The Meaning of Matter: Atoms, Energy, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Tyson Stolte
In: Victorian Studies, Volume 63, Number 3, Spring 2021
pp. 354-376

This article focuses on the bodily matter that is at the heart of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, returning the poem to the context of Victorian debates about atomic matter and the new energy science. Essential to this reading is FitzGerald’s comparison of Omar Khayyám to Lucretius, the latter of whom was widely seen in the 1860s and 1870s as having anticipated both Victorian atomism and thermodynamics. Arguing that FitzGerald’s translation reflects Lucretian science in its form as well as its content, this article finds in the Rubáiyát a window onto the contested status of Victorian matter, thereby complicating our narratives of the rise of scientific naturalism and underscoring the resiliency of scientific dualism in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Abstract