Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Translated by Edward FitzGerald
For the great bulk of English readers—-if in this connection a “ great bulk " of readers can be predicated—the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam means the one particular translation done so divinely well by Edward FitzGerald when the Victorian era was at its most self-centred and self-sufficient stage of development.
The poem made so little mark on its first appearance—so little mark with the critics and the general public, that is to say—that the original edition, passing out of sight, became presently a delightful rarity for the next generation of second-hand book lovers to unearth, for the high appreciation in two kinds which was then awaiting it— the literary and the monetary, And it remains essentially, like all other translations—even the authorised version of the Bible—a second¬ handbook.
For the translator of poetry and vision always stands between us and the original. And whatever the beauty or the exact meaning of the original may have been, in this case, we can hardly doubt that, for English minds, the translator has given to it a reconciling beauty and flavour of his own, which make it more acceptable to all but scholars or pedants.
Of this, indeed, we have proof in the very free and pliant variants of the rival versions—the earlier and the later—which are so fortunately available; and it is only necessary to compare FitzGerald's amended form of the opening stanza with his original, to realise how large liberty he gave himself when rendering into English the richly-coloured similes of the East
. “Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height
Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night;
And, to the field of Heav’n ascending, strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.”
Contents:
CONTENTS
Introduction by Laurence Housman
PAGE
7
Edward FitzGerald by G. F. Maine
IS
Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald
37
First Edition of Rubaiyat, 1859
5 i
Second Edition of Rubaiyat, [868
91
Fifth Edition of Rubdiyat, 1SS9
149
Variations in Texts
203
Comparative Tabic of Quatrains
209
Notes to Second Edition
213
Glossary
218
Index to first lines of Quatrains
220
Book Published: 1947
Author: Omar Khayyam
Edited by GEORGE F. MAINE
Translator: FitzGerald, Edward
Translator: FitzGerald, Edward
Illustrated by Robert Stewart Sherriffs
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