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Shvoong Home>Books>Poetry>Review on “From Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” by Edward Fitzgerald Review

Review on “From Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” by Edward Fitzgerald

Book Review   by:akso6o175     Original Author: Andy Kester Sawian
  • Summary rating: 4 stars (14 Ratings)
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  • words:900 
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The translation of the famous Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is not strictly literal since he had frequently altered the structure as well as the sense to suit his purpose. While Omar’s quatrains were spontaneous short poems, Fitzgerald contrived to make a dramatically unified whole out of these. The narrator invites his listeners to come and fill the cup while the Fire of Spring flings the Winter Garment of Repentance. The Bird of Time has a little way to fly and behold it is already flapping on its wings. With him along some Strip of Herbage strown; lying with him on a piece of land covered with herbs; that divides the desert from the greenery, where names of slaves and sultan is scarcely known which pities Sultan Mahmud; Sultan Mahmud, the conqueror of India during the 10th century A.D.; on his Throne. Both the narrator and his friend were singing in the wilderness which is paradise enow; enough; and carried along with them a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine and a book of verse.
Mortal Sovranty; worldly glory; can be very sweet as some may think to compare it to the paradise that is yet to come. One can take the cash in hand and waive the rest, while sounding the music of a distant drum. They must make the most of what they may yet spend, before they too descend to dust and lie there-sans wine, sans song, sans singer and sans end. It goes all the same for those who prepare today just as much as those who procrastinate until tomorrow. A Muezzin; Muslim clergy man who summons the faithful to prayer; cries from the tower of darkness and declaring it to the fools that their reward is neither here nor there. All the saints and sages who discussed about the two worlds so learnedly are thrust like foolish prophets who go forth in their ways and their words of scorn are scattered while their mouths are stopped with dust.
All the listeners are welcome to join with old Khayyam and leave the wise to talk but one thing is certain that life flies and the rest is lies, for the flower that had been blown once dies forever. When the narrator was young, with eagerness, he visited the doctor and the saint. He heard the great arguments about religion and science which continued endlessly and by the end of the day, he had to come out by the same door that he entered. He sowed the seed of wisdom with them and with his own hand he laboured the seed to grow. The only harvest that he reaped was that he came in like water and left like the wind. Into this universe without knowing he flowed like water and the wind came blowing along the waste willy-nilly; whether willingly or not. There was a door but he could not find the key and there was a veil past which he could not see. Then to the rolling Heaven itself he cried and asked about the lamp that had the destiny to guide its children who stumble in the dark. Heaven replied that it was a blind understanding.
All around, in and out, above, about and below, it is nothing but a Magic Shadow show which is played in a box, whose candle is the sun round which their phantom; ghost; figures come and go. This is all a chequer-board about nights and days where the pieces play with the destiny of men. It moves hither and thither and slays the mates one by one and lays them in the closet. All are gradually forgotten in due time. There are no questions in the ball but only answers of either yes or no and right or left as the player strikes and goes. The player that tossed Khayyam down is the player who knows it all. The moving finger writes and having written, it moves on, not for all Khayyam’s piety or wit that it shall not lure it back to cancel half a line nor for all his tears that wash a word out of it.
The sky which is like an inverted bowl and we live and die under its crawling coop. One should not lift one’s hands towards the sky for help for it rolls on impotently as any mortal who does on earth. The one who made possible with pitfall and with gin beset the road for the narrator to wander in will not enmesh him round with predestination nor impute the narrator’s fall to sin. The Creator who made the man of the baser earth and devised the snake in Eden for all the sins that man commits has showed the way of forgiveness. In the end when the spring vanished with the rose and closed that youth’s sweet scented manuscript, with the nightingale that sang in the branches will fly away at a secretly designated time. If only he and his love could conspire with fate to grasp this entire sorry scheme of things, then they would not shatter into bits but remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.

Published: October 08, 2010   
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