• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Tag Archives: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

In Boozo Veritas #36: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

In Boozo Veritas, Teege Braune, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

In Boozo Veritas #36 by Teege Braune

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

It is a shame that no one can talk about Edward FitzGerald’s best selling nineteenth century poem The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám without weighing in on the famous controversy surrounding the former’s admittedly un-literal translation of the Persian poets original quatrains. The never ending debate about FitzGerald’s poetic license and the accusations that he puts blasphemies in the mouth of a highly moral and devoutly religious intellectual by way of espousing alcoholism as means of overcoming life’s existential dilemma are perfect examples of scholarship missing the poetry by focusing on the minutia surrounding it, and indeed, FitzGerald by way of Khayyám, comments on the uselessness of such activities in the very poem inspiring them:

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discussed

Of the Two Worlds so wisely – they are thrust

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn

Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopped with Dust.

What’s more, attempts at “proper” translations, such as Robert Graves’ clunky, self-righteous blunder, have routinely failed to match the poetic beauty of FitzGerald’s own. On the other hand, Sufi scholar Abdullah Dougan has championed FitzGerald’s translation as the instrument Allah chose to introduce Sufism to the west. While I have deep respect for Sufism and find Dougan’s assertion that the poem is “divine inspiration… a miracle,” appealing on some levels, I do not care for interpretations of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as a religious text and would, in fact, argue that it is the opposite.

Untitled 2

Others who revere FitzGerald’s translation, or “transmogrification” as he referred to it, for its poetic achievement often misinterpret it as pessimistic and fatalistic, summing it up as an elaborate expression of the sentiment, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we’ll die.” Never mind that truncating a 404 lined poem into a cliche misses the point and joy of poetry in the first place, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is much more than the barroom philosophy of some simple-minded hedonist. While the poem certainly does come to the conclusion that perpetual indulgence in wine is the best way to live, it only does so after rigorous attempts to understand the nature of life and death, God, and our own purpose in this world have proved futile. Omar, as the narrator of FitzGerald’s interpretation, if not the historical and original poet, spends as much time discussing his own folly as a student of philosophy and theology, referring to the afterlife as “the Veil through which I might not see” and comparing humanity to clay pots in that both are made of earth, exist as empty vessels, and one day are returned to the dust and forgotten, as he does in drunken revelry.

When I discovered this poem as a young man of nineteen, I was going through a similar existential crisis as FitzGerald’s Khayyám. I had recently left Christianity due to a personal lack of faith, which I saw as a rejection by a Calvinist God, and discovered my own love of all things fermented including, if not especially, the grape. The certainty of my own death was terrifying to me.

Untitled 3

For the first time in my life I could not cling to some approximation of Heaven to cushion the blow of its mystery. Alcohol, I found, eased the discomfort of this anxiety. Studying The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám allowed me to see drinking not as an easy escape hatch, but rather the ecstatic celebration of life that it can be. Omar is not hiding from hard truths and difficult questions. When he says,

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before

I swore – but was I sober when I swore?

And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand

My threadbare Penitence apieces tore.

we can see that he is past fear. He has left those concerns behind to revel in the hear and now. What better way to do this than by drinking wine?

In class I grew frustrated with my colleagues who interpreted The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as a symbol of communion, who equated the wine with the blood of Christ. This interpretation ignores Omar’s regular and devastating criticisms of religion and a legalistic deity who would “Sue for a Debt he never did contract, / And cannot answer…” And yet, communion may be closer to Khayyám’s or FitzGerald’s meaning than base hedonism. I have always found it disturbing that scholars of English literature, a group trained to look for metaphors and symbolism, are so quick to take Omar’s wine at face value. Perhaps every reader of The Rubáiyát will not be an oenophile. I do not think that this needs detract from the value or beauty of the poem; wine is the perfect stand-in for joy. Around the same time FitzGerald was transmogrifying Khayyám’s Rubáiyát, the French poet Charles Baudelaire was commanding his readers to get drunk “with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please!” Neither poets are equating drunkenness with sloppy inebriation; on the contrary, it is associated with an all-encompassing, passionate exuberance.

Untitled 1

His contributions to algebra, geometry, and astronomy are widely celebrated, but little is known about the personal life of the historical Omar Khayyám. He was a skilled poet in his native Persian and wrote over a thousand quatrains, some that look like this. When FitzGerald’s translation of a few of these quatrains introduced Khayyám to the western world, undoubtedly a romanticized interest in Orientalism in Victorian England led to its immense popularity. The exoticness of Omar Khayyám’s name was all these early western readers needed to know about him. Over a century later, scholars continue to argue whether or not he was a deeply religious orthodox Muslim, a mystically inclined Sufi, or FitzGerald’s fellow agnostic, a man who, like myself, craved earthly joy is lieu of cosmic security. Wine is often used as a symbol for divine communion in Sufi poetry as it is in Christian liturgy and pagan Dionysian-cult rituals, and yet for Omar, at least FitzGerald’s Omar, wine is not transcendent. It is of earthly origin for the pleasure of humanity, ourselves earthly beings made of the same clay as the cups from which we drink, in which the grape grows. Understanding this struck me as pessimistic at one time in my life, but now I see it as mysticism and materialism in perfect synchronicity. Religion, a promise of heaven, these may bring joy to lives of other people, but for me:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, of Loaf of Bread – and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness –

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

___________

Teege at Grand Floridian

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

 

Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Feminism
  • Film
  • Film Commentary
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Criticism
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • science
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Westerns
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #182: Walk in Silence
  • The Perfect Life #44
  • Episode 530: Jamie Hecker!
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #181: Energized and Anthologized Vol. 4
  • Episode 529: Kathryn Harlan!

Archives

  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Join 4,213 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...