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Victorian Poetry and Translation

Victorian Poetry and Translation. Richard Cronin
In: Reading Victorian Poetry. Richard Cronin. Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 114-140.

It was not a great age of poetic translation, but in D.G. Rossetti and Edward FitzGerald it had two great translators, and almost all the most important Victorian poets produced translations of one kind or another. Greek tragedy proved particularly attractive: Barrett Browning translated Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound not once but twice (1833 and 1850), and Augusta Webster translated it too, before going on to publish a version of Euripides’ Medea (1866 and 1868). Robert Browning accommodated within two of his later poems, Balaustion’s Adventure (1871) and Aristophanes’ Apology (1875), complete translations of two other plays by Euripides, Alcestis and Heracles . Edward FitzGerald translated the Agamemnon (1865) as well as Omar Khayyám.

An ‘Umar Khayyám database

An ‘Umar Khayyám database. Jos Coumans.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 242–252.

Coumans studies Khayyám’s popularity worldwide, offering a methodology to establish a database to view all the information on the Rubáiyát, on the original Persian source, and on the secondary literature.

Vernacularizing Rubaiyat: the politics of Madhushala in the context of the Indian nationalism

Vernacularizing Rubaiyat: the politics of Madhushala in the context of the Indian nationalism. A. Castaing.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 215–232.

Anne Castaing shows the influence of Khayyám on the young Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bacchan (1907-2003), who translated the quatrains into Hindi under the title of Umar khayyám kī Madhuśálá (“Omar Khayyám’s House of Wine”). Bacchan wrote his own collection of quatrains entitled Madhuśálá (“The house of wine,” 1935) that deals with the same motifs and symbolism and are interpreted as an “allegory of poetic creation, homeland, universe, love etc., with wine and intoxication symbolising the duality of existence, both sweet and bitter.” By using themes and motifs from Khayyám’s poetry, Bacchan readdresses the questions of orthodoxy versus free thinking, hierarchy of being and man’s place in the universe.

Other Persian quatrains in Holland: the Roseraie du savoir of Husayn-i Ázád

Other Persian quatrains in Holland: the Roseraie du savoir of Husayn-i Ázád. J.T.P. de Bruijn.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 105-114.

De Bruijn explains how, from the nineteenth century onwards, Persian quatrains became fashionable in Dutch poetry. After briefly referring to two great Dutch poets, P.C. Boutens (1870-1943) and J.H. Leopold (1865-1925), De Bruijn concentrates on their common source, an anthology of Persian quatrains in two parts published in 1906 under the titles Gulzár-i ma ‘rifat and La Roseraie du Savoir respectively. The author of these Persian and French anthologies was a Persian by the name of Husayn-i Ázád, who was a physician at the provincial Qajar court of Isfahan. He travelled to London and Paris, but later settled in Paris, where he concentrated on European and Persian poetry. In his chapter, De Bruijn gives a vivid picture of Husayn-i Ázád’s life and how he tried to introduce treasures from the Persian literary tradition to a western public.

How ‘Umar Khayyám inspired Dutch visual artists

How ‘Umar Khayyám inspired Dutch visual artists. Jos Biegstraaten.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 135-142.

Biegstraaten examines the work of four Dutch artists who were inspired by Khayyám’s quatrains: Willem Arondéus (1894-1943), Ger Gerrits (1893-1965), Siep van den Berg (1920-1998) and Theo Forrer (1923-2004).

Between tavern and madrassa: ‘Umar Khayyám the scientist

Between tavern and madrassa: ‘Umar Khayyám the scientist. Bagheri, Mohammad.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 67-72.

This contribution focuses on Khayyám as a scientist and how his scientific merits are combined with his literary genius. Bagheri’s study includes Khayyám’s classification of cubic equations, his commentary on Euclid’s Elements, and Khayyám’s scientific achievements.

La thématique de la mort chez Khayyâm et Gautier

La thématique de la mort chez Khayyâm et Gautier. Akram Ayati.
Plume 7 (2012) 15, pp. 45–69.

Thinking of the death occupied, for a long time, the spirit of the human being and it changed constantly the image of his life. The death is registered in the depths of us, as an inseparable certainty of our destiny, however thinking the death is already thinking about life, because it is the perception of the death that forms the way of life. The theme of the death and its connotations impose in a privileged way, in Theophile Gautier’s poems, writer and poet French of the 19th century. The reading of these poems with a touch pessimistic revives Omar Khayyam’s quatrains in the minds which are familiar with Persian poetry.