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The Hunter Rubáiyát: illustrating Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam in an contemporary Australian setting

The Hunter Rubáiyát: illustrating Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam in an contemporary Australian setting. Tallulah Cunningham. Newcastle, University of Newcastle, 2015.

Summary

Edward FitzGerald’s poem Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám has been illustrated over a hundred and fifty times during the decade and a half since its first publication. These illustrations have depicted exotic, arcadian other-places that ignore the poem’s frequent endorsement to live with immediacy. My Practice-based Creative PhD project has focused on producing a visual interpretation that reflects the immediate landscapes of my own physical situation: modern Australia. I have crafted illustrations that use the current landscapes and biotic content of the Hunter Valley, NSW, to emphasise not only the ongoing relevance of this poem to the brevity of human life but also my interpretations of the poem. To describe the poem’s frequent references to the passage of time I have drawn on my experience as a Natural History Illustrator, integrating the cycle of seasonal climatic events, plant and animal behaviour into my visual interpretation. I have also inverted the existing trend of exotic illustrations in a familiar physical context (that of a book) by presenting my depiction of the familiar, local environments in two exotic formats. These formats are based on Japanese narrative-scrolls and woodblock prints, providing unusual and intentionally tactile creative objects.

Late night thoughts on reading Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam

Late night thoughts on reading Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam: my own reflections on a poem that has guided me well. Robert Gary. Independently published, 2017. 55 p. ISBN: 978-1520406756.

Summary:
This book is personal philosophical reflections on reading on Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as translated by Edward Fitzgerald. Only some of the rubai are included, and the ones selected for including are taken from many different editions of the Fitzgerald translation based on the author’s own preference of which was the best. The French translations are his own amateur attempt to convey the basic meaning of a few rubai into modern French. The illustrations are Gary’s own gouache and watercolor paintings done in 1995.

Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi Interpreted

Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi Interpreted. The Politics and Scholarship of Translating Persian Poetry. Amir Theilhaber.
In: Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist Scholarship and International Politics. Berlin, Munich, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020. viii, 627 pp. ISBN: 978-3-11-063925-4.
Also available as Open Access document.

Summary

In the recently published Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist scholarship and international politics Amir Theilhaber describes the diplomatic career and scholarly-literary productions of Friedrich Rosen “to investigate how politics influenced knowledge generated about the “Orient” and charts the roles knowledge played in political decision-making regarding extra-European regions. This is pursued through analyses of Germans in British imperialist contexts, cultures of lowly diplomatic encounters in Middle Eastern cities, Persian poetry in translation, prestigious Orientalist congresses in northern climes,leveraging knowledge in high-stakes diplomatic encounters, and the making of Germany’s Islam policy up to the Great War.” An extensive chapter 6 deals with Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi, in the context of politics and scholarship of translating Persian Poetry.

Tamám : trace, reinterpretation and the periphery of poetic translation

Tamám : trace, reinterpretation and the periphery of poetic translation. Simon P. Everett. Colchester, Essex University, 2019. Thesis (Ph.D).

Summary

This thesis consists of two parts: my main creative project, Tamám; four translations of the Chinese T’ang poet Yu Xuanji; and an accompanying critical commentary. Tamám is a present-day reimagining of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám consisting of one-hundred-and-one quatrains. It frames translation as a creative process informed by philosopher Jacques Derrida’s la trace (trace): that source texts and other sources defer their meaning to one another, simultaneously absent and present in the genesis of new writing. These sources tangentially influence and “mark” the content and meaning of a new text. The main translational elements of Tamám are the Persian source text of The Rubáiyát; Edward FitzGerald’s 19th century translation of The Rubáiyát; the case of the Somerton Man; the sociopolitical climate of 21st century south-east England; translation theory and deconstruction theory.

Un voyageur dans la tourmente

Un voyageur dans la tourmente : lecture de la pensée d’Omar Khayyâm : avec adaptation de 133 quatrains et de poèmes en arabe de Khayyâm et d’autres auteurs. Fathi Ennaïfer. Tunis : Fathi Ennaïfer, 2018. ISBN: 9789938006216. 249 p.

Summary:
Relecture des quatrains de Khayyam, leur adaptation vérsifiée, des références à ses traducteurs, une réflexion sur sa pensée philosophique.