Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Edward FitzGerald
- First Published: 1859
- Type of Work: Philosophical Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric sequence
- Subjects: Authors or writers, Poetry or poets, Symbolism, Mysticism, Life, philosophy of, Life and death, Mathematics or mathematicians, Senses or sensation, Wine or wine making, Pleasure, Pottery, porcelain, or glass
Containing 75 quatrains in the first edition, some 100 in later editions, Fitzgerald’s collection imposes an organization, both philosophical and artistic, on the otherwise random ordering of Khayyam’s poetry. Such an arrangement stresses the materialistic side of Khayyam’s thought by eliminating the more spiritual of the rub’ai, and it earned for Fitzgerald’s Omar the reputation as a hedonist and religious skeptic, explaining somewhat his place as a cult figure of Victorian England.
Fitzgerald’s Khayyam advocates that humankind make the most of life through intense...
[The entire page is 564 words long]
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