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Omar Khayyam: much more than a poet

Omar Khayyam: much more than a poet. Robert Green.
Montgomery College Student Journal of Science and Mathematics 1 (2002) (Sept.)

Omar Khayyam, although well known for his poetry, was also an accomplished mathematician, scientist, astronomer, and philosopher. In fact, his contributions include the Jaláli Calendar, astronomical tables, and contributions to mathematics, especially in Algebra. He wrote, “Maqalat fi al-Jabr al-Muqabila,” in this area of mathematics, which many claim provided great advancement in the field.

Gissing the ‘Omarian’ : Fin de siècle cult of Omar Khayyám and Gissing’s Born in Exile (1892)

Gissing the ‘Omarian’ : Fin de siècle cult of Omar Khayyám and Gissing’s Born in Exile (1892). Ayaka Komiya.
Hiyoshi Bulletin 41 (2002) p. 102-121

The year 1859 was made memorable in English literary history by the publication of three books—Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, Samuel Smile’s Self-Help, and Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám. Although each of these three books is important in its own way, it is FitzGerald’s Omar Khayyám that bears the most importance to a study of George Gissing (1857-1903). Probably due to its extraordinaiy popularity, something that continues to this day, Omar Khayyám appears to have failed to attract attention as a serious work of art. However, its effect on contemporary literature was immense—so much so that its neglect is quite unwarranted. It is my aim here to remedy the present situation, at least in part, and to shed a new light on Gissing study by looking at the influence of Omar Khayyám on his works.

The Rubaiyat of Edward FitzOmar – Edward FitzGerald, translator of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’

The Rubaiyat of Edward FitzOmar – Edward FitzGerald, translator of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’. G. Sloan.
American Atheist Magazine (2002) (Winter)

Long ago, in the Protestant hinterlands of northeast Texas, four young infidels consecrated their bibulous souls to Omar Khayyám, the eleventh-century Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet. Each Saturday night in an old Studebaker, we made a pilgrimage to Hugo, Oklahoma, the nearest wet town, to procure libations of Ripple wine. As we meandered homeward on isolated back roads, we swilled the “old familiar juice.” Between swigs, we recited quatrains from The Rubáiyát, the bible for apostate tipplers. The mellifluous verse articulated our cosmic incertitude, alienation, and melancholy yearning. It also lent a romantic aura to inebriation.

Astronomical References In The Ruba’iyât Of Omar Khayyam

Astronomical References In The Ruba’iyât Of Omar Khayyam. Imad-Ad-Dean Ahmad.

Delivered to the Third International Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Mondell, Sicily, January, 2001.

Omar Khayyam was both an astronomer and a poet. We examine the astronomical references in different translations of his poetry and in Elihu Vedder’s illustrations of the first American edition of Edward Fitzgerald’s famous translation as the takeoff points for discussing the controversy as to the meaning of his poetry and the differences in culture between 11th-century Iran where he wrote them and 19th-century Britain and America where Fitzgerald and Vedder respectively were born.

Fugitive articulation of an all-obliterated tongue …

Fugitive articulation of an all-obliterated tongue – Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and the politics of collecting. B.J. Black.
In: On exhibit. Victorians and their museums. Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 2000, p. 48-66.

In a chapter on the Rubáiyát and “the politics of collecting,” Black argues that FitzGerald appropriated an oriental text in order to domesticate it.

Emotion and Closure in the Sound Expressiveness of Quatrains from Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Emotion and Closure in the Sound Expressiveness of Quatrains from Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. C. Whissell.
Empirical Studies of the Arts 18 (2000) 2, p. 135-149.

Summary

This article follows two branches of Tsur’s cognitive poetic theory to their logical conclusion and applies them to Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam where they are fully validated. The first branch emphasizes the expressiveness of speech sounds (phonemes) and the second branch the importance of the Gestalt principle of closure to poetry. Rubaiyat were phonetically transcribed and their phonemes were then categorized in terms of emotional character. The closural device of a return to baseline described the preferential use of active phonemes in the rubaiyat while the closural allusion of definitive termination described the preferential use of pleasant phonemes. Clynes’ concept of the essentic form for grief was used to explain the rise and fall of preferential activation in the first three lines of each quatrain. The emotional picture drawn of the rubaiyat on the basis of these procedures was one of fatalism or emotional resignation. General patterns and individual examples are discussed.