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Edward Fitzgerald and Other Men’s Flowers: Allusion in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Edward Fitzgerald and Other Men’s Flowers: Allusion in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Christopher Decker.
Literary Imagination 6 (2004) 2, pp. 213-239.

One of the most arresting images called to mind in Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is that of the corpus redivivum, the buried corpse that turns to flowers gently in the grave. The body’s separate members suffer a metamorphosis into other objects that recompose and recollect their bygone looks. Khayyám reflects: I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head. (XVIII)

The Rubaiyat of Edward FitzOmar – Edward FitzGerald, translator of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’

The Rubaiyat of Edward FitzOmar – Edward FitzGerald, translator of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’. G. Sloan.
American Atheist Magazine (2002) (Winter)

Long ago, in the Protestant hinterlands of northeast Texas, four young infidels consecrated their bibulous souls to Omar Khayyám, the eleventh-century Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet. Each Saturday night in an old Studebaker, we made a pilgrimage to Hugo, Oklahoma, the nearest wet town, to procure libations of Ripple wine. As we meandered homeward on isolated back roads, we swilled the “old familiar juice.” Between swigs, we recited quatrains from The Rubáiyát, the bible for apostate tipplers. The mellifluous verse articulated our cosmic incertitude, alienation, and melancholy yearning. It also lent a romantic aura to inebriation.