[In the following essay, originally published in 2000, Leacock-Seghatolislami outlines the positive and negative effects of FitzGerald's liberal translation of Khayyám's Rubáiyát.]

It is difficult to decide where to start with the Edward FitzGerald-Omar Khayyam debate, because so much has been written, it deserves its own library. Of course, most of the debate has been focused on decrying FitzGerald's liberal rendering of Khayyam. This essay is intended to give the lay reader of the Rubaiyat a more rounded picture of the situation.

Let it first be made clear that FitzGerald never set foot on Persian soil, or on that of any other Persophone region. He took up Persian at home in England, while in his forties, under the tutelage of his friend Edward Byles Cowell, a young scholar who was then seventeen years his junior. Shortly after FitzGerald took up his studies, Cowell was posted to Calcutta, the Indian end of the British Empire. FitzGerald corresponded with his teacher by letter (which took quite a long time in those days), and his study consisted of using a grammar book (the second edition of Sir William Jones's Grammar of the Persian Language) and a dictionary (Francis Johnson's A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic & English). He also read an 1857 travelogue by Robert B. M. Binning, A Journal of Two Years' Travel in Persia, Ceylon, &c, to get some feel for Persian scenery. Cowell would send him some Persian texts as practice for his studies. These studies were never very thorough, and, as many have verified, FitzGerald's understanding of the Persian language remained rudimentary at best. He did not let this ‘minor’ obstacle deter him, however, and, as Iran Hassani Jewett puts it, ‘the superficiality of his knowledge of Persian and his confidence in his superiority over the Persian poets enabled FitzGerald to compose his masterpiece in his own way, unhampered by any bothersome doubts’ (143).

The manuscripts left behind in British institutions are testimony to FitzGerald's lack in understanding basic Persian. His verses are riddled with mistranslations of words. As his letters to Cowell show, he was piecing together his rendition by going through the dictionary, and, when he could not find something there, he would write to Cowell for suggestions or he would try to conjecture a meaning. In fact, at the turn of the century, some 40 years after FitzGerald's text was first printed, Edward Heron-Allen published a vehement refutation of FitzGerald and his method. Heron-Allen included letters he had himself received from FitzGerald's teacher, Cowell, who had by then become rather distressed by his student's ‘translation’. After having failed to steer his protégé straight on several previous occasions, Cowell wanted no part of the situation, though it was he who had introduced FitzGerald to Khayyam in the first place. Cowell was quite embarrassed to have his reputation as a scholar of Eastern languages (he held appointments as Professor of Sanskrit and of Persian) sullied by FitzGerald's obviously inept translation of the poet.

Heron-Allen also published his own translation of the Rubaiyat—a more accurate but not nearly as eloquent version—which included an analysis of the sources for FitzGerald's quatrains. Heron-Allen spent more than seven years researching the sources, and published his findings in 1898:

Of Edward FitzGerald's quatrains, forty-nine are faithful and beautiful paraphrases of single quatrains to be found in the Ouseley or Calcutta MSS., or both. Forty-four are traceable to more than one quatrain, and therefore may be termed the “composite” quatrains. Two are inspired by quatrains found by FitzGerald only in Nicolas' [French] text. Two are quatrains reflecting the whole spirit of the original poem. Two are traceable exclusively to the influence of the Mantik ut-tair [Conference of the Birds] of Ferid ud din 'Attar. Two quatrains primarily inspired by Omar were influenced by the Odes of Hafiz. And three, which appeared only in the first and second editions, and were afterwards suppressed by Edward FitzGerald himself, are not—so far as a careful search enables me to judge—attributable to any lines of the original texts. Other authors may have inspired them, but their identification is not useful in this case.

(Arnot 40)

As late as 1952, the issue had not been laid to rest, and A. J. Arberry, a scholar of Eastern literature, took a turn at translating Khayyam when two new manuscripts were unearthed. In his version, each roba'i is put into two short stanzas, amounting to two quatrains per poem. As Arberry himself acknowledges in his 1952 introduction, this goes against ‘the classical theory of Islamic poetry [which holds] that each verse should be independent in itself, and not require assistance from any previous or subsequent verse to complete its meaning’ (33). Arberry's preferred format is an unfortunate choice, for it immediately distorts the visual form of the original. It does, however, allow him to give a full translation of the text, as he has more room to set out the meaning. Nonetheless, in addition to the obvious visual trauma this format causes the reader, I find that Arberry frequently stretches the Persian to make it fit his form, often resulting in epigrammatic explications of Khayyam's text. Arberry also changes the final rhyme scheme, AABA, the most recognizable trademark of the roba'i, to ABBA. At least FitzGerald's version is faithful to the rhyme scheme of the original.

In his introduction, Arberry is almost apologetic about offering his new version—he had already been scolded in some quarters for a first attempt (1950 Chester Beatty manuscript). By this time it was considered sacrilegious to tamper with FitzGerald's rendition. Arberry's translation could not hold a candle to FitzGerald's interpretation of Khayyam. Seven years later, in a book commemorating the centenary of the publication of FitzGerald's first edition, he too decided to join the “FitzGerald as genius” movement, professing a new enlightened appreciation for the mastery of FitzGerald's version. In his 1959 tribute, Arberry attempts to convince his reader of the marginal nature of FitzGerald's errors—being careful to point out each major one in more than a hundred pages of cross-referenced translations. The new book even included FitzGerald's letters to Cowell, detailing his difficulties with, and misreadings of, the text.

Of course, by 1959, the manuscripts Arberry had worked from were long considered to have been forgeries. As Elwell-Sutton tells us in his introduction to Dashti's 1971 book, the Persian scholar, Mojtaba Minovi even declared them to be the output of “a still active ‘manuscript factory’ in Tehran” (Dashti 19). This fact may explain Arberry's reverence for ‘Old Fitz’ in his 1959 book. In a quasi apology for his own recent versions as well as for the present undertaking, Arberry issued the following disclaimer on his ‘Acknowledgments’ page:

If I have anatomized the reverse side of the carpet, it is in order that the dazzling lustre of the finished masterpiece may be more informedly, and therefore more truly and rewardingly appreciated. Lest any misconception should remain, my object has been to enlarge and not to belittle FitzGerald's fame, secure indeed as that is against all cavilling.

(7)

At least this time around Arberry reverted to the four-line format of the poems. It is from his second book that I draw samples of his translations. To date, most of the criticism is based on the following:

There are a few samples listed at the end of this essay, but they are by no means rare or isolated occurrences. The truth of the matter is that the text of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat is not readily mirrored in Khayyam's. Aficionados have been struggling with this knowledge for a hundred years, mostly downplaying it. It is time, therefore, for those who cherish Khayyam to look at FitzGerald's rendering for what it is: a fabulous English poem inspired by the Persian of Khayyam, in whom FitzGerald felt he had found a kindred spirit. It has repeatedly been said that FitzGerald's Rubaiyat is the best and most loved ‘translation’ into the English language, second in popularity only to the Bible, with the 1001 Nights holding fast in third place. (Interestingly, they all happen to be Eastern texts.) As a young girl, I simply fell in love with those poems. FitzGerald's rendering displays a sensitivity, a delicacy in the turn of phrase, which suggests that the poetic Muse was permanently encamped on his doorstep. For its sheer beauty, as whatever it is, it is a happy turn of fate that this text has come down to us.

This almost did not happen. FitzGerald rescued Khayyam's poetry (not his other writings) from obscurity, and he, in turn, had to be rescued from the same peril. As the story goes, the first edition of the book was such a dismal failure that the publisher quickly relegated it to the penny box. It was found there by Whitley Stokes, a lawyer and Celtic scholar, believed to be contributing editor of the Saturday Review at the time. He passed copies on to his friends—among them Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who told Algernon Swinburne and Robert Browning. When Rosetti and Swinburne (who went on to write his ‘Laus Veneris’ à l'Omar) returned to purchase more copies for distribution to William Morris, George Meredith, Edward Burne-Jones, John Ruskin and the rest of the Pre-Raphaelite band, the price had been increased to twopence. They were outraged at the sudden inflation, declaring it to be “iniquitous.”

At any rate, all of this fame led to the Omar Khayyam Club being founded in England, with Alfred Tennyson, George Borrow, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conan Doyle listed as members. When the little text made its way across the Atlantic, thanks to Charles Eliot Norton's favorable piece in the October 1869 North American Review, its American readers started their own club on the East Coast, near Philadelphia. The American demand for the little book was so high that FitzGerald was forced to come out of hiding to issue third and fourth editions. Some of the changes evident in these subsequent versions altered his own originals so profoundly that it is impossible to imagine they could ever have come from the same quatrain by Khayyam. Heron-Allen asserts that FitzGerald's deeper perusal of J. B. Nicolas's French version is at play in some of the alterations made. FitzGerald even acknowledges in his introduction to the revised edition that Nicolas's version “reminded [him] of several things, and instructed [him] in others” (1868). One could say, therefore, that a good portion of the follow-up versions constitutes a reshuffling of FitzGerald's various sources.

FitzGerald's Rubaiyat should be labeled precisely that. But the situation is complicated, for though it is not a true translation of the original text, one could say that it frequently comes close to being an honest translation of the feel of it, in that it captures the light-hearted mood of Khayyam's sardonic phrases. Of course, FitzGerald totally omitted many of the quatrains which were too sober for his own taste. The honesty one gets out of his version, therefore, is an abbreviated and a manufactured one.

FitzGerald's reconfiguration of Khayyam's text frequently ends up perverting or obscuring the meaning of the original. By physically taking portions of the quatrains out of context, FitzGerald has all but obliterated the reader's ability to grasp the true significance of much of Khayyam's poetry, which often has a Sufistic feel to it. It should be made clear here that while Khayyam's poetry is frequently classified as Sufistic, he is not officially classified as a Sufi, because he was not part of an established Sufi order. Yet, to his readers in the original Persian and to many scholars, he was a Sufi in the truest sense of the term—shunning all ‘isms’ and dogmas in the pursuit of knowledge and the Divine. He often pokes fun at theologians and Sufis in his poems, he pokes fun at the pious and at religion as ritual, but he does not poke fun at the truth of religion as belief per se.

Khayyam has often been described as an agnostic, an atheist or a heretic, but I would venture to say that this is primarily a Western interpretation, the result of reading him through a Christian frame of reference. In Islam, his overt questioning of G—d would not be considered heresy. In the moments where he queries G—d he seems to believe in Him all the more (as a biblical Job). Though he questions the logic behind creation—Why is existence so transitory?—he is not an unbeliever. His questions are directed to some higher authority that he holds responsible for the perceived futility of existence. He is simply a questioner, a provocateur; he was, after all, a philosopher. Moreover, an Islamic tradition holds that the doubting or questioning believer is more prized and is nearer to G—d than the one who follows blindly. Khayyam was admired by many as one who understood the Truth, and, in some early Persian anthologies, Khayyam is referred to as Hojjat-ol-Haqq (“Proof of/Authority on the Truth”). This title was also given to Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Khayyam was considered second only to him in the philosophical sciences.

IMPACT OF FITZGERALD'S KHAYYAM:

• 1) Khayyam and the touch of the Orient (or the ‘exotic’) made FitzGerald a household name, something he certainly would never have achieved on his own. This fame would overshadow all of his other translations, including the more serious works of Jami' (Salaman and Absal) and Farid ud-Din ‘Attar (Conference of the Birds or Bird Parliament).
• 2) There are a number of writers influenced by FitzGerald's Khayyam, including T. S. Eliot (who, it is said, came to writing after being inspired by Khayyam at the age of 13 or 14), Harold Lamb, and Oliver Herford (Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten).
• 3) FitzGerald's English translation remains the most famous, practically annihilating the French, German, etc. Irfan Shahid, then Sultanate of Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Literature at Georgetown University, postulated in a speech published in 1982 that the dominance of the English version is due to the natural, linguistic affinity between English and Persian. He says this is because they are both “Indo-European” languages. I would say that this is an imagined affinity. The truth is that Persian belongs more specifically to the Indo-Aryan (whence the country's name, Iran) language group, which includes Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Pashto, and Tajik. Though it is true that that group is now considered to be a subgroup of Indo-European, to this day the umbrella branch is more hypothetical than factual, and the filiation has more geographical than real justifications. Shahid states “[a] recognition of certain linguistic facts will show that English has closer affinities with Persian than either German or French or Latin or Greek. … Perhaps the most important is the fact that both English and Persian have reached a very advanced degree in the analytic process, a degree unknown to classical Greek or Latin or German” (19). Such a theory is questionable, and calls to mind Joachim du Bellay's sixteenth century manifesto, La Défense et Illustration de la Langue française. Moreover, as Shahid acknowledges (19-20), the argument for linguistic affinity cannot account for the relative failure of all other English versions of Khayyam.
• 4) Bad translations beget bad imitations. FitzGerald has been translated into almost every tongue on earth. Khayyam is known all over the world, but frequently as the result of bad translation squared.
• 5) Much to the chagrin of many Persian speakers, Khayyam has been held up as the epitome of their poetry, whereas for them he is broadly looked upon as a minor poet in their literary history. He is not even ranked among the top contenders of his time, and is much more famous for his writings on mathematics and physics.
• 6) FitzGerald brought about a new popularity of Khayyam in his native land. The impact of his fame abroad has obliged Persian scholars to (re)visit Khayyam. Tourists came to Iran looking for the Khayyam experience. This demand forced production of polyglot copies of the Rubaiyat. One such is my 1963 Amir-e Kabir edition. It uses FitzGerald's introduction, and lists his version with French and German beneath and Farsi (Persian) on the facing page. In such polyglot copies, the non-English versions (whose authors frequently go unnamed) are sometimes direct translations of the English, rather than translations of the Persian. The book jackets are more profusely ornamented than similar books for the domestic market, and the illustrations are often downright garish. (Elwell-Sutton also comments on this in his introduction to Dashti's work.). Sometimes, these books even include artistic depictions of mild undress.
• 7) The foreign interpretation of the Rubaiyat led to the development of a more suggestive painting style, which is sometimes referred to as Khayyamic. Of course, in Iran, this suggestive style never approached the stark nudity depicted in Western illustrations (see J. Yunge Bateman's drawings in a 1965 edition), which can be said to be yet another bad translation of Khayyam. The Western illustrations are more modest with male nudity, but women's nakedness is often depicted nearly in full. The ravishing damsel wears nothing but “a veil with tiny aster flowers,” to borrow a title from Nasrin Ettehad, which floats breezily behind her, leaving her exposed. This conflicts with Persian literature, taking away the modesty, ergo, beauty, of elegantly clothed women reclining in coy poses, an omnipresent theme. To illustrate with an anecdote: even at the time of the last Shah, when Iran was at the height of Western imitation (gharbzadegi, to borrow a term from Jalal Al-e Ahmad), prostitutes in Tehran would wear full chador. They understood that even the man who consults a prostitute still wants to imagine that he is with a modest woman of noble character, who does not display the asrar (secrets) of her body, and the prostitute still wants to feign to be such.
• 8) There is no shortage of taverns, restaurants and like places of sumptuous dining, imbibing and general carousing bearing the name of Khayyam. This was also true for pre-revolution Iran. There is even an American cookbook entitled, Dinner at Omar Khayyam's. The food is Armenian and the restaurant was in California, but according to the author, the title comes from the Armenian story that it was one of their own who introduced the pious Khayyam to the pleasures of the Saki's cup.
• 9) Even his critics and subsequent translators had to resort to including FitzGerald's version in their books, thereby affording the reader an immediate opportunity to favor it. The reader was always forewarned that to compare these new texts to FitzGerald's would be to impose an undue hardship and unfair standards of excellence on the translators. Heron-Allen even went so far as to proclaim that the “excessive baldness” of his versions was “intentional” (Arnot 41). The challengers' renditions could not approach the beauty and grace of FitzGerald's and so their fate—banishment—was quickly sealed. The “Old Fitz” version has endured countless attacks from within what André Lefevere calls the “polysystem,” and it has yet to be dethroned. In essence, it has been canonized, and though Lefevere assures us that “canonization is by no means final and irreversible” (55), Holbrook Jackson's hundred-year-old conjecture seems to be holding its own: “Other translators may come, but it is more probable that the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam rendered into English verse by Edward FitzGerald will ever be the sun around which all others will revolve, lesser planets, drawing their light from him, yet paled by his greater rays. Some things are done as if by magic, with finality stamped upon them at birth” (21)
• 10) FitzGerald has set the standard for the translation of Classical Persian poetry, even for works by other Persian authors. This is unfair, but true. His own versions of Jamí and ‘Attar were plagued by Khayyam's fame. Even today, I find that many translations of Classical Persian poetry attempt to sound like FitzGerald's work. Inevitably, it is always a case of ‘Well, it isn't quite like Old Fitz's.’

FitzGerald's Rubaiyat lifted Khayyam's text out of what Stephen David Ross would call a “restricted economy”—national culture, literature, history, religion—and has given it a strange, yet wondrous, liberation, freeing it to “plenish the earth.” Few other texts ever receive such enduring international acclaim. Still, it is a tainted freedom, which traps Khayyam and his Roba'iyyat in a new, imposed “restricted economy”—he is the patron saint of merry-making. On the one hand, FitzGerald has done the “Good for translation” (Ross), and Norton put it best in the Benjaminian wording of his 1869 review:

FitzGerald is to be called ‘translator’ only in default of a better word, one which should express the poetic transfusion of a poetic spirit from one language to another, and the re-representation of the ideas and images of the original in a form not altogether diverse from their own, but perfectly adapted to the new conditions of time, place, custom and habit of mind in which they reappear. It is the work of a poet inspired by the work of a poet; not a copy, but a reproduction; not a translation, but the redelivery of a poetic inspiration.

(Heron-Allen 293)

On the other hand, FitzGerald is still the Pied Piper, and, sadly, the “‘Messiah-like breath’ of his poetic inspiration” (Arberry, The Romance 13) continues to paint Khayyam as the Bacchus of the East.

SAMPLE TRANSLATIONS

I.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape,
Bearing a vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas-the Grape!

EF 1, XLII

Drunken I passed by the wine-tavern last night;
I saw an old man, drunk and with a pitcher on his shoulder;
I said, ‘Are you not ashamed of God, old man?’
He said: ‘Generosity belongs to God; go, drink wine!’
Sar-mast be-meikhaneh gozar kardam dush …

AJA 218

The obvious irony in the Farsi quatrain is that Khayyam is also drunk. This is not evident in EF's version. Also, EF mistook the Persian word, ‘piri’, an old man, for ‘pari’, ‘fairy’. Not only are these words spelt differently in Farsi, EF's error shows that he failed to recognize that the indefinite article was being used.

II.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

EF 1, LI

Nothing becomes different from what the Pen has once written,
and only a broken heart results from nursing grief;
though all your life through you swallow tears of blood
not one drop will be added to the existing score.
Az rafteh qaIam hich digar-gun na-shavad …

AJA 126, 224

The characters of all creatures are on the Tablet,
The Pen always worn with writing ‘Good’, ‘Bad’:
Our grieving and striving are in vain,
Before time began all that was necessary was given.
Z-in pish neshan-e budaniha bud-ast …

PAJHS, p. 44, n26

Oh heart, since the Reality of the world is allegory
How long will you go on nursing the grief of this prolonged anguish?
Submit the body to Fate and befriend the pain,
Since the stroke of the Pen will not return in your favor.
Ay del, cho haqiqat-e jahan hast majaz …

TLS

PAJHS has a similar version (p. 46, n32). The wording of this quatrain differs slightly in the manuscripts used by AJA and EHA. EF's version is a composite of these quatrains.

III.

Listen again, One Evening at the Close
Of Ramazan, ere the better Moon arose,
In that old Potter's Shop I stood alone
With the clay Population round in Rows.
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?”
(Kuza-Nama section)

EF 1, LIV & IX

Richard LeGallienne, in his version of the Rubaiyat, notes that FitzGerald's “kuza-nama” (“book of the pots”) section is not to be found in Khayyam's Persian. Explaining why the reader will find this section missing from his own rendition, LeGallienne states: “À propos of the clay, the reader will miss that little book of the pots which is one of the triumphs of FitzGerald's version. Omar gives several hints for that quaint little miracle-play, but the development of them is so much FitzGerald's own that there was no option but to leave the pots alone” (“To The Reader”).

In EF 2, 3, and 4, stanza LX was expanded into two non-sequential stanzas, each time varying greatly from EF 1, e.g.:

Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listen'd, perhaps, but never talk'd at all.
Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot—
I think a Sufi pipkin—waxing hot—
‘All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me, then,
‘Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?’

EF 3 & 4, LXXXIII & LXXXVII

These were all inspired by one quatrain in the Persian, Dar kar-gah-e kuzehgari raftam dush …, which EBC translated as follows (AJA's is quite similar, except for ‘two thousand pots’, which is correct):

I went last night into a potter's shop,
A thousand pots did I see there, noisy and silent;
When suddenly one of the pots raised a cry,
‘Where is the pot-maker, the pot-buyer, the pot-seller?’

EBC, in AJA, p. 228

Key

AJA = Arthur John Arberry (1959)

EBC = Edward Byles Cowell (in Arberry, 1959)

EF = Edward FitzGerald. 1, 2, 3, 4 = FitzGerald Version

BHA = Edward Heron-Allen (1898)

PAJHS = Peter Avery & John Heath Stubbs (1979)

TLS = Tracia Leacock-Seghatolislami

Works Consulted

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———. The Romance of the Rubaiyat: Edward FitzGerald's First Edition Reprinted with Introduction and Notes. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959.

Arnot, Robert, Ed. The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, in Definitive Form including the Translations of Edward FitzGerald with Edward Heron-Allen's Analysis, E. H. Whinfield, J. B. Nicolas. New York: M. Walter Dunne, 1903.

Benson, A. C. Edward FitzGerald. New York: Macmillan, 1905.

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D'Ambrosio, Vinnie-Marie. Eliot Possessed: T. S. Eliot and FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. New York: New York University Press, 1989.

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Du Bellay, Joachim. La Défense et Illustration de la Langue française (extraits), avec oeuvres Poétiques diverses (extraits). Paris: Larousse, 1972.

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———. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: The First and Fourth Editions in English verse by Edward FitzGerald. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1964.

———. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Edward FitzGerald's Translation Reprinted from the First Edition with his Preface and Notes. Drawings by J. Yunge Bateman. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1965.

———. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Rendered into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.

———. Salaman and Absal. An Allegory translated from the Persian of Jami, together with A Bird's-Eye View of Farid-uddin Attar's Bird-Parliament. Ed. Nathan Haskell Dole. Boston: L. C. Page and Co., 1899.

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———. The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam. Trans. Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs. London: Allen Lane, 1979.

———. Roba'yyat-e Hakim ‘Omar Khayyam, ba Divan-e Baba Taher 'Oryan. Tehran, Iran: Eqbal, S. H., 1984. 1363.

Lefevere, André. “Beyond the Process: Literary Translation in Literature and Literary Theory.” Translation Spectrum: Essays in Theory and Practice. Ed. Marilyn Gaddis Rose. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981. 52-59.

LeGallienne, Richard. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Paraphrase from Several Literal Translations. New York: John Lane, 1897.

Mardikian, George. Dinner at Omar Khayyam's. Third Edition. New York: Viking Press, 1945.

Ross, Stephen David. “The Good for Translation.” Translation Horizons Beyond the Boundaries of Translation Spectrum, Translation Perspectives IX (1996): 331-347.

Rypka, Jan. History of Iranian Literature. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1968.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. “On Language and Words.” Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche. Ed. Douglas Robinson. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing, 1997. 246-249.

Shahid, Irfan. Omar Khayyam: The Philosopher-Poet of Medieval Islam. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1982.

Terhune, Alfred McKinley. The Life of Edward FitzGerald, Translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947.

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