poetry

How long will sages debate if this world is eternal or created? / Once I have left it, why should I care, either way?

Iran

“Your Reward is Neither Here nor There!” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:24

Juan Cole

A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries “Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!”

Iran

“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:23

Juan Cole

The grimness of the teaching, that life is short is leavened by lighthearted advice to enjoy yourself while you can

Iran

“And we, that now make merry in the Room:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:22

Juan Cole

Quatrain no. 22 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám again invokes the image of the way the living are walking atop those who lived and died before them, leaving them alone in the “room” of the world. The departed dead are dressed in blooms, i.e. flowers grow […]

Omar Khayyam

“And one by one crept silently to Rest:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:21

Juan Cole

Stanza 21 of the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám continues with the theme of the shortness of life and the finality of death, but introduces new emotions, of grief for lost loved ones and nostalgia for the past. These poignant lines have sometimes made me cry. We get […]

Iran

“Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:20

Juan Cole

Stanza no. 20 in in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám celebrates wine as a means of escaping lingering shame and the dread of an unknown future. It is about, as the hippies used to say in the 1960s, “being here now,” with a little help from a mind-altering substance. […]

Omar Khayyam

“From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:19

Juan Cole

With no. 19 in in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the theme turns away from the glory of kings as a flash-in-the-pan to the impermanence of life for everyone. One of the tropes common in the subsequent poems, already used in no. 18, is that we are clay and […]

Iran

“The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:18

Juan Cole

Stanza 18 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the last in the series that emphasizes the impermanence of royal glory and it transitions to a subsequent set of meditations on the transitory character of life itself XVIII. I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as […]

Iran

“They say the Lion and the Lizard keep the Courts:” Edward FitzGerald’s the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:17

Juan Cole

Quatrain 17 of the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám continues the theme that kingly glory quickly fades. XVII. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: And Bahrám, that great Hunter — the Wild Ass Stamps o’er his Head, and he […]