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Les lectures de Khayyâm en France

Les lectures de Khayyâm en France. Sarah Mirdâmâdi.
La Revue de Tehran (2010) 59 (Octobre)

Les célèbres Robâiyât de Khayyâm ont fait l’objet d’un très grand nombre de traductions en différentes langues occidentales. Si la première et la plus fameuse fut la traduction anglaise de Fitzgerald, à partir de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, plusieurs traductions françaises des Quatrains ne tardèrent pas à être publiées. Les fameux poèmes suscitèrent de nombreux débats concernant la personnalité de leur auteur : Khayyâm était-il un hédoniste ou même un ivrogne aux penchants nihilistes avide de profiter des jouissances de l’instant présent ?

‘Umar al-Khayyám’s contribution to the Arabic mathematical theory of music

‘Umar al-Khayyám’s contribution to the Arabic mathematical theory of music. M. Barontini; T.M. Tonietti.
Arabic sciences and philosophy, 20 (2010), nr. 2 (Sept.), p. 255-279.

The authors present the Arabic text, with an English translation, of certain pages dedicated by al-Khayyām to the mathematical theory of music. Our edition is based on a manuscript extant in a library in Manisa (Turkey), and corrects the mistakes found in another transcription. Lastly, we compare the theory of al-Khayyām with other Arabic theories of Music, and with those coming from other traditions.

FitzGerald’s Omar and Hardy’s Jude: A Humanistic Kinship

FitzGerald’s Omar and Hardy’s Jude: A Humanistic Kinship. Asad al-Ghalith.
The Midwest Quarterly, 51 (2010) 1, pp. 57–69.

Edward Fitzgerald’s poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, focuses on some of the major humanistic issues of the Victorian period: What is man? From whence did he come? What is his purpose in life? In FitzGerald’s translation of the poem, Omar appears to be strongly preoccupied with the fatalistic vision of man’s existence. This vision was one that emerged again and again in Victorian writers. Thomas Hardy, in Jude the Obscure, wrestled with a fatalistic view of man not unlike FitzGerald’s. This article will draw parallels between the two literary works not only to suggest a matter of influence, but also to stress the common intellectual heritage of humankind.

Ventriloquism

Ventriloquism. Marina Warner.
London Review of Books, 31 (2009) 7 (9 April)

Review of: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald, edited by Daniel Karlin. Oxford, 167 pp, January 2009.

Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Richard Dalby
Book and Magazine Collector (2009), nr. 314, p. 44-61.

Dalby presents a short history of the Rubáiyát and highlights the most important and best known illustrated editions, also giving prices that were realized at recent auctions. The article is illuminated with sixteen illustrations from these editions, mainly by artists from the first decades of the previous century, such as Greiffenhagen, Palmer, Robinson, Dulac, Brangwyn, Bull, Geddes and Balfour.

Metaphor, translation, and autoekphrasis in FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat

Metaphor, translation, and autoekphrasis in FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. Herbert F. Tucker.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 69-85.

Among the many virtues of Christopher Decker’s edition of the FitzGerald Rubaiyat is its patient elucidation, not only of the various circumstances surrounding the text’s multiple versions, but of what we can infer about the translator’s equally various attitude toward his work. Enthusiastic, torpid, apologetic, cavalier, across two decades and more between the first edition of 1859 and the final one of 1879 the anonymous agent who once signed himself in correspondence “Fitz-Omar” remains hard to read with assurance–by reason partly of a diffidence that was specific to the man’s…