Metaphor, translation, and autoekphrasis in FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. Herbert F. Tucker.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 69-85.
Among the many virtues of Christopher Decker’s edition of the FitzGerald Rubaiyat is its patient elucidation, not only of the various circumstances surrounding the text’s multiple versions, but of what we can infer about the translator’s equally various attitude toward his work. Enthusiastic, torpid, apologetic, cavalier, across two decades and more between the first edition of 1859 and the final one of 1879 the anonymous agent who once signed himself in correspondence “Fitz-Omar” remains hard to read with assurance–by reason partly of a diffidence that was specific to the man’s…