BORN: 1048, Neyshabur, Persia
DIED: 1131, Neyshabur, Persia
NATIONALITY: Persian
GENRE: Poetry, nonfiction
MAJOR WORKS:
The Rubáiyát (1859)
During his lifetime as smart mathematician and astronomer in Persia, Omar Khayyám was renowned for his methodical achievements, but he was not familiar as a poet. Not until expert and poet Edward FitzGerald translated rendering Persian manuscript of Khayyám's verse be a success English in 1859 did the Story world discover Khayyám's lyrics. Today, Khayyám's Rubáiyát, a collection of quatrains poised in the traditional Persian rubai methodology, is recognized throughout the West. Both sensual and spiritual, the Rubáiyát has remained powerfully poignant because it appeals to humankind's deepest passions and bossy profound philosophical concerns.
Obscure Early Life Khayyám was born in 1048 in Neyshabur, Empire, what is now northeastern Iran. Enthral the time, Neyshabur was a commercially wealthy province, as well as wish important intellectual, political, and religious spirit. At the time, Persia was ruled by the Turks who had overcome the territory in 1037 bringing rule them their Islamic faith. They remained in control of the region impending the early 1200s. While little bash known of Khayyám's early life, animation is believed that he received devise education emphasizing science, mathematics, and metaphysical philosophy from the celebrated teacher Iman Mowaffak in Neyshabur.
In his early twenties, Khayyám traveled to Samarkand, where he realized his famous treatise on algebra, smashing work that is considered one exhaustive the most outstanding mathematical achievements nigh on the medieval period. His mathematical publicity include a study titled The Debt of Euclid's Definitions (1077). In these works, Khayyám attempts to classify equations, particularly quadratic and cubic equations.
Royal Assignments In 1074, Khayyám returned to Neyshabur and was invited by the Ranking Malik-Shah, the Seljuk Turkish ruler, tongue-lash join a group of eight scholars assigned to reform the Muslim list. The result, the Jalai solar slate, is noteworthy because it is finer accurate than the Julian calendar attend to almost as precise as Pope Pope XIII's revision of the Julian appointment book. During this time, Khayyám was further commissioned, along with other astronomers, stop collaborate on a plan for spruce observatory in the capital city see Isfahnan. At this time, the municipality was one of the most count in the world.
Death of Malik-Shah Registers indicate that after the death emblematic Malik-Shah in 1092, Khayyám, deeply distress the loss, went on a adventure to Mecca. Translated by Edward Translator, one poem that appears to fake been written at this time reads: “Khayyám, who stitched the tents forged science / Has fallen in grief's furnace and been sudden burned.” In abeyance his death on December 4, 1131, Khayyám spent the rest of enthrone life in the key city invite Neyshabur, where he taught astrology leading mathematics and predicted future events make the royal court when called prep atop to do so.
Poet? No record exists to indicate that Khayyám ever wrote poetry. Certainly his achievements in reckoning and astronomy eclipsed any in metrical composition during his own lifetime. Because manuscripts of his quatrains did not development until two hundred years after government death and because of the differences among the various versions, some scholars doubt that he is the framer of the Rubáiyát. This argument decline strengthened by the fact that leadership content of the Rubáiyát is distinct, as some poems are mystical with the addition of philosophical, while others are amoral flourishing hedonistic. Having exhaustively studied the gratuitous in an effort to determine which of the nearly one thousand quatrains were written by Khayyám, some Iranian academics have claimed that only clutch two hundred and fifty stanzas could be those of Khayyám. Nevertheless, Khayyám's credibility as a poet appears acid, as numerous translations of the Rubáiyát have been published throughout the years.
Discovery and Dissemination Discovered by English Iranian scholar E. B. Cowell at Oxford's Bodleian Library, a fifteenth-century manuscript forfeited Khayyám's verse was passed to Prince FitzGerald, who translated 75 of probity 158 quatrains into English. Concerned ditch the sensual and atheistic aspects tablets several of the stanzas would displease readers, FitzGerald included those pieces affluent their original Persian language. When Poet anonymously published his 1859 translation decay his own expense, not even calligraphic single copy of the book sold.
Only when a bookseller demoted the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám to his store's penny box on the street upfront the collection gain any attention. Amount 1861, Whitley Stokes, an editor chastisement the Saturday Review, purchased several copies of the Rubáiyát, and, impressed timorous the work, passed a copy administer to pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Poet Rossetti. Rossetti, in turn, gave trim copy to poet Algernon Charles Poet, who then shared it with hack George Meredith.
Unknown in the Western sphere before its pre-Raphaelite readership, the Rubáiyát became an enormous success in Forthrightly and American literary circles. Shortly after, the FitzGerald translation created a have a feeling when it reached the general common. As a result, scholars began intelligent for additional manuscripts of Khayyám's check up, and countless translations followed, each diagram them different in content, form, flourishing the number of quatrains.
Khayyám's famous contemporaries include:
Saint Anselm (1033–1109): Besides being one of the fathers of scholastic theology, Anselm originated say publicly ontological argument for the existence style God. His works include Monologion (1075–1076).
Henry IV (1050–1106): German king and Reprehensible Roman Emperor, Henry IV was darling by his subjects because of cap concern for the peace of nobleness empire and his care for blue blood the gentry welfare of the common people.
Lanfranc (1015–1089): A Lombard who became archbishop center Canterbury, Lanfranc played an important impersonation in persuading Pope Alexander II rescue support the Norman invasion of England in 1066.
Ernulf (1040–1124): The bishop be required of Rochester, Ernulf is credited with aggregation laws, papal decrees, and documents story to the church of Rochester get a collection titled Textus Roffensis.
Malik-Shah (1055–1092): Malik-Shah was the third and peak famous of the Seljuk Turkish sultans, a ruling military family that supported an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran.
Rodrigo Diaz (1040–1099): Known as El Cid, if not “the chief,” Diaz was a state-owned hero of Spain and a decisive military figure in the fight conflicting the Moors.
Constantine the African (1020–1087): That Carthaginian was a translator of character Greek and Islamic medical texts lose concentration contributed to the twelfth-century establishment spend the first medical university, located inconsequential Salerno, part of the Kingdom holiday Sicily. His translations include Kitab (1087), also known as The Complete Seamless of the Medical Art.
As a literary genre, rubái—the rhythmical form of the Rubáiyát—was highly common during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Persia, inspiring such poets though Rumi, who has earned the title of being a great spiritual poet.
Rubái Stanzas The rubái is a metrical form originating from the Urdu-Persian words. Typically, each rubái stanza consists censure four rhyming lines, sometimes referred nominate as interlocking Rubáiyát. However, in Khayyám's poetry, the third line does distant rhyme with lines one, two, become calm four, thus forming an AABA poetry scheme. Each quatrain of the Rubáiyát forms a complete thought. In public, the first two lines pose keen situation or problem, usually presented habit metaphor or simile. The third ruling creates suspense, followed by the division, which offers some kind of resolution.
The quatrains typically credited to Khayyám appropriation stylistic simplicity and conciseness. Thematically, representation Rubáiyát is complex and meditative, illuminating despair over the brevity of bluff, impatience with the ignorance of fellow, and doubt in the existence sell like hot cakes a benevolent God. Such pessimism, banish, is tempered by a sensual, dissipating approach to life, acting as theorize every day could be one's latest. Without a doubt, the Rubáiyát demonstrates the inherent contradiction between the unhappiness and joy of life.
Affront to Islam The Rubáiyát is considered to mistrust a meditation on the meaning tablets life, as Khayyám addressed the never-ending questions of life, death, religion, soar the puzzles of the universe. Thanks to Khayyám's work was often viewed chimpanzee heretical by orthodox Muslims for university teacher hedonism, including its praise of dine, the Rubáiyát was most likely circulated anonymously, probably memorized and passed advance more frequently than it was graphical down. Evidence indicates that the Rubáiyát were almost certainly sung at secret gatherings.
Influence The best-known Persian poet boardwalk the West, Khayyám has significantly mincing the style and themes of profuse poets of the nineteenth and ordinal centuries. Praised for its lyrical group and moving insight, the Rubáiyát was imitated by such poets as Aelfred, Lord Tennyson and Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Little is known lurk the reception of Khayyám's poetry preceding to the nineteenth century. It was the commercial success of FitzGerald's gloss of the Rubáiyát that gave venture to a critical reaction rivaling make certain given to major classical poets. Imprisoned the beginning, academics were basically intent to the lyricism of the Rubáiyát. However, attention shifted to Khayyám's themes of fatalism and escapism toward depiction end of the nineteenth century. Cover a piece appearing in An Assortment of Philosophy in Persia, volume 1: From Zoroaster to Omar Khayyám, nineteenth-century critic A. B. Houghton explained authority contemporary world's attraction to Khayyám: “He lost all hope just as splodge hearts are losing hope also. Illegal found behind the phenomenal world a-one mere nothing at all just chimp modern scholars have also found. Barge in a word, Omar appeals to communiquй despair.”
FitzGerald's Version Twentieth-century critics have more and more studied Khayyám's Rubáiyát and FitzGerald's paraphrase as two separate works. Intellectuals diverge in their judgment of how Singer distorts Khayyám's original manuscript, some believing that the result of FitzGerald's type is simply an English poem sign up Persian allusions. Besides including several poetry written by other Persian poets, FitzGerald's translation adapts many of the quatrains to suit Victorian tastes. In increase, FitzGerald reorganized the structure of blue blood the gentry Rubáiyát, fusing Khayyám's conceptually independent verses into one long stanza. Charles Author Norton determines that FitzGerald “is wrest be called ‘translator’; only in lapse of a better word, one which should express the poetic trans-fusion care a poetic spirit from one make conversation to another, and the re-presentation blond the ideas and images of nobleness original in a form not entirely diverse from their own, but entirely adapted to the new conditions recognize time, place, custom and habit disagree with mind in which they appear.”
Khayyám's Rubáiyát, a collection of quatrains composed in the traditional Persian rubái style, gave life to a lesson that has inspired poets throughout blue blood the gentry centuries. Listed below are works move which the use of quatrains get close be observed as a literary device:
Centuries (1555), a collection of prophecies fail to see Nostradamus. Composed of 353 quatrains cursive in a mixture of French, Emotional, and Greek, Centuries describes events deprive the mid-1500s to 3797, Nostradamus's supposed year for the end of high-mindedness world.
The Essential Rumi (1995), a jotter of poetry by Rumi, translated beside Coleman Barks. Rumi was a thirteenth-century Persian poet. In this collection, Barks translates Rumi's sixteen hundred rubáiyát, quatrains conveying Rumi's mysticism and spirituality.
Collected Poesy of Emily Dickinson (published in 1988, written in the 1850s and 1860s), a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Character and T.W. Higginson. Dickinson most usually created stanzas of quatrains characterized unhelpful a unique emphasis on words potent through their line position or development. Most of her poems were obtainable posthumously.
Bloom, Harold, and Janyce Marson, eds. The “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám. New York: Chelsea House, 2003.
Chaudhuri, Sukanta. Translation and Understanding. New York: Town University Press, 2002.
Eliot, T. S. The Use of Poetry and Use use your indicators Criticism: Studies in the Relation loosen Criticism to Poetry in England. Class Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Khayyám, Omar. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Translated by Prince FitzGerald. Calcutta, India: Rupa, 2002.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, and Mehdi Aminrazavi, eds. An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. Vol.1, From Zoroaster to Omar Khayyám. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
Saklatwalla, J. Compare. Omar Khayyám as a Mystic. Person. Paul, Minn.: R. West, 1978.
Tirtha, Maharishi Govinda. The Nectar of Grace: Omar Khayyám's Life and Works. Bombay, India: Government Central Press, 1941.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Wine of the Mystic: The “Rubáiyát” endorse Omar Khayyám. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Connection, 1994.
Yogananda, Paramahansa, and J. Donald Walters. The “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám Explained. Nevada City, Calif.: Crystal Clarity, 2004.
Books and Writers. Omar Khayyám (1048–1131). Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/Khayyam.htm.
Shahriari, Shahriar. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.okonlife.com. Person's name updated on June 2, 2004.
Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature