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William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’

William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’. Michaela Braesel.
Apollo (2004), (February)

Braesel discusses the manuscript designs by the British artists William Morris (1834-96) and Edward Burne-Jones (1893-98) for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which was translated in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald. The author notes that two copies of the manuscript can be differentiated by Burne-Jones’s involvement in the designs, details Morris’s biographer Mackail’s account of the colour scheme adopted for the patterns in the manuscript, and compares the second version of the `Ynglings’ manuscript with patterns on the London manuscript for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. She notes Morris’s interest in designs featuring female musicians, traces the history of the small manuscript format, and examines Morris and Burne-Jones’s reasons for avoiding illustrating the dramatic segments of the text.

Omar with a smile. Parodies in books on FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Omar with a smile. Parodies in books on FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Jos Biegstraaten.
Persica 20 (2004), p. 1-37

In the spring of 1859 Edward FitzGerald had 250 copies printed of his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Forty copies were for his own use, the remaining 210 were for sale in the bookshop of Bernard Quaritch, a London bookseller. No one was interested until 1861, when Whitley Stokes, a Celtic scholar, passed Quaritch’s bookstall and bought the book. He must have appreciated the contents, because he came back later and bought some additional copies. One of them he gave to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who introduced the quatrains to other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, like Swinburne. The latter passed his admiration on to William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. It was the beginning of a period in which the Rubáiyát was to grow to an immense popularity in England.

Young Eliot’s Rebellion

Young Eliot’s Rebellion. V.M. d’Ambrosio.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 119-149.
(From Eliot Possessed: T. S. Eliot and FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. 1989)

The reception to the Rubaiyat in America is presented in “Young Eliot’s Rebellion” (pp. 119-149), where Vinni Marie D’Ambrosio introduces us to the influence it had on T.S. Eliot who discovered it in 1902. The ambiance of the time was pervaded by the rage for or against the Rubaiyat, which was considered to have played a role in the breakdown of America’s Protestant religion and of the Temperance ethic that the religion had subsumed. This cultural milieu of Eliot as a youth explains several of his poems and, as the author concludes, the youthful Eliot may have felt he was “not an imitator of Omar, but a manly, if secret, disciple of him”. (Abstract from: Abstracta Iranica)

FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation

FitzGerald’s Approach to Translation. Habibollah Mashhady, Mahbube Noura.
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research 3 (2012) 4, pp. 370–384.

The present paper attempts to explore FitzGerald’s overall approach to translation by examining his translated works and particularly by focusing on his translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Khayyam Rubaiyat is selected as the text to gather data and it is compared to its English translation by FitzGerald in order to identify the strategies he used in translating it into English.

Attempts at locating the Rubaiyat in Indian philosophical thought

Attempts at locating the Rubaiyat in Indian philosophical thought. A. Rangarajan.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 233–243.

In this article Rangarajan gives a metaphysical reading of Khayyám’s quatrains by comparing Khayyám’s description of human existence with the supernatural order of Hinduism. Moreover, the author concentrates on other religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Ajivika, showing how Khayyám’s philosophy matches the tenets of these religions.

Some ‘Umarian quatrains from the lifetime of ‘Umar Khayyám

Some ‘Umarian quatrains from the lifetime of ‘Umar Khayyám. Alexander H. Morton.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 55-65.

Morton draws attention to an overlooked anthology compiled by Abu ‘l-Qásim Nasr b. Amad b. who was writing during the reign of the Ghaznavid Mas ‘ùd III (492-508/1099-1115).