Omar Khayyám (1040/62 -1131/32) y la filosofía árabe. Martín González Fernández.
Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, 21 (2014), pp. 119-130.
This article analyzes the figure of Omar Khayyam (Nîsâbur, Persia, ca. 1040/62, – ca. 1131/32, Nîsâbur) by looking at his famous quatrains or rubayat, focusing on the reception and review of the Arab philosophies of his time, and the defense that he makes of Persian Archaic, Zoroastrian, Mazdean and Manichean culture and philosophy.
Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam. B. Crucifix.
Filter 21 (2014) 2, p. 7-19.
Paul Claes is a notorious Flemish translator, most famous for his translations of classic and modernist texts; but he is also a novelist and a poet, a critic and a scholar. This article examines how translation and writing interconnects in Claes’s translations and pastiche of Edward FitzGerald’s (free) translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Because of a cultural difference in legal status and representation, translating and writing are often considered to be strictly separate activities, establishing a hierarchical distinction between ‘creative’ and ‘derivative’ modes.
FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Popularity and Neglect, edited by Adrian Poole, Christine van Ruymbeke, William H. Martin, and Sandra Mason (Review). A. Barton.
Victorian Studies, 56 (2014), Nr 2 (Winter), pp. 327-329.
FitzOmar the fascinating “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. D. Rice
English review, 24 (2013) 1, pp. 16-19.
Edward FitzGerald’s imperfectly translated collection of 75 quatrains by the 12C Persian polymath Omar Khayyam has become a global phenomenon since its initial publication in 1859. The best known poetry book in the world, the “Rubaiyat” has been produced in at least 900 editions in 85 languages, while 130 artists have illustrated it and 150 composers have set it to music. This article suggests the many reasons for its success, such as the brevity and consequent digestibility of its four-line stanzas, the vivacity of the dramas they contain, and their sense of honesty, humour and reassurance. It also acknowledges the astute marketing and merchandising campaigns that helped to establish the collection’s assimilation into popular culture.
A Comparative Study of Modulation in English Translations of Khayyam’s Quatrains. Mojtaba Delzendehrooy ; Amin Karimnia.
Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 70 (2013), pp. 28–40.
During the process of translation, the relatedness of content and form sometimes leads to some changes in semantics or point of view of the original text. This study tries to investigate the instances of modulation occurred in the translation of poetry. To this end, two English translations of Khayyam’s quatrains (FitzGerald and Emami) were studied to see what kinds of modulation have been used by the translators and consequently how they have changed the semantics and points of view of the original work; i.e. Khayyam’s quatrains. The two translations were studied carefully to identify the instances of modulations occurred.
Rescuing Omar Khayyam from the Victorians. J. Cole.
Michigan Quarterly Review, 52 (2013) 2, pp. 169-173.
The Rubaiyat or quatrains attributed to the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. circa 1126) of Nishapur were made famous by the loose rendering of Edward Fitzgerald, first published in 1859. Specialists in Persian literature now agonize over how many, if any, of these poems were actually written by Khayyam. For a century after his death he was not renowned as a poet, even to those who knew him and wrote about him. Slightly later sources occasionally attribute one or two, or some as many as thirteen, Persian quatrains to the scientist. The oldest substantial book of them giving him as the author is a 1460 manuscript from Shiraz now held in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (this was a principal source for Fitzgerald). Obviously it is very late, and eighty-two of the poems in it also appear in the divans or poetry collections of other authors.
Secular Pleasures and Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. A. Çelikkol.
Victorian Poetry, 51 (2013) 4, pp. 511-532.
The author starts from the point of view that FitzGerald’s poem “imagines a secular experience that resists the reign of reason. Musing on transcendental matters cannot help the speaker to make sense of his own existence, but neither can rational inquiry. (…) he relates to the material world around him by seeking and embracing pleasure. Through the senses of wonder, connectedness, and enchantment inspired by the self’s engagement with the natural world, FitzGerald transfers some of the most fulfilling aspects of religion onto a secular experience.” The essays then goes on to demonstrate how this idea is an “articulation of some of the insights that have come to inform the critical study of the secular today”.