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Emotion and Closure in the Sound Expressiveness of Quatrains from Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Emotion and Closure in the Sound Expressiveness of Quatrains from Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. C. Whissell.
Empirical Studies of the Arts 18 (2000) 2, p. 135-149.

Summary

This article follows two branches of Tsur’s cognitive poetic theory to their logical conclusion and applies them to Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam where they are fully validated. The first branch emphasizes the expressiveness of speech sounds (phonemes) and the second branch the importance of the Gestalt principle of closure to poetry. Rubaiyat were phonetically transcribed and their phonemes were then categorized in terms of emotional character. The closural device of a return to baseline described the preferential use of active phonemes in the rubaiyat while the closural allusion of definitive termination described the preferential use of pleasant phonemes. Clynes’ concept of the essentic form for grief was used to explain the rise and fall of preferential activation in the first three lines of each quatrain. The emotional picture drawn of the rubaiyat on the basis of these procedures was one of fatalism or emotional resignation. General patterns and individual examples are discussed.

FitzOmar: Live Eagle

FitzOmar: Live Eagle. D. Alexander.
In: Creating Literature Out of Life: The Making of Four Masterpieces. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. p. 45-84.

Gives a biographical sketch that suggests the psychological background and context for FitzGerald’s composition of the first (1859) version of the Rubáiyát.

Umar Khayyam

Umar Khayyam
In: Dalal (Ed.) Ethics in Persian poetry (with special reference to Timurid period). Ghulam Abbas Dalal. New Delhi : Abhinav Publications, 1995. ISBN: 8170173140 . Pp. 71–95.

Discusses life of Khayyam and his works, and the views thereon. Was he a poet or not, a drunkard and heretic, and what was his character?

Edward FitzGerald, a reader “Of Taste”, and ‘Umar Khayyám, 1809-1883

Edward FitzGerald, a reader “Of Taste”, and ‘Umar Khayyám, 1809-1883. R.W. Ferrier.
Iran 24 (1986), pp. 161-187.

Summary

Edward Fitzgerald, writing to his friend, E. B. Cowell, in March 1867 on the fickleness of posthumous reputation, remarked that a hundred years ought to elapse before memorials should be made. The centenary of his death passed on June 14th 1983 and it seems appropriate to commemorate his memory, recall his humanity and reflect on his contribution to literature. He had two principal passions in life, reading and friendship. He described himself to Frederick Tennyson in 1850 as one who pretends “to no Genius, but to Taste” and disclaimed any pretensions to be a poet, for “I cannot write poems”. As for his friends, their presence glows from his letters. These two influences, imperceptibly interweaving themselves into the fabric of his personality, were responsible for that bright short decade in the middle of his life, when his “languid energies”‘ were galvanised into literary activity of which his poetic “version” of the Rubáyyat of ‘Umar Khayyám was the fascinating and controversial climax.

Omar Khayyám : Some Facts and Fallacies

Omar Khayyám : Some Facts and Fallacies by Reynold A. Nicholson.
In: Aberdeen University Review. Nr. 2 (1914), Feb., p. 138-142

Since FitzGerald introduced him to Europe, Omar Khayyám has enjoyed a world-wide reputation exceeding that of all the rest of the Persian poets together. Does he deserve it? What was his character and philosophy? Was he a materialist or a mystic, or neither? How far is the English version an original poem, and can we fairly use it as a key to the riddle? These are some of the questions that I am going to discuss and in part, I hope, to answer.