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Eliot possessed: T.S. Eliot and FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát

Eliot possessed: T.S. Eliot and FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát. Vinnie-Marie D’Ambrosio. New York: New York University Press, 1989. X, 244 p. ISBN: 0814718140.

Summary:
By his own account, T. S. Eliot’s love for poetry began when he first encountered the Rubáiyát at the age of fourteen, although he also claimed that he soon outgrew FitzGerald’s poem. D’Ambrosio’s monograph examines the complex ways in which both the poem and the figure of FitzGerald himself continued to haunt Eliot throughout his poetic career. (Victorian poetry, 2008)

Contents

Part I “Animula” (1929).
The possession
A bird’s-eye view
Eliot’s allegory
Omar and the boy
FitzGerald’s allegory
The “Low dream”
Part II. America.
Critical shifts: Norton, Aldrich, and more
Young Eliot’s rebellion
Part III. Crossings.
Parodying Omar at Harvard
Minuet a trois: Fitzgerald, Pound, and Eliot
Part IV. England.
The mystery in “Gerontion”
“Gerontion” and FitzGerald’s character
The dispossession.
Abbreviations
Notes
Index

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát: A Victorian Invention

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát: A Victorian Invention. Esmail Zare-Behtash. The Australian National University, 1997.

Summary:
This study was written in the belief that FitzGerald did not so much translate a poem as invent a persona based on the Persian astronomer and mathematician (but not poet) Omar Khayyám. This ‘invention’ opened two different lines of interpretation and scholarship, each forming its own idea of a ‘real’ Omar based on FitzGerald’s invention. One line sees Omar as a hedonist and nihilist; the other as a mystic or Sufi. My argument first is that the historical Omar was neither the former nor the latter; second, FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát is a ‘Victorian’ product even if the raw material of the poem belongs to the eleventh-century Persia. The Introduction tries to find a place for the Rubáiyát in the English nineteenth-century era.

World outlook of Hakim Umar Khayyam

World outlook of Hakim Umar Khayyam. Ahmad Shahvari. Mumbay, Shahvary, 1999. 86, [3] pp.

Summary:
Purpose of this book is to provide a new window for thinking about Khayyam’s views regarding the principle questions about life, man, creation. Shahvary discusses a number of quatrains from various translations.

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and Neglect

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and Neglect. Edited by Adrian Poole, Christine van Ruymbeke, William H. Martin and Sandra Mason. Anthem Press, 2011.
240 p. ISBN 9780857287816.

Summary

This volume of essays is based on a conference held in July 2009 at Trinity College, Cambridge to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Edward FitzGerald (1809) and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of his ‘Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’ (1859). The ‘Rubáiyát’, loosely based on the verses attributed to the eleventh-century Persian writer, Omar Khayyám, has become one of the most widely known poems in the world, republished virtually every year from 1879 (the year of FitzGerald’s fourth edition) to the present day, and translated into over eighty different languages. And yet, with a few exceptions, it has been systematically ignored or at best patronized by the academic establishment. This volume sets out to explore the reasons for both the popularity and the neglect. Broadly speaking, the essays are divided into two main blocks. The first six chapters focus primarily on the poem’s literary qualities (including consideration of its place in the tradition of verse translation into English, the idea of ‘nothingness’, and ‘syntax and sexuality’), the last five on aspects of its reception (including essays on the late-Victorian Omar Khayyám Club, on American parodies, and on the many illustrated editions). They are linked by three essays that address key ‘facilitators’ in the poem’s transmission (including the significant but neglected issue of cheap reprints)

Contents

Preface; Notes on Contributors; List of Illustrations; Introduction – Adrian Poole; 1. Edward FitzGerald, Omar Khayyám, and the Tradition of Verse Translation into English – Dick Davis; 2. Much Ado about Nothing in the Rubáiyát – Daniel Karlin; 3. Common and Queer: Syntax and Sexuality in the Rubáiyát – Erik Gray; 4. A Victorian Poem: Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – Clive Wilmer; 5. FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and Agnosticism – Marta Simidchieva; 6. The Similar Lives and Different Destinies of Thomas Gray, Edward FitzGerald and A. E. Housman – Anthony Briggs; 7. The Second (1862 Pirate) Edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – John Drew; 8. Edward Heron-Allen: A Polymath’s Approach to FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – Garry Garrard; 9. ‘Under Omar’s subtle spell’: American Reprint Publishers and the Omar Craze – John Roger Paas; 10. The Imagined Elites of the Omar Khayyám Club – Michelle Kaiserlian; 11. Le Gallienne’s Paraphrase and the Limits of Translation – Adam Talib; 12. ‘Some for the Glories of the Sole’: The Rubáiyát and FitzGerald’s Sceptical American Parodists – Annmarie S. Drury; 13. The Vogue of English Rubáiyát and Dedicatory Poems in Honour of Khayyám and FitzGerald – Parvin Loloi; 14. The Illustration of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát and its Contribution to Enduring Popularity – William H. Martin and Sandra Mason.

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.