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The Fin de Siècle cult of FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam

The Fin de Siècle cult of FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam. John D. Yohannan.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 5-19.
(From Review of National Literatures 2, no. 1.)

Yohannan describes how the Rubaiyat was recognised as “a disintegrating spiritual force in England and America” and how in the Omar Khayyam clubs the veneration for the translator tended to surpass worship of the poet.

Fugitive articulation: an introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Fugitive articulation: an introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. D Schenker.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 59-76.
(From Victorian Poetry 19, no. 1.)

Schenker takes an innovative and challenging look at the Rubaiyat, questioning why we fail today to respond to it as a work of serious literary art (p. 60). The author compares its effect on an audience with that of an “unimpeachable contemporary masterpiece, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The Rubaiyat’s wide appeal might be that it “institutionalizes a cult of spiritual resignation” and that it is “sufficiently void of meaning to be recyclable in any number of contexts”. In his analysis of the poem, the author recognises its “verbal claustrophobia”.

Larger hopes and the new hedonism: Tennyson and FitzGerald

Larger hopes and the new hedonism: Tennyson and FitzGerald. Norman Page.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 151-168.
(From Tennyson: Seven Essays, edited by Philip Collins. 1992 by The Macmillan Press Ltd.)

Page compares Tennyson’s In Memoriam with the almost contemporary Rubaiyat. The author’s analysis is that, even as he confronts the threats to faith posed by the new science (Darwin), Tennyson remains conservative and reassuring with the strength of his convictions, while the Rubaiyat, a fin-de-siecle poem “born before its time”, is uncompromisingly unorthodox and challenging with the power of its scepticism.

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)

FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation

FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation. Habibollah Mashhady, Mahbube Noura.
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research 3 (2012) 4, pp. 370–384.

The present paper attempts to explore FitzGerald’s overall approach to translation by examining his translated works and particularly by focusing on his translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Khayyam Rubaiyat is selected as the text to gather data and it is compared to its English translation by FitzGerald in order to identify the strategies he used in translating it into English.

Méditation sur les mystères de la création. Paul Valéry et Omar al Khayyâm

Méditation sur les mystères de la création. Paul Valéry et Omar al Khayyâm. Mohammad Reza Mohseni.
Revue Annales du patrimoine, (2012) Nr. 12, pp. 57-71.

La méditation sur la mort, l’ordre de l’existence ainsi que les mystères de la Genèse constitue l’objet principal des études philosophiques dont s’inspirent, de temps à autre, la poésie et la littérature. Cette recherche se fixe comme objectif de démontrer si l’attitude des poètes Paul Valéry et Omar al Khayyâm à l’encontre des notions telles que la mort et l’existence tire son origine de leur affres de la mort, ou bien elle prend ses sources dans leurs préoccupations philosophiques. Nous allons étudier les attributs narcissiques des poèmes de Valéry, en pleine contra diction avec des vers cosmopolites et regorgés de sagesse de Khayyâm.