follow."

Although The Light of Asia was widely received and highly acclaimed, there was a group of critics who "attacked the poem on both literary and moral-religious grounds," observed Kogan. Kogan noted that these writers, who embraced the Christian philosophy, denounced Arnold's work as "a pernicious book." William Cleaver Wilkinson was one of the strongest critics. In his book, Edwin Arnold as Poetizer and as Paganizer, he wrote: "Those who admire Mr. Edwin Arnold's poetry, admire unwisely." Wilkinson considered The Light of Asia to be "a broad joke from beginning to end." Kogan commented that Wilkinson was offended by Arnold's poem, feeling it "ensnared vast numbers of Christian readers" and forced them "from their ancient faith into the arms of a not altogether wholesome pagan one."

For the next twelve years, Arnold wrote various books; some dealt with Asian themes and others did not. His Poems, National and Non-Oriental, with Some New Pieces appeared as a "response to the reiterated charge that he wrote only Oriental poems," remarked Kogan. After the death of his second wife in 1889, Arnold published the work In My Lady's Praise; Being Poems, Old and New, Written to the Honour of Fanny, Lady Arnold, and New Collected for Her Memory.

Arnold may have felt compelled to write The Light of the World; or, The Great Consummation in order to appease critics of The Light of Asia. This poetic work paraphrases selected New Testament writings as the life of Jesus is conveyed to an Indian follower. By the end of the work, the disciple compares the teachings of Jesus to those of Buddha. According to Kogan: "Arnold failed to mitigate the negative feelings generated by the earlier Light of Asia, and the Christian epic achieved only a moderate success."

Despite various physical infirmities, Arnold continued to write until a few years before his death. He published several volumes of poetry, a biography of Queen Victoria, and a play titled Adzuma; or, The Japanese Wife. However, none of these works ever achieved the popularity of The Light of Asia.

An obituary in the London Times, quoted by Kogan, praised Arnold for his "astonishing fertility of language [and] luxuriant wealth of imagery." The writer felt that Arnold was an author who pursued "a subject of his own on which most of his countrymen and country-women were sadly ignorant, and of which they were quite willing to learn so much as could be presented to them in an attractive form."