The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Ömer Hayyam'ın Rubailer'ini okudum. Hayyam'ın şiirlerinin iyi olduğunu biliyordum ama bu kadar iyi olmasını beklemiyordum. Neredeyse beğenmediğim rubai yoktu. 30-40 tanesini ezberleyesim geldi.

Kitabı bitirdikten sonra çevirmenin yazdığı önsözleri okuyunca tüm rubaileri Hayyam'ın yazmadığı görüşünün hakim olduğunu öğrendim. Hangi rubaileri Hayyam yazmış bunu belirlemek zor, ama kesin olan bir şey var ki Hayyam'ın belirgin bir tarzı var ve bu tarz çok güzel.
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lots of this is super super beautiful, but the lack of class consciousness and un-critical obsession w alcohol both started to get to me :/ ( )

This is a nely published version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as it was interpreted/ translated originally into English by Edward Fitzgerald. This version is a reprint of a 1909 edition which was beautifully illustrated by Edmund Dulac. The text is printed deliberately and moderately, written two quatrains to a page in a lovely, scholarly font. As to the accuracy of the translation, I cannot attest. But the book is beautiful to view.

COME, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring.
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way.
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing

*eARC Netgalley* ( )

I have more editions of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám than any other book. I mainly buy new (to me, that is, as most of them are second-hand volumes) editions based upon either the quality of a book as an artefact, or due to the illustrations. The former is a relatively common bibliophilic phenomenon, of which I imagine many reading this review will recognise in themselves. The latter is, I think, due to an unfortunate tendency towards orientalism, a by-product of the cultural context of my youthful upbringing. I try to offset this tendency by somewhat extending my knowledge and (hopefully) understanding of other cultures, by which I justify my indulgence. So much for the mea culpas (culpi?).

What attracts me to FitzGerald's rendition is the beauty of his language, particularly in the first edition, and his ordering of the verses to develop themes (perhaps beyond what Khayyám intended? I'm not scholar enough to know for sure). FitzGerald/Khayyám building effects by re-presentation of the concepts of the impermanence of life; the fleeting nature of human existence; the sadness inherent in mortality; the essentially unknowable fate of us all, despite what the "two-and-seventy jarring sects" might say; the logic (that seems the right word, Khayyám being a mathematician, and FitzGerald a student of Greek philosophy) of living in the moment; the consolations of a right good piss-up (this last I might have blasphemously expressed if some interpretations of Khayyám are accepted).

I've no doubt myself that Khayyám was an atheist, notwithstanding claims that there is an underlying Sufi spiritual message in his poetry, though my belief is, admittedly, based upon a rendition of his works by a Westerner stepped in a Christian tradition, even if that tradition was one he ultimately rejected (not to avoid mentioning that I am an atheist myself, so possibly inclined to such a reading of the verses). I find something deeply human about this, looking to ourselves for meaning, or even an acceptance of being in a meaningless universe from which we are required to carve our own temporary meaning if we are to live as persons, even for so brief a time as we have to experience it. I feel in this a connection with Khayyám, though aware that it is mediated through FitzGerald. I've read a literal translation of Khayyám, which did not touch me so deeply. Perhaps it was the more direct phrasing and lack of a distinct thematic thread that I found lacking, or that I was distracted by trying to figure out which quatrains were the basis got FitzGerald's versions. I should read the direct translation again, I think, without the rose-tinted spectacles. ( )