Thomas Hardy, in Jude the Obscure, wrestled with a fatalistic view of man not unlike FitzGerald's. This vision was one that emerged again and again in Victorian writers. The Stars before him from the Field of Nightĭrives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikesEdward Fitzgerald's poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, focuses on some of the major humanistic issues of the Victorian period: What is man? From whence did he come? What is his purpose in life? In FitzGerald's translation of the poem, Omar appears to be strongly preoccupied with the fatalistic vision of man's existence. The Sultán's Turret with a Shaft of Light.ġ872-79: Wake! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight ![]() Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night Īnd, to the field of Heav'n ascending, strikes ![]() Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:Īnd Lo ! the Hunter of the East has caughtġ868: Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height Literal: The sun has thrown the lassoo of dawn over the roof the emperor of day has thrown the stone into the cup.ġ859: Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Arberry's The Romance of the Rubáiyát, London, 1959.Ĭomparison of a literal translation of the Persian original of lines 1-4 with FitzGerald's successive versions will exemplify his method of translation and recension: The best recent edition of the 1859 version is A. Textual notes in quotation marks are FitzGerald's notes from that edition. The text printed here is that of the first edition. FitzGerald's publisher, Bernard Quaritch, had named him as Omar's translator in a book catalogue in the autumn of 1868, but that mention went unnoticed and FitzGerald was not formally recognized as the author of the Rubáiyát until March 1876, in an article in the Contemporary Review. The poem underwent extensive revision for successive editions in 1868 (with 110 quatrains), 1872 (101 quatrains), and 1879. The first edition of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám appeared anonymously in March 1859. Cowell who later became a distinguished Sanskrit scholar but who, in the 1850's, was rather a keen and gifted student of Oriental languages than an authoritative guide. When he encountered difficulties in interpreting Omar, he consulted his friend and unofficial tutor, E. his worldly pleasures are what they profess to be without any pretence at divine allegory: his wine is the veritable juice of the grape: his tavern, where it was to be had: his Saki, the flesh and blood that poured it out for him: all which, and where the roses were in bloom, was all he profess'd to want of this world or to expect of paradise." As translator, FitzGerald was concerned not with literal accuracy but with securing a forceful and lively equivalent: "Better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle." As Persian scholar, he was a dedicated and careful amateur. FitzGerald viewed the rubáiyát more literally: ". Studying some six hundred rubáiyát in the two Omar manuscripts available to him, FitzGerald saw that by selection and arrangement "a very pretty eclogue might be tesselated out of his scattered fragments." The controlling design was outlined by FitzGerald in a letter to his publisher: " begins with dawn pretty sober and contemplative then as he thinks and drinks, grows savage, blasphemous, etc., and then again sobers down into melancholy at nightfall." FitzGerald recognized that his plan altered somewhat the balance of moods in Omar, allowing "a less than equal proportion of the 'Drink and make merry,' which (genuine or not) recurs over-frequently in the original." Since Omar's own day there have been recurrent attempts to interpret in a mystical sense the poet's glorification of wine and the joys of the moment. The result is, as FitzGerald said, "a strange farrago of grave and gay," with recurring motifs but without essential unity or progression of theme or mood. ![]() Collections of rubáiyát were made, not by grouping together stanzas similar in subject matter, but by arranging the independent units in an alphabetic sequence. In the Persian original each rubái is an independent composition, its thought condensed and polished to the form of epigram. FitzGerald's stanza, a pentameter quatrain with aaba rhyme, is similar in form to Omar's although less varied in its rhythm. ![]() The traditional Persian stanza he employed, the rubái, consisted of two verses of varied prosody divided into hemistichs, with the first, second and fourth hemistichs rhyming-and occasionally the third as well. 1] Omar Khayyám, Persian astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and poet, lived at Naishápúr in Khorassán in the second half of the eleventh and the first quarter of the twelfth century A.D.
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