[fantasyfan]

Every so often I get an itch to read literature in English translation. At the moment I am reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. The English translation that is far and away the most famous is that of Edward Fitzgerald, a Cambridge educated Orientalist who published his first edition privately in 1859. It was a complete flop--not that Fitzgerald, who was quite wealthy, minded all that much. It was first offered to the public for half a crown. When no one showed any interest the bookseller reduced the cost to a shilling, and as a last resort it was put in the "penny box" outside the shop. Finally, two friends of Dante Gabriel Rossetti told the latter about "a wonderful little pamphlet" in a bookshop stall. Rossetti and Swinburne bought it showed it to Sir Richard Burton and suddenly Fitzgerald found himself famous.

"Rubaiyat" is the plural of "ruba'i" a four line stanza rhyming aaba. Hence the title. Fitzgerald used a selection of Khayyam's individual stanzas and organised them into a sequence from morning to night. He also linked those with similar subjects together to give the poem an inner consistency and logic which is not nearly as apparent in the work of Omar. That first edition used 75 quatrains. His second edition went to 110 verses and the third, fourth, and fifth settled on 101 quatrains. The last three editions really vary in quite minor ways. So that many copies now give both the first and fifth editions. The first edition has tremendous spontaneity and energy while the fifth is more nuanced. It is more difficult to get that second edition but many copies of the first and fifth do give some of the variations from the second in the notes or back matter.

There have been some attempts to create a translation closer to the original. For those interested Peter Avery and and John Heath-Stubbs did produce one for Penguin. It runs to 235 quatrains. The quatrains are in the four line form but unrhymed. It's good to have it but it is quite inferior in beauty to Fitzgerald's Victorian translation. There is another version, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Paraphrase from Several Literal Translations. by the poet, Richard Le Gallienne. It dates from 1916 and is available free from Wikisource. I've been reading it and it does have its moments. Le Gallienne, however, claims that he is no rival of Fitzgerald and simply wished to present an approach "mitigated more frequently by moods of optimism than in Fitzgerald."

Here are the opening three quatrains from Fitgerald's 1859 text:

I.
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.

II.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
"Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

III.
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—"Open then the Door!
"You know how little while we have to stay,
"And, once departed, may return no more."

Now here are the opening verses in Le Gallienne:


“Wake! for the sun, the shepherd of the sky,

Has penned the stars within their fold on high,

And, shaking darkness from his mighty limbs,

Scatters the daylight from his burning eye.


"Awake! my soul, and haste betimes to drink,

This sun that rises all too soon shall sink,--

Come, come, O vintner, ope thy drowsy door!

We die of thirst upon the fountain's brink.


"Poor homeless men that have no other home,

Unto the wine-shop early are we come,

Since darkling dawn have we been waiting here,

Waiting and waiting for the day to come.”

Excerpt From: Khayyám, Omar. “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám A Paraphrase from Several Literal Translations.”

Personally, I find the Fitzgerald lines more vibrant. But the Le Gallienne is well worth reading in its entirety.