[In the following excerpt, Jewett compares FitzGerald's Rubáiyát to its source, maintaining that the original contains greater variance in theme and mood, and more humor, while FitzGerald's version contains more vivid imagery, as well as more action and movement.]

FITZGERALD'S VERSION OF THE RUBáIYáT

FitzGerald's Rubáiyát—the “Epicurean Eclogue” as FitzGerald once described it—follows a pattern that is lacking in the original. By their very genre, Omar Khayyam's quatrains are individual entities that formulate and present a complete idea in each stanza and follow no set arrangement. The Persian manuscripts that FitzGerald used for his translation had the quatrains arranged in an alphabetical order, a method often used for the convenience of both the copyist and the reader. The rubai, the Persian word for the quatrain, is regarded as a typically Iranian innovation. According to a popular story, the rhythm of the rubai was discovered by a Persian poet in the ninth or tenth century who used as his metrical model a phrase sung by a boy at play. The lyrical swing of the rubai and its short and epigrammatic form soon made it a popular vehicle of poetic expression among both the common folk and the literati. To compose a rubai on the spur of the moment became a skill worthy of respect and a pastime indulged in by the quick witted and the fluent.

The rubai consists of four hemistichs of up to thirteen syllables each, and a rhyme scheme of a a b a or a a a a. Traditionally, the first three hemistichs are regarded as the prelude to the fourth, which should be sublime, subtle, or epigrammatic. The range of subject matter and the variation of thought and mood in the rubai are unlimited; masters of the poetic art as well as anonymous composers of folk poetry have used the form. Sometimes, the masters have indulged in the ribald as well as in the sublime—the contrast one finds in the quatrains of Omar Khayyam. The obscene jests in some of his stanzas greatly perplexed and troubled Omar's French translator J. B. Nicolas, who nevertheless stoutly maintained that Omar was a Sufi who employed only mystical imagery in his quatrains.

As regards the authenticity of the stanzas attributed to Omar in the manuscripts that have come under scholarly scrutiny, including the two manuscripts that FitzGerald used as his sources, no consensus exists among Orientalists. Some scholars, mostly in the West, have questioned the authorship of many of the quatrains and have attributed them to anonymous poets, but others have seen no reason to doubt that Khayyam composed the stanzas bearing his name. The process of authentication has been rendered difficult by the fact that no manuscripts of the Rubáiyát are to be found either in Khayyam's own hand or with his signature. The fact that no manuscripts survive from Omar's own lifetime, or from the period after his death is undoubtedly the result of the havoc wrought by the Mongol invasion which destroyed a large part of the cultural wealth of Iran.

Selections from Khayyam's Rubáiyát, however, have appeared in Persian anthologies, one of which goes as far back as 1611. These anthologies attest to the popularity of Omar's Rubáiyát and the existence of a large number of his quatrains at one time. No one who has read Omar's Rubáiyát in Persian can deny their merit. Khayyam may not be in the first rank of Persian poets, but he is not among the least. Persian scholars regard him as a liberal agnostic in the tradition of Avicenna and as a forerunner of Hafez in whose poetry Omar's earthly wine assumes a mystical significance. Omar's place in the hierarchy of poets is expressed best in a statement attributed to the Moghul Emperor of India, Akbar, who said that each of Hafez's ghazals (“lyrics”) should be accompanied by a rubai from Omar Khayyam, for reading Hafez without Omar was like wine without relish.

As for the philosophical content of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát, the diversity of thought in the Persian original far outstrips that of the English version. Omar's quatrains are not confined to the themes of doubt of a future life and the advocacy of enjoyment in this one. The freedom of the rubai form allowed Omar to indulge in satire, parody, veiled jokes sometimes taken as serious observations by critics, and in piety as well as skepticism. His changes of mood are one reason for his popularity, for every man can find a corroboration of his own state of mind in Omar.

The parodoxes of life that Omar points out in his Rubáiyát have puzzled men for centuries. Sufism was one attempt to answer these questions. The Sufi movement started in the early years of Islam, perhaps in the seventh or eighth century, and gained many adherents. The word Sufi is derived from the Arabic word suf and denotes an individual who prefers to wear a garment of simple woollen cloth rather than the silks and brocades fashionable among the wealthy. The Sufis renounced worldly goods and physical comforts, and devoted their lives to seeking reunion with the Creator. In its heyday in Iran, Sufism inspired some of the finest poems in the Persian language. The movement, however, fell into disrepute, and some of its practices drew sharp criticism not only from orthodox Muslims who regarded Sufism as dangerously close to heresy, but also from intellectuals in general.

Some of Omar's rubais enunciate thoughts found in Sufism, thus leading to the theory that Omar was a Sufi. Those who hold this view, however, disregard Omar's attacks on the hypocrisy of the Sufis and his jokes at their expense. His works show him to have been a liberal philosopher who tried to examine questions in the light of reason and logic. If his musings sometimes sound like mysticism or Sufism, it may be because mysticism also tries to find reasons for ostensibly unreasonable phenomena; and in its attempts to do so, it sometimes resorts to logical absurdities. As a creed, Sufism has rigidities that an independent thinker like Omar would have found hard to accept; nor is it possible to believe that a rationalist like Omar could have subscribed to the extremes of thought and behavior practiced by the Sufis in general.

FitzGerald himself described Omar in his preface to the Rubáiyát as a man “of such moderate worldly Ambition as becomes a Philosopher, and such moderate wants as rarely satisfy a Debauchee,” who bragged more than he drank of the wine that he celebrates. If FitzGerald had been better acquainted with the conventions of Persian poetry, he might have pointed out as well that the wine mentioned with such frequency in Omar's poetry could be regarded as one of these conventions. Since wine was forbidden by Islam, it came to be used as a symbol of many things, such as rebellion against fate, the forbidden fruit, the hope of future happiness—since holy wine is one of the joys provided in paradise—and the mystical love of God. Persian poets have used wine in innumerable contexts; and, if they have praised it not symbolically but for its earthly effects, they have refrained from saying so openly, perhaps hoping that the nondrinker would interpret their wine as a symbolic one, and the wine-drinker embrace them as a comrade in sin. The wisdom of this course is illustrated by Omar's Rubáiyát, which is accepted by one group as mystical and by another as a celebration of inebriety.

Omar uses wine in many contexts, sometimes as a device to illustrate the absurdities in human concepts of sin and virtue. Khayyam is always critical of convention, but his attitude is not that of an indignant social reformer, but that of a scholar with a sense of humor. His approach is a tongue-in-cheek one, and his verses are lighthearted. He cannot resist applying the principles of logic and mathematics to all conventional beliefs, including the poetic and religious. In one quatrain, he examines addiction to wine in the light of the belief in divine omniscience. God knew, he says, since the beginning of time, that Omar would drink wine. If Omar should not drink wine, would it not turn God's omniscience to ignorance? Obviously an impossibility!

In another rubai, Omar propounds a joke in logic. His opponents told him, he says, not to drink, because wine is the enemy of faith. Realizing this, Omar declares, I swore by God that I would drink the blood of the enemy; for killing the enemies of God is a forgivable act. Drinking then, by Omar's calculation, becomes a doubly meritorious action. He is not above poking fun at the Deity; and, in one quatrain that is popular among the Persians, he complains that God had broken his jug of wine and ruined his pleasure. Dear God, he asks, could it be that you are drunk? Omar may or may not have written this stanza himself; but this irreverent humor is so typical of his quatrains that one can easily believe that Omar wrote it.

Little of Khayyam's humor survives in the English version. Perhaps FitzGerald did not understand or could not capture in English the subtle jokes, and the ribald and irreverent ones he left alone. He did notice the concepts of logic, mathematics, and physics that Omar employs in his rubais. In a note to stanza fifty-six in the third and fourth editions, he points out that the lines were a jest at his studies. He says that Omar has a mathematical quatrain comparing himself and his beloved to a pair of compasses, a metaphor made famous in English poetry by John Donne.

Omar's observations on life that have earned him the reputation of skeptic can be reduced to a few essential points. He advocates that man make the most of this life; for, whatever sages and saints may say, no one has verified the existence of another world beyond this one. He poses the question of sin and evil; if God created the world and everything in it, he also created evil. The responsibility for the existence of evil in this world thus lies at God's own door. Since only good emanates from God, wine and sin cannot be evil, for these are also God's creations.

FITZGERALD'S INNOVATIONS

In regard to FitzGerald's Rubáiyát, the reader who is unacquainted with the Persian may still find it hard to decide whether FitzGerald's poem is a translation or mostly his own creation. Persian words such as “Máh” and “Máhi” and the names of Persian monarchs that are deliberately used by FitzGerald to give an Oriental color to his poem tend to confuse the student, who begins to search for abstruse Eastern allusions in quatrains that proclaim their meaning in plain English. To look for obscurity in FitzGerald's Rubáiyát is to defeat the poet's main objective in not only the quatrains but in all his poems: the presentation of a foreign or difficult concept in a form familiar to the English reader. As FitzGerald repeatedly said in his letters, he was trying to achieve literary excellence rather than fidelity to the original. In this pursuit of excellence, he achieved in the Rubáiyát a lyrical beauty that in places outstrips the Persian.

Since FitzGerald conceived of the Rubáiyát as an “Epicurean Eclogue,” he chose from Khayyam only those quatrains that fitted this pattern. He discarded all those stanzas that expressed piety or religious sentiment, though he was well aware of them; for in a letter to George Borrow of June, 1857, he copied the Persian and translated one of Khayyam's quatrains expressing repentance:

Alas, that life is gone in vain!
My every mouthful is unlawful, every breath is tainted;
Commands not fulfilled have disgraced me;
And alas for my unlawful deeds!

In choosing to translate only the “epicurean” quatrains, FitzGerald gave the Rubáiyát a superficiality and a one-sidedness not found in the original. On the other hand, FitzGerald's English version sparkles with a sustained light and color found only occasionally in the Persian. FitzGerald seems to have captured in his Rubáiyát the sunlight and spring flowers of his beloved Suffolk, all the more precious because so fragile and transient. Like the paradox of life itself, the poem evokes visions of beauty while constantly reminding one of its evanescence; FitzGerald's quatrains cluster around the single theme of the shortness of life and the uncertainty of the future. As he said many times, his poem is intended for those who are not acquainted with the Persian; for such a reader does not then miss the many subtle meanings and allusions in Khayyam's quatrains, and he does not resent FitzGerald's treatment of the Persian. To appreciate the Rubáiyát, one should regard it, therefore, as an English poem inspired by a Persian poet.¹

FitzGerald's contribution to the shaping of the Rubáiyát is evident in the form of the English version. In the Persian, each independent quatrain expresses a thought and a mood perhaps quite different from the preceding or the succeeding one. In composing his version, FitzGerald had to find a unifying element which would connect the stanzas to each other and form a continuous whole. He solved the problem by introducing the element of drama and by giving his poem the unity of time—one day; the unity of character—the poet himself; and the unity of action—the poet's musings.

FitzGerald explained his approach in the Rubáiyát in a letter he wrote to Quaritch on March 31, 1872, in which he was defending the alterations and additions in the second edition which had displeased some readers:

I daresay Edⁿ 1 is better in some respects than 2, but I think not altogether. Surely, several good things were added—perhaps too much of them which also gave Omar's thoughts room to turn in, as also the Day which the Poem occupies. He begins with Dawn pretty sober and contemplative: then as he thinks & drinks, grows savage, blasphemous &c., and then again sobers down into melancholy at nightfall. All which wanted rather more expansion than the first Edⁿ gave. I dare say Edⁿ 1 best pleased those who read it first: as first Impressions are apt to be strongest.

The introduction of action in a poem which deals essentially with philosophical concepts was a difficult task that FitzGerald accomplished successfully. He chose as his opening stanza a quatrain which does not appear as the first one in either of the two sources that he used. The quatrain conveys a sense of urgency and propels the reader into the dramatic action:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
          And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultán's Turret in a Noose of Light.

The journey of the sun across the sky, of man in this life, and of Omar through the realm of philosophy is on its way. The second and third stanzas maintain the hurried, breathless pace set by the first quatrain, and they convey the basic concept of the poem—that, in this life, there is no time to postpone pleasure. In the fourth edition, FitzGerald specified that the first three stanzas, which he called the “Lever de Rideau,” should appear on the first page.

The start of day also heralds the advent of springtime in the fourth stanza:

Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
          Where the WHTE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

For the poet, spring is the time of youth and pleasure; “The Nightingale cries to the Rose,” and the poet calls out for more wine (Seventh stanza):

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
          The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

The three succeeding stanzas all continue the imagery of spring. Stanza eight introduces summer:

And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke—and a thousand scatter'd into Clay:
          And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshýd and Kaikobád away.

Stanzas nine to thirteen continue the images of early summer—green herbage, red rose, blossoms of a thousand hue. The twelfth stanza is the famous “Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,” and the quatrains of early summer culminate in the exquisite thirteenth:

Look to the Rose that blows about us—”Lo,
“Laughing,” she says, “into the World I blow:
          “At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
“Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

The fourteenth stanza creates an abrupt change with its “Ashes” and its “Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face.” The fifteenth stanza, however, returns to the summer images of golden grain, rain, wind, and aureate earth. FitzGerald apparently did not like the break in continuity, for in the second edition he inserted the “Golden grain” stanza after that of “the blowing Rose”; and he also made the “Ashes” quatrain number seventeen and the prelude to stanzas suggesting a change in mood, season, and the time of day.

In the first edition, stanzas sixteen to twenty-two indicate a change from early summer. The absence of color in these quatrains, the repeated use of “day,” the description of Bahram sleeping, and the loveliest and the best drinking a round or two and creeping silently to rest—all evoke a quiet and somnolent atmosphere such as prevails at high noon in midsummer. Stanza twenty-two, which mentions summer's dressing in new bloom, gives an indication of the season of the year the poet is still describing. The section seems to end with the twenty-third stanza, which introduces a series decrying abstract theorizing. Even in quatrains that deal with abstract concepts, FitzGerald maintains the lively and energetic pace by using active metaphors, as in stanza twenty-eight:

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
          And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd—
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

Images that occur most frequently in the Rubáiyát are the rose, the nightingale, and the green of spring and summer, all of which are favorite topics of Persian poetry. FitzGerald also uses light and color to indicate the time of day and the change of seasons, as well as to evoke a mood. Stanzas twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five, which describe the futility of conjectures about the future, emphasize darkness and dust:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
          Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!
Alike for those who for To-Day prepare,
And those that after a TO-MORROW stare,
          A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries
“Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!”
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
          Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

Stanzas twenty-nine and thirty ask the reason for man's creation in lines that flow with the sharpness of a clear mountain spring:

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
          And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.
What, without asking, hither hurried whence?
And, without asking, whither hurried hence!
          Another and another Cup to drown
The Memory of this Impertinence!

Because these stanzas are as colorless as water, the brilliant flash of stanza thirty-one comes as a surprise:

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
          And many Knots unravel'd by the Road;
But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.

The seventeen stanzas that follow concentrate primarily on the play of light and shadow: Destiny's Lamp and “little Children stumbling in the Dark” (stanza 33); “Dusk of Day” in the marketplace (36); the stars setting and the caravan starting for the “Dawn of Nothing” (38); “The Angel Shape” stealing through the dusk (42); the “black Horde” contrasted with the polish of the “enchanted Sword”(44); and the “Magic Shadow-show/Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun” (46). The only touches of color in these stanzas are gold, rose, and ruby vintage; and each is mentioned only once. The tempo of the poem quickens suddenly in stanza forty-nine, and is heightened in stanza fifty by the metaphor of the player striking the ball. The action reaches a peak in stanzas fifty-four and fifty-five, which together form a complete sentence:

I tell Thee this—When, starting from the Goal,
Over the shoulders of the flaming Foal
          Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtara they flung,
In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul
The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about
If clings my Being—let the Súfi flout;
          Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.

These two stanzas, and stanza fifty-six, all of which contain words of light, heat, and suddenness, suggest to the mind's eye the last brilliant light cast by a sinking sun. Stanza fifty-eight with its direct address to the Deity—

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
          For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give—and take!

—provides a fitting end to the day and to the start of night which, as FitzGerald may or may not have known, is observed by Omar's countrymen with a prayer.

Stanza fifty-nine, which in the first edition is the beginning of the “Kúza-Náma” or the episode of the pots, uses the storyteller's device of attracting his audience's attention, “Listen again,” in order to set the stage for the dramatic narrative of the pots. The episode occupies that part of the evening when the sun has set, but the moon has not as yet risen. The haze of twilight which surrounds the stanzas is skillfully suggested by “the surly Tapster,” his visage daubed with the “smoke of Hell.” The greyness of twilight is matched, as it were, with the aridity of abstract speculation in stanza sixty-five:

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
“My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
          “But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
“Methinks I might recover by-and-by!”

The advent of “the little Crescent” ends the episode and ushers in a mood of calm cheerfulness. The garden is alive again; perfume is in the air; spring has come; and nature has renewed herself. But, for the poet, there is no return. His farewell is sad, but not bitter:

Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash my Body whence the Life has died,
          And in a Windingsheet of Vine-leaf wrapt
So bury me by some sweet Garden-side.
That ev'n my buried Ashes such a Snare
Of Perfume shall fling up into the Air,
          As not a True Believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.

Though the poet is no more, he lives on in nature, having merged with it.

The end of the poem returns to the beginning: the garden, spring, and wine. But, in place of the hubbub of dawn, there is the peaceful quiet of a moonlit night. The last two stanzas of the Rubáiyát shine with a lyrical beauty seldom matched in English literature:

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
          How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me—in vain!
And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
          And in thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

KúZA-NáMA

In the episode of the pots, FitzGerald retained the paradoxes formulated by Omar. FitzGerald arranged the speculative stanzas consecutively in the form of questions. In the 1872 edition, he revised one of the stanzas to indicate the Sufistic nature of the questions raised. In the first edition, he had written the stanza thus:

And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
          And suddenly one more impatient cried—
“Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”

(stanza 60)

In the second edition he revised the stanza:

Thus with the Dead as with the Living, What?
And Why? so ready, but the Wherefor not,
          One on a sudden peevishly exclaim'd,
“Which is the Potter, pray, and which the Pot?”

(stanza 94)

This version did not please FitzGerald, for in the third edition he changed it, adding the word “Súfi” as well”

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot—
I think a Súfi pipkin—waxing hot—
          “All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me, then,
“Who makes—Who sells—Who buys—Who is the Pot?”

(stanza 87)

In the fourth edition, he restored the last line to its original form, but left the first three lines intact:

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot—
I think a Súfi piplin—waxing hot—
          “All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me, then,
“Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”

(stanza 87)

In the first edition, the questions appear under “Kúza-Náma,” beginning with stanza sixty, and ending with the rising of the crescent, stanza sixty-six. FitzGerald arranges them in succession: (A) What is the true nature of existence, and of man's relationship to God? (B) If God created man for a purpose, why does he stamp him back to earth again? Why does God create beautiful things, and then destroy them for no apparent reason? (C) If there is ugliness, why did God create it? (D) If God is all-merciful, would it not be against his nature to punish men? Stanza sixty-five offers no solution, but a way of escape from exhausting and insoluble paradoxes—the old familiar juice of the grape which at least ensures a jolly time while life lasts.

In later editions, FitzGerald removed the subtitle of “Kúza-Náma,” or the episode of the pots; but he left the questions arranged consecutively and as parts of the episode. In the second edition, FitzGerald added a number of stanzas with a philosophical content, perhaps influenced by his reading of Nicolas' edition of the Rubáiyát from the manuscript he had found in Iran. The sequence of stanzas fifty to fifty-five of the second edition are not in the first edition. Stanza thirty-six, which first appears in the second edition, draws upon an allusion in Attar's Mantic uttair, which FitzGerald also translated, for the image of the mourning sea:

Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn;
          Nor Heav'n, with those eternal Signs reveal'd
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.

Since FitzGerald allowed himself great latitude in composing the English version of the Rubáiyát, allusions appear from his other readings, both Oriental and non-Oriental. He was fully aware of the common heritage of Eastern and Western thought, and he pointed out in a note to the Rubáiyát the occurrence of the metaphor of the Potter and the Pot in different literatures of the world. Thus he did not consider it improper to add a dash of Calvinism to Omar's Persian philosophy in stanza fifty-seven of the first edition:

Oh, Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
          Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

Or even to contribute his own philosophy in the famous epigrammatic line of stanza fifty-eight:

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
          For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd, man's Forgiveness give—and take!

Note

1. FitzGerald was not the only poet to take liberties with his original. Matthew Arnold's “Sohrab and Rustum,” which is widely regarded as recounting the episode of Sohrab from Firdusi's Shah Nameh, and is so described in anthologies of literature, differs widely in reality from the original version. Matthew Arnold put together the details of his story, not from any translations in English or in French of the Shah Nameh, but from short accounts of the episode of Sohrab in Sainte-Beuve's review and in Malcolm's History of Persia. For details of Arnold's debt to the latter, see my “Matthew Arnold's Version of the Episode of Sohrab,” Orientalia Suecana, 16 (1967).