The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Other Persian Poems

by Omar Khayyám (Contributor), A.J. Arberry (Editor)

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 1972

About the author

Arabic:عمر الخيام Persian:عمر خیام
Kurdish: عومەر خەییام


Omar Khayyám was a Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. He wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, and music. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nishapur where Khayyám was born buried and where his mausoleum remains today a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year.

Outside Iran and Persian speaking countries, Khayyám has had impact on literature and societies through translation and works of scholars. The greatest such impact among several others was in English-speaking countries; the English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him. The most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83), who made Khayyám the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation and adaptations of Khayyám's rather small number of quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.'

Reviews

[Parmida Rezai]

Kom, fyld dit Bæger, kast i Vaarens Ild din Angers tunge Vinterklæder; spild ej Tiden, thi dens Fugl er mod sit Maal paa Vingerne og farer aldrig vild.

(Digte, på dansk ved Aage V. Reiter, 1945)

[Olga Gibbs]

I love Omar Khayyam poems, and I can't explain logically why. Maybe because of the depth of his gaze into himself and humanity, maybe because of the rhythm of his poetry. But maybe his work doesn't need disassembling, broken into parts, explained how it works or written. Maybe his work needs to be enjoyed as a blossoming garden, just as it is.
Sometimes the soul just calls for those words, and apart from Khayyam nobody else is able to deliver them.

[Margaret Clarke]

Complicated. Persian poetry -- not in a metre etc. that English are used to.
Abandoned.