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Op hun gevleugelde gedachten

Op hun gevleugelde gedachten. Over P.C. Boutens en de Rubaiyat van Omar Khayyam. Rianne Batenburg. Utrecht, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, Faculteit Letteren, 2004.
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The Fin de Siècle cult of FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam

The Fin de Siècle cult of FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam. John D. Yohannan.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 5-19.
(From Review of National Literatures 2, no. 1.)

Yohannan describes how the Rubaiyat was recognised as “a disintegrating spiritual force in England and America” and how in the Omar Khayyam clubs the veneration for the translator tended to surpass worship of the poet.

Fugitive articulation: an introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Fugitive articulation: an introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. D Schenker.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 59-76.
(From Victorian Poetry 19, no. 1.)

Schenker takes an innovative and challenging look at the Rubaiyat, questioning why we fail today to respond to it as a work of serious literary art (p. 60). The author compares its effect on an audience with that of an “unimpeachable contemporary masterpiece, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The Rubaiyat’s wide appeal might be that it “institutionalizes a cult of spiritual resignation” and that it is “sufficiently void of meaning to be recyclable in any number of contexts”. In his analysis of the poem, the author recognises its “verbal claustrophobia”.

Larger hopes and the new hedonism: Tennyson and FitzGerald

Larger hopes and the new hedonism: Tennyson and FitzGerald. Norman Page.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 151-168.
(From Tennyson: Seven Essays, edited by Philip Collins. 1992 by The Macmillan Press Ltd.)

Page compares Tennyson’s In Memoriam with the almost contemporary Rubaiyat. The author’s analysis is that, even as he confronts the threats to faith posed by the new science (Darwin), Tennyson remains conservative and reassuring with the strength of his convictions, while the Rubaiyat, a fin-de-siecle poem “born before its time”, is uncompromisingly unorthodox and challenging with the power of its scepticism.

The discovery of the Rubáiyát

The discovery of the Rubáiyát. Robert Bernard Martin.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 77-95.
(From With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward FitzGerald, 1985.)

Martin considers the death of Fitzgerald’s great friend, William Browne, as the significant event which shaped the author’s life. The consensus to explain the Rubaiyat’s success is that “the times were ripe” for works repudiating the traditional religious morality and attempting to find an alternative to it. It is indeed startling to realise that the date of the Rubaiyat’s first appearance, 1859, coincides with that of Darwin’s Origin of Species.

The tale of the inimitable Rubaiyat

The tale of the inimitable Rubaiyat. T. Leacock-Seghatolislami.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 195-209.
(From Translation Persepctives XI. 2000)

Summary

In choosing to translate only the “Epicurean” quatrains, Fitzgerald gave the Rubaiyat a superficiality and a one-sidedness not found in the original. However, Tracia Leacock-Seghatolislami’ presents contrasting opinions. Divorcing the English poem from the Persian rubai, she exposes Fitzgerald’s lack of knowledge of Persian, the result being “a text so discombobulated that it is hard to trace in the Persian”. Despite this, Fitzgerald’s rendering “displays a sensitivity, a delicacy in the turn of phrase, which suggests that the poetic Muse was permanently encamped on his doorstep” (pp. 198-9). Though forcefully asserting the “true significance of much of Khayyam’s poetry, which often has a Sufistic feel to it”, the author fails to give convincing references or arguments for this.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. I.B.H. Jewett.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 21-58.
(From Edward FitzGerald. © 1977 by G.K. Hall & Co.)

Jewett pinpoints interesting moments in the correspondence between Fitzgerald and his mentor, Cowell, comparing their versions of the same Khayyam quatrain, thus illustrating “dramatically the difference between translation and creation”. The importance Fitzgerald attached to his earlier translation of Jami’s Salaman and Absal is also touched upon. Fitzgerald emphatic stipulation that Omar never be published without Salaman was apparently disregarded after his death. The article further gives a brief treatment of the problem of the Persian quatrains’ authenticity and of Khayyam’s possible authorship and possible mysticism.