The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859)Published in 1859, the same year as Darwin's Origin of Species, the Rubaiyat, in addition to being great poetry, is a key signpost on the road to the abandonment of God by Western Civilization. After meager initial sales, the poems were passed around by such figures as Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Robert Browning, William Morris & Swinburne and the praise from these men lead to it's becoming a bestseller. FitzGerald, was born on March 31, 1809 in Suffolk. He married
unhappily and escaped from his marriage by devoting himself to translating
Omar Kayyam's poetry. Kayyam was a Persian mathematician and astronomer,
born in Persia on May 18, 1048. The rubaiyat are sort of like haiku
in that they were not really the product of poets, they were mostly written
by Persian intellectuals.. They are two line stanzas, split in two
again. The first, second and last lines rhyme; the third is unrhymed.
FitzGerald was captivated by Kayyam's work, but in translating them, he
made them very much his own, rather than slavishly reproducing them word
for word:
VII
25 Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
XI
41 Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
XXIII
89 Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
XXVI
101 Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise
XXXIV
133 Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn
XXXVII
145 Ah, fill the Cup:--what boots it to repeat
XXXIX
153 How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit
XLIX
193 'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
LI
201 The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
These resulting poems reflect the atheism of the two men and are pretty much nihilist, existential and decadent. But they struck an immediate chord with the dissipated intellectuals of FitzGerald's time and have naturally retained their appeal in our Godless age. Moreover, as A.S. Byatt writes, "FitzGerald's verse is insidiously memorable. It sings in the mind, controlled by its steady rapid rhythm and its strong, emphatic, reiterated rhyme, which in turn is made mysteriously open by the one unrhymed line in each verse." The end product is some of the most memorable poetry of all time. And the final one reproduced above, "The Moving Finger writes", is one of the most quoted poems in the English language. This is a work worth knowing, both for its beauty and because of the influence of the malignant message it conveys, which sadly has become the ethos of the age--Carpe Diem! (Reviewed:) Grade: (C) Tweet Websites:-Selected Poetry of Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)(includes the Rubaiyat) -Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald (Richard Brodie) One of the most disconcerting experiences we New Hampshire residents
face is to be walking along a densely wooded trail and come upon a dilapidated
stone wall or a crumbling cemetery. You really get an appreciation
for the accomplishment of our farming ancestors when you see the restored
wilderness where their old homesteads and farms were and how thick was
the woodland that they had to clear. And you can't help but be struck
by the fact that their epic efforts lie forgotten, as do they. But
they aren't totally forgotten, it is not an uncommon hobby up here to go
around collecting epitaphs and sketchings from the old graveyards and this
book consists of a selection of memorable epitaphs from some 200 cemeteries
in six New England states. They range from the humorous to the poignant,
from simple to eloquent. They testify to changing attitudes towards
death and evolving causes of death and, in so doing, provide a unique and
interesting cultural history of the Northeast.
Many of the earliest were basically admonitions to the living on the inevitability of death, like this popular paraphrase of the epitaph of Edward the Black Prince:
Josiah Lyndon
Behovld and See
or
Jonathan Kilborn
He was a man of invention great
Later they seem more intended to vindicate the life memorialized:
William Pelsue
He was killed at Bellows Falls, Vt.,
or
I began the preserving
or
Justin Morgan
This man brought to
Some seem almost cruel:
Molly tho' pleasant in her day
or
Here lies our darling baby boy
Others pique our curiosity:
In Memory of
or this from a Guilford, VT farmer's 1877 tombstone:
The first man in this country
and, of course, some are merely humorous:
O fatal gun, why was it he
All in all, they make for a morbidly entertaining glimpse of death and dying American-style. GRADE: B+ WEBSITES:
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