Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and Salámán and Absál: Together with a Life of Edward Fitzgerald and an Essay on Persian Poetry by Ralph Waldo EmersonOmar Khayyam
GeneralSufism
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and Salámán and Absál: Together with a Life of Edward Fitzgerald and an Essay on Persian Poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Omar Khayyam
Persian poetry -- Translations into English
One of FitzGerald's chief characteristics was what might almost be
called a genius for friendship. He did not, indeed, wear his heart upon
his sleeve, but ties once formed were never unloosed by any failure in
charitable and tender affection on his part. Never, throughout a lengthy
life, did irritability and erratic petulance (displayed 'tis true, at
times by the translator of "that large infidel"), darken the eyes of
those he honoured with his friendship to the simple and whole-hearted
genuineness of the man.
From Oxford, FitzGerald retired to the 'suburb grange' at Woodbridge,
referred to by Tennyson. Here, narrowing his bodily wants to within the
limits of a Pythagorean fare, he led a life of a truly simple type
surrounded by books and roses, and, as ever, by a few firm friends.
Annual visits to London in the months of Spring kept alive the alliances
of earlier days, and secured for him yet other intimates, notably the
Tennyson brothers.
Amongst the languages, Spanish seems to have been his earlier love. His
translation of Calderon, due to obedience to the guiding impulse of
Professor Cowell, showed him to the world as a master of the rarest of
arts, that of conveying to an English audience the lights and shades of
a poem first fashioned in a foreign tongue.
At the bidding of the same mentor, he, later, turned his attention to
Persian, the first fruits of his toil being an anonymous version, in
Miltonic verse, of the 'Salámán and Absál' of Jámi. Soon after, the
treasure-house of the Bodleian library yielded up to him the pearl of
his literary endeavour, the verses of "Omar Khayyám," a pearl whose
dazzling charm previously had been revealed to but few, and that through
the medium of a version published in Paris by Monsieur Nicolas.
FitzGerald's hasty and ill-advised union with Lucy, daughter of Bernard
Barton, the Quaker poet and friend of Lamb, was but short-lived, and
demands no comment. They agreed to part.
In later life, most summers found the poet on board his yacht "The
Scandal" (so-called as being the staple product of the neighbourhood) in
company with 'Posh' as he dubbed Fletcher, the fisherman of Aldeburgh,
whose correspondence with FitzGerald has lately been given to the world.
To the end he loved the sea, his books, his roses and his friends, and
that end came to him, when on a visit with his friend Crabbe, with all
the kindliness of sudden death, on the 14th June, 1883.
Besides the works already mentioned, FitzGerald was the author of
"Euphranor" [1851], a Platonic Dialogue on Youth; "Polonius": a
Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances [1852]; and translations of
the "Agamemnon" of Æschylus [1865]; and the "Œdipus Tyrannus" and
"Œdipus Coloneus" of Sophocles. Of these translations the "Agamemnon"
probably ranks next to the Rubáiyát in merit. To the six dramas of
Calderon, issued in 1853, there were added two more in 1865. Of these
plays, "Vida es Sueno" and "El Magico Prodigioso" possess especial
merit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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