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Some quatrains of Omar Khayyàm

From: Acanthia. Poems original and edited by William Stigand. London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1907.
Potter 375

Some quatrains of Omar Khayyàm

THOU mad’st me of earth, water and air, Could I help it!
Silk or cotton I must as thou wouldst daily wear, Could I help it!
In my brain all my doings for good and for ill,
You have fully beforehand writ me down there – Could I help it!

Alas! for the heart which lovingly warm, Could not be;
Which cheered and tormented by love’s yearning charm, Could not be;
The day when love passing shall leave thee all cold,
A worse day than that for thy soul’s deadly harm, Could not be.

For goodly people I would ransom be,
To them right willingly I’d bend the knee,
But wouldst thou have a good foretaste of hell,
Of vulgar men and base seek the society.

My soul and body are at war, that’s plain! What can I do?
My deeds mostly give me but shame and pain, What can I do?
And should the Lord have mercy for my sins,
The shame I must ever still bear in my brain. What can I do?

Ye heavens, your wheel gives best things to the vile –
Baths, mills, canals, with gardens by the mile;
While noble fellows pawn their rings for bread,
For you a groat to pay were scarce worth while.

Ye bunglers in a world which is Naught, naught,
Built on a bubble of which mortal sees Naught, naught;
Your lives are sorry dots between two naughts,
And after their nonentities, Naught, naught!

 

From: “A new rubaiyat”

From: “A new rubaiyat”
Translation Joyce Kilmer (Potter 340)
(Originally in New York Evening Times, April, 1914.
Taken from Otautau Standard and Wallace Country Chronicle, vol. X, Issue 478, 21 July 1914)
Potter 340

I.
Not for your sake alone the World was made,
Wise men and fools share with you Light and Shade.
You and the countless others come and go,
Pawns in a Game by the great Gamester played.

II.
And wherefore, then, should you and I be sad,
Because to Life no minute we can add?
This is true Wisdom, as it seems to me:
Grief will not change the world—therefore be glad!

III.
Lady of Love, the Sun begins to shine,
Greet him with Song-, and cheer your heart with Wine.
Those who are here To-day will not remain
And those who go send back nor Word nor Sign.

IV.
Not always shall this Convent wall us in,
So cease to preach that Wine and Love are sin.
How long shall old Creeds fetter us, or new?
When I am gone, then let the mad world spin!

V.
The Tulips bathe in the soft Rain of May,
But for our bathing, founts of Wine shall play.
The Grass that flourishes so brightly green
Shall rise To-morrow from your sleeping Clay.

VI.
Last night I dashed the Wine Cup on a stone
(Oh, I was drunk; yes, very drunk, I own),
And as it fell, “I was like you,” it said,
“And soon like me will, all your Flesh have grown.”

VII.
A drop of water mingles with the Lake;
To the gray Earth there comes of Dust a flake.
What will it do, this mighty Life of ours?
Rise like a Bubble, like a Bubble break!

VIII.
O, may he feel the lashes of Disgrace
Who lets Grief cast a shadow on his Face!
Drain the glad Cup and strike the merry Lute,
Before stern Fate destroys our Feastingplace.

IX.
Out of the Dark has been our journeying;
Life is a Bead —for no one knows what String!
It is the Darkness in Man’s soul that speaks,
The light remains a secret, silent thing.

X. Rise, Master of Old Wisdom! From the Ground
See how that Boy kicks clouds of Dust around!
O, speak to him and say: “Tread gently, Boy,
The Brains of Sages form this earthern mound.”

XI.
Not the Beginning nor the End we know
Of this blue Vault through which we come’ and go.
No one has read the secret of the Stars
That tells the Whence and Whither of Life’s flow.

XII.
So drink! for this blue sullen Vault of Sky
Hates our white Souls and waits to watch us die.
Rest on the soft green Grass, my Love, for soon
We shall be Dust together, you and I.

XIII.
Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and the Seven Spheres,
These made your Flesh and fill your Soul with fears.
Drink Wine! I Ear, a thousand times, drink Wine!
Before your Dust drifts down the vanished Years.

6 quatrains

6 quatrains, translated by Abraham Yohannan
In: ‘Oldest known manuscript of Omar’s work’. The Lotus Magazine, vol. 6 (1915), 5 (Feb.), p. 235-236.

The world was not made thus solely for you!
Do not the Sages also tenant it?
There are many like you who come and go,
You are simply a piece in the game.

Why should you and I fret with idle grief,
Because we cannot add one day to life?
The truth is, it seems to me,
That out mum (wax),we cannot make mim (letter M).

Behold the tulips bathe in the rains of Nauruz!
Then it is meet to make thy ablution in wine.
The grass which makes such a beautiful show today,
Tomorrow from thy dust will grow.

A drop of water mingles with the sea,
An atom of dust joins the earth.
Thy coming into the world, what is it?
A bubble that appears and disappears.

Arise old Sage of ages from the ground!
See that youth scattering the dust!
Give him counsel. Say “Do thou gently,
‘Tis Qai Kubad’s and Parwiz’ brain finely ground.”

This vault through which we come and go,
Neither its beginning or end will show.
No one has explained the secret as yet,
Whence is our coming or whence our going.

Khayyam, Omar: iv. English Translations of the Rubaiyat

Khayyam, Omar: iv. English Translations of the Rubaiyat. Austin O’Malley
In: Encylcopædia Iranica, edited by Ehsan Yarshater and Elton Daniel, 16:464-70. Leiden: Brill.

Over the past one hundred and fifty years, the quatrains of Khayyam have been translated into English more often than the verse of  any other Persian poet. The bibliographies of Ambrose Potter and Jos Coumans together list nearly one hundred translators and editors for the Rubaiyat in English. Out of this mass of material, however, only a few dozen translations enjoyed considerable circulation or exerted lasting influence on the tradition of the Rubaiyat in English. These can be heuristically divided into two categories: those based directly on the Persian, and those based on previous translations in English or other languages

A cautionary tale

A cautionary tale. Garry Garrard
In: Omariana , Vol. 10, Nr. 1, Summer 2010

One of the most bizarre editions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to be published was drawn by an Indian Pharsee named Mera Ben Kavas Sett who, according to his publisher, became well-known as an artist and interior designer in Europe. His version was published in two formats.

The Meaning of Matter: Atoms, Energy, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

The Meaning of Matter: Atoms, Energy, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Tyson Stolte
In: Victorian Studies, Volume 63, Number 3, Spring 2021
pp. 354-376

This article focuses on the bodily matter that is at the heart of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, returning the poem to the context of Victorian debates about atomic matter and the new energy science. Essential to this reading is FitzGerald’s comparison of Omar Khayyám to Lucretius, the latter of whom was widely seen in the 1860s and 1870s as having anticipated both Victorian atomism and thermodynamics. Arguing that FitzGerald’s translation reflects Lucretian science in its form as well as its content, this article finds in the Rubáiyát a window onto the contested status of Victorian matter, thereby complicating our narratives of the rise of scientific naturalism and underscoring the resiliency of scientific dualism in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Abstract

The Works of Omar Khayyam in the History of Mathematics

The Works of Omar Khayyam in the History of Mathematics. Thomas Bisom
In: The Mathematics Enthusiast, 18 (2021), nrs. 1 & 2, p. 290-305

The exact time when the mathematician Omar Khayyam lived is not well-defined, but it is generally agreed upon that he lived from the end of the 11th century to the beginning of the 12th century C.E. in Nishapur, which is in modern-day Iran and Afghanistan (Struik, 1958). Other than mathematics, Omar Khayyam also made considerable contributions to other fields, such as astronomy, philosophy, and poetry (Struik, 1958). He is probably most famous for his poem titled Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which was translated by Edward Fitzgerald (Struik, 1958). Although famous for his poetry, he was professionally inclined to astronomy and mathematics. In mathematics, he is well-known for being the first individual to find positive root solutions to multiple cubic equations, and he is also known for furthering understanding of the parallel axiom (Eves, 1958, p. 285; Struik, 1958). In this report, details of Omar Khayyam’s life will be mentioned, but the focus will be on his contributions to mathematics and his role in the history of mathematics.
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