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Vernacularizing Rubaiyat: the politics of Madhushala in the context of the Indian nationalism

Vernacularizing Rubaiyat: the politics of Madhushala in the context of the Indian nationalism. A. Castaing.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 215–232.

Anne Castaing shows the influence of Khayyám on the young Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bacchan (1907-2003), who translated the quatrains into Hindi under the title of Umar khayyám kī Madhuśálá (“Omar Khayyám’s House of Wine”). Bacchan wrote his own collection of quatrains entitled Madhuśálá (“The house of wine,” 1935) that deals with the same motifs and symbolism and are interpreted as an “allegory of poetic creation, homeland, universe, love etc., with wine and intoxication symbolising the duality of existence, both sweet and bitter.” By using themes and motifs from Khayyám’s poetry, Bacchan readdresses the questions of orthodoxy versus free thinking, hierarchy of being and man’s place in the universe.

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.