Taking an Interest
In: Bubb (Ed.) 2023 – Asian Classics on the Victorian. Flights of Translation. Oxford : Oxford U niversity Press, 2023. Pp. 33-62. ISBN: 9780198866275.
This chapter explains why nineteenth-century readers with no specialist or professional commitment to Asian languages and literatures began to take an interest in oriental translations, an interest that can be observed to grow steadily over the course of the century. It proposes four main ‘growth factors’: a climate of religious tolerance and ecumenism, increased opportunities for travel to Asia, imperial consciousness, and concerns surrounding decadence and the perceived cultural decline of the West. It is then shown how each of these factors contributes to the phenomenal popularity of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, in a variety of translations between 1880 and 1920. Finally, the chapter defines some of the limits of Victorian cosmopolitanism, beyond which readerly curiosity or sympathy did not readily extend.
A Coleção Rubáiyát. Denise Bottmann
In: Cadernos de Tradução, vol. 43 (2023) 1
This article draws a sketch of the so-called Coleção Rubáiyát, published by Livraria José Olympio Editora since 1943 through 1961, presenting its previous roots in another series of books, and a complete list of its published works, as well as a brief iconography with some cover images.
Omar Chajjam Freiheit und Skepsis Die Aktualität der Lebens- und Existenzphilosophie eines persischen Unversalgenies. Javid Kazemi. Norderstedt : Books on Demand, 2023. – 249 p. ; 22 cm. – ISBN: 9783758309861
180 quatrains in German, organized in 9 chapters.
Contents
Vorwort (1)
Erster Teil. Lebensweg (5)
Zweiter Teil. Chajjam als Dichter (11)
Dritter Teil. Chajjams magisch-philosophische Dichtung (27)
Vierter Teil. Das Rubaijat (101)
Anhang. Anmerkungen und Erläuterungen (153)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam : the best-loved, bestselling poem ever published. Translated from the Persian. Edited by A.D.P. Briggs. London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023. 160 p.; 20 cm. ISBN: 9781399614122 (The great poets)
Originally published: London: Everyman, 1998
Omar’s Rubaiyat. [Translated by Edward FitzGerald]. [S.l.] : Wolf, 2023. 12 cm.
Pack of 75 playing cards, illustrated with Sullivan’s images and the 75 quatrains from FitzGerald’s first edition. Together with a little booklet with instructions how to use the cards as tarot cards.
Abolgassem E’tessam-Zadeh. Omar Khayyam. Le retour d’un géant, Les quatrains. Bilingue persan-français. Edition revue et augmentée par Reza Rokoee.
Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings. Annmarie Drury
In: Modern Philology 121 (2023) 2, p. 169-191
Abstract
Shaaban Robert’s Swahili poem Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili (Omar Khayyam in Swahili) (1952), translated from Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1859), provides a study in the reach and transformation of British literature of the nineteenth century and in the significance of translation within a colonial sphere. Robert (1909–1962), a major Swahili author, was employed by the colonial service for all his working life, and in terms of his receipt of FitzGerald’s poem and the very language he used, the Standard Swahili created by the British colonial state, his translation was imbricated in a colonial context. He exercised significant creative agency as translator, plumbing FitzGerald’s poem for underlying elements of Khayyám’s Persian and translating FitzGerald’s rendering of Khayyám to highlight affiliations between Khayyám and Swahili poetic tradition. At the inception of Robert’s translating of FitzGerald lay a troubling experience of dislocation that resonates with FitzGerald’s creation of his translation and the reception of that poem and that helps us understand the affective associations belonging to Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili. Thus, Robert nurtured the cosmopolitan connections of Swahili poetry while creating for Standard Swahili—a variety of Swahili with little poetry to call its own—a poem bearing a sense of poetic tradition.
