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Robert Graves’s Mythopoetic Hospitality

Robert Graves’s Mythopoetic Hospitality. Sara Greaves
In: HAL Open Science, 2023

This article draws on poetry criticism, translation studies and, briefly, hospitality studies to revisit the controversial translation of The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah. Graves took an interest in Sufism, especially as a ‘force of mental power which could be created by telepathic communication’ and worked together with the Shah brothers to dislodge Fitzgerald’s nineteenth-century best-selling version and replace it with what was intended to be a founding text of twentieth-century Western Sufism, a ‘secondary original’. Nevertheless, the poet polymath had his own agenda, an act of mythopoetic hospitality that the controversy should not be allowed to overshadow.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in the interpretation of the Russian scientist Z.N. Vorozheykina

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in the interpretation of the Russian scientist Z.N. Vorozheykina. Sultanova Zulkhumor Sabatullaevna
In: ANGLISTICUM. Journal of the Association-Institute for English Language and American Studies, Vol. 12 (2023), 11 (November), p. 27-33

In this article, Z.N.Vorozheykina, first of all, paid attention to the socio-ethical events that were the focus of the poet’s attention, and in this context, analyzed the meaning and ideological essence of the poet’s rubai, and in the article “Umar Khayyom and Khayyom’s rubai” first Khayyom indicates the sources that informed him as a poet. In particular, he mentions the testimonies of “Khayyam’s younger contemporary, historian Abulhasan Bayhaqi”, Arabic-speaking historian Kifti, Arabic-speaking jurist Najmuddin Razi about “Khayyam’s Arabic poems and his Persian rubai”. This scientist singles out Khayyam’s poetry in the rubai genre and considers “the main content of his poems to be philosophical and joyous lyrics.” In this context, analyzing Khayyam’s Rubaiyat based on a mental approach, he comes to the conclusion that it is a “great idea”. Taking into account the personality of the poet Khayyam, that is, the confirmation of the right of every person living on earth to live happily, allows us to consider Khayyam the greatest humanist of the past,” he says (45, 13). From this point of view, the researcher analyzes samples from Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. and shows its essence and main approaches of thought. Segregation of Khayyam’s work into the world of topics, identification of ideological directions, recognition and evaluation of Khayyam’s work, the merits of this orientalist are very great. Omar Khayyam’s biography occupies a special place in Russian oriental studies. In the scientific works devoted to the study of this topic, issues such as his birthplace, social status, date and place of birth, personal and family life, and his relationship with his contemporaries were evaluated from different angles.

Omar Khayyam: Deorientalized and Retranslated

Omar Khayyam: Deorientalized and Retranslated. M. Kamiar. Mountain ViewWorld Class Educational Entertainment, 2022. 294 p. ISBN: 979-8843721077.

This is a (Re)translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat from its original Farsi into English more faithfully, making sure the connotation, inferences, and meanings of the verses penned by Omar Khayyam in Farsi are maintained. In the process of writing about the Orientalist approach of Edward FitzGerald’s original translation, the Racist Orientalists’ role in destroying the Orient was explained. In the heat of the summer of 2020, most people in the world had to face the two pandemics of COVID-19 and racial hate crimes committed by the supremacists.

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings. Annmarie Drury
In: Modern Philology 121 (2023) 2, p. 169-191

Abstract

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili poem Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili (Omar Khayyam in Swahili) (1952), translated from Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1859), provides a study in the reach and transformation of British literature of the nineteenth century and in the significance of translation within a colonial sphere. Robert (1909–1962), a major Swahili author, was employed by the colonial service for all his working life, and in terms of his receipt of FitzGerald’s poem and the very language he used, the Standard Swahili created by the British colonial state, his translation was imbricated in a colonial context. He exercised significant creative agency as translator, plumbing FitzGerald’s poem for underlying elements of Khayyám’s Persian and translating FitzGerald’s rendering of Khayyám to highlight affiliations between Khayyám and Swahili poetic tradition. At the inception of Robert’s translating of FitzGerald lay a troubling experience of dislocation that resonates with FitzGerald’s creation of his translation and the reception of that poem and that helps us understand the affective associations belonging to Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili. Thus, Robert nurtured the cosmopolitan connections of Swahili poetry while creating for Standard Swahili—a variety of Swahili with little poetry to call its own—a poem bearing a sense of poetic tradition.

Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat

Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat. Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat. Ismail Alghamdi, Mohammed Albarakati.
In: Journal of Translation and Language Studies, 5 (2024) 1, pp. 65-81.

Research studies from around the globe on Omar Khayyẚm’s Persian quatrains and their translation into English by the poet, writer, and translator Edward Fitzgerald, are in abundance. Researchers are, in general, in praise of the translation and give credit to Fitzgerald for making Khayyẚm a world-renowned poet. However, the translation has rarely been approached from a socio-political perspective, or a look into Fitzgerald’s ideological manipulation of the original. The present research study investigates two issues with Fitzgerald’s translation- ideological manipulation and selective translation. The study also looks into Khayyẚm’s life and his works. It probes into the effects this translation left on the literary scene. The study involves a comparative literary translation analysis to compare and contrast the elements found in Fitzgerald’s translation and two Arabic translations. Employing Lefevere’s (1992) theory of ‘translation as rewriting,’ this paper assesses the extent to which a translator’s ideology can lead to a misrepresented product of translation (Lefevere, 1992). The study adopts textual analysis as a research method to capture the epicurean elements recurrently emphasized by Fitzgerald in his translation.

Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát

Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát. Sylvia Yount.
American Art, 29 (2015), 2, pp. 112–118.

The distinctive work and career of Elihu Vedder have proven difficult to categorize in the history of American art. Part academic naturalist, part progressive symbolist, the artist is best remembered for his allegorical and literary paintings. Yet a more contextual examination of Vedder’s production challenges the standard view of him as a visionary out of step with the art world of his time and unconcerned with the broader cultural reach of his work.