The benefits of reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as pastoral. Giuseppe Albano.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 55-67.

On the publication of J. B. Nicolas’ French translations of Omar Khayyam –collected in book form as Les quatrains de Kheyam in 1867, having initially appeared in the Revue de l’Orient, de l’Algerie et des Colonies four years earlier–Edward FitzGerald was provoked into a caustic disagreement with its translator. The Frenchman held that Omar’s testaments to the benefits of drinking wine should not be taken literally, but should be seen in Sufi terms as representing an enlightened state of being.