POPULARITY OF AN OLD PERSIAN'S QUATRAINS--SPLENDID
ORIENTAL IMAGERY JOINED TO MODERN DOUBT FOUND IN THIS
GREAT POEM.
A few of the world's greatest books have been given their popularity by
the genius of their translators. Of these the most conspicuous example
is _The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam_, which has enjoyed an extraordinary
vogue among all English-speaking people for more than a half century
since it was first given to the world by Edward FitzGerald, an
Englishman of letters, whose reputation rests upon this free translation
of the work of a minor Persian poet of the twelfth century. What has
given it this extraordinary popularity is the strictly modern cast of
thought of the old poet and the beauty of the version of the English
translator. Each quatrain or four-line verse of the poem is supposed to
be complete in itself, but all are closely linked in thought, and the
whole poem might well have been written by any skeptic of the present
day who rejects the teachings of the various creeds and narrows life
down to exactly what we know on this earth.
[Illustration:
THE BEST-KNOWN PORTRAIT OF
EDWARD FITZGERALD, IMMORTALIZED BY HIS VERSION
OF THE "RUBA'IYAT"--THIS PICTURE IS FROM
A STEEL ENGRAVING OF A PHOTOGRAPH OF
"OLD FITZ," THE COLLEGE CHUM
AND LIFELONG FRIEND OF
THACKERAY AND
TENNYSON]
The imagery of the poem is Oriental and many of the figures of speech
and the illustrations are purely Biblical; but in its essence the poem
is the expression of a materialist, who cannot accept the doctrine of a
future life because no one has ever returned to tell of the
"undiscovered country" that lies beyond the grave. Epicureanism is the
keynote of the poem, which rings the changes on the enjoyment of the
only life that we know; but the poem is saved from rank materialism by
its lofty speculative note and by its sense of individual power, that
reminds one of Henley's famous sonnet.
Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur, in Persia, and enjoyed a good
education under a famous Imam, or holy man, of his birthplace. At this
school he met two pupils who strangely influenced his life. One was
Nizam ul Mulk, who in after years became Vizier to the Sultan of
Persia; the other was Malik Shah, who gained unenviable notoriety as the
head of the Assassins, whom the Crusaders knew as "The Old Man of the
Mountains." These three made a vow that should one gain fortune he would
share it equally with the other two.
When Nizam became Vizier his schoolmates appeared. Hassan was given a
lucrative office at court, but soon became involved in palace intrigues
and was forced to flee. He afterward became the head of the Ismailians,
a sect of fanatics, and his castle in the mountains south of the Caspian
gave him the name which all Christians dreaded. His emissaries, sent out
to slay his enemies, became known as Assassins. Omar made no demand for
office of his old friend, but begged permission to live in "a corner
under the shadow of your fortune." So the Vizier gave him a yearly
pension, and Omar devoted his remaining years to the study of astronomy,
in which he became very proficient, and which earned him many favors
from the Sultan.
Omar became widely celebrated for his scientific knowledge and his skill
in mathematics, and he formed one of the commission that revised the
Persian calendar. His heretical opinions, shown in the _Ruba'iyat_,
gained him many enemies among the strict believers, and especially among
the sect of the Sufis, whose faith he ridiculed. But the poet was too
well hedged about by royal favor for these religious fanatics to reach
him. So Omar ended his life in the scholarly seclusion which he loved,
and the only touch of romance in his career is furnished by the
provision in his will that his tomb should be in a spot where the north
wind might scatter roses over it. One of his disciples relates that
years after Omar's death he visited Naishapur and went to his beloved
master's tomb. "Lo," he says, "it was just outside a garden, and trees
laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall and dropped
their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them."
Edward FitzGerald, the translator, who made Omar known to the western
world, and especially to English-speaking readers, was one of the
quaintest Englishmen of genius that the Victorian age produced. A
college chum of men like Tennyson, Thackeray and Bishop Donne, he so
impressed these youthful friends with his rare ability and his engaging
personal qualities that they remained his warm admirers throughout life.
Apparently without ambition, FitzGerald studied the Greek and Latin
classics and made several noteworthy translations in verse, which he
printed only for private circulation. Through a friend, Professor
Cowell, a profound Oriental scholar, FitzGerald mastered Persian, and it
was Cowell who first directed his attention to Omar's _Ruba'iyat_, then
little known even to scholars.
The poem evidently made a profound impression on FitzGerald and in 1858
he gave the manuscript of his translation of the _Ruba'iyat_ to the
publisher, Quaritch. It was printed without the translator's name, but
soon gained notice from the praises of Rossetti, Swinburne, Burton and
others who recognized the genius of the anonymous author. Ten years
later FitzGerald revised his first version and added many new quatrains,
but the text as we have it today was the fifth which he gave to the
public. Unlike Tennyson, FitzGerald appeared to improve everything he
labored over, with the single exception of the first quatrain of the
_Ruba'iyat_. In the commonly printed fifth edition he omits a splendid
figure because he happened to use it in another poem. Aside from this
the changes are all improvements, which is more than can be said for the
revisions of Tennyson.
[Illustration:
A PAGE FROM AN ANCIENT PERSIAN
MANUSCRIPT COPY OF THE "RUBA'IYAT"
WITH MINIATURES IN COLOR]
The authorship of the _Ruba'iyat_, which soon ceased to be a secret,
gave FitzGerald great fame during the closing years of his life.
FitzGerald also translated a work of Jami, a Persian poet of the fifth
century, and he put into English verse a free version of the _Agamemnon_
of AEschylus, two _OEdipus_ dramas of Sophocles, and several plays by
Calderon, the great Spanish dramatist.
The _Ruba'iyat_ is far longer than Gray's _Elegy_, but it occupies much
the same position in English literature as this classic of meditation,
because of the finish of its verse and a certain beguiling attraction in
its thought. The reader of the period who makes a study of the
_Ruba'iyat_ cannot escape the conviction that old Omar is secretly
laughing at his readers. In fact, we come to the conclusion that he had
much of FitzGerald's quizzical humor, and consequently believed in few
of the heresies that he voices so poetically in his work.
That he was an epicurean and a materialist is very difficult to believe
when one considers the simple life that he led and the fact that he
voluntarily gave up high official place and the means of securing much
wealth. To live the life of a scholar, to dwell in the world of thought
and abstraction is not the habit of the man who loves pleasure for its
own sake. Hence, though Omar indulges in many panegyrics on the juice of
the grape, it is pretty safe to say, from the record left by his
disciples, that he cared little for wine and less for kindred pleasures
of the senses that he sings of so well. That he could not accept the
mystical Moslem faith of his day is not strange, for he had a modern
cast of mind. His religion was that of thousands today who long to
believe in a future life, but who have not the faith to accept it on
trust.
[Illustration:
ONE OF THE GILBERT JAMES
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE "RUBA'IYAT" TAKEN
FROM AN EDITION PUBLISHED BY
PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY]
This lack of faith is finely expressed in several quatrains, which might
have been written by a poet of today so modern are they in tone, so
thoroughly do they embody the new doctrine that happiness or misery
depends upon one's own character and acts. The man who cheats and
over-reaches his neighbor, who lies and deceives those who trust him,
who indulges in base pleasures through lack of self-restraint, such a
man lives in a real hell on earth, plagued by fears of exposure and ever
in a mental ferment of unsatisfied desires. Old Omar Khayyam has
pictured this doctrine in these two exquisite quatrains, which give a
good idea of the quality of his thought, as well as the beauty of
FitzGerald's version:
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we must travel too.
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
The best known quatrain of the _Ruba'iyat_, the one which is always
quoted as typical of Omar's epicurean attitude toward life, is this:
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Here we will take leave of Omar. His _Ruba'iyat_ is good to read because
FitzGerald has clothed his Oriental imagery in beautiful words that
appeal to any one fond of melodious verse. If you wish to see what a
great artist can evoke from the thoughts of this Persian poet, look over
Elihu Vedder's illustrations of the _Ruba'iyat_--a series of
memory-haunting pictures that are as full of majesty and beauty as the
visions of the poet of Naishapur.