OMAR KHAYYÁM
By John Hay
_Address delivered December 8, 1897, at the Dinner of the Omar Khayyám
Club, London_.
I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's
translations of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's
Homer, has described the sensation once for all:
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those
amazing stanzas were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of
their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless
courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and death.
Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as
ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet
or the translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact,
a reproduction of an antique song, or a mystification of a great modern,
careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in
the eleventh century, so far away as Khorasan, so accomplished a man of
letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such
calm disillusions, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this
"Weltschmerz," which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia
in 1100? My doubt only lasted until I came upon a literal translation of
the Rubáiyát, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of
Fitzgerald's poem was its fidelity to the original.
In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of
Omar. It was not to the disadvantage of the latter poet that he followed
so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary
genius had appeared in the world, had sung a song of incomparable beauty
and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of
narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by
a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the
first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sang it anew with
all its original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of
ages of art. It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master;
each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of
precious workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common
hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the
supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all
that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the
poets, there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half-barbarous
province: Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken
or read, the "Rubáiyát" have taken their place as a classic. There is
not a hill post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a
coterie to whom Omar Khayyám is a familiar friend and a bond of union.
In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In
the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful
volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion
wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the
Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in any club library. I
heard them quoted once in one of the most lonely and desolate spots in
the high Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of
the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs,
one sending its waters to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal
Carib summer. One morning at sunrise, as we were breaking camp, I was
startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these
words of sombre majesty:--
"Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest."
I thought that sublime setting of primeval forest and pouring canyon was
worthy of the lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air never
vibrated to strains of more solemn music. Certainly, our poet can never
be numbered among the great writers of all time. He has told no story;
he has never unpacked his heart in public; he has never thrown the reins
on the neck of the winged horse, and let his imagination carry him where
it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant," as Browning sang.
Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eyes no
glitter can dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air
of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a
place forever among that limited number, who, like Lucretius and
Epicurus--without range or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth, look
deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the
absurd, and allegiance to arrogant authority; sufficiently conscious of
fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions; with a faith too wide for
doctrine and a benevolence untrammelled by creed; too wise to be wholly
poets, and yet too surely poets to be implacably wise.