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The Epicurean Humanism of Omar Khayyam

The Epicurean Humanism of Omar Khayyam. Pat Duffy Hutcheon.
Humanist in Canada, 1998 (Spring), p. 22-25, 29.

Summary

The man who was to keep the torch of scientific humanism alight within early Islamic civilization was born a thousand years after the death of Lucretius, and into a vastly different cultural setting. Nevertheless, in all that Omar Khayyam wrote one can clearly recognize the influence of the great Roman poet, and of the naturalistic Epicureanism that he celebrated. This is doubly remarkable when we recall that, during the centuries between Lucretius and Khayyam, a Dark Age had engulfed and stifled Western Europe. The spread of a mystical form of religion throughout the remnants of the Roman empire, combined with the influence of the Germanic tribes, had gradually produced what amounted to a reversion to barbarism. Gullibility and ignorance pervaded life at all levels, while economic activity declined to primitive levels of barter. An attitude of contempt for earthly existence and bodily pleasures had become the norm, along with belief in all manner of superstition and magic.

Bernard Quaritch as an antiquarian bookseller

Bernard Quaritch as an antiquarian bookseller. E. Glasgow.
Library review 47 (1998) nr. 1, p. 38-41.

Summary

This is a brief study of the life and work of the celebrated antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819‐1899). Born in Germany and having served his apprenticeship as a bookseller there, he came to London in 1842 with a letter of introduction to John Murray. After a short period in Paris he finally settled in London in 1845, setting up his own business there in 1845. This flourished and in his Victorian heyday Quaritch had an international fame, priding himself on being bookseller to many “eminent Victorians”. In 1859 he was also first to venture to publish Edward Fitzgerald’s somewhat daring “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. Quaritch had a firm and lasting influence on books and literature of his time. Apart from his enormous influence on private libraries he helped decisively to build up the collections of the British Museum and of the H.C. Folger Library in the USA. He illustrates how the book trade in Victorian England made its own forceful contributions to the advancement of literature, learning and libraries of all sorts.

‘Let the Credit Go’: Coleridge, Edward FitzGerald, and Literary Custody

‘Let the Credit Go’: Coleridge, Edward FitzGerald, and Literary Custody. Erik Gray.
Coleridge Bulletin: The Journal of the Friends of Coleridge (1999) (Autumn), p. 47-52.

Edward FitzGerald seems to have been thinking of Coleridge while translating the Rubáiyát. In a letter of May, 1857, about a year after he had been introduced to the poem, FitzGerald gives the first evidence that he has been translating it into verse. Only a single quatrain is translated, and that not into English, but into Latin; FitzGerald writes, “I could not help running into such bad Latin,” which, he says, “is to be read as Monkish Latin.”

Omar Khayyam, Mathematicians, and Conversazioni with Artisans

Omar Khayyam, Mathematicians, and Conversazioni with Artisans. A. Özdura.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 54 (1995) nr. 1, p. 54-71.

Summary

The main purpose of this article is to substantiate the proposition that mathematicians and architect-artisans had collaborated through special meetings, called conversazioni in the text, for the application of geometry to architecture in the Islamic world. A meeting reportedly attended by Omar Khayyam furnishes convincing evidence for this proposition. The study expands on the untitled treatise written by Omar Khayyam as a response to a question raised at this meeting. The treatise is about a problem that concerns an ornamental pattern, the story of which can be traced in two other works on geometry: Abu ‘l-Wafa’ al-Buzajani’s book, What the Artisan Requires of Geometric Constructions, and an anonymous Persian treatise on ornamental geometry, On Interlocking Similar or Corresponding Figures. While these three works are analyzed in the article, the wider implications of the collaboration between mathematicians and artisans concerning the field of architecture are discussed.

Omar Khayyâm en breton

Omar Khayyâm en breton. J.L. Backès.
Revue de littérature comparée 99 (1992) nr. 4 (Oct./Déc.), 419-437.

A la fin du volume de ses Poèmes publié en 1967, Roparz Hemon propose à son lecteur soixante-dix-sept quatrains réunis sous le titre général “Diwar Omar C’hayyam”, ce qui s’entend: “D’après Omar Khayyâm”. Honnêtement, le poète ajoute entre parenthèses: “hervez E. FitzGerald”, ce qui signifie: “selon FitzGerald”.