Washington Irving, Tales from the Alhambra (New York: Lea and Carey, 1832). Legend of the Arabian Astrologer. IN OLD times, many hundred years ago, there was a Moorish king named Aben Habuz, who reigned over the kingdom of Granada. He was a retired conqueror, that is to say, one who having in his more youthful […]
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Culture
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Why some Sufis drink Wine
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day A search for good times isn’t why we drink: Wine’s not for going rogue or faithlessness. We sip to bring ourselves to selflessness; that is the secret of my drunkenness. trans. Juan Cole, (Whinfield 66) می خوردن من نه از برای طربست نز بهر فساد و ترک […]
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, “True lovers always are out of their minds”
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day True lovers always are out of their minds. They’re crazy and distracted and disgraced. When we are sober, life annoys us; but when we’re drunk, what things will be, will be. trans. Juan Cole, (Whinfield 8) عاشق همه ساله مست و شیدا بادا دیوانه و شوریده و […]
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: “Who brought you, tipsy, here to me?”
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day Tonight, who brought you, tipsy, here to me? Who brought you to my hand without a veil? –to one on fire because you had been gone– one like an arid wind; who brought you here? trans. Juan Cole, (Whinfield 2) امشب بر ما مست که آورد ترا […]
Poetry of Uplift for our Plague Year: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Juan Cole’s New Translation)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today my new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is out from I.B. Tauris/ Bloomsbury. I hope you all enjoy it! I make an argument in the historical epilogue to my translation that this volume is an anthology by many poets and that a custom had grown up of […]
Sneak Peak at Juan Cole’s Exciting new translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Bloomsbury is offering a Sneak peak at The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in Juan Cole’s new, “radically modern” translation. .@ibtauris is publishing @jricole's new, radically modern translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam on April 30th. Find a sneak peek here: https://t.co/ZyFDW6wcma and DM us if you'd like a review copy #Rubaiyat #translation #persian #literature […]
How the Plague Influenced Shakespeare
By Paul Yachnin | – Shakespeare lived his life in plague-time. He was born in April 1564, a few months before an outbreak of bubonic plague swept across England and killed a quarter of the people in his hometown. Death by plague was excruciating to suffer and ghastly to see. Ignorance about how disease spread […]
A Malignant Contagion: Trumpism’s Mindlessness on Coronavirus and Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’
Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Albert Camus’ The Plague evokes the malign contagion of Trumpism — the mindless death cult that contaminates America with its disdain for facts, science, experience, democracy and human life. In Camus’ 1947 novel, the plague begins with infected rats invading the Algerian city of Oran. Like the Nazis who […]
Coronavirus Solidarity: A 13th Century Mystical Persian Poem about Humanity Shows why We need a Global Response
By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | – Coronavirus is all about human connectivity. From a philosophical perspective, I’ve been thinking about how this virus is forcing us to confront our common fate, highlighting our connections in the process. The novel coronavirus defies geography and national borders. There is no escaping it – exactly because humanity is inevitably […]