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Ventriloquism

Ventriloquism. Marina Warner.
London Review of Books, 31 (2009) 7 (9 April)

Review of: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald, edited by Daniel Karlin. Oxford, 167 pp, January 2009.

Khayyam, Omar ix. Illustrations of English translations of the Rubaiyat

Khayyam, Omar ix. Illustrations of English translations of the Rubaiyat. W.H. Martin, S. Mason.
Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, July 2009

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam contain some of the best-known verses in the world. The book is also one of the most frequently and widely illustrated of all literary works. The stimulus to illustrate Khayyam’s Rubaiyat came initially from outside Persia, in response to translations in the West.

Khayyam, Omar x. Musical works based on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Khayyam, Omar x. Musical works based on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. W.H. Martin, S. Mason.
Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, July 15 2009

The enduring popularity of the verses in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is reflected in the large number of musical works they have inspired. Not all the works were small-scale pieces. One of the best-known large-scale compositions is Sir Granville Bantock’s (1868-1946) ‘Omar Khayyam’ (1908-10) for soloists, chorus and orchestra. It is a three-part work, setting all the 101 quatrains from FitzGerald’s fifth edition.

Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Richard Dalby
Book and Magazine Collector (2009), nr. 314, p. 44-61.

Dalby presents a short history of the Rubáiyát and highlights the most important and best known illustrated editions, also giving prices that were realized at recent auctions. The article is illuminated with sixteen illustrations from these editions, mainly by artists from the first decades of the previous century, such as Greiffenhagen, Palmer, Robinson, Dulac, Brangwyn, Bull, Geddes and Balfour.

Metaphor, translation, and autoekphrasis in FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat

Metaphor, translation, and autoekphrasis in FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. Herbert F. Tucker.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 69-85.

Among the many virtues of Christopher Decker’s edition of the FitzGerald Rubaiyat is its patient elucidation, not only of the various circumstances surrounding the text’s multiple versions, but of what we can infer about the translator’s equally various attitude toward his work. Enthusiastic, torpid, apologetic, cavalier, across two decades and more between the first edition of 1859 and the final one of 1879 the anonymous agent who once signed himself in correspondence “Fitz-Omar” remains hard to read with assurance–by reason partly of a diffidence that was specific to the man’s…

The Art of Omar Khayyam: illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat

The Art of Omar Khayyam: illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. Illustrated lecture given to the Iran Society on 22nd November 2007. W.H. Martin, S. Mason.
Journal of the Iran Society, 2 (2008), nr 7, p. 1-8.

The lecture is mainly concerned with the Rubaiyat and the extraordinary publishing phenomenon that is associated with it, particularly the extensive and continuing production of illustrated editions of FitzGerald’s version of the poem. In it, the authors draw extensively on their recently published book on the subject.