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Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Salámán and Absál Together With A Life Of Edward Fitzgerald And An Essay On Persian Poetry By Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- GenresPoetryNonfiction
99 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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141 people want to read
About the author
Edward FitzGerald
634 books24 followersPeople note British poet Edward FitzGerald for his translation in 1859 of
The Rubáiyát
, a collection of quatrains of the medieval Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer Omar Khayyám.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 27, 2016
Sit back with this book and two bottles of red and you will find Heaven !
February 9, 2025
This went so far over my head that I might as well have not attempted reading it. I bought it at the library book sale last year because it was pretty. Apparently, FitzGerald's English translation is really bad, but I can't read Persian so what do I know?
Fun fact: a jeweled edition of this book sank on the Titanic!
Fun fact: a jeweled edition of this book sank on the Titanic!
March 6, 2022
Having just encountered a quote from this poem that was new to me I was moved to read it in its entirety. The original was in Persian and in translation has been rendered in 75 quatrains with a rhyme scheme of aab a. The theme is one of the impermanence of life and a desire to grab what joy one can find while life lasts. It remind me a great deal of the Proverbs of Solomon without the moral caste.
July 21, 2024
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing….
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat is one of the greatest translations in world literature, evenly balanced with the Baudelaire and Mallarmé translations of Edgar Allan Poe, the Schlegel-Tieck translations of Shakespeare, and the King James translation of the Bible.
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat points unambiguously to the poetic and philosophic dominance of 11th -century Persia over the prosaic, superstitious, intellectually primitive 11th -century West, a West still sunk in poverty, overrun by barbarians, confused, illiterate, depopulated, and primarily rural.
Far from looking down on Omar and his world, FitzGerald found there a better, more humane, more appealing world than that offered by Victorian England.
In FitzGerald’s hands, individual Persian quatrains amalgamated into one of the most poignant and most often cited modern poetic statements about forfeiture, yearning, and reminiscence.
The imagery of the Rubaiyat is wild, flamboyant, and extraordinary. It is a proto-modern achievement, hanging just on the lip of modernity.
Bloom has this to say:
A great eccentric, fortunately endowed with private means, Fitzgerald made a dreadful mistake in 1856 by marrying the daughter of a deceased friend, the Quaker poet Bernard Barton. After a year of quarrels, the couple separated, and Fitzgerald solaced himself by composing his Rubdiyat.
The historical Omar Khayyém (1048-1131) was a renowned astronomer and mathematician but only a minor poet, content to write many epigrams. Rubdiydt simply means quatrains, following a rhyme scheme (aaba).
A close friend, a scholar of Persian, made the manuscripts of Omar available to Fitzgerald. Published by an antiquarian bookseller and soon remaindered, Fitzgerald’s Rubdiyat would have vanished utterly except that a copy reached Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who fell in love with the poem. Rossetti introduced it to his circle, including Algernon Charles S winburne, William Morris, and George Meredith, and these enthusiasts made it known to a soon enthralled general reading public.
The poem became a transatlantic cult, and continues to be a part of Anglo-American literary culture.
Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing….
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat is one of the greatest translations in world literature, evenly balanced with the Baudelaire and Mallarmé translations of Edgar Allan Poe, the Schlegel-Tieck translations of Shakespeare, and the King James translation of the Bible.
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat points unambiguously to the poetic and philosophic dominance of 11th -century Persia over the prosaic, superstitious, intellectually primitive 11th -century West, a West still sunk in poverty, overrun by barbarians, confused, illiterate, depopulated, and primarily rural.
Far from looking down on Omar and his world, FitzGerald found there a better, more humane, more appealing world than that offered by Victorian England.
In FitzGerald’s hands, individual Persian quatrains amalgamated into one of the most poignant and most often cited modern poetic statements about forfeiture, yearning, and reminiscence.
The imagery of the Rubaiyat is wild, flamboyant, and extraordinary. It is a proto-modern achievement, hanging just on the lip of modernity.
Bloom has this to say:
A great eccentric, fortunately endowed with private means, Fitzgerald made a dreadful mistake in 1856 by marrying the daughter of a deceased friend, the Quaker poet Bernard Barton. After a year of quarrels, the couple separated, and Fitzgerald solaced himself by composing his Rubdiyat.
The historical Omar Khayyém (1048-1131) was a renowned astronomer and mathematician but only a minor poet, content to write many epigrams. Rubdiydt simply means quatrains, following a rhyme scheme (aaba).
A close friend, a scholar of Persian, made the manuscripts of Omar available to Fitzgerald. Published by an antiquarian bookseller and soon remaindered, Fitzgerald’s Rubdiyat would have vanished utterly except that a copy reached Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who fell in love with the poem. Rossetti introduced it to his circle, including Algernon Charles S winburne, William Morris, and George Meredith, and these enthusiasts made it known to a soon enthralled general reading public.
The poem became a transatlantic cult, and continues to be a part of Anglo-American literary culture.
Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
June 2, 2022
impossible to read
April 14, 2025
For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews