I am rewriting a previous essay here and adding some new translations. The world has seen a lot of misery this past year, I thought it might be nice to talk about poetry and rebirth today.

In 2020, I brought out a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which one reviewer called “aggressively modern.” The poetry had been made famous by the rendering of the Victorian translator, Edward FitzGerald. The quatrains or Rubaiyat attributed to the medieval astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), four-line Persian poems, are often about renewal, and some make special mention of New Year’s Day (Now-Ruz in Persian).

Here’s the thing: in ancient, Zoroastrian, Iran, New Year’s Day was celebrated on the vernal equinox (21 or 20 March). So although in all cultures, New Year’s is a time of renewal and rebirth, in Iran it coincides with the beginning of spring and not just, as in Christian culture, the beginning of the end of winter.

In the first poem, below, I substituted “spring” for Now Ruz, since the spring references with regard to the New Year would have been confusing for Anglophone audiences. But it is in the original a “New Year’s breeze.” I know that the Persian Now-Ruz or New Year isn’t the same as the Western, which falls soon after the winter solstice. But there is nothing wrong with dreaming on our New Year about the Persian one and its springtime greenery.

Here’s the poem:

The spring breeze on a rose’s cheek spreads joy.
The face you glimpse beyond the blooms grants bliss.
No words about last winter can bring cheer;
don’t speak of yesterday —- rejoice today.

h/t ganjoor.net.

Another poem with this theme that some have attributed to Khayyam (it is not in my book) goes this way:

When New Year’s clouds wash clean the tulip’s face
Then for your resolution wine’s a must.
For this green lawn that so delights our eyes
Will grow tomorrow from our very dust.

چون ابر به نوروز رخ لاله بشست
برخیز و به جام باده کن عزم درست
کاین سبزه که امروز تماشاگه ماست
فردا همه از خاک تو برخواهد رست

People have always partied on the New Year, and medieval Iran was no exception. This poetry is the opposite of the puritanical ideology we often hear from the Middle East, but anyone who has actually lived there knows that the stereotype of sober religiousness is just that. This poetry urges people to have a good time while they still can:

Deep in my dream, I heard a sage cry out:
“What joy has slumber ever caused to bloom?
Why do a thing that looks so much like death?
Go drinking! Lifetimes soon will pass in sleep!”

Shaboozey and his “Tipsy” have nothing on Omar Khayyam.

Illustration for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edmund Dulac. Public Domain.

Another poem referring to New Year’s Day is this:

On New Year, like a tulip, raise a glass
with someone pretty if you get the chance.
Drink wine with joy! The ancient heavens turn —
they’ll cast you down like dust as they advance.

چون لاله به نوروز قدح گیر بدست
با لاله رخی اگر ترا فرصت هست
می نوش بخرمی که این چرخ کهن
ناگاه تو را چون خاک گرداند پست

The ancient Persians believed that the sky was a hard lapis lazuli vault that turned against the earth, crushing its surface, so as the days and years go by it crushes humans into dust. (This one is also not in my book. A lot of poems are attributed to Khayyam, who was a “frame author.”)

While clear-eyed about how short life is and our ultimate fate, the poetry urges against dwelling on on the downside of mortality. Awareness of it should instead impel us to become joyous and make every moment count.

     Since we can’t trust tomorrow,
 find a way to fill this lovelorn heart with joy:
Drink up in the light of the moon– a moon that someday
   will look for us …and not find us.

The moon won’t find so many after the grim last year of wars, but those of us it can still descry must find a way to fill our lovelorn hearts with joy in the new year.

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Featured Illustration: screenshot from a work of Abdur Rahman Chughtai.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

When New Year’s rainclouds wash the tulip’s face,
get up and to red wine your will entrust.
Since this green lawn that now delights your eye
Tomorrow will be growing from your dust.

(In Mohammad ibn Bahr Jājarmī, Mo’nes al-Ahrār, dated 1340, in E. Denison Ross, “’Omar Khayyam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 4, 3 (1927), pp. 433-439.)

Now that the bloom is on the rose of bliss,
Don’t hesitate to raise a wine glass high.
Drink up, for your determined foe is time:
You won’t again come by a day like this.

Whinfield 71

Wine server, rise and bring shame to my name.
The old and young have often seen our like.
Musician, my physician, sing a song,
then grab a wine decanter: a chord strike!

“Kholāsat al-ash`ār fi al-Robā`īyat,” Safīneh-‘e Tabrīz.

Into the garden flew a drunken nightingale,
delighting in the cup of wine that was its rose.
It whispered with its mystic voice into my ear:
“Grab hold, for life is gone when once it goes.

Whinfield 81

Tonight, who brought you from behind the veil;
who brought you, tipsy, to me, drawing near?
–to one on fire because you had been gone–
one like an arid wind; who brought you here?

Whinfield 2

The dawn has broken: rise, you hopeless flirt,
and gently – gently -— sip some wine and strum.
For those who dwell here will not be here long.
Of those who left, not one again will come.

– Mo’nes al-Ahrar

“Now Ruz on Sunset,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dreamland v. 3/ Lunapic, 2023

What’s being, then, if death is the reality?
What is the road to our impossible desires?
No layover will offer any benefit.
And when the journey’s done, what kind of rest transpires?

Whinfield 88

Wine is an essence that takes many forms:
It animates all life and waters roots.
Do not imagine that it ever dies.
Its essence lives, if not its attributes.

Whinfield 75

Since I translated the poetry into a contemporary idiom, I thought I’d try my hand at a digital image that pays homage to the Bravo show, “The Shahs of Sunset,” instead of the Victorian, pre-Raphaelite sort of painting that has typically accompanied the The Rubaiyat in Western publishing.

These poems are not in my translation of the Yerbudaki manuscript, which is available as below:

Juan Cole, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (London: IB Tauris/ Bloomsbury, 2020). Click here.

Reviews:

“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Two Scenes from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (2022) ~ Trio for Bb Clarinet, Violin & Piano Performed by Alan Sun, Alex Vershinin and Emma Fu Video and Audio by Nelson Walker

“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a Persian poetry collection first put together in 1460 in Shiraz. It consists of quatrains, four-line poems, with a set of unconventional themes. The poetry is irreligious and questions the afterlife and God’s providence. It shows keen awareness of the shortness of life and the finality of death. It advises therefore that every fleeting moment of every day should be savored, with wine, lovers and song. The combination of a serious philosophy of life and a carefree attitude has made the poetry popular for centuries. In 1859, Edward FitzGerald brought out a loose English translation that took the world by storm. It became the most beloved and widely known poem in the English language for decades until its popularity finally faded in the late twentieth century. Although they were attributed to the great mathematician and astronomer, Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), the poems were by many anonymous hands, and he was just a frame author, akin to Scheherezade in the Arabian Nights.” – Dr. Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan

About the Composition of Adam Lenhart: “Two Scenes from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” explores and embodies two of the main themes that carry throughout the quatrains of the poem collection. In FitzGerald’s translation, the quatrains follow a day to night cycle. The two movements reflect this by starting off with an abrupt “wake up” section and ending the piece with a nocturne. The first movement, “Wine”, celebrates the camaraderie, joy and chaos that comes through the physical joy of being with friends. The clarinet, violin and piano interact in a conversational way, talking, laughing, and insulting one another in their own independent lines.

The second movement is entitled “Intimacy” and explores the emotional joy of connecting with one another. The movement is set in a waltz style dance and draws influence from Chopin, Liszt and other romantic era composers. This is juxtaposed by youthful and energetic phrases so that the piece embodies all forms of love: young love, years of marriage and even friendship. Each movement has a sense of urgency and density which is present in the rubá’iyát as well, expressing to the reader that our time on Earth is so short and to make the most of each day.

Purchase this score at: https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-U… Watch the score follower video at:    • Two Scenes from T…   Movement I, “Wine”: 0:00 Movement II, “Intimacy”: 3:52

For the Cole translation:

For the earliest collection of verse attributed to Omar Khayyam see
my The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian

Order from

Bloomsbury (IB Tauris)

or Schuler Books in Ann Arbor.

or Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor.

or Barnes and Noble.

or Amazon

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Although the Khomeinists depicted their ideal society as based on premodern norms, in fact clerical puritanism was always a sectorial phenomenon that often had limited reach. Kings ruled as they pleased, and in many eras the clerics had to grin and bear it as society went in directions of which they disapproved.

Evidence for premodern anticlericalism and opposition to puritan moral strictures is plentiful in the grand tradition of Persian lyric poetry.

I have argued that the work entitled “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” is an anthology of quatrains (the meaning of Rubaiyat) by many hands, some of it originating in the working class, which was attributed to the astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131) as its frame author, in the same way that the various tales of the Thousand and One Nights, produced over centuries in several different cities, were all attributed to the princess Scheherazade.

The “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” was loosely translated into Victorian English by the gentleman poet Edward FitzGerald in 1859, and went viral. Especially in the United States, there was a craze for it that caused bookstores to be mobbed. By 1900 a new edition was being published every day. It is a little mysterious why people kept wanting new printings of the same book. Publishers began omitting the date of publication so that their edition didn’t come to be viewed as superannuated. The publisher Houghton Mifflin made its initial fortune on the back of the Rubaiyat, and was the first to include artwork in a Pre-Raphaelite style. American publishers arbitrarily declared FitzGerald’s translation out of copyright. The enthusiasm for the Rubaiyat lasted into the 1960s. It influenced everyone who was anyone in British and American letters, from T.S. Elliott to Jack Kerouac. The vogue for it surely had something to do with secularization, with moderns seeking a worldly form of enchantment or what scholars have called “secular transcendence” as Darwinism and modern geology pulled the rug from beneath the feet of the traditional theologians.

Today’s protests in Iran were kicked off by public revulsion at the death in the custody of the morals police of Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, who had been arrested for being unsatisfactorily veiled in public. She was visiting the capital of Tehran from her small town in Iranian Kurdistan.

The Rubaiyat also contains a stanza showing regret for the senseless deaths of beautiful women:

Not even a drunk would try to sunder
the graceful stem and bowl of a wine glass.
As for the shapely hands and feet of a temptress, for
whom are they crafted? And whose hatred in the end shatters them?

There was one mystical trend in Iran and Central Asia that frowned on the pride that is engendered by puritan conflict, seeing boastfulness and ostentation about one’s piety as Satan’s traps. These mystics were called “Self-Blamers” (Malamati) and they sometimes deliberately flaunted religious strictures in public to make sure no one thought well of them so that, in turn, they would not be tempted to take pride in their own religiosity. This poem comes from that tradition, and seems especially appropriate to the anti-veiling protests:

In taprooms, you wash up for prayers with wine.
For never can a tarnished name be cleared.
Rejoice! We’ve torn this secret veil of ours
so badly there is no hope of repair.

This poem is an implicit critique of the Creator, wondering at the cruelty of the death imposed on mortals.

The poetry, like the Iranian youth engaging in provocative public displays of affection, celebrates wine and love as essential fonts of meaning:

Get up quick and bring me some wine—this is no time for
talk!
Tonight, your lush lips are my daily bread.
Pour me some Shiraz as red as your blushing cheeks.
My past repentance is as tangled as your curls.

Romantic love, a great theme in Persian poetry, is seen as the sine qua non of a meaningful life:

Too bad if your heart isn’t scorched, if there’s
no one you’re pining for, who makes it leap.
That day on which love does not ache in you
is the most wasted day of your whole life.

Discontent with conventional religion is also apparent in the anthology. Spirituality, it asserts, should well up from within rather than being imposed by the doctrine of heaven and hell:

In monasteries, temples and retreats
they fear hellfire and look for paradise.
But those who know the mysteries of God
don’t let those seeds be planted in their hearts

Secular transcendence in this poetry often centers on wine. Although some have wanted to see it as symbolic of spiritual ecstasy, in the poetry attributed to Khayyam it is clearly just wine. Drinking parties are often associated in this poetry with youth and with springtime, when the young people could sneak out to the savannah away from town:

Since today is the season of my youth,
I want some wine, since that’s what makes me happy.
Don’t scorn me —- although it is harsh, it is good.
It is bitter because it is my life.

My point is not that the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam coincides with the values of Iran’s Gen Z but that it demonstrates that an alternative set of non-puritan, anticlerical and often critical values was not only present in premodern Iran but was widely celebrated. Poets from various social classes went on contributing to the corpus of the Rubaiyat for centuries. A Persian lithograph brought out in Lucknow in the 1860s contained a thousand such poems, many of them clearly composed in India, where Persian had been the lingua franca before English assumed tht role. The poems added by later hands contained the same skepticism about conventional, clerical religion and the same search for secular transcendence in love and wine.

For the earliest collection of verse attributed to Omar Khayyam see
my The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian

Order from

Bloomsbury (IB Tauris)

or Schuler Books in Ann Arbor, who will ship it to you

or Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, who will ship it to you

or Barnes and Noble, who will ship or do curbside delivery.

or Amazon

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

I am rewriting a previous essay here, quoting some extra poems different from the ones I used last year, but my big points remain the same. After the dark year of 2021, I thought it might be nice to talk about poetry and rebirth today. The quatrains or Rubaiyat attributed to the medieval astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), four-line Persian poems, are often about renewal, and some make special mention of New Year’s Day (Now-Ruz in Persian).

Here’s the thing: in ancient, Zoroastrian, Iran, New Year’s Day was celebrated on the vernal equinox (21 or 20 March). So although in all cultures, New Year’s is a time of renewal and rebirth, in Iran it coincides with the beginning of spring and not just, as in Christian culture, the beginning of the end of winter.

In April of 2020, I brought out a new translation of the Rubaiyat, which has been called “aggressively modern.” The poetry had been made famous by the rendering of the Victorian translator, Edward FitzGerald. Alas, the pandemic deprived me of any opportunity for readings in bookstores. So this blog is the next best thing.

In the first poem, below, I substituted “spring” for Now Ruz, since the spring references with regard to the New Year would have been confusing for Anglophone audiences. But it is in the original a “New Year’s breeze.”

The spring breeze on a rose’s cheek spreads joy.
The face you glimpse beyond the blooms grants bliss.
No words about last winter can bring cheer;
don’t speak of yesterday —- rejoice today.

h/t ganjoor.net.

People have always partied on the New Year, and medieval Iran was no exception. This poetry is the opposite of the puritanical ideology we often hear from the Middle East, but anyone who has actually lived there knows that the stereotype of sober religiousness is just that. This poetry urges people to have a good time while they still can:

Deep in my dream, I heard a sage cry out:
“What joy has slumber ever caused to bloom?
Why do a thing that looks so much like death?
Go drinking! Lifetimes soon will pass in sleep!”

The passing of the old year is an occasion for teary nostalgia, and the prospect of a new year is an occasion for trepidation. The Rubaiyat’s message to us at moments like this is, “Chill!”

Like cascading waters, or a desert squall,
another day of my life has fled.
But I never feel regret for two days:
The one that hasn’t yet arrived and the one that long since passed.

Another poem with overtones of New Year is this:

     Now that the world verges on being happy,
the high-spirited plan to make merry outside.
     Each branch is putting out shoots as white as the
   hand of Moses,
  and every breeze wafts the life-giving breath of Jesus.

Trees with white blooms like our magnolias or elderberries are being compared here to the miraculous white hand of Moses. Turning his hand white was one of his divine signs that God instructed the Hebrew prophet to use when he confronted Pharaoh:

Exodus 4:1,6-7

Then Moses answered, “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’… Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” He put his hand into his cloak; and when he took it out, his hand was leprous,[a] as white as snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back into your cloak”—so he put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his body—

This miracle is also mentioned in the Qur’an, and Persian poetry refers to it as a sign of renewal, since Moses can reverse the condition at will.

The other reference is to Jesus’ ability to raise the dead.

We were reminded last year of how fleeting life is, how unpredictable fate. The poetry, however, urges against dwelling on our own ephemerality. Awareness of it should instead impell us to become joyous and make every moment count.

     Since we can’t trust tomorrow,
 find a way to fill this lovelorn heart with joy:
Drink up in the light of the moon– a moon that someday
   will look for us …and not find us.

The moon won’t find so many of us after the grim last year, but those of us it can still descry must find a way to fill our lovelorn hearts with joy in the new year.

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Featured Illustration: screenshot from a work of Abdur Rahman Chughtai.

“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’” ―Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

Buy The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

A repository of subversive, joyous and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning of life, fate and how to live a good life in the face of human mortality, this translation reveals anew why this singular collection of poems has struck a chord with such a temporally and culturally diverse audience, from the wine houses of medieval Iran to the poets of Western twentieth century modernism.

Ta’seel Commons: Conversation with Juan Cole on The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam – A New Translation from the Persian

Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1131) was a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran who lived and worked at the courts of the Seljuk dynasty. Modern scholars agree that there is very little (if any) of the collected work of poetry know as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that can be certainly attributed to the historical figure. A tradition of attribution grew up in the centuries after Khayyam’s death which culminated in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation in the 19th Century.

Juan Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the translator of Broken Wings and The Vision by Khalil Gibran.

Ta’seel: Watch our previous podcast with Prof. Cole on his book ‘Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires’

As we look forward to a declaration of independence from the novel coronavirus on July 4 and the cautious return of some good times, I thought I’d share some new translations of the poetry of the original good time Charlie of medieval times, Omar Khayyam. This poetry celebrates wine, song and lovers, and living in the moment in the face of the inexorable approach of death. Although it was attributed to the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1132), it is actually folk poetry, and kept being written all through medieval and early modern times in Iran and India.

The poems I’m sharing today are not in my book of Khayyam translations, and I think a lot of them are Indian in origin. They were collected by the nineteenth-century British scholar E. H. Whinfield. In my book, I translated the quatrains (that is what rubaiyat means) as four-line free or blank verse, but in these translations I am trying out a bit of rhyme along with an iambic meter (some are pentameter, others different foot lengths). For the form of the English rubaiyat, in which Robert Frost, T.S. Elliott, Ezra Pound and other great poets engaged, see How to write Rubaiyat.

Whinfield 44

To drink up like a blossoming spring rose
with someone rosy-cheeked would be sublime.
Let’s sip some wine with joy, since brooding fate
may scatter us like wind at any time.

Whinfield 58:

We’re infidels of love, and faith is something else.
We’re ants, and Solomon’s renown is something else.
We’re sallow-cheeked; our clothes are old and tattered now:
The glorious new silk bazaar is something else.

Whinfield 60:

Not fit for praying in a mosque or church,
God knows what clay he made me from– that of
a cynic-mystic or an ugly tart? —
my hopes don’t lie in this world or above.

Whinfield 71:

Now that the bloom is on the rose of bliss,
don’t hesitate to raise a wine glass high.
Drink up, for your determined foe is time;
you won’t again come by a day like this.

Whinfield 86

Without red wine the course of this life has no joy–
without the strains of an Iraqi flute, no joy.
For every time I contemplate this world’s affairs
I see its pleasures; in the rest there is no joy.

Whinfield 88:

What’s being, then, if death is the reality?
What is the road to our impossible desires?
No layover will offer any benefit,
and when the journey’s done what kind of rest transpires?

Whinfield 93:

My heart is dark; I’m looking for your light.
I am a sinner, seeking out your grace.
If heaven’s only for obedience,
it’s just a wage; where is your kind embrace?

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Featured illustration: “A New Marriage, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” by
Edmund Dulac. .

After the dark year of 2020, I thought it might be nice to talk about poetry and rebirth today. The quatrains or Rubaiyat attributed to the medieval astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), four-line Persian poems, are often about renewal, and some make special mention of New Year’s Day (Now-Ruz in Persian).

Here’s the thing: in ancient, Zoroastrian, Iran, New Year’s Day was celebrated on the vernal equinox (21 or 20 March). So although in all cultures, New Year’s is a time of renewal and rebirth, in Iran it coincides with the beginning of spring and not just, as in Christian culture, the beginning of the end of winter.

Last April, I brought out a new translation of the Rubaiyat, which has been called “aggressively modern.” The poetry had been made famous by the rendering of the Victorian translator, Edward FitzGerald.

In the first poem, below, I substituted “spring” for Now Ruz, since the spring references with regard to the New Year would have been confusing for Anglophone audiences. But it is in the original a “New Year’s breeze.”

The spring breeze on a rose’s cheek spreads joy.
The face you glimpse beyond the blooms grants bliss.
No words about last winter can bring cheer;
don’t speak of yesterday —- rejoice today.

h/t ganjoor.net.

Another poem with overtones of New Year is this:

     Now that the world verges on being happy,
the high-spirited plan to make merry outside.
     Each branch is putting out shoots as white as the
   hand of Moses,
  and every breeze wafts the life-giving breath of Jesus.

Trees with white blooms like our magnolias or elderberries are being compared here to the miraculous white hand of Moses. Turning his hand white was one of his divine signs that God instructed the Hebrew prophet to use when he confronted Pharaoh:

Exodus 4:1,6-7

Then Moses answered, “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’… Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” He put his hand into his cloak; and when he took it out, his hand was leprous,[a] as white as snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back into your cloak”—so he put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his body—

This miracle is also mentioned in the Qur’an, and Persian poetry refers to it as a sign of renewal, since Moses can reverse the condition at will.

The other reference is to Jesus’ ability to raise the dead.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam take a dim view of people who put off achieving their hearts’ desires. It is very much a poetry of “seize the day.” It advises against letting yourself lose hope, and urges that you express life-fulfilling passions:

Too bad if your heart isn’t scorched, if there’s
no one you’re pining for, who makes it leap.
That day on which love does not ache in you
is the most wasted day of your whole life.

We all have New Year’s resolutions on our minds nowadays, but this poetry is very well aware of our human frailties, and complicates whether breaking those resolutions is always a bad (or at least avoidable) thing:

   Get up quick and bring me some wine—this is no time for
   talk!
Tonight, your lush lips are my daily bread.
     Pour me some Shiraz as red as your blushing cheeks.
My past repentance is as tangled as your curls.

We were reminded last year of how fleeting life is, how unpredictable fate. The poetry, however, urges against dwelling on our own ephemerality. Awareness of it should instead impell us to become joyous and make every moment count.

     Since we can’t trust tomorrow,
 find a way to fill this lovelorn heart with joy:
Drink up in the light of the moon– a moon that someday
   will look for us …and not find us.

The moon won’t find so many of us after the grim last year, but those of us it can still descry must find a way to fill our lovelorn hearts with joy in the new year.

Reviews:
“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”
– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

“’Omar Khayyam is a Persian treasure and Juan Cole’s new
translation brings him anew to Western audiences who
for centuries have been both delighted and educated by this
medieval sage! Reading The Rubáiyát is a thrill – you feel the
echoes of the 12th century seamlessly into our 21st, as this is
a holy book of wisdom and magic. In another perilous era for
Iranians, it’s wonderful to see this enchanting volume make
its way through the world yet again!’”
– Porochista Khakpour, novelist, essayist and author of Brown Album (2020)

Featured Illustration: screenshot from a work of Abdur Rahman Chughtai.

Tuesday, Oct 27 2020 – 7:00 pm ET

Our friend Juan Cole is joining us on Facebook LIVE to discuss his new book The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam A New Translation from the Persian.

A Q+A will follow.

ABOUT THE BOOK: A repository of subversive, joyous and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning of life, fate and how to live a good life in the face of human mortality, this translation reveals anew why this singular collection of poems has struck a chord with such a temporally and culturally diverse audience, from the wine houses of medieval Iran to the poets of Western twentieth century modernism.

“’To read Juan Cole’s deft, plain-spoken translation of the Rubáiyát
is to find companionship, to rejoin a thousand-year human
conversation about how to endure, enjoy, and find a fleeting beauty
in everlastingly dire times. The lucid, cogent and mind-opening
Epilogue is a kind of grace, a gift freely given, from one of our
most astonishing and generous intellects.’”

– Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Moonglow (2017)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three and a half decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian. Among his other recent works are Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (Bold Type Books, 2018) and The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, 2014). He has translated works of Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran. He has appeared widely on media, including the PBS News Hour, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes’ All In, CNN, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has written about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf and South Asia and about both extremist groups and peace movements.

Remember, on Facebook LIVE at 7 pm ET, Tuesday October 27.

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The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (Paperback)

By Omar Khayyam, Juan R. I. Cole (Translator) $32.34 ISBN: 9780755600519 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: I. B. Tauris & Company – April 30th, 2020

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