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The Englishing of ‘Omar Khayyám

The Englishing of ‘Omar Khayyám. John Drew
The Daily Star, 9-12-2017

Summary:
Drew points out that there is an Indian connection in the history of the Rubaiyat’s rise to fame, and that is the pirate Madras edition, produced by Whitley Stokes, a Dubliner who, unable to find work in London, sailed for Madras and evidently took a copy of the Rubáiyát with him. Once in Madras, Stokes met up with Thomas Evans Bell, a dissident army officer who was Hon. Sec. of the Madras Literary Society, and together they printed (anonymously) a pirate edition of the Rubáiyát. It not only reproduced Fitzgerald’s translations of Omar’s rubáiyát but also 32 by Cowell (published in the Calcutta Review, 1858), 10 in French by Garcin de Tassy and 15 versions by Stokes himself. Drew also compares some quatrains from the three translations.

Umar Khayyam

Umar Khayyam. Mehdi Aminrazavi; Glen van Brummelen
In: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2017

Summary

The authors argue that Umar Khayyam was a philosopher-sage (ḥakīm) and a spiritual-pragmatist whose Rubā‘iyyāt should be seen as a philosophical commentary on the human condition. The salient features of Umar Khayyam’s pioneering work in various branches of mathematics were also discussed. Khayyam’s mathematical genius not only produced the most accurate calendar to date, but the issues he treated remained pertinent up until the modern period. For Khayyam, there are two discourses, each of which pertains to one dimension of human existence: philosophical and poetic. Philosophically, Khayyam was the last Peripatetic in the Persian speaking world before philosophical thinking eclipsed the Eastern part of the Islamic world for several centuries. Khayyam defended rationalism against the rise of orthodoxy and made an attempt to revive the spirit of rationalism which was so prevalent in the first four centuries in Islam. Poetically, Khayyam represents a voice of protest against what he regards to be a fundamentally unjust world. Many people found in him a voice they needed to hear, and centuries after he had died his works became a venue for those who were experiencing the same trials and tribulations as Khayyam had.

The Spiritual States (Ahwal) in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Spiritual States (Ahwal) in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Sri Wulan and Devi Pratiwy.
KnE Social Sciences, 3 (2018) nr. 4,pp. 864-877.

Summary

The Rubaiyat is the exposition of Khayyam’s contemplation of life and Divinity, which is highly appreciated, and of great importance in the world of literature and a stepping progress to spirituality. Concerning the contemplation of Divine existence, the poet has experienced spiritual states. These spiritual states or experiences are called Ahwal in the concept of Sufism. The Ahwal are the main concern of this study. This concept is referred to the classification of Ahwal given by Qushayri (1966). There are six forms of Ahwal expressed by Omar Khayyam in the Rubaiyat. They are Wajd `Ecstacy’, Dzawq `Taste’, Fana `Exctincion’, Baqa `Permanency’, `Ishq `Divine Love’, and Sukr’ `Intoxication’. Then, it is found that the six spiritual states, Ahwal, are undergone by Omar Khayam and they are reflected through his Rubaiyat.

Figure 4 in Khayyam’s Rubais

Figure 4 in Khayyam’s Rubais. Rafiq Manaf Novruzov; Gulnar Fikret Novruzova
Nowa Polityka Wschodnia, 16 (2018) 1, pp. 111–124

Summary:
The article deals with the symbolic meaning of figure 4 in Khayyam’s poetry.

Intersemiotic translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Iranian and Thai illustrators: a comparative study

Intersemiotic translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Iranian and Thai illustrators: a comparative study. Saber Atash Nazarloo, Hossein Navidinia.
Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 5 (2018) 1, p.p. 72-81.

Summary

One way of transferring the culture and identity of a nation is through book illustrations as a kind of intersemiotic translation. Omar Khayyam is an Iranian poet whose fame, thanks to FitzGerald, is now worldwide. Khayyam’s works have been translated to many languages and even some illustrators have tried to transform Khayyam’s quatrains into illustrations. Transferring textual materials into signs of non-verbal system is called intesemiotic translation. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare samples of two successful illustrators, namely Muhammad Tajvidi, an Iranian illustrator who knows Persian, the language of Khayyam’s original works and Niroot Puttapipat, a Thai illustrator who does not know Persian, and therefore, the source of his illustrations is FitzGerald’s translations. Findings indicated that Puttapipat’s illustrations conveyed more cultural elements than Tajvidi’s, since the former is translated for a foreign audience.