Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
This article is about the work by Edward FitzGerald. For poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam, see Omar Khayyam § Poetry.
Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat".[1]
FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.
Scepticism vs. Sufism debate[edit]
The extreme popularity of FitzGerald's work led to a prolonged debate on the correct interpretation of the philosophy behind the poems. FitzGerald emphasized the religious scepticism he found in Omar Khayyam.[10] In his preface to the Rubáiyát, he describes Omar's philosophy as Epicurean and claims that Omar was "hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed and whose faith amounts to little more than his own when stripped of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide".[11] Richard Nelson Frye also emphasizes that Khayyam was despised by a number of prominent contemporary Sufis. These include figures such as Shams Tabrizi, Najm al-Din Daya, Al-Ghazali, and Attar, who "viewed Khayyam not as a fellow-mystic, but a free-thinking scientist".[7]: 663–664 The sceptic interpretation is supported by the medieval historian Al-Qifti (ca. 1172–1248), who in his The History of Learned Men reports that Omar's poems were only outwardly in the Sufi style but were written with an anti-religious agenda. He also mentions that Khayyam was indicted for impiety and went on a pilgrimage to avoid punishment.[12]
Critics of FitzGerald, on the other hand, have accused the translator of misrepresenting the mysticism of Sufi poetry by an overly literal interpretation. Thus, the view of Omar Khayyam as a Sufi was defended by Bjerregaard (1915).[13] Dougan (1991) likewise says that attributing hedonism to Omar is due to the failings of FitzGerald's translation, arguing that the poetry is to be understood as "deeply esoteric".[14] Idries Shah (1999) similarly says that FitzGerald misunderstood Omar's poetry.[15]
The Sufi interpretation is the view of a minority of scholars.[16] Henry Beveridge states that "the Sufis have unaccountably pressed this writer [Khayyam] into their service; they explain away some of his blasphemies by forced interpretations, and others they represent as innocent freedoms and reproaches".[17] Aminrazavi (2007) states that "Sufi interpretation of Khayyam is possible only by reading into his Rubaiyat extensively and by stretching the content to fit the classical Sufi doctrine".[2]: 128
FitzGerald's "scepticist" reading of the poetry is still defended by modern scholars. Sadegh Hedayat (The Blind Owl, 1936) was the most notable modern proponent of Khayyam's philosophy as agnostic scepticism. In his introductory essay to his second edition of the Quatrains of the Philosopher Omar Khayyam (1922), Hedayat states that "while Khayyam believes in the transmutation and transformation of the human body, he does not believe in a separate soul; if we are lucky, our bodily particles would be used in the making of a jug of wine".[18] He concludes that "religion has proved incapable of surmounting his inherent fears; thus Khayyam finds himself alone and insecure in a universe about which his knowledge is nil". In his later work (Khayyam's Quatrains, 1935), Hedayat further maintains that Khayyam's usage of Sufic terminology such as "wine" is literal, and that "Khayyam took refuge in wine to ward off bitterness and to blunt the cutting edge of his thoughts."[6]
FitzGerald's text was published in five editions, with substantial revisions:
Of the five editions published, four were published under the authorial control of FitzGerald. The fifth edition, which contained only minor changes from the fourth, was edited posthumously on the basis of manuscript revisions FitzGerald had left.
Numerous later editions were published after 1889, notably an edition with illustrations by Willy Pogany first published in 1909 (George G. Harrap, London). It was issued in numerous revised editions. This edition combined FitzGerald's texts of the 1st and 4th editions and was subtitled "The First and Fourth Renderings in English Verse".
A bibliography of editions compiled in 1929 listed more than 300 separate editions.[19] Many more have been published since.[20]
Notable editions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries include:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (1887, 1888, 1894);
Doxey, At the Sign of the Lark (1898, 1900), illustrations by Florence Lundborg;
The Macmillan Company (1899);
Methuen (1900) with a commentary by H.M. Batson, and a biographical introduction by E.D. Ross;
Little, Brown, and Company (1900), with the versions of E.H. Whinfield and Justin Huntly McCart;
Bell (1901); Routledge (1904);
Foulis (1905, 1909);
Essex House Press (1905);
Dodge Publishing Company (1905);
Duckworth & Co. (1908);
Hodder and Stoughton (1909), illustrations by Edmund Dulac;
Tauchnitz (1910);
East Anglian Daily Times (1909), Centenary celebrations souvenir;
Warner (1913);
The Roycrofters (1913);
Hodder & Stoughton (1913), illustrations by René Bull;
Dodge Publishing Company (1914), illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom.
Sully and Kleinteich (1920).
Critical editions have been published by Decker (1997)[21] and by Arberry (2016).[22]
