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The Rubáiyát: A Labour of Love

The Rubáiyát: A Labour of Love. Reza Taher-Kermani.
Victoriographies, 7 (2017) 1, pp. 76-80.

This is an essay on the genesis of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The contention is that the Rubáiyát ensued, at least, partly from the affection that Edward FitzGerald had for his friend and mentor in Persian, Edward Byles Cowell. FitzGerald used Omar Khayyám as an excuse to stay in touch with his dear friend Cowell, who left England after introducing him to Khayyám and his poetry. But FitzGerald soon fell in love with ‘Omar’, his new Persian mentor, and replaced the love that he had for Cowell with the one he developed for ‘Omar’. The result of this love was the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

FitzGerald’s Anglo-Persian Rubáiyát

FitzGerald’s Anglo-Persian Rubáiyát. R. Taher-Kermani.
Translation and Literature, 23 (2014), nr. 3 (324-335)

This article examines Edward FitzGerald’s translation practice and the poetics of his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) in order to to enrich and supplement previous critiques. FitzGerald succeeded in ‘Persianising’ his re-writing of the rubáiyát by importing matter of peculiar Persian significance. In order to identify it, his translation of Khayyám needs to be read with, so to speak, a Persian eye; it has to be scrutinized as a native critic would read and analyse the poetry of, for example, Hāfiz. This is the fundamental approach of this essay.