Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald. Originally published in 1859 (1st ed.), my copy from 1960.
My current favourite podcast is Backlisted, and I may shortly breakdown and get a paid subscription just so I can get some of my favourite features, including a list of all books mentioned on the shows. The show is wonderful, albeit terrible for my bookshelves as I’m constantly seeking out the intriguing books they discuss (for example, my recent read and review of The Quiet American was encouraged by the podcast). On an older episode (I can’t recall which one), one of the hosts recommended this book, insisting on the Edward Fitzgerald translation as the best one to get. I found a lovely old, battered paperback version from an online bookseller, and spent a delightfully indolent vacation morning reading it over coffee.
This is one of those “I think I’m supposed to have read this” books, one that I think “everyone” has read. I found the quatrains quaint and a few quite charming, but overall didn’t see much appeal in these as poems or literature. There seems to be some philosophy behind them that varies from carpe diem to an almost fatalistic sense that a great power is in charge of one’s destiny (with the many references to earth or clay being shaped by larger hands). There is quite a lot of wine in the poems, both as an item and as metaphor, including the most famous one about the loaf of bread, the flask of wine, etc.
In reading a bit more about this book and the “translation”, the attribution on my copy makes sense. It seems likely that the verses are more inspired by the originals than actual translations. The metre of the verses as well as the rhyming scheme is definitely English, and it would be some coincidence that the original Persian text followed the same scheme. Fitzgerald apparently described his process as more “transmogrification” than translation, and so the verses are likely more attributable to him than to Khayyam. As the link to Khayyam is also somewhat questionable historically, even more accurate may be “based on the supposed writings of Khayyam”.
My favourite of the verses is number XX, which I think is the essence of the “eat, drink, and be merry” philosophy most commonly ascribed to these:
Ah! My belovéd, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future fears —
To-morrow? Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.
Fate: charity shop or little book library
3 – before 1939
12 – felt I should read it
14 – a name in the title
21 – translation-ish
22 – poetry
25 – new author to me
rclr 