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Sipping from the Rubáiyát’s Chalice

Sipping from the Rubáiyát’s Chalice. My journey with the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Martin Kimeldorf. Kimeldorf, 2017. 118 pp. ISBN: 9781537462608.

Contents:
Prefatory map
Introduction
Part I – My Rubáiyát memoir
Chapter 1 – Looking backward to find a way forward
Chapter 2 – Lessons from the Rubáiyát
Part II – The Poets and their Poetry
Chapter 3 – The grand collaboration
Chapter 4 – My favorite Rubáiyát quatrains
Chapter 5 – The sweet and sour chalice rim
Part III – Trying to Grasp the Scheme Entire
Chapter 6 – The artistic connections
Chapter 7 – Sipping the 21st century chalice
Chapter 8 – The Omarian Martini toast

Late night thoughts on reading Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam

Late night thoughts on reading Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam: my own reflections on a poem that has guided me well. Robert Gary. Independently published, 2017. 55 p. ISBN: 978-1520406756.

Summary:
This book is personal philosophical reflections on reading on Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as translated by Edward Fitzgerald. Only some of the rubai are included, and the ones selected for including are taken from many different editions of the Fitzgerald translation based on the author’s own preference of which was the best. The French translations are his own amateur attempt to convey the basic meaning of a few rubai into modern French. The illustrations are Gary’s own gouache and watercolor paintings done in 1995.

Early artists of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1914-1929

Early artists of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1914-1929. Danton O’Day. Emeritus Press, 2018. iv, 141 p. ISBN: 9781388734190.

Summary:

This intensely illustrated book focuses on the era from 1914-1929 that followed the Golden Age of Rubáiyát Art, 1884-1913. It reveals the work of 16 illustrators who produced two or more pictures to illustrate the poems and 9 other artists who embellished the poetry with page decorations, title page adornments and unique frontispiece images.
In these pages, the identity of a previously anonymous artist is revealed. New decorators are discovered. Tables and graphic timelines put all the work into perspective as multiple images—many published here for the first time in 90-100 years—reveal the often-unparalleled talent of artists who took their pens, inks and paints to the task of illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát.

Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi Interpreted

Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi Interpreted. The Politics and Scholarship of Translating Persian Poetry. Amir Theilhaber.
In: Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist Scholarship and International Politics. Berlin, Munich, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020. viii, 627 pp. ISBN: 978-3-11-063925-4.
Also available as Open Access document.

Summary

In the recently published Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist scholarship and international politics Amir Theilhaber describes the diplomatic career and scholarly-literary productions of Friedrich Rosen “to investigate how politics influenced knowledge generated about the “Orient” and charts the roles knowledge played in political decision-making regarding extra-European regions. This is pursued through analyses of Germans in British imperialist contexts, cultures of lowly diplomatic encounters in Middle Eastern cities, Persian poetry in translation, prestigious Orientalist congresses in northern climes,leveraging knowledge in high-stakes diplomatic encounters, and the making of Germany’s Islam policy up to the Great War.” An extensive chapter 6 deals with Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi, in the context of politics and scholarship of translating Persian Poetry.

Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: The Appeal of Terse Hedonism. Asghar Seyed-Gohrab
In: Seigneurie (Ed.) 2020 – A Companion to World Literature, Volume 4: 1771 to 1919.

Summary

The year 1859 is a seminal moment for both Persian and English poetry. In that year, the English poet Edward Purcell FitzGerald (1809–1883) published an adaptation of the quatrains attributed to the Persian philosopher poet Omar Khayyam, under the title The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. It was to become one of the world’s best-known poems. Although several poets before FitzGerald had translated specimens of Persian literature into English, his translations transmitted the Persian sentiments into English poetry, and have remained popular in world literature ever since. At first the translation was not successful at all, as the history of the first edition indicates. The book contained 75 quatrains and was published anonymously in an edition of 250 copies, 40 of which were bought by FitzGerald himself. With this poor start, the remaining books were sent to Bernard Quaritch’s bookshop, where they were shelved and later placed in a box outside the door for sale. In 1861, Whitley Stokes and John Ormsby discovered the book. Stokes purchased copies of the Rubáiyát for his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who introduced the book to the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Its enthusiastic reception among the Pre-Raphaelites led FitzGerald to publish a second edition of the Rubáiyát in 1868 to which he added 35 quatrains. The cult of Rubáiyát was born. The Rubáiyát ran to a third edition in 1872, a fourth in 1879, and a fifth, posthumous, edition in 1889 (Karlin 2009, l–lvi). FitzGerald’s quatrains have been the source for hundreds of translations in various languages. Some 310 editions have sold millions of copies around the world.

Omar Khayyam’s Transgressive Ethics and Their Socio-Political Implications in Contemporary Iran

Omar Khayyam’s Transgressive Ethics and Their Socio-Political Implications in Contemporary Iran. A.A. Seyed-Gohrab.
In: Iran Namag, Vol. 5, no. 3 (Fall 2020).

Summary:

In this paper, the author examines several social implications of Khayyam’s poetry and the reception history of the Persian sage (hakim) Omar Khayyam, who has become a personification of transgressive ideas in Persian literary history. The fascination of the author is due not only to Khayyam’s poetic genius (although he is not the author of the majority of quatrains attributed to him), but also to his problematic reception in twentieth-century Iran and how he has been connected to the notion of modernity. Both religious and secular intellectuals have tried to position Khayyam in the modern intellectual history of Iran in their own ways.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
In: Taher-Kermani (Ed.) 2021 – The Persian Presence in Victorian. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781474448161. Pp. 146–173

Summary:
Omar Khayyám is known in Persian literary history as the supreme exponent of the rubáiy (pl. rubáiyát), a short verse from consisting of a single stanza, rhyming aaba. The extent of Khayyám’s fame, however, goes beyond the geographical or cultural boundaries of his place of origin. Thanks to Edward FitzGerald’s translation, Khayyám is now celebrated globally, not just as one of Persia’s classical poets, but as a learned philosopher who, in a collection of epigrammatic poems, has encapsulated some of the largest and most enduring preoccupations of humankind.