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The sweetest of Fitzgerald’s quatrains

The sweetest of Fitzgerald’s quatrains. Henry E. Legler
in: Book Lover, November-December 1902, p. 464-465

Compares FitzGerald’s famous quatrain no. 12 (1879) “A Book of Verses …” with translations by other authors (Le Galienne, Curtis, Pickering, Kerney, Whinfield, Garner, Keene, Anson, Costello, Cowell and Powell.

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings. Annmarie Drury
In: Modern Philology 121 (2023) 2, p. 169-191

Abstract

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili poem Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili (Omar Khayyam in Swahili) (1952), translated from Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1859), provides a study in the reach and transformation of British literature of the nineteenth century and in the significance of translation within a colonial sphere. Robert (1909–1962), a major Swahili author, was employed by the colonial service for all his working life, and in terms of his receipt of FitzGerald’s poem and the very language he used, the Standard Swahili created by the British colonial state, his translation was imbricated in a colonial context. He exercised significant creative agency as translator, plumbing FitzGerald’s poem for underlying elements of Khayyám’s Persian and translating FitzGerald’s rendering of Khayyám to highlight affiliations between Khayyám and Swahili poetic tradition. At the inception of Robert’s translating of FitzGerald lay a troubling experience of dislocation that resonates with FitzGerald’s creation of his translation and the reception of that poem and that helps us understand the affective associations belonging to Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili. Thus, Robert nurtured the cosmopolitan connections of Swahili poetry while creating for Standard Swahili—a variety of Swahili with little poetry to call its own—a poem bearing a sense of poetic tradition.

Omar Khayyám en de Rubaiyat in vertaling en romans

Omar Khayyám en de Rubaiyat in vertaling en romans. Kees Hendrikse
In: Boekenpost 10 (2002), 61, p. 34–35

In de serie onder de titel BOEKBOEKEN bespreekt Kees Hendrikse bekende en minder bekende schrijvers met hun boeken over mensen die boeken lezen, schrijven, drukken of verkopen: Garfield, Canetti, Bradbury, Hanff, e.a. Dit keer de apocriefe lotgevallen van een wereldberoemde tekst.

Meer dan gedichtjes lezen. De invloed van Perzische dichters op de Nederlandse literatuur

Meer dan gedichtjes lezen. De invloed van Perzische dichters op de Nederlandse literatuur. Christiaan Weijts
In: Mare 29 16-3-2006, p. 13

Mark Twain had tot op zijn sterfbed altijd een bundeltje van Omar Khayyam op zak. Ook Nederlandse auteurs zijn dol op Perzische poëzie. Van Bilderdijk tot Jan Wolkers. Vrijdag 17 maart 2006 verschijnt voor het eerst een monografie over de invloed van Perzische poëzie op de Nederlandse literatuur.

 

Het jaar van Omar Khayyám

Het jaar van Omar Khayyám. Janneke van der Veer
In: Boekenpost, 17 (2009) 101, p. 43-45

2009 is niet alleen het jaar van Darwin en Calvijn, het is ook het jaar van de Perzische dichter Omar Khayyám. Dit jaar is het namelijk 150 jaar geleden dat de eerste Engelse bewerking van aan hem toegeschreven gedichten verscheen. Bovendien is het 200 jaar geleden dat Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), die voor deze bewerking heeft gezorgd, geboren is. Alle aanleiding dus voor een gesprek met Jos Biegstraaten, voorzitter van het Omar Khayyám Genootschap.

‘Momentary glimpse’

‘Momentary glimpse’. Final report of the Conference “The Legacy of Omar Khayyam” (6-7 July 2009, Leiden University). Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

In: Persica 23 (2010), p. 123–126

The conference was intended to highlight not only Khayyam as a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, but also the reception of Khayyam in various literary traditions. It was very successful, in terms of academic achievement and of networking and establishing new projects in the future.

 

Dis-contenting Khayyam in the Context of Comparative Literature

Dis-contenting Khayyam in the Context of Comparative Literature. An Invitation to Translating Rubaiyat with a Focal Shift from Content to Form. Sajad Soleymani Yazdi
In: International journal of comparative literature and translation studies, 7 (2018) 1, p. 24-30

Abstract

Since its conception in France in 1877, Comparative Literature, always subject to a critique of Eurocentrism, has been in a state of perpetual crisis. In “The Old/New Question of Comparison in Literary Studies: A Post-European Perspective” (2004), Ray Chow argued for a Post-European perspective in which comparatists begin with the home culture and look outwards to the European cultures, contrary to the dominant approach of doing just otherwise. Missing in Chow’s argument is the position of translation in this post-European perspective. In the 14 years between 2004 and 2018, the grandiose claims of comparative literature have been problematized and addressed; the lay of the land, however, remains predominantly Eurocentric, as it still focuses on content disproportionately. In this paper, through a study of English translations of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, and taking Chow’s argument further, I argue that with its commitment to transfer the form of a text as much as the content, translation studies can further help comparative literature to distance itself from Europe. To exemplify the implication of this, I suggest that a translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat from Farsi to English would be more faithful to the original if its translations were to focus on the poem’s form rather than the content. I argue that translating with a focus on form would foreignize Khayyam’s poetry, hence an act of resistance against cultural hegemony.

The Afterlife of Edward FitzGerald s Poem

The Afterlife of Edward FitzGerald s Poem. A Comparative Study of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and Housman s A Shropshire Lad. Mostada Hosseini
In: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies , (2018) 1, p. 19-34

Abstract

The present paper seeks to address and examine Edward FitzGerald’s globally-known poem afterlife, The Rubáiyát. Translation can serve as a force for literary renewal and innovation. For many years translation was regarded as a marginal area within comparative studies, now it is acknowledged that translation has played a vital role in literary history and great periods of literary innovation tend to be preceded by periods of intense translation activity. The significance of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát lies in how the poem was read when it appeared and in the precise historical moment when it was published. The impact of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát was such that on the one hand it served as a model for a new generation of poets struggling to make the skepticism and pessimism a proper subject for poetry, while on the other hand it established a benchmark for future translators because it set the parameters in the minds of English-language readers of what Persian poetry could do. The present chapter tries to show that FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát had a role in forming pre-modern English poetry, notably Housman’s poetry, in terms of form and content. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad and FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát have undeniable similarities.

Omar Khayyám on theodicy

Omar Khayyám on theodicy. Irreconcilability of the transcendental and the imminent. Mehdi Aminrazavi
In: Journal of Islamic Philosophy, 11 (2019), p. 33-44.

Abstract

The philosophical and theological thoughts of Omar Khayyām, the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and the likely author of the Rubāʿiyyāt (Quatrains), has remained a neglected area of scholarship. Much of the scholarship on Khayyām in the last few centuries has primarily been focused on his Quatrains, and to a lesser extent, on his views on mathematics and geometry. Despite Khayyām’s significance, his six philosophical treatises were not even edited nor published until recently, which is perhaps why they have remained relatively obscure. In this article, Khayyām’s dual views on theodicy are presented notwithstanding that he is the only figure we know of in the annals of Islamic intellectual history who adopted two opposite positions—simultaneously— with regard to the problem of evil. This article postulates that Khayyām’s dual positions on theodicy can only be understood if they are placed in their proper contexts; philosophically, theodicy is explainable, while on a more experiential level it is not. Conclusions may vary, depending on whether we are looking at the presence of evil from a transcendental or an imminent perspective.

 

The Impact of Power and Ideology on Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of the Rubáiyát

The Impact of Power and Ideology on Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of the Rubáiyát. A Postcolonial Approach. Bentolhoda Nakhaei
In: TranscUlturAl, 11 (2019) 1, p. 35-48

Abstract

This paper analyzes the issues raised by the change of ideology and the underlying meanings in five FitzGerald’s translations of Khayyám’s quatrains according to the theories of certain translation scholars such as André Lefevere and Antoine Berman. With regard to the fact that the British translator has given a harmonizing beauty and an epicurean flavor of his own to Khayyám’s Rubáiyát, could it be claimed that translator’s voice is louder than the author’s? From the transcreation point of view, one could wonder whether FitzGerald did maintain the intent, style, tone, and content of the Persian quatrains. Do FitzGerald’s translations evoke the same emotions and does it carry the same implications in English as Khayyám’s Rubáiyát does in Persian. In general, from a postcolonial perspective, FitzGerald’s five English translations could offer interesting and fertile ground for investigating the effects of power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized text during the Victorian age in England.