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Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát

Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát. Sylvia Yount.
American Art, 29 (2015), 2, pp. 112–118.

The distinctive work and career of Elihu Vedder have proven difficult to categorize in the history of American art. Part academic naturalist, part progressive symbolist, the artist is best remembered for his allegorical and literary paintings. Yet a more contextual examination of Vedder’s production challenges the standard view of him as a visionary out of step with the art world of his time and unconcerned with the broader cultural reach of his work.

Jack Kerouac’s Rubaiyat: The Influence of Omar Khayyam

Jack Kerouac’s Rubaiyat: The Influence of Omar Khayyam. Michael Skau.
The Journal of Popular Culture, 48 (2015), 3, pp. 487–506.

Almost all of the Kerouac studies have ignored the influence of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát in his life and work. The Rubáiyát provides significant similarities to Kerouac’s dualistic viewpoint: “the extremes of innocent indulgence of the beautiful variety of life and bitter, or even perverse, acceptance of the desolation of mortal existence”. The author, expert in ‘Beat poetry’ (Corso, Ferlinghetti, Burroughs, Ginsberg) points to numerous allusions to and echoes from Khayyám’s poetry, not only in On the road but in his other novels, essays and letters as well.

Love and Death in Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Love and Death in Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Akela Reason.
American Art, 29 (2015), 2, pp. 119–125.

Spiritual uncertainty figured in many of Elihu Vedder’s works. The artist acknowledged his fascination with this theme, writing in his autobiography, The Digressions of V., “it delights me to tamper and potter with the unknowable, and I have a strong tendency to see in things more than meets the eye.” Especially preoccupied by the mystery of death, Vedder returned to the subject again and again. Death comes in many forms in Vedder’s art—from “all-devouring” sphinxes presiding over desert wastes to the fratricidal conflict of the Old Testament, and devastating medieval plagues.

Cosmic poetry of Omar Khayyam and its artistic exposition using batik techniques

Cosmic poetry of Omar Khayyam and its artistic exposition using batik techniques. Victoria Nikulina; Muhammad Rashid Kamal Ansari
Mystic Thoughts – Research Journal of Sufism and Peace, 1 (2015) 1, pp. 61–94.

This study compares seven translations of Omar Khayyam, five in English, one in Urdu and one in Russian. These translations are free translations from the Persian. Translators in most cases have translated giving a flavor of their own views about the poetry of Omar Khayyam. So, all the translations appear different while translating the same quatrain. Eight quatrains of Omar Khayyam which this study terms as cosmic are selected and their translations are compared. Finally, eight paintings created by one of the authors Victoria Nikulina are introduced which illustrate the cosmic views of Omar Khayyam. These paintings utilize the mediums of Batik Art

Comment la traduction des figements linguistiques et culturels influence les réseaux sémantiques des Quatrains d’Omar Khayyâm

Comment la traduction des figements linguistiques et culturels influence les réseaux sémantiques des Quatrains d’Omar Khayyâm. Bentolhoda Nakhaei.
L’imaginaire d’une vie, 2 (2015)

This study aims to investigate how fossilized linguistic forms may have been deformed in translation and how this may have had an impact on the underlying networks of signification in the first English and French translations of Omar Khayyâm’s Rubaiyat in XIX century. Antoine Berman’s theories will serve as reference to try to find out how the original linguistic and cultural balance may have been transformed through the process of translation of a major text in Persian literature towards French and English languages.

The Rubáiyát and its compass

The Rubáiyát and its compass. Annmarie Drury.
In: Translation as Transformation in Victorian. Annmarie Drury. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015. pp. 147-191.

Edward FitzGerald described his translation of Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát, which he produced in four versions ranging from 75 to 101 stanzas, as centered on the theme of carpe diem. In musical terms, the poem might be described as variations on that theme; in visual terms, as a kaleidoscopic exploration of it. Following the lead of Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet and scientist, FitzGerald made his Rubáiyát elaborate a philosophy of “seizing the day”: through lamentation, through the recounting of personal experience, through bald assertions of defiance against conventional piety, through metaphorical representations of a world in which human beings lack meaningful volition, and through vignettes – especially the longest, most fanciful one, in which the poem’s speaker overhears a group of pots speculating about their creator.

Pessoa, Borges and Khayyam

Pessoa, Borges and Khayyam. Fabrizio Boscaglia
Variaciones Borges, 2015, nr. 40, pp. 41–64.

The fascinating possibility of an encounter between Pessoa and Borges in Lisbon, in May 1924, at the end of Borges’s second trip in Europe, has been the departing point for some comparative readings on these authors (Rodriguez Monegal 15-16; Ferrari and Pizarro 91; Balderston 168). The author wants to imagine that, if it had happened, they would have discussed, among other things, a work which both would later mention in their upcoming publications and that would become an important reference to both of them. It is the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), in the famous English translation by the English poet Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), first published in 1859.

Voice in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and FitzGerald’s English translation

Voice in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and FitzGerald’s English translation. Saeedeh Bisayar; Mahdi Safari; Mousaahmadian
International journal of English language, literature and translation studies, 2 (2015) 1, pp. 114–124.

This study attempted to examine the concept of “voice” in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat compared with Fitzgerald’s English translation through investigating the extent of ideological changes Fitzgerald applied in his paraphrase and through analysis of the existing voice in every selected quatrain of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. For this purpose, six Persian quatrains by Khayyam have been selected randomly and their equivalences have been traced in the first edition of the translation of Rubaiyat by Fitzgerald.

Veiling the Mystic in the Hedonist’s Gear: A Comparative Rereading of Omar Khayyam’s The Rubaiyat …

Veiling the Mystic in the Hedonist’s Gear: A Comparative Rereading of Omar Khayyam’s The Rubaiyat and Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s Madhuśālā. Prasun Banerjee.
The Contour, 1 (2015) 4 (April), pp. 14-21.

Despite the conspicuous mystic perspectives, the recognition of the Rubaiyat to the Western literary discourse has essentially been as a hedonist poem celebrating the paganistic wine-intoxicated revelry and joys of earthly life and that of Omar Khayyam as the poet of the sharab (wine), saki (wine-girl) and peyala(wine-pot). But a careful scrutiny of the Persian and oriental tradition of poetry would reveal that the Rubaiyat is fraught with poetic devices that indicate at established Sufistic discourses in Khayyam’s verses, almost akin to the poets like Rumi, Hafeez or Ferdowsi.

Omar FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. A panacea for Victorian era

Omar FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. A panacea for Victorian era. Mahdi Baghfalaki; Zeinab Mahmoudibaha.
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory, 4 (2015) 1, pp. 92–98.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, often called ―the single best-selling book of poetry ever to appear in English‖, was an outlet relief for Victorian era and a source of inspiration for the major Victorian poets as well. Why should this be so? Why should an obscure dilettante’s translation of the quatrains of a minor Persian poet have gone more or less straight to the reading public’s heart and stayed there for a hundred years or so? This paper is an attempt to analyze the reasons beyond the success of Edward Fitzgerald‘s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyamin Victorian era.