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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.

Absurdity and Metaphysical Rebellion in the Philosophies of Albert Camus and Omar Khayyam

Absurdity and Metaphysical Rebellion in the Philosophies of Albert Camus and Omar Khayyam. Lynn Alsatie. Indianapolis : Butler University, 2019. Undergraduate Honors Thesis.

Summary

The first time Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyiat were brought to the Western world, it was through a translation from their original Persian to English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Over the next century, Khayyam’s verses saw extraordinary popular success among intellectuals both in England and beyond. This paper, however, explores what these verses meant to Persians in Omar Khayyam’s context, long before the quatrains reached the West. Although whether the meaning of his poetry is esoteric or hedonistic in nature is debated, his quatrains express an existential longing and grieving that can be compared to parallel feelings described by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. In this project, I explore the similarities in the notion of the absurd as defined by Albert Camus with the expressions of absurd experience in The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam. Through this exploration of the absurdist experience across cultures and centuries, I propose Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat as an example that the spirit of metaphysical rebellion can exist in a non-Western context, and that it existed nearly a millennium before Albert Camus developed it as an idea in the 20th century.

Orlando Greenwood illustrates the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Orlando Greenwood illustrates the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Danton O’Day. [S.l.], Blurb, 2021. [48 p.] 9 illustrations ; 23 x 15 cm. ISBN: 9781034492504.

Orlando Greenwood (1892-1989) was a brilliant, talented artist, who already at the age of 21-22 felt strongly attracted by the verses of Omar Khayyám. His illustrations to the Rubáiyát were recently discovered and presented in this book by Danton O’Day for the first time. The nine illustrations are included in the text of FitzGerald’s first version.

The Study of Rubaiyat attributed to Khayyam in Movies

The Study of Rubaiyat attributed to Khayyam in Movies. Milad Minakar, Amir Hossein Chitsazian.
In: CINEJ Cinema Journal, Vol. 8, no. 2 (2020), p. 324-352.

Summary

Among the literati and men of culture of Iran, it is not exaggerated to call Khayyam one of the vaguest figures. One might recognize him certainly and resolutely through his philosophical and scientific works; however, it was his Rubaiyat attributed to him which created many arguments. This paper studies Hakim Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat in English and Persian language feature and non-biographical movies; hence, biographical movies depicting factual or imaginary life of Khayyam or any serials, TV productions, documentaries, non- English, non- Persian movies are not included. The aim is to expound any relationships between the film and Rubaiyat; therefore, according to the type of the applied quatrain, movie genre, plot, some categories are propounded to classify the movies in which Khayyam’s quatrains are quoted such as Transiency-Death, Transiency-Carpe Diem, Heaven and Hell, and Determinism. Indeed, these categories can be applied to the theme of the movies or a single scene in which the stanza is quoted.

The Effect of Ideology on the Form …

The Effect of Ideology on the Form and Content of Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Mana Aleahmad.
In: LingLit Journal: Scientific Journal for Linguistics and Literature, vol. 2, nr. 2 (2021), p. 75-82.

Summary

The present study attempted to examine Edward FitzGerald’s interest in Persian poetry. Translation deals with power and authority and most of the time the ideology of source text changes in favor of the dominant ideology of target text. Victorian people‘s scornful outlook toward the East led to ideological manipulation of source texts by translators such as Fitzgerald. His strange reduction in his translations, especially in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat results in the necessity of investigating his translation from ideological point of view. Surprisingly the translation of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat has never been studied from ideological perspective and is unknown for many literary scholars. Victorian issues had a strong effect on FitzGerald‘s selection of some of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.