Archives

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Critical Celebrations of a Beloved Poem

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Critical Celebrations of a Beloved Poem. E. Nakjavani.
Iranian Studies, 47 (2014), nr. 4, pp. 627-648.

Erik Nakjavani reviews and discusses two recent volumes on the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The first is ‘Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Famous Poem and its Influence’, by William H. Martin and Sandra Mason (Anthem Press, 2011). The reviewer discusses this work in respect of contemporary views about reception and assessment of poetry, by enthusiasts and devotees as well as scholars and academics. The second volume is ‘Edward 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), in which he summarizes and discusses the separate essays.

Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: a Famous Poem and Its Influence …

Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: a Famous Poem and Its Influence William H. Martin and Sandra Mason, Eds. A. Bulfin
English Literature in Transition, 56 (2013), 2, pp. 252-255.

Review of: Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Famous Poem and Its Influence. William H. Martin and Sandra Mason, eds. London: Anthem Press, 2011.

Ventriloquism

Ventriloquism. Marina Warner.
London Review of Books, 31 (2009) 7 (9 April)

Review of: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald, edited by Daniel Karlin. Oxford, 167 pp, January 2009.

Appendix: two early reviews of the Rubaiyat

Appendix: two early reviews of the Rubaiyat.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 105-125.

For many years it was thought that the earliest criticism of the Rubaiyat to appear in print was a review of the second edition, published in the North American Review in 1869, by Charles Eliot Norton. In 1960, however, an earlier review, dating from just six months after the publication of the first edition, was rediscovered in The Literary Gazette, a London weekly. (See Michael Wolff, “The Rubaiyat’s Neglected Reviewer: A Centennial Recovery,” VN 17 (1960): 4-6.)

Gilbert Lazard, translator of Omar Khayyam

Gilbert Lazard, translator of Omar Khayyam. Mohammad Ziar.
Faits de Langues 38 (2011), pp. 97-102.

Summary

Besides his Grammar of Contemporary Persian (1957) and French-Persian Dictionary (1990) Gilbert Lazard is also the translator of twelve books, including One Hundred and One Quatrains of Omar Khayyam (1994) where he tried to translate robaïat from the great Persian poet and philosopher, a translation more consistent with the taste of French readers and francophones. Obviously Gilbert Lazard has read but did not like many of the translations of Omar Khayyam’s quatrains done before him, finding them too solemn, which according to him, would not accord very well with robâï lightness and flexibility. So that’s why he decided that a new poetic translation would be better than those of Jean-Baptiste Nicolas: The quatrains of Omar Kheyyam, (1867), Charles Grolleau: The quatrains of Omar Kheyyam (1902), Claude Anet: Robais 144, (1920), Franz Toussaint (1924), Arthur Guy: The Robaï Kheyyam Omer (1935), P. Seghers: Omar Khayyam, his life and his quatrains, (1982), Mostafa Farzaneh and Jean Malapate: Cats of Omar Khayyam) (1993) … We, therefore, propose that some of these translations as well as One Hundred and one Quatrains be compared with the original text to see the strength of each and examine the quality of Gilbert Lazard’s translation.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: a critical assessment of Robert Graves’ and Omar Ali-Shah’s ‘translation’

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: a critical assessment of Robert Graves’ and Omar Ali-Shah’s ‘translation’. J.C.E. Bowen
Iran: Journal of Persian studies 11 (1973), pp. 63–73

When Cassells in November 1967 published Robert Graves’s versification of 111 of Omar Khayyam’s quatrains, they announced it to be “for the first time a true translation of Omar Khayaam which reverses his philosophy as presented, in ignorance of the Persian language and of Sufi symbolism, by Edward FitzGerald”. They also called it “one of the most important literary revelations of our time”. In this article, the validity of these claims is examined.

Graves and Omar

Graves and Omar. Anthony Burgess.
Encounter (1968) (Jan.), pp. 77–80

Comments on the Graves-Ali Shah translation of the Rubáiyát.

The real Omar Khayyam

The real Omar Khayyam. B. Csillik.
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 10 (1960), p. 58-77.

Review of Arberry's edition of 1949.
This edition, as the Author-Editor himself tells us in his Introduction, had to fulfill the purpose of quickly presenting to the public, with a minimum of critical apparatus, the newly discovered facts in order to give share to others in the exciting work of further research. Beside the Introduction the book contains nothing but the printed text of the MS with the critical apparatus, the English versions and an alphabetical list of the quatrains. The Editor restored the dotted däl’s wherever the copyist omitted them by obvious inadvertency and — what the copyist did not even try to do — he distinguished the pä and gäf letters from the bä and käf letters. This peculiar employment of the däl, bä and käf letters speaks for the antiquity of the MS. The dots supplied by the Editor are not indicated, and this may be regretted in view of the potential hints which the presence or absence of the dots of the däl’s might have given to the student of phonology and linguistic history.