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The Romance of the Rubáiyát: Edward FitzGerald’s First Edition

The Romance of the Rubáiyát: Edward FitzGerald’s First Edition. A.J. Arberry. London, Allen & Unwin, 1959. 244 p. Reissued in 2016.

Summary:
In this scholarly centennial edition, Arberry makes use of FitzGerald’s own notes, letters, and Latin version of the quatrains to show how the English poem emerged out of the Persian sources.

Contents

Preliminary Essay
Introduction
Appendix
The First Edition of the Rubáiyat
Table and Notes
Bibliography
Index

Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald

Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald. A.J. Arberry. London: Iran Society, 1959. 19 p. (Iran Society occasional papers, no. 1)

Summary:
A paper read before the Iran Society on 17th February, 1959.

A comparative analysis of Edward Fitzgerald’s and Robert Graves’s translation of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’

A comparative analysis of Edward Fitzgerald’s and Robert Graves’s translation of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’. Bahram Meghdadi. Columbia University, 1969.

Summary:
Robert Graves’s publication of his own translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat in November, 1967 triggered this study. Graves claims that Edward FitzGerald used spurious sources for his translation and that FitzGerald misinterpreted Khayyam’s basic philosophy.

In search of Omar Khayyam

In search of Omar Khayyam. Ali Dashti. Translated from the Persian by L.P. Elwell-Sutton. London, Allen & Unwin, 1971. ISBN: 0048910420 (Persian studies monographs; 1). Reprinted by Routledge, 2011.

Contents

Introduction.
Note on Transliteration.
Preface to the Persian Second Edition.
Part 1: In Search of Khayyam
1. Khayyam as Poet
2. Khayyam as Seen by his Contemporaries
3. Meanness or Common Sense?
4. Hero or Martyr?
5. A Dispute with a Prince
6. Khayyam from his own Writings
7. Khayyam and Sufism
8. Khayyam and Isma’ilism
Part 2: In Search of the Quatrains
1. The Key Quatrains
2. The Axis of Life and Death
3. Khayyam’s Literary Style
4. Khayyam and his Imitators
5. Khayyam’s Wine-Poetry
6. Khayyam as Seen by the West
7. The Selected Quatrains
8. Some Khayyam-like Quatrains
Part 3: Random Thoughts
1. ‘Whence we have come, and whither do we go?’
2. ‘If it was bad, whose was the fault but His?’
3. ‘A tiny gnat appears – and disappears’
4. ‘The Withered Tulip Never Blooms Again’
5. ‘Whether this Breath I take will be My Last.’
Appendix I: Biographical Notes.
Appendix II: Glossary of Technical Terms.
Bibliography.
Index.

Translation or travesty?

Translation or travesty? an enquiry into Robert Graves’s version of some Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. John Charles Edward Bowen. Abingdon, Abbey Press (Berks), 1973. Freshet library, no. 2. IX, 43 p. ISBN: 0900012323.

Summary:
Bowen discusses whether Edward FitzGerald’s (1859) or Robert Graves’s (1967) version of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat is a more accurate translation; it explains the scope of the great Islamic philosophy of Sufism, and questions whether a mystical interpretation of the quatrains accords with Khayyam’s known scepticism; and it quotes conclusive evidence that Robert Graves’s version of the Rubaiyat, so far from having been translated from a manuscript which has lain bidden in the Hindu Kush for the past 800 years, is based on the text of a book published in London in 1899.