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Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations Edward FitzGerald’s THE RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University ©2004 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications Introduction © 2004 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher Printed and bound in the United States of America 10 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Rubait of Omar Khayyam / edited and with introduction by Harold Bloom p cm — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-7910-7583-4 Omar Khayyam Rubáiyát FitzGerald, Edward, 1809–1883— Criticism and interpretation I Bloom, Harold II Series PK6525.R83 2003 891’.5511—dc21 2003006918 Contributing editor: Janyce Marson Cover design by Terry Mallon Cover: © Stapleton Collection/CORBIS Layout by EJB Publishing Services Chelsea House Publishers 1974 Sproul Road, Suite 400 Broomall, PA 19008-0914 www.chelseahouse.com Contents Editor’s Note vii Introduction Harold Bloom The Fin de Siècle Cult of FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam John D Yohannan The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Iran B Hassani Jewett 21 Fugitive Articulation: An Introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Daniel Schenker The Discovery of the Rubáiyát Robert Bernard Martin 77 The Apocalyptic Vision of La Vida es Suo: Calderón and Edward FitzGerald 97 Frederick A de Armas Young Eliot’s Rebellion 119 Vinni Marie D’Ambrosio Larger Hopes and the New Hedonism: Tennyson and FitzGerald 151 Norman Page 59 vi CONTENTS Bernard Quaritch and ‘My Omar’: The Struggle for FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát Arthur Freeman 169 Paradise Enow 185 John Hollander The Tale of the Inimitable Rubaiyat Tracia Leacock-Seghatolislami Forgetting FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát Erik Gray Chronology 227 Contributors 235 Bibliography 239 Acknowledgments Index 245 243 195 209 Editor’s Note My Introduction ponders the perpetual popularity of the Rubáiyát, and celebrates the authentic aesthetic achievement of Edward FitzGerald’s marvelous poem John D Yohannan examines the literary cult of the Rubáiyát down to 1909, the fiftieth anniversary of the poem’s first publication, while Iran B Hassani Jewett learnedly traces the history of FitzGerald’s “translation” (to call it that) and offers a summary of it In another introduction to the Rubáiyát, Daniel Schenker addresses our current “inability to talk about the poem,” after which Robert Bernard Martin gives us the biographical details as to just how FitzGerald “discovered” the Rubáiyát Frederick A de Armas widens our sense of FitzGerald by describing his translation of Calderón’s drama, Life Is a Dream, while Vinni Marie D’Ambrosio traces T.S Eliot’s early obsession with the Rubáiyát In a contrast between Tennyson and FitzGerald (who were close friends), Norman Page emphasizes some common patterns shared by In Memoriam and the Rubáiyát, after which Arthur Freeman tells the story of the crucial involvement of the publisher Bernard Quaritch in the availability of the Rubáiyát The poet-critic John Hollander illuminatingly reviews the best recent critical edition of the poem, while Tracia Leacock-Seghatolislami traces both the good and the bad effects upon our knowledge of Persian poetry brought about by FitzGerald’s very free version of the Rubáiyát In this volume’s final essay, Erik Gray traces the common pattern of benign “forgetting” that links In Memoriam and the Rubáiyát vii HAROLD BLOOM Introduction John Hollander, in his review-essay on the best critical edition of the Rubáiyát, interestingly compares Edward FitzGerald’s poem to Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” The two poems have absolutely nothing in common except their perpetual popularity with both intellectuals and middlebrows Each refuses to dwindle into a Period Piece Rubáiyát simply means “quatrains” of a particular kind, rhymed a a x a (there are some variants) The historical Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian mathematician, is hardly one of the great poets of the Persian tradition His four-line epigrams might now be forgotten except for Edward FitzGerald’s transposition and indeed transmogrification of the materia poetica that Omar provided FitzGerald’s first Rubáiyát appeared in 1859, and would have vanished, unread and forgotten, except that a copy reached Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet-painter and leader of the circle of Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti indubitably must have recognized and enjoyed the Tennysonian coloring of the poem Even as Keats was grandfather of the Pre-Raphaelite poets, and the father of Tennyson, so the early Tennyson of “The Lady of Shalott,” “Mariana,” and “Recollections of the Arabian Nights” can be said to have sired Rossetti, William Morris, and one aspect of Swinburne, who joined George Meredith and the painter Burne-Jones in circulating the Rubáiyát Lightning struck Edward FitzGerald, in a proverbial sense, since only ... America Veneration of the translator tended to surpass worship of the poet FitzGerald came to be thought of as the author of a poem called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam rather than as the man who rendered... matches the seductive pessimism of Omar with the bracing optimism of the Rabbi, giving the The Fin de Siècle Cult of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 13 polemical advantage to the latter,... and Infidel of the Rubaiyat, these poems will come as a surprise and a revelation For Omar Khayyam was a man of lofty yet humble piety and the majestic figure of the real Omar Khayyam the Astronomer,