Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam Poem

[Leontina Heidgerken]

Althoughcommercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a "fin de sicle cult of the Rubaiyat".[1]

In the 1930s, Iranian scholars, notably Mohammad-Ali Foroughi, attempted to reconstruct a core of authentic verses from scattered quotes by authors of the 13th and 14th centuries, ignoring the younger manuscript tradition. After World War II, reconstruction efforts were significantly delayed by two clever forgeries. De Blois (2004) is pessimistic, suggesting that contemporary scholarship has not advanced beyond the situation of the 1930s, when Hans Heinrich Schaeder commented that the name of Omar Khayyam "is to be struck out from the history of Persian literature".[5]

FitzGerald completed his first draft in 1857 and sent it to Fraser's Magazine in January 1858.He made a revised draft in January 1859, of which he privately printed 250 copies. This first edition became extremely sought after by the 1890s, when "more than two million copies ha[d] been sold in two hundred editions".[9]

Critics of FitzGerald, on the other hand, have accused the translator of misrepresenting the mysticism of Sufi poetry by an overly literal interpretation. Thus, the view of Omar Khayyam as a Sufi was defended by Bjerregaard (1915).[13] Dougan (1991) likewise says that attributing hedonism to Omar is due to the failings of FitzGerald's translation, arguing that the poetry is to be understood as "deeply esoteric".[14] Idries Shah (1999) similarly says that FitzGerald misunderstood Omar's poetry.[15]

FitzGerald's "scepticist" reading of the poetry is still defended by modern scholars. Sadegh Hedayat (The Blind Owl, 1936) was the most notable modern proponent of Khayyam's philosophy as agnostic scepticism. In his introductory essay to his second edition of the Quatrains of the Philosopher Omar Khayyam (1922), Hedayat states that "while Khayyam believes in the transmutation and transformation of the human body, he does not believe in a separate soul; if we are lucky, our bodily particles would be used in the making of a jug of wine".[18] He concludes that "religion has proved incapable of surmounting his inherent fears; thus Khayyam finds himself alone and insecure in a universe about which his knowledge is nil". In his later work (Khayyam's Quatrains, 1935), Hedayat further maintains that Khayyam's usage of Sufic terminology such as "wine" is literal, and that "Khayyam took refuge in wine to ward off bitterness and to blunt the cutting edge of his thoughts."[6]

Of the five editions published, four were published under the authorial control of FitzGerald. The fifth edition, which contained only minor changes from the fourth, was edited posthumously on the basis of manuscript revisions FitzGerald had left.

Numerous later editions were published after 1889, notably an edition with illustrations by Willy Pogany first published in 1909 (George G. Harrap, London). It was issued in numerous revised editions. This edition combined FitzGerald's texts of the 1st and 4th editions and was subtitled "The First and Fourth Renderings in English Verse".

FitzGerald's translation is rhyming and metrical, and rather free. Many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to his source material at all.[23] Michael Kearney claimed that FitzGerald described his work as "transmogrification".[24] To a large extent, the Rubaiyat can be considered original poetry by FitzGerald loosely based on Omar's quatrains rather than a "translation" in the narrow sense.

My translation will interest you from its form, and also in many respects in its detail: very un-literal as it is. Many quatrains are mashed together: and something lost, I doubt, of Omar's simplicity, which is so much a virtue in him. (letter to E. B. Cowell, 9/3/58)

I suppose very few people have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though certainly not to be literal. But at all Costs, a Thing must live: with a transfusion of one's own worse Life if one can't retain the Originals better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle. (letter to E. B. Cowell, 4/27/59)

I desire a little ruby wine and a book of verses,

Just enough to keep me alive, and half a loaf is needful;

And then, that I and thou should sit in a desolate place

Is better than the kingdom of a sultan.

John Leslie Garner published an English translation of 152 quatrains in 1888. His was also a free, rhyming translation.Quatrain I. 20 (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above):

In Spring time I love to sit in the meadow with a paramour

perfect as a Houri and goodly jar of wine, and though

I may be blamed for this, yet hold me lower

than a dog if ever I dream of Paradise.

This worn caravanserai which is called the world

Is the resting-place of the piebald horse of night and day;

It is a pavilion which has been abandoned by a hundred Jamshyds;

It is a palace that is the resting-place of a hundred Bahrams.

A. J. Arberry in 1949 and 1952 produced translations of two putative thirteenth-century manuscripts recently acquired by the Chester Beatty Library and Cambridge University Library. However, it was soon established that, unbeknown to Arberry or the libraries, the manuscripts were recent forgeries.[31][32] While Arberry's work had been misguided, it was published in good faith.

A modern version of 235 quatrains, claiming to be "as literal an English version of the Persian originals as readability and intelligibility permit", was published in 1979 by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs. Their edition provides two versions of the thematic quatrain, the first (98) considered by the Persian writer Sadeq Hedayat to be a spurious attribution.[34]

In spring if a houri-like sweetheart

Gives me a cup of wine on the edge of a green cornfield,

Though to the vulgar this would be blasphemy,

If I mentioned any other Paradise, I'd be worse than a dog.

Many Russian-language translations have been undertaken, reflecting the popularity of the Rubaiyat in Russia since the late 19th century and the increasingly popular tradition of using it for the purposes of bibliomancy. The earliest verse translation (by Vasily Velichko) was published in 1891. The version by Osip Rumer published in 1914 is a translation of FitzGerald's version. Rumer later published a version of 304 rubaiyat translated directly from Persian. A lot of poetic translations (some based on verbatim translations into prose by others) were also written by German Plisetsky, Konstantin Bal'mont, Cecilia Banu, I. I. Tkhorzhevsky (ru), L. Pen'kovsky, and others.

"Sufis understood his poems outwardly and considered them to be part of their mystical tradition. In their sessions and gatherings, Khayyam's poems became the subject of conversation and discussion. His poems, however, are inwardly like snakes who bite the sharia [Islamic law] and are chains and handcuffs placed on religion. Once the people of his time had a taste of his faith, his secrets were revealed. Khayyam was frightened for his life, withdrew from writing, speaking and such like and travelled to Mecca. Once he arrived in Baghdad, members of a Sufi tradition and believers in primary sciences came to him and courted him. He did not accept them and after performing the pilgrimage returned to his native land, kept his secrets to himself and propagated worshipping and following the people of faith." cited after Aminrazavi (2007)[page needed]

"The writings of Omar Khayyam are good specimens of Sufism, but are not valued in the West as they ought to be, and the mass of English-speaking people know him only through the poems of Edward Fitzgerald. It is unfortunate because Fitzgerald is not faithful to his master and model, and at times he lays words upon the tongue of the Sufi which are blasphemous. Such outrageous language is that of the eighty-first quatrain for instance. Fitzgerald is doubly guilty because he was more of a Sufi than he was willing to admit." C. H. A. Bjerregaard, Sufism: Omar Khayyam and E. Fitzgerald, The Sufi Publishing Society (1915), p. 3

This is part of 200 to 600 rubaiyat, or four line poems done by Omar Khayyam in about 1080 AD. This guy was an awesome dude. He solved some major math problems and was an astronomer. (There's a crater on the moon named after him.) I admire him for that, but he was also a poet. He wrote in Farsi, but a poet named Edward J. Fitzgerald translated them. Sometimes faithfully, sometimes he "improved" on it for his Engish audiences, but he stayed pretty close to the spirit of them! The above website has really good translations of all the rubaiyat--literal, meaning, Fitzgerald's, and even German! Here is the poem.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on : nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

I was immediately drawn to this poem because of my love of reading. The poem's spirit is really closer to destiny being written already and can't be changed, but I like to think of it in relation to books and stories I read. The story is written, and no matter how much I regret reading it, or wish it was different, it is written and can't be changed. I have cried over a tale, wanting it to be different, but the "moving finger" has already moved on to the next sentence. I love this short, bittersweet poem. I especially thought my niece would like this one, being a writer. I wonder if writer's think this way? If I was writing, and something truly tragic happened, I would be tempted to delete it and rewrite the happier version my heart wanted. A true writer must follow the characters where they are destined to go and not give into this, I suppose! That is why I'm not a writer. I shall remain a reader, and happy.Tags: fate, omar khayyam, poem

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