The following essay by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi is an excerpt from a longer introduction (pp. 27-87) to the 12th and last book of his series Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, subtitled, Book 12: Khayyami Legacy: The Collected Works of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123) Culminating in His Secretive 1000 Robaiyat Autobiography. The introduction was subtitled “Toward A Textually and Historically More Reliable Biography of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123) Based on the Findings of This Series.”
The Islamophobic and Islamophilic Colonialities of Edward FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat”: Decolonizing How He World-Famously Distorted Omar Khayyam’s Robaiyat
This series has offered a study of Omar Khayyam’s life and works based on careful sharing and analyses of all of his own extant primary works. That is the only reliable and scientific way of going about researching Omar Khayyam’s legacy. You cannot arbitrarily render just some quatrains among hundreds of them attributed to him, ignore other writings definitively attributed to him as well, and assume you have all the sources you need to judge who Khayyam was and what his works shared.
It is of course helpful to know the opinions of others about Khayyam, but unfortunately much of the contemporary Khayyami studies have become continual recycling of others’ opinions of him, both of those inherited from the long past and of those produced in modern times, without paying close attention to what Khayyam himself left us in his own words by way of his own works.
Some have relied only on the more accessible and seemingly simple-worded quatrains to know him, sparing themselves of the need for the more difficult and time-consuming study of Khayyam’s texts as a whole, as if one can learn about Khayyam by way of a magical short-cut. Even those who read the quatrains, read them selectively, some even reading their “free translations” or “renderings” second-, third-, or even fourth-hand, and regard themselves as the best judges of and experts in Khayyam’s life and worldview, without having bothered to carefully read his other works to the extent they had become available even in their own times.
But the never-ending recycling of others’ opinions about Khayyam, including those shared by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) in his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; the Astronomer-Poet of Persia; Translated into English Verse—originally self-financed anonymously in 1859, later revised in subsequent editions, the subtitle also revised from “translated” to “rendered” in the second edition and thereafter—cannot substitute for careful studies of Khayyam’s own works as the only reliable and scientific basis for evaluating others’, including FitzGerald’s, opinions of him.
In this series, when needed and relevant, I have commented on the relevant contributions of others, including those of FitzGerald. In addition, in Books 8, 9, and 10 of the series, I indexed the quatrains in such a way that they identified which quatrains likely served as sources of or inspirations for those translated or rendered by others, including those by FitzGerald (the latter marked by the index letter Z) across his various editions. Therefore, those interested can compare theirs with my direct and literal English verse translations of his Robaiyat.
Given the primary focus of this series on Khayyam’s own works, I have not found it necessary to devote more space to the study of the secondary material of others, including those of FitzGerald’s English verse renderings of Khayyam’s poetry, beyond those I have shared in the series in the context of the analyses being made of Khayyam’s works. Those interested may regard this entire series to be a commentary on others’ works published on Khayyam, that of FitzGerald included. Still, I will share below a few more words on the latter before closing this introduction.
It has been generally assumed that both Omar Khayyam and Edward FitzGerald’s world fames in modern times are owed to FitzGerald’s English renderings of Khayyam’s quatrains in his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám—his 1st edition released in 1859 (75 quatrains), with four subsequent editions released in 1868 (2nd edition, 110 quatrains), 1872 (3rd edition, 101 quatrains), 1879 (4th edition, 101 quatrains), and 1889 (5th edition, 101 quatrains, released posthumously).
Although the number of quatrains rendered by him varied across some editions, when considering his renderings as a whole including the overlaps and added new ones across the published editions, FitzGerald rendered into English 117 quatrains. 75 were shared in the first edition, 38 were new in the second edition having dropped three (quatrains 33, 37, and 45) from the first, later editions including variations of those already shared, plus 4 shared separately in his introduction and notes editions, 1 of which was used in his second edition, not counting a fifth that is not his but a literal translation he quoted in his introduction from his mentor Edward Byles Cowell (1826-1903), an orientalist expert in Persian language and literature.
The questions that should reasonably accompany such an assumed acknowledgment of mutual fame resulting from FitzGerald’s publications of his Rubáiyát, as far as the consideration of his “free translations” (or in his own words regarding his Rubáiyát “renderings”) goes, are the following. (1) How faithfully did FitzGerald render into English the literal meanings of Khayyam’s attributed quatrain originals? (2) How faithfully did he render the essential spirit of Khayyam’s attributed quatrain originals and his worldview as a whole? (3) How much of the fames resulting from FitzGerald’s work should be credited to Khayyam and how much to FitzGerald? Given the implications of the above three questions when mashed together, so to speak, and given that it was FitzGerald who rendered Khayyam into English and not the other way around obviously, a fourth question to be answered is: (4) Did FitzGerald make Khayyam (and himself) world famous faithfully or distortedly?
As far as the first question is concerned, it would be unfair to judge FitzGerald’s renderings as anything but “freely translated” or renderings inspired (distortedly or not) by Khayyam’s originals. Even he himself did not claim that his renderings were all literal translations, further acknowledging that the simplicity of expression of the originals may have been lost in his renderings. In his own words, “… very unliteral as it is. Many quatrains are mashed together and something lost, I doubt, of Omar’s simplicity, which is so much a virtue in him” (Heron-Allen 1898:xxiv).
Edward Heron-Allen (1899:xi-xii), who became even more informed of Persian language and literature than FitzGerald, found that of FitzGerald’s quatrains, 49 are “faithful and beautiful paraphrases,” 44 renderings “traceable to more than one quatrain,” 2 are of quatrains found in J. B. Nicolas’ French edition (1867), 2 generally reflecting the spirit of Khayyam’s quatrains without presumably being literal translations, 2 traceable to Farideddin Attar poems, 2 to Hafez Shirazi poems, and 3 being FitzGerald’s own compositions not traceable to other sources. To these must be added 3 additional in FitzGerald’s introductions and notes which Heron-Allen traced to specific Khayyam quatrains, and for another 10 Heron-Allen speculated on their possible Khayyam original inspirations in his appendix (ibid), altogether totaling 117, not counting 1 borrowed from Cowell.
Heron-Allen’s statistics may be interpreted in different ways. On one hand, one may believe that a majority (100-107, counting those traced in Heron-Allen’s appendix) are either faithful, mashed together, or general renderings of Khayyam’s originals. If so, then should we not conclude, based on the above statistics, that the presumed success of FitzGerald’s renderings are owed, overwhelmingly, to Khayyam’s originals and to his being an astronomer-poet from Persia whose life story is so mesmerizingly shared in FitzGerald’s introduction thanks to the long passages about Khayyam’s three-classmates story borrowed from Cowell’s Calcutta Review (1858)? No matter how good a poet or renderer FitzGerald is assumed to be, in other words, it was his renderings of Khayyam’s quatrains that made him famous, no? Logically speaking, neither FitzGerald, nor Heron-Allen, nor anyone, can insist on the Rubáiyát being truly expressive of Khayyam’s originals without having to admit that it was Khayyam’s poems that made FitzGerald famous, and not the other way around.
After all, FitzGerald did not become famous for other “free translations” he made, most of which were received with lukewarm reception, his posthumously published renderings of Farideddin Attar’s poems having been judged by Cowell as having been done too freely and unscientifically to be acceptable for publication in scholarly journals. And it happens that FitzGerald himself named his anonymously released Rubáiyát after Khayyam—whatever his reasons for doing so may have been, such as his fear of a cultural backlash (to himself or even to his mentor Cowell, whose identify as the author of his cited Calcutta Review he did not reveal in his 1st edition, presumably out of respect for him not to be found responsible for FitzGerald’s own renderings) amid a Victorian culture, his presumed lack of interest in fame, or his fear of being rejected publicly for any failures. FitzGerald had originally submitted 35 of his renderings to Fraser’s Magazine, receiving no reply from them for months, even though he claimed to have sent the magazine the less “wicked” of his renderings (meaning, those less likely to provoke rejection due to being judged challenging to his times’ Victorian religious sentiments). He later added 40 he had kept for their being “too strong,” having noted to Fraser’s publisher that “he might find them rather dangerous among his Divines” (Heron-Allen 1898:xxv).
So, if FitzGerald and his enthusiasts insist that his renderings overwhelmingly convey the essential spirit of Khayyam’s originals, they must logically admit that it was Khayyam’s poetry that primarily contributed to their mutual fame. If you translate a poem written in another language, you naturally expect that its poet must be the acknowledged creative author of that poem, of course giving due credit secondarily to the translator or renderer as well—as a translator or renderer.
Now, on the other hand, let us suppose that it was the way FitzGerald rendered the Khayyam originals, as a renderer and/or as a poet himself, that was responsible for the success of his book in bringing world fame to Khayyam, and to himself.
FitzGerald did not claim that the overall spirit and substance of the renderings were anything but those of Khayyam’s originals and took pride in that achievement. In other words, it is not being claimed presumably that FitzGerald’s primary success had anything to do with his conveying a new overall meaning invented by FitzGerald himself, but it had to do with his success in conveying the essential spirit of Khayyam’s originals. Even his book being published under Khayyam’s name, and not his own, supports such a claim made by FitzGerald. Therefore, the success of FitzGerald’s way of rendering Khayyam’s originals must have had to do primary with the form in which the originals were rendered, not their claimed faithfully transmitted content.
This leads us to two possibilities, either (1) FitzGerald’s way of rendering Khayyam remained generally faithful to the originals, or (2) his way of rendering them was something new and not found in the originals. If the former, one can assume again that the resulting fame was primarily due to the form of the original poems, since FitzGerald did not claim to be composing poems of his own, but, given even the statistics shared by Heron-Allen, his poems were mostly renderings of Khayyam’s work. In the second case, however, we face a different situation, where we could consider FitzGerald having rendered the originals in such a different way of his own that the credit for the resulting success must be given primarily to him.
As far as the latter of the above cases is concerned, we now face the question of what exactly it is that FitzGerald did that presumably made his renderings of Khayyam originals successful primarily due to his own different way of rendering them. What are the different formal attributes of FitzGerald’s English renderings of Khayyam’s originals that presumably resulted in his claimed success?
The attribute cannot be the quatrain form, of course, since it is an essential attribute of the Khayyam original. It is true that FitzGerald’s lines are shorter, containing 10 syllables in contrast to the 12-syllable form generally found in the originals; but this cannot necessarily imply a reason for the presumed success. The shorter lines make it perhaps more readable, an aim FitzGerald pursued, but it can also limit the extent to which the original can be translated literally. This may explain why FitzGerald had to pick and choose aspects of the originals to share, for almost half of his renderings having to mash them together, at times borrowing even from other Persian poets. Heron-Allen uses the adjective “beautiful” only for the 48 that for him were more directly literal renderings of specific quatrains.
It can in fact be argued that the precedent FitzGerald set of 10-syllable lines for the quatrains could have taken the renderings away from the originals, making it more difficult even for others to offer their own rendering variations, especially for those not familiar with the Persian language, trying to offer alternative renderings simply based on a second-hand reading of FitzGerald renderings. Those who can read Khayyam’s originals in Persian can clearly note the difference of line renderings in FitzGerald’s compared to those in the originals. However, at this point we are concerned with explaining the success of FitzGerald’s renderings in English, and the persistence of the quatrain form is not anything we can credit FitzGerald for, since he simply followed the quatrain form of Khayyam’s originals for the purpose.
Another most noted and celebrated formal attribute of FitzGerald’s renderings is said to be his overall rendering of them as, in his words, a “pretty tessellated eclogue,” claiming it to be his own innovation, and regarded as such by others. His renderings are arranged, it is said, as reflections Khayyam is having during a single day, early morning to late at night, a day he begins sober but during which, drinking wine, he becomes increasingly more intoxicated with more and more daring, even presumably (in characterizations of some) blasphemous thoughts, ending the day with melancholic thoughts about death and how he wished to be remembered, his sentiments overall being sad and pessimistic in tone about the nature of human existence having been preordained by fate. At this point, we are not concerned with the content of that day’s thinking, but wish to examine whether the one-day-event form of his renderings was his own innovation in the success of his rendering.
The idea of Khayyam’s originals being a telling of a story temporally, whether of a day or a lifetime, is present in the attributed Khayyam originals, and it depends on the patience, breadth, and depth of reading of all the quatrains—even when reading those available to FitzGerald (thanks to Cowell) as found in the Bodleian and Calcutta manuscripts—for one to appreciate that the possibility of a logical and temporal organization may be of the essence of Khayyam’s originals as his intended autobiography, or in his own words, his “book of life” (دفتر عمر). Just because quatrains in the Persian literary tradition were traditionally regarded as single poems by more publicly engaged poets does not mean Khayyam would have followed suit and not used his quatrains as pearls to be pierced for tessellation for a posthumous display. As I have argued in this series, even the aaba quatrain form may have been his own innovation, since before his time quatrains generally had aaaa form, and it was beginning in mid sixth lunar century, when Khayyam’s secretive quatrains were gradually released posthumously, that, presumably due to their increasing popularity, the aaba style became the predominant form of quatrain composition in Persian poetry, a format that FitzGerald also follows in his renderings.
The notion of “book” (also expressed as “diwan,” usually translated as “book of verse”) is a recurring theme in the wider Khayyam attributed originals. In fact in his Calcutta Review, when literally and faithfully translating one of Khayyam’s poems, one that found its rendering in quatrain 11-12-12-12 in FitzGerald (one I have translated as Quatrain 975 in this series), Cowell translated “diwan” (usually referred to as a collection of poems), as “díwán of poems” (p. 157), one that FitzGerald himself translates as “book of verse.” So, Khayyam himself, in that non-wandering and undisputedly attributed quatrain, speaks of a book of poems, which can presumably be regarded as a reference to his own book of poetry, that is the Robaiyat.
In the Calcutta manuscript you can find the notion of “book” in quatrains 43, 119 (“The secret of the world as it is written in our book”), 207, 223, 370, 437 (“Suppose the book of life to be read, what is the upshot?”), 490, speak of book of wine, of life, of existence, of happiness, and so on. FitzGerald can be credited for having first noticed the possibility of tessellating the quatrains in a temporal way, but he regarded it as his own innovation rather than an attribute found in the originals he was rendering. But it is evident in my translations of a thousand of them in this series that the possibility and the intention of composing the Robaiyat as a “book of life”—implying a temporal and logical arrangement of them—can be indeed traced to the originals themselves, since they can be logically organized coherently following his own presented logical method as stated in his treatise “Resalat fi al-Kown wa al-Taklif” (“Treatise on the Created World and Worship Duty”), methodically asking the questions: 1) Does Happiness Exist? 2) What Is Happiness? and 3) Why Does (or Can) Happiness Exist? (See the last chapter of this volume for their presentation, having been presented with annotation in Books 8-10, and as a whole in Book 11.)
But even tessellation, in and of itself, does not guarantee success, nor does it guarantee the eclogue being faithful to the original story Khayyam had had in mind. Even in my logical arrangement of the quatrains, Khayyam is found first sharing sober and bitter thoughts on human sadness, becoming more hopeful following his hearing the voice of the Saqi (Wine-Tender), and ending his collection with joyful sentiments, including his praise for the spiritual Wine of his poetry, that is, the Robaiyat—the latter having little to do with literal wine intoxication, let alone with becoming blasphemous. On the contrary, in his tessellated quatrains, he becomes even more expressive of his knowledge of and love for God.
At this point, we are not engaging with the substantive question of what view is being tessellated, however. Rather, we wish to know what in FitzGerald’s tessellations of Khayyam originals explains the claimed success of his renderings. But tessellating quatrains would not result in success unless it is judged in relation to the substance of the views being tessellated. The simple fact that 75 of the quatrains were translated into English for the first time (compared to the 32 translated faithfully by Cowell in his 1858 Calcutta Review, ones FitzGerald obviously had read), is not a sufficient explanation either. But, whereas Cowell had not tessellated them, FitzGerald did, and the difference certainly caught the attention of his reviewers and readers, regarding them as his own unique contribution assuming that Khayyam’s originals had not been temporally and logically ordered in the first place in his own papers.
The problem with tessellating quatrains is that one can do it in a variety of ways, the faithfulness of the resulting eclogue to Khayyam’s thinking depending on how inclusively and faithfully it is done. The same can be said about translating the originals themselves in quatrain verse forms. Nor, can one say the degree of simplicity (and therefore readability) of the FitzGerald renderings, compared to the originals in Persian, explains the success, since even FitzGerald himself did not claim having done an optimal job at that task. The fact is that purely formal considerations of the way he rendered the tessellated quatrains cannot explain, by themselves, why his work captured the imagination of a wide audience over time.
The above should lead us to the conclusion that it is simply impossible to judge the reasons for the presumed success of FitzGerald’s renderings in terms merely of formal factors separately from the substantive dimension of what he rendered, and if we assume that he rendered them faithfully based on FitzGerald’s own claim, the credit for the presumed success must go, again, to Khayyam, given that not only the originals were more readably composed in quatrain forms, but also we have even now ascertained that they were intended to be tessellations of his “book of life,” that is, his autobiography. You cannot write a book of life, i.e., an autobiography, without having in mind a temporal and logical order for its organization. Khayyam’s treatise on Euclid demonstrates how seriously he took the logical order of presenting ideas.
The contribution FitzGerald made as a “free” translator (after Cowell’s literal translations of 32 quatrains published in 1858) into English of some Khayyam’s quatrains in tessellated form is that they were translated in the first place, allowing for a Western audience to read them, starting a domino effect of others trying to do the same in English and other international languages in subsequent decades, in a way that the original Persian quatrains could not have done. If so, then the domino effect’s starter was not FitzGerald, but E. B. Cowell, himself prompted by the discovery of the centuries-old Bodleian manuscript of Khayyam’s attributed Robaiyat.
In other words, if the above is true, then it would be fair to give due credit to E. B. Cowell, who originally discovered, wrote a substantively engaging material on Khayyam, including the biographical material about Khayyam’s childhood three-classmates story, in his 1858 Calcutta Review, long passages of which (in Cowell’s translations) FitzGerald drew on, directly and anonymously quoting from Cowell in his 1859 Rubáiyát introduction, even echoing Cowell’s views about Khayyam that motivated and aided FitzGerald to publish his Rubáiyát. Even the subtitle of the latter was taken from the title of Cowell’s 1858 Calcutta Review article, “Omar Khayyam, The Astronomer-Poet of Persia.” So, FitzGerald had been not only mentored by Cowell, and encouraged by him to learn Persian, but also was inspired by Cowell, quoting from Cowell extensively in his introduction. Cowell had a lot to do with the success FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát experienced, since it offered a glimpse of a Persian scientist and poet having lived a life amid a social and historical context that could easily capture the imagination of a wide Western, and subsequently global, audience.
In this context, the position of England as the seat of the hegemonic British empire in the 19th century should not be underestimated. Cowell himself was trained as an academic, to serve many years in colonial India, and the cultural attention the literary events taking place in England could receive globally cannot be underestimated in understanding why the first book-length English verse renderings of Khayyam’s poetry, could garner wide readership in England, and internationally.
Note that in the above, we have assumed, following FitzGerald’s own claim, that he succeeded in transmitting the essential spirit of Khayyam’s poems in his own English verse renderings. So, as implied in the very reason that he named his book’s author as being Omar Khayyam, we should logically conclude that it was Khayyam who primarily made FitzGerald’s renderings world famous, not the other way around. FitzGerald’s renderings of Farideddin Attar and Jami, whether published during his life or posthumously, did not bring him any comparable fame; it was his renderings of Khayyam that brought him fame. Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Persia, had composed autobiographical poems that lent themselves to being readable, organizable in logical and temporal form in a ‘book of life’ (or tale of a day, for FitzGerald), discussing questions about life, death, faith, science, nature, garden, pottery, cemetery, heaven and hell, using “wine” prominently as a trope of his poem.
The basic message of FitzGerald’s renderings of Khayyam’s poems is as follows. Human existence is subject to fate as preordained by God. Since, all things, such as plants, pottery, and human lives—be they kings, lovers, wise folks, teachers or students—inevitably pass into dust and nothingness, not knowing why they have come here and where they are going, facing an existential puzzle, they must enjoy today, enhanced especially by “wine” (subject to interpretation), enjoying the cash of the paradise now instead of an uncertain one promised in the hereafter; God, being a good fellow, will forgive and spare them from hell, even if it exists as claimed.
The above are Khayyam’s ideas, not FitzGerald’s, nor are they Cowell’s. Therefore, even substantively considered, it was Khayyam’s worldview that made FitzGerald world famous, not the other way around, since—beginning from Cowell, to whom credit must first go for rediscovering Khayyam’s poetry in the West and in encouraging and mentoring FitzGerald patiently to read and translate them over decades, Khayyam’s views as already existing in his poems and being increasingly rediscovered in modern times (like his treatise in algebra translated into French in 1851), were going to be discovered sooner and later, capturing the imagination of the Western and global audience in time. It just happens that those to play the catalyzing initial roles in this world’s rediscovery of Khayyam’s poems, as far as Khayyam’s Robaiyat were concerned, were, first and foremost E. B. Cowell, and by way of his encouragement and mentoring, Edward FitzGerald—contributions that were later deepened and widened by the works of others such as J. B. Nicolas, Edward Heron-Allen, and numerous others and enthusiasts. Without a Khayyam and his Robaiyat, there would not have been a Cowell or FitzGerald to make their contributions.
Let us now consider more carefully the second question of faithfulness of FitzGerald’s renderings of Khayyam’s attributed originals, which can then allow us to engage with the third and fourth questions I originally raised about Khayyam becoming world famous through FitzGerald, faithfully or distortedly.
To be fair to him again, any critical evaluation of the faithfulness of Edward FitzGerald’s English verse Rubáiyát renderings of Khayyam’s Robaiyat must be done in the context of the sources that were available to him in the historical context of his time (his actual consulting and accepting the sources being a separate consideration).
Khayyam’s treatise in algebra had just been published in French translation by Franz Woepcke (1851), in reaction to which FitzGerald’s mentor E. B. Cowell had published his Calcutta Review article in 1858. Cowell did not actually review Khayyam’s treatise in algebra in that article, it being devoted to introducing Khayyam’s quatrains in historical context to his readers. Nor did FitzGerald’s introduction and his citations of his “reviewer” (Cowell) from that article suggest that FitzGerald had himself read Khayyam’s treatise in algebra, unfortunately.
But many of Khayyam’s other works had not yet been unearthed by 1859. For instance, Khayyam’s treatise on the universals of existence (see Chapter II of this volume, studied in Book 4 in detail) had not yet been found, one in which Khayyam himself expresses explicitly his preference for the Sufi way among the four spiritual paths he lists, his own independence from all four ways withstanding. Many manuscripts of his Robaiyat that are extant today had also not yet been found or FitzGerald had not yet had access to them in England, aside from the additional (beyond the Bodleian manuscript) Calcutta manuscript copied for him by Cowell.
In his Calcutta Review article of 1858, Cowell reports on his knowledge of the three-classmates story (which FitzGerald drew on fully in his introduction). He also quoted Cowell’s Thomas Hyde report about Khayyam, “the King of the Wise,” having died in 517 LH, and his “Khwájah Nizámi” report of talks with Khayyam in his garden (which is interestingly different from a reported meeting in Balkh) and having visited his grave, finding it buried under “rose blossoms.” FitzGerald cites both of the above from Cowell in his Rubáiyát introduction, but Beyhaqi’s Tatemmat Sewan el-Hekmat in which Khayyam’s fame as the Avicenna of his time is reported was not known to FitzGerald, nor was it to his mentor E. B. Cowell directly.
Interestingly, in his 1858 Calcutta Review article, Cowell leaned on believing that Khayyam must have meant the “material and tangible” kind by the trope of wine in his poems (“his wine is of mortal vintage,” p. 157), also not regarding Khayyam as having been a mystic or Sufi as traditionally considered (“ … Omar was no mystic—we find no trace of Sufeyism [sic] in his book,” ibid). These are exactly sentiments that FitzGerald echoed in his 1859 released Rubáiyát, and it can clearly be evidenced that he published them thinking that he was following Cowell’s lead in portraying Khayyam (and his poetry) as such in his initial release. So, again, we cannot assign a primary credit to FitzGerald for holding such views about Khayyam, since he had proceeded to release his 1859 Rubáiyát thinking that he was following Cowell’s lead in interpreting Khayyam’s worldview and poetry as such for framing his renderings.
However, by the end of his life, even having witnessed the publication of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, and having worked in India with more direct access to resources found and scribes met, Cowell became convinced otherwise without any doubts, implying that he had abandoned his initial 1858 Calcutta Review article portrayals of Khayyam as not being a mystic or Sufism-inclined, having even changed his mind that by “wine” Khayyam could have meant the literal wine.
In his The Romance of the Rubáiyát (1959), A. J. Arberry narrates what Thomas Wright wrote about FitzGerald in his book Life of Edward FitzGerald (1904):
When I visited Cambridge in November 1901, I was able to hear Professor Cowell’s opinions from his own lips.
“Are we,” I said, “to take Omar’s words literally, or is there a hidden meaning?”
“The poem,” he replied, “is mystical. I am convinced of it. When in India I had many conversations with the Monshees [scribes] on the subject, and they were all of this opinion. They ridiculed the idea that the poem is not allegorical.”
“Omar’s laudation of drunkenness,” said I, “is difficult to explain away.”
“By drunkenness,” said Professor Cowell with a smile, “is meant ‘Divine Love.’”
“Then Omar was a Sufi, and not, as some will have it, heterodoxical?”
“Certainly, Omar was a Sufi.”
“But FitzGerald did not agree with you?”
“Sometimes he inclined to this belief, though generally not. He could never quite make up his mind.” (Arberry 1959:18)
From the above it can be ascertained that FitzGerald had released his initial 1859 renderings of his Rubáiyát based on the impressions of Khayyam he had received from Cowell (as read in Calcutta Review). But Cowell himself radically changed his mind since then, increasingly distancing himself from the trends spreading around FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, whose literal wine-drinking and denial of Khayyam’s Islamic mystical and Sufi-inclined faith had garnered an international cult-like following.
In a 1898 letter to Edward Heron-Allen, Cowell wrote,
… I yield to no one in my admiration of ‘Omar’s poetry as literature, but I cannot join in the “Omar Cult,” and it would be wrong in me to pretend to profess it. So, I am deeply interested in Lucretius, and I believe I first introduced FitzGerald to his sublime poem in 1846, when we read a good deal of it together at Ipswich; but here again I only admire Lucretius as “literature”. I feel this especially about ‘Omar Khayyam, as I unwittingly incurred a grave responsibility when I introduced his poems to my old friend in 1856. I admire ‘Omar as I admire Lucretius, but I cannot take him as a guide. In these grave matters I prefer to go to Nazareth, not to Naishapúr. Forgive my plain speaking, and believe me, Yours most sincerely, E. B. Cowell. (Heron-Allen 1908: xv)
Cowell was writing the above on 1898. He had already changed his mind since 1850s when he thought Khayyam was not a mystic and Sufism-inclined, his “wine” being of a literal kind. As shared in his later 1904 published interview with Wright also quoted above, in 1901 he regarded Khayyam as being inclined to mysticism and Sufism, and his Wine being of the spiritual kind. Cowell had introduced FitzGerald to Khayyam’s poems when he believed the former, but was writing in 1898 to Heron-Allen, when he believed the latter. During this time, he had witnessed what he had regarded to be Khayyam’s sublime poems turned into an “Omar Cult.”
So, Cowell was admitting that he felt gravely responsible for having introduced FitzGerald to Khayyam’s poetry given that result, respectfully rejecting being perceived as joining the cultish trend by accepting Heron-Allen’s offer of dedicating a book to him. Cowell’s letter has been interpreted by some as contrasting his Christian beliefs with that of Khayyam, but the Khayyam he was now referring to was not a believer in a false religion, as FitzGerald had portrayed him to be, distorting Khayyam’s poems away from Khayyam’s own Islamic faith. Cowell felt gravely responsible for setting FitzGerald on a course of treating Khayyam in a way that he had himself later abandoned. He was not recognizing now Khayyam’s sublime poems in the “Omar Cult” trends emerging as a result of FitzGerald’s rendering of them beginning in 1859, so he wished to dissociate himself from it. Otherwise, why would he wish to distance himself from poems he still regarded as sublime, having introduced FitzGerald to it and published his own translations of them in 1858? He felt responsible because his earlier interpretations had “unwittingly” initiated a cult of Omar as a “curious infidel” that had little resemblance to his views of him now.
Elsewhere, Hebron-Allen writes, “Certain it is that the late Prof. E. B. Cowell—… who was primarily responsible for the Western cultus of ‘Umar by his introduction of Edward FitzGerald to the Rubá’iyyat—felt heavily that responsibility, and deeply regretted his share in the matter” (1908:xiv). FitzGerald himself wrote later to Prof. W. H. Thompson, reflecting back on what followed his first printing of his Rubáiyát with Quaritch, “… Cowell, to whom I sent a copy, was naturally alarmed at it; he being a very religious man” (Heron-Allen 1898:xxvii). Why alarmed? FitzGerald, portraying Khayyam as a “curious infidel” had, in effect, accused him of what he had spent a lifetime trying to clear his name from.
Given that we are discussing the circumstances surrounding FitzGerald’s release of his first edition in 1859, a year following Cowell’s 1858 published review, one that FitzGerald had read and cites extensively from in his introduction, we should realize that Cowell had initially reinforced the positions FitzGerald had taken in his first edition regarding Khayyam’s spirituality and use of the wine trope in his poetry. The difference here is that Cowell, being a scholar and open to rethinking his convictions, changed his mind in light of his further studies amid his work in India, while FitzGerald seemed to still stand publicly in his poetry renderings by his original positions until the end, having firmly insisted on his literal interpretation of wine’s meaning when reacting to Nicolas’s work (published in 1867), as expressed in the revised introduction in his second edition of Rubáiyát released in 1868.
But the above (lack of resources not yet available in his time, or Cowell’s influence on his initial exposure to Khayyam’s life and poetry) cannot excuse FitzGerald from the distortions he himself willingly introduced in his English renderings of the Robaiyat, despite material and evidence that were readily available to him, including the evolving views and opinions of his mentor Cowell. Cowell read the then recently published French translation of Khayyam’s treatise in algebra, but FitzGerald does not show any indication that he had read it in earnest for his renderings. FitzGerald was also provided in time an opportunity to rethink his positions about Khayyam’s spirituality and use of wine as a trope in his poems, when he read the more literal translations (and associate originals, errors in J. B. Nicolas’s (1814-1875) interpretations of Khayyam withstanding, such as his equating the Saqi with God) that became available to him by way of Nicolas’s book, published in 1867. Nicolas, who was the French consul in Rasht, Iran, had no doubt that Khayyam’s poems were Sufistic and his trope of Wine was of a spiritual kind, a view FitzGerald firmly rejected in his second edition’s revised introduction. He also became increasingly aware that Cowell himself was changing his initial views on the matter, as quoted above, but decided to abide by his own initial positions (“generally” as Cowell admitted later).
It was FitzGerald’s own views to treat Khayyam as being, as expressed in his Rubáiyát introduction, “justly revolted from their Country’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it.” This is a comment on Khayyam’s attitude toward Islam, and not religion generally. It is one thing for FitzGerald to hold such a view toward Islam, and another to attribute it to Khayyam. In his Rubáiyát, he often uses the expression “prophet” disparagingly, a euphemism he uses for the prophet of Islam, while he shares Khayyam’s positive renderings of Jesus and Moses more explicitly. He ignored a positive reference to the prophet in Bodleian (q. 105) and in Nicolas referring to both Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali (q. 403). FitzGerald was aware of his renderings being “wicked” or “dangerous” in his Victorian times, of course, but he allowed in his Rubáiyát renderings for Islam’s prophet and faith to be negatively portrayed, while maintaining Khayyam’s positive tropes for Jesus and Moses.
The very first quatrain of Bodleian is an emphasis on the poet’s belief in the unitary nature of God, yet FitzGerald chose to dismiss it as an expression of Khayyam’s faith. The distorting aspect of FitzGerald’s biased renderings of Khayyam’s attitude toward his Islamic faith is also evident in his apparent disregard for how Khayyam himself had begun his then just French translated and published treatise in algebra, one that it seems he did not even care to read, or do so empathetically. So, in his view, Khayyam must have been duplicitous to begin and end his treatise in algebra (already extant in FitzGerald’s time in French, see Woepcke 1851:1) with most reverent words for his God and the prophet of Islam (see Chapter XII of this volume, studied in detail in Book 6 of this series): “Praise to God, the Lord of the worlds, the end of the righteous, and the enemy of none but the oppressors. And greetings to all His prophets, especially to Muhammed and his entire pure family.” In the same treatise Khayyam in fact shared, in the introduction, his most critical words of the duplicitous thinkers of his time (see Chapter XII of this volume):
… And most of the philosopher-resembling men of these times put on a clothing of falsehood over righteousness and do not step any further than hypocrisy and deceptive pretention to knowledge, such that even what they know they do not offer except to satisfy their own base material interests. And if they see someone is seeking after the truth and choosing righteousness in his efforts while avoiding falsehood, hypocrisy, pretention, or deception, they humiliate and ridicule him. In any case, God offers help and refuge to all.
FitzGerald and those in “Omar Cult” (in Cowell’s words) have claimed that Rubáiyát has conveyed the spirit of Khayyam’s originals despite acknowledging the renderings not being literal translations. But FitzGerald’s notion of “Man’s Forgiveness give—and take” (quatrain 58-88-81-81 in his all Rubáiyát editions) is only his own and cannot be found in the Khayyam originals. It in fact contradicts Khayyam’s celebrated (and even FitzGerald rendered) polo ball quatrain in which it is repeatedly acknowledged that only God knows. How can FitzGerald claim that Khayyam had found no answers yet was knowledgeable enough to forgive God? Khayyam was freethinking enough to ask his critical questions from his God, but never expressed that notion which he, and Muslims, would find insulting to their faith. Heron-Allen himself could not explain the source of that FitzGerald quatrain “which has baffled so many commentators” (1898:226) and unsuccessfully paralleled it to Bodleian quatrain 109, which has absolutely nothing in it that suggests that notion; in fact it conveys the opposite, Khayyam telling his God what he can do given the shame he has felt about sins committed (see my Quatrain 256 translation).
Sharing the same quatrain rendering of FitzGerald, Heron-Allen adds, “There are many isolated lines and ideas, and more than one entire quatrain for which diligent study has revealed no corresponding passages in the original quatrains of Omar Khayyam” (Ibid, p. 293). Heron-Allen’s attempt elsewhere (1908:164-165) to find sources of that notion in the Calcutta manuscript quatrains 115 and 510 or in Abu Said Abol-Kheyr, is also entirely unconvincing given even his own translations of them—displaying the extent to which “Omar Cult” attitudes have tried to justify FitzGerald’s unfaithful renderings of Khayyam. Cowell was also correct in stating that “there is no original for the line about the snake” (Ibid. p. 88, a trope that appears in the same quatrain) and even his own speculation of which quatrain it may have come from (see Q 247 in my translations, as in Calcutta 286, as cited in Heron-Allen’s, pp. 164-165) entirely lacks that notion (the proposed quatrains expressing a meaning opposite to what FitzGerald has unfaithfully attributed to Khayyam).
In his letter to Cowell in 1867, FitzGerald tried to justify his distortion of Khayyam’s views by stating, “As to my making Omar worse than he is in that Stanza about Forgiveness—you know I have translated none literally, and have generally mashed up two—or more—into one” (Decker 1997:xxxvii). This only illustrates how the “rendering” maneuver conveniently served his distorting Khayyam’s views while claiming to convey the spirit of his poetry better than others (including Cowell, and Nicolas). FitzGerald’s “live sparrow,” it turns out, was an ostrich after all (called “shotor-morgh” or “camel-bird” in Persian), since it allowed him to claim it to be either a camel or a bird when facing its identity crisis. As the Persian saying goes: “You don’t look like a camel!” “I’m like a bird.” “But, you don’t fly like a bird!” “I run like a camel.” Or: “These don’t look like translations!” “They are renderings.” “So, they are just renderings!” “They are translations essentially!” Similarly: “You are not being democratic!” “I am an empire spreading democracy!” “But, you just toppled a democracy there in 1953!” “I am a democracy here.” Without such duplicity, empires crumble. Newtonian separate billiard balls obviously render possible such duplicitous imperial games playing. As Christopher Decker, apparently in defense of FitzGerald, has acknowledged, “A free translation might be less open to attack on the grounds of misrepresentation. By translating freely he hoped to protect himself from one kind of adverse criticism, though exposing himself to another” (Ibid:xxiii-xxiv). “As far as we can tell,” writes Daniel Karlin, “FitzGerald never met a Persian person, or indeed any Muslim” (2009:xxix), later adding, “FitzGerald accepted without question the right of the West to take what it wanted from the East” (p. xxx).
From the above, then, it becomes clear that FitzGerald took advantage of the opportunity of the renderings to partly distort Khayyam’s poems to pass on his own beliefs and grind his own axes in critique of his Victorian times, naming his renderings after Khayyam in his otherwise anonymously authored book to avoid the blame in fear of a cultural backlash to his renderings. To counter his Victorian times’ religiosity, he had to make sure his renderings of his favored Khayyam’s poems were not themselves mistaken for his own favoring the Islamic faith with which Khayyam was associated, hence portraying Khayyam as being an infidel revolting against his own “false religion.” Such a translation strategy was not only unscholarly and unscientific but deeply unfair to Khayyam’s Islamic faith and worldview. A principled scholar such as Cowell could not have accepted, and was rightly alarmed by, such portrayals of Khayyam. Good for him, a genuine scholar and humble person that he was, caring even to respect and cite his Indian “Monshees” (scribes) as his sources.
In FitzGerald’s dualistic, Newtonian billiards ball, thinking, wine cannot be at once literal and spiritual in a poetical text. One cannot be at once Sufism-inclined but also critical of specific Sufis and Sufi ways, engaging in a critical dialogue with them to help improve a way he considered to be still better than other ways. In such a dualistic mindset, one cannot be a Muslim and a freethinker at once, asking spiritual questions while still believing in one’s faith, as is evident in the wider collection of attributed Robaiyat, even those available to him. If Khayyam is found to be a freethinker, in FitzGerald view he cannot be Muslim, but a “curious infidel.”
Conclusions such as those of FitzGerald can be self-servingly reached only if one renders a few of the attributed quatrains worthy of “pretty eclogue tessellations,” and invents others of his own, mashing together quatrains in his pot in a way that can portray his own preferred image of who Khayyam was and his poetry was about. “Rendering” can be self-serving. One can at once say one has translated an original and not be held “gravely responsible” for doing it. FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát is a mix of renderings, some directly traceable to Khayyam’s quatrains, and some mashed together of them. To the extent that he conveyed meanings from Khayyam’s originals, he benefited from Khayyam’s originality in composing them, and to the extent that he invented his own meanings in contradiction to Khayyam’s works available to him, he distorted Khayyam’s faith and purpose in composing his Robaiyat.
What has made “free translation” possible without feeling “gravely responsible” for it have been the doubts cast on the attributability of quatrains to Khayyam. FitzGerald dismissed the very first quatrain in the Bodleian manuscript by using the excuse of its being out of its alphabetical order, signifying that a scribe was trying to portray Khayyam as a man of faith, so out it went of his tessellation. Khayyam’s just published treatise in algebra in French did not matter as a source to be consulted, even though his mentor, Cowell, had cited it in his Calcutta Review. But the French-translated quatrains of Nicolas, in which Khayyam’s Sufistic poetry is rendered more inclusively, were cited to be dismissed and exiled from his tessellations.
The strategy of casting increasing doubts on the attributability of quatrains to Khayyam has been a flip-side of the coin of Western colonial attitudes trying to de-Islamize Khayyam, to shape an Iranian Muslim “astronomer-poet” away from his Islamic faith and in their own image. The contradicting quatrains can then be dismissed as doubtfully attributed, exiled from tessellations. Pessimistic quatrains are allowed, optimistic ones dismissed. Quatrains in which the puzzles about existence are posed are celebrated but those in which Khayyam announces having solved all the problems from the Earth to Saturn are not given their due logical attention.
Of course, the reason FitzGerald limited himself to only those quatrains that allowed him to see only his own favored parts of Khayyam’s elephant and not its whole may have to do also with the limitations he had in reading Persian. But they were readable enough for Cowell and Nicolas to translate them more inclusively and more literally. The notion that only 75 or at most 117 quatrains were rendered, in part or fully, by FitzGerald should not be taken to imply that he had understood correctly all the hundreds of the quatrains that were made available to him. FitzGerald’s “rendering” strategy masks his failures in offering straightforward English verse translations of the originals directly and quatrain by quatrain. The reason he “rendered” them is because he could not translate them in English verse while retaining the quatrains’ literal meanings across their lines and collections.
His was more of a pragmatic approach to render as few or many of the quatrains that he could understand (thanks to Cowell’s assistance and the latter’s 32 already translated quatrains in his Calcutta Review) or self-servingly and distortedly invent to shape them to fit his own anti-Victorian views, in the name of Khayyam. In this series, I have shown that 1000 attributed Khayyami quatrains can indeed be translated in English verse in a logical order while conveying their literal meanings. By choosing to apply a 10-syllable per line format in his renderings, FitzGerald unnecessarily limited himself in translating the originals in verse and made it more difficult for others trying to emulate him later on. To Persian speakers, FitzGerald’s renderings do not sound like the originals, directly done or mashed together.
In his book The Romance of the Rubáiyát (1959), A. J. Arberry studied FitzGerald’s renderings in its first edition as well as the private correspondence FitzGerald had made with his mentor E. B. Cowell. He began his book by preemptively portraying criticisms made of FitzGerald’s translations as “pedantic” so as to soften the impact of the list of FitzGerald numerous errors that he was going to report in his book (a culturally defensive attitude that seems to be prevalent in Western literature about FitzOmar, treating FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát as if it is a colonial spoil). Arberry still found errors in both the published renderings and in the then recently released correspondence that FitzGerald had had with his mentor E. B. Cowell. Among them there are many observations, such as the following: “FitzGerald’s actual errors of understanding can now be detected readily enough; they are not a few, but they are not unduly numerous, considering the material at his disposal and the limited extent of his experience of the Persian language and literature … “ (p. 21); “FitzGerald evidently misunderstood the Persian of the second couplet completely, and makes Omar say the exact opposite of what he actually wrote” (p. 131); “His understanding of the fourth line as given in this letter is quite erroneous” (pp. 133-134); “FitzGerald misunderstood the meaning of C 72 …” (p. 135); “It is clear that he misread mānam … as mātam …, and so arrived at the extraordinary mistranslation ‘serious tears’” (p. 135); “FitzGerald looked at the wrong word in F. Johnson, A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English …” (p. 143). Reporting on such cases requires pages.
Despite the above, as far as the second question I listed earlier is concerned, FitzGerald claimed that he had faithfully captured in his renderings the spirit of the original quatrains attributed to Khayyam, even implying that he had done better than “these Persians” could do. When referring to Farideddin Attar’s “Mantik” (Manteq ol-Ṭayr) in his correspondence, for instance, we find him saying, “It is an amusement to me to take what liberties I like with these Persians, who (as I think) are not poets enough to frighten one from such excursions, and who really do want a little art to shape them” (Edward Heron-Allen, 1898: viii). Only a condescending colonial mentality can offer such words about another culture’s art.
FitzGerald had no basis to judge so firmly, as stated in his introduction, that Khayyam had “never been popular in his own Country,” projecting instead his own prior ignorance of him on Iranians, given that he, thanks to Cowell, had even come across a gold-dusted manuscript of Khayyam’s Robaiyat published in the 15th century in Shiraz, and another, longer one, that came to be known as the Calcutta manuscript, having been found by Cowell even in another country, India. Just because such manuscripts were unknown to them in England does not mean they had not been known in Khayyam’s own homeland and broader region, even when selectively spread across manuscripts by scribes who cared to keep a record of them in Iran’s literary memory as best as they could despite Mongol and foreign invasions and multiple devastating earthquakes. How can one judge Khayyam’s fame in Iran so unfairly, without noting the devastations Neyshabour and Iran experienced across centuries (such observations more telling of someone making them from the safe center of a colonial empire)? After all, FitzGerald had read about and even quoted (from Cowell) Thomas Hyde’s AD 1700 entry on Khayyam, no? Does not that indicate Khayyam must have been even famed enough for Hyde to report on him?
Given that FitzGerald believed that Khayyam had “never been popular in his own Country, and has been but charily transmitted abroad” (to note, he already knew of a gold-dusted book of Khayyam’s poetry released in Shiraz and another copied to him by Cowell from Calcutta, India) we must assume that by the end of his life, if not initially, he regarded himself as having played a key role in making Khayyam famous, the assumption being that the fame achieved has been faithful to Khayyam.
In his eclogue tessellation, FitzGerald ignored quatrains in which the poet expressed his love and reverence for his God, even gutting the spiritual tropes of the last two lines of the same quatrain original from which he plucked his own renderings for his first quatrain in his Rubáiyát—lines in which Khayyam’s spiritual connotations for his “wine” to be served daily in early morning hours like prayers was evident. He ignored the trope of Kaykhosrow and his Cup in the original, one that evokes pouring of a spiritual Wine of universal self-knowledge (as the trope Jamsheed’s Cup implies, the Cup having been associated with Kaykhosrow in Persian literature), instead opting for characterizing the Persian king as a Turkic “Sultan.”
That very first celebrated quatrain as rendered in his Rubáiyát (for further details see my comments on the original quatrain, Q 266, in Book 8) is emblematic of FitzGerald’s distorted renderings as a whole. Having ignored the point of the last two lines of the original, he simply avoided them altogether in his tessellations.
The fixed stars being chased away, as stated in the first two lines of his own “rendering,” would have been regarded as representing the high intellects and souls by Khayyam (see Q 352 in my translations starting with اجرام كه ساكنان اين ايوانند اسباب تردد خردمندانند meaning, “The fixed-star masses that adorn this turning dome / Are the enlightened wise masters’ frequenting home”). In other words, the fixed stars are what Khayyam was seeking to reach and embrace in their Saqi personification, not chase away as if in a colonial war. If only FitzGerald had considered what he quoted from Cowell in a footnote in his Salámān and Ábsāl (p. 103, 1879 edition), in fact the meaning of the Jāmi’s poetry he himself translated at the end, regarding the “Ten Intelligences,” to be also applicable to understanding Khayyam’s Robaiyat, he would not have used that stars analogy as such in his rendering of his first quatrain.
But the stars trope evocation is not even present in Khayyam’s original. He just kept it, knowing it was not in the originals, yet named the book after Khayyam. FitzGerald’s invention was perhaps due to his interpreting the casting of a stone in bowl as found in one rare variation of the original quatrain (in others the trope being that of casting “wine” in Jamsheed’s Cup) as a call “to horse” implying to ready for battle. But even the stone (in fact the Persian word used is not stone or سنگ but مهره which implies a bead in a tessellated rosary) could have been interpreted as a prayer rosary bead, pearl or ruby made, being poured molten as a ruby-like Wine in Jamsheed’s Cup standing in Persian poetry for serving universal self-knowledge.
By way of his “rendering” strategy of going about representing or rather “shaping” the poetry of “these Persians” for the world and even for themselves condescendingly, FitzGerald found a way of avoiding the harder work of literally translating (in verse or not) the widest possible set of attributed quatrain that were available to him. This allowed him to tessellate the quatrains selectively to serve his own views. The reason had partly to do with his own limitations in reading Persian, but substantively it functioned as a way of regarding himself to be an expert in offering his “little art to shape” his Persians, presumably including Khayyam. The trope of wine that Khayyam painstakingly composed to signify his own spiritual poetry, then became simplistically “shaped” into meaning only the literal wine, a view that even his own mentor Cowell rejected in due time, and one that was responsible for the propagation of the most Islamophilic interpretations of Khayyam’s Robaiyat over the decades, behind which usually lurk Islamophobic sentiments (see Tamdgidi 2012).
A basic interpretive error in FitzGerald and those who have tried to learn Khayyam’s views apart from all his other writings, one that I have discussed throughout this series, has been the difference between fate and chance (قضا و قدر), which in philosophical terms are discussed in his writings as a difference between essential and accidental attributes (ذاتى و عرضى). The distinction, as repeatedly expressed in Khayyam’s treatises, is essential to the view of humanity as an intelligent animal potentially endowed with will-power. Khayyam’s Robaiyat, when inclusively and faithfully studied and logically organized, concludes as a severe critique of fatalistic thinking that pessimistically regards human life as preordained, rather than being also subject to human will and creative action. FitzGerald’s ignorance of Khayyam’s broader worldview has resulted in attributing a fatalism to his thinking that was the very aim of his Robaiyat to transcend. Khayyam did not have to “conspire” against a pre-ordained God’s plan to bring a happier and more just order to human life. For him, that has indeed been God’s plan, creating a potentially willful humanity that must awaken from its being a doll and ignorant of its potential, to actualize its willful nature to bring about a happier world in a self-determining and self-fulfilling way.
For Khayyam, the call in his Robaiyat for awakening to the here and now is a call to make us aware of our human nature as spirits originating in the universal intellect and soul created by God (as expressed by the trope of the Wine-Tending Saqi) to encourage us to ask, before it is too late, who we are, why we are here, and where we should be going spiritually. Yes, it is also about awakening to enjoy our existence in our todays, joy in his view being what we have been created to experience. But the latter is only one leg of the compass of Khayyam’s geometry of human existence, the other leg being that of awakening us to seek to know ourselves before it is too late.
The joy to be experienced in Khayyam’s view is not a momentary joy devoid of universal spiritual wisdom. It is not an invitation to experience a passing joy enhanced by literal wine drinking to escape from the world, but a call for seeking universal self-knowledge as captured in the trope of Jamsheed’s Cup.
Khayyam reports in the poems of his “book of life” having felt existentially depressed, inventing the spiritual Wine of his Robaiyat as a way of healing himself. While appreciating the Khayyam-inspired renderings of FitzGerald, Rubáiyát enthusiasts need to consider the mental health implications such one-sided pessimistic renderings can have for the depressed who expect momentary joys that do not effectively help them deal with personal troubles in relation to the public issues of their times arising from deeper spiritual and existential issues Khayyam addressed in his original quatrains. Such a healing requires world-historical and personal self-knowledge, not a few or more sips of literal wine, their harms withstanding, as listed by Khayyam in his Nowrooznameh, requiring their respective remedies. A partial and nihilist interpretation of the joy to be achieved today by tessellating only the fatalistic parts of the Robaiyat’s elephant, no matter how pretty it can be, when failing, can lead to deeper existential depression. An overall pessimistic view of Khayyam’s Robaiyat, which could have even been avoided if FitzGerald’s tessellations were inclusive of a wider set of his poems, could have yielded a more balanced result.
The implied narrative of FitzGerald’s renderings of Khayyam’s quatrains has been that, despite their “free” nature, they captured the essence of his poetry, even better than his own culture could do, resulting in worldwide fame for Khayyam and for FitzGerald himself. There is nothing wrong with the West being inspired, amid their Victorian culture in the mid-19th century, and since, by Khayyam’s poetry, even if it was distorted amid FitzGerald’s “free” renderings. The experience is in fact an example of how those who have tried to convert Iran’s society and culture have themselves been converted in turn and benefited from Iran’s rich spiritual and poetic legacy. However, to claim that the West can represent the poetry, works, and life, of a thinker such as Khayyam better than his own culture is a typically arrogant display of Western colonialism even when echoed and enabled by the Westoxicated sentiments exported to the local culture, whether expressed abroad or in Iran.
What the West made famous about Khayyam included the distortions of his poems, not even adequately acknowledging that it must have been Khayyam, even when mistranslated, that contributed more to FitzGerald’s fame than in reverse, since obviously none of FitzGerald’s other translations achieved similar fame for him. It is the condescending cultural attitudes such as those found in FitzGerald that have paved the way for the Western “we know better” political, economic, and military interventions in Iran. By scalping out Iranian Islamic freethinkers from their culture to appropriate and showcase them distortedly as their own “FitzOmar,” the West has at once fueled Islamophobia and used Islamophilic brushes to render Khayyami quatrains as caricatures of their originals, duplicitously naming them after him while questioning their Khayyam attributability.
The colonial nature of the double-pronged scissors used by some Western scholars and their local spokespersons abroad or in Iran aimed at cutting the lifeline of Khayyam’s Robaiyat legacy while presumably appropriating it becomes apparent when the logic of their behavior is scrutinized independently of the deceptively and impossibly “blinded” peer review systems serving as panopticons in academic (and other) circles to self-monitor, self-discipline, and self-censor alternative perspectives when findings challenge established dogmas on dearly held topics (see Tamdgidi 2005/6, 2008). The double-pronged scissors of “attributability enigma” and “free translating” has served well in reducing Khayyam’s poetic legacy to nearly zero while hoisting the FitzGeraldian “rendering” of the same to the zenith of British, nay Western, civilization. The colonial logic of how it is done is as follows.
FitzGerald’s renderings are published under the name of Khayyam, not even claiming to be literal renderings but magically capturing the essential spirit of the originals. So, knowing obviously that Khayyam did not compose English quatrains, FitzGerald’s renderings have been at best quatrains inspired by Khayyam, done distortedly or not, and celebrated worldwide by his enthusiasts. So, FitzGerald is basically an English variety of those “Persians” who are accused of having composed quatrains in the past in Iran, naming them after Khayyam. They are to be ignored, however, but FitzGerald’s celebrated. Why not treat those allegedly questionable (in terms of attributability) quatrains composed in Khayyam’s own culture, even when done anonymously under Khayyam’s name presumably, the same way if they also capture the essential spirit of the “originals”? Conversely, why not ignore FitzGerald’s?
Why the Persian composers of the Robaiyat, even if we assume they were not Khayyam himself (as FitzGerald definitely was not), are treated differently and the cultural legacy of their contributions are sent to attributability dust bins? Is that because they are “these Persians,” their renderings being dispensable and not worthy of equal attention, study, and celebration, as widely and inclusively as possible? Have not they also tried to “render” as best as they can the essential spirit of Khayyam’s Robaiyat, even assuming they are not his? Why the attributability of Iran’s past renderers are questioned, while the English renderer’s obvious rendering is promoted?
One of the most condescending manifestations and consequences of FitzGerald’s “free translations” of the Rubáiyát can be found in the chronicles of Western visitors looking for Khayyam’s old tomb in Iran. Finding that it was a humble and nameless grave in the corner of a revered Muslim Shia saint’s shrine, they felt Khayyam deserved better, this being a sign to them that Khayyam’s own culture did not appreciate him enough. They could have said, “look, here we have evidence that Iran’s Islamic culture can be respectful of its freethinkers, since they have allowed for centuries his grave to be maintained on the side of a saint’s shrine.” But, that seemed to have escaped the narratives of their reception of Omar Khayyam in the West. Instead, they resorted to the time’s Qajar king of Iran for a remedy, finding that the king himself did not appreciate Khayyam enough, the king’s reaction now being judged to stand for the same of all Iranians and the Iranian culture as a whole. Being inclined to judge Khayyam’s appreciation by his own culture in terms of the physical quality of his grave, they did not appreciate that the humble tomb of Khayyam (at the time, as depicted in the image on the cover of this volume), including its location, was in fact more fitting to Khayyam’s own fame-eschewing character and what he wished for his grave’s design to be like as poetically expressed in his Robaiyat.
How could have E. B. Cowell (and subsequently FitzGerald) run into Khayyam’s poetry without there being a “book of verse” in the first place, to become famous as the Bodleian manuscript of the Robaiyat, gold-dusted in Shiraz centuries before? Does not that indicate Khayyam must have been appreciated and famed, his words having survived devastating calamities befallen his Neyshabour and homeland?
So, if a Qajar king is not found to be as appreciative of Khayyam as they expected, there must have been other grassroots “popular” sources for Khayyam’s legacy to survive in the hearts and minds of Iranians—the Bodleian library manuscript being just an example for it, numerous others having been written by scribes through the centuries, making it possible for Khayyam’s life and legacy to be remembered across the centuries. Are not those manuscripts the real burial sites of Khayyam?
The real tomb of Khayyam has always been the hearts and minds of generations of Iranians who helped Khayyam’s writings and poetry to survive devastating invasions and natural disasters. The Bodleian and Calcutta manuscripts are just testaments to the grave Khayyam himself wished to be buried in, as even told and instructed poetically in his own words in his Robaiyat—a grave made of the spiritual Wine of his Robaiyat, that is, in his own words, his “book of life.”
Iran’s appreciation of Omar Khayyam’s legacy can be best judged not by the physics of his burial sites, traditionally humble or artistically modern, but by the role Iranians themselves have played in safeguarding his primary spiritual works especially in the bricks and mortars of his Robaiyat as his own secretly built everlasting tomb. Without “these Persians’” labors of love, no Cowell or FitzGerald would have even learned about the life and works of Omar Khayyam. The world fame of Khayyam’s Robaiyat today is thus primarily owed first and foremost to Khayyam’s worldview and art, and its true rebirth place in the mid 19th century Europe is the rediscovered Bodleian manuscript itself, thanks, secondarily, to its Persian scribe named Mahmoud Yārbudaqi (محمود ياربودقى) to whom credit must be duly given as representing all Iranian scribes and those in the broader region to keep Khayyam’s memory alive. It was Khayyam’s lasting works that assured his spiritual survival in Iran’s and wider region’s collective memories despite the challenges they faced across the centuries. Among his works, his secretive autobiography lived on and proved to be more lasting than many artwork, Cowell judging them to be “unique in the literary history of the world” (1858:153), before even FitzGerald released his renderings in 1859.
Omar Khayyam’s world fame in modern times is in my view, thirdly, owed to Edward Byles Cowell (1826-1903). He is the unsung hero of Omar Khayyam’s rediscovery in Europe and the modern world. He was in every definition of the word a remarkable man and scholar of Persian and Khayyami studies in modern times, taking to heart the interests of Iranian culture and Khayyam’s poetry despite even his erred initial assessments. It takes not only scholarly depth and a deep sense of moral duty to correct even one’s own interpretive errors when learned, but also intellectual courage to maintain one’s independence from prevailing “Omar Cult” trends that were emerging in his time—setting a scientific example to be hopefully followed. Despite his friendship with his student FitzGerald, he stood his own grounds of abiding by what he thought was a more faithful assessment of Khayyam’s life and works. It was he who discovered the Bodleian manuscript, it was he who had the expertise to appreciate its unique significance, it was he who wrote a deeply inspiring biographical introduction to Khayyam and his poetry in his Calcutta Review article published in 1858, and it was he who patiently, selflessly, and humbly encouraged, motivated, and mentored Edward FitzGerald to read and understand it, never abandoning his principles as a scholar and good teacher to point out the errors of judgment and interpretation he found in his most cherished student’s work.
It was Cowell who first translated in 1858 32 quatrains of Khayyam, done faithfully with utmost care in his Calcutta Review article, and was responsible for the imaginative, historically contextualized, biographical brushes of Khayyam that later on inspired and enriched FitzGerald’s introduction. Those reading FitzGerald’s rendering would not have become as fascinated and absorbed in Khayyam’s life and poetry without the imaginative introductory passages he anonymously borrowed from Cowell. Cowell had the scientific expertise and open-mindedness to appreciate Khayyam’s views empathetically, revising his early interpretations of them as a result of new learning, any errors he himself made initially or later notwithstanding. The true rebirth place of Khayyam’s modern world fame is E. B. Cowell’s biographical brushes of the three classmates story and his faithfully translated translations of the 32 Robaiyat in Calcutta Review of 1858, not Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of 1859 which world-famously distorted Khayyam’s views, albeit with good intentions.
FitzGerald’s Islamophobia and resulting Islamophilic renditions of Khayyam’s quatrains as an increasingly inebriated Khayyam who becomes blasphemous as his day progressed were two sides of the same coin, serving his intention of critiquing his Victorian era without being accused of sympathy for a freethinking Islamic “astronomer-poet of Persia.” The problem with FitzGerald’s rendering has as much to do with what he rendered and how he rendered as with what he chose not to render among all the quatrains and sources that had become extant (including Khayyam’s then recently published treatise in algebra). The silences, the poems not rendered, what did not make into his tessellations are as important to note as those that did, to understand how he distorted Khayyam’s Robaiyat. And the Western fueled “attributability enigma” has nicely served that colonial cultural tessellation project.
FitzGerald did not heed the advice of his mentor to rethink his interpretations of Khayyam. Had he taken seriously the task of understanding Khayyam through his other extant work and inclusively of all the quatrains that had become extant, he would not have attributed to Khayyam a view of his Islamic faith as a false religion. He would have then found it more proper to tessellate the widest set of reasonably attributable quatrains to Khayyam that had just become extant, learning that the Wine of his “book of verse,” the Robaiyat, is the spiritual Wine of his Robaiyat itself.