Really, It is interesting that English speakers think like this!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
Volunteer work is great idea! I never thought about it.
You're welcome! About Khayyam,Quote:
Thanks stlukesguild and Sofia for your comprehensive and highly informative replies. Only if there was some way of explaining the Persian poetry. Khayyam's Rubaiyat are just not what we see in English translation, they are more, much more. Khayyam is considered a major astronomer and mathematician and not a major poet in is home-country. This should give an idea of the people with whom he is competing for that title.
"He is best known for his poetry, and outside Iran, for the quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, popularized through Edward Fitzgerald's re-created translation. His substantial mathematical contributions include his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which gives a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle[2]. He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.
Omar Khayyám's poetic work has eclipsed his fame as a mathematician and scientist.
He is believed to have written about a thousand four-line verses or quatrains (rubaai's). In the English-speaking world, he was introduced through the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which are rather free-wheeling English translations by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883).
Other translations of parts of the rubáiyát (rubáiyát meaning "quatrains") exist, but Fitzgerald's are the most well known. Translations also exist in languages other than English.
Ironically, Fitzgerald's translations reintroduced Khayyam to Iranians "who had long ignored the Neishapouri poet." A 1934 book by one of Iran's most prominent writers, Sadeq Hedayat, Songs of Khayyam, (Taranehha-ye Khayyam) is said have "shaped the way a generation of Iranians viewed" the poet.[9]
Omar Khayyam's personal beliefs are not known with certainty, but much is discernible from his poetic oeuvre.
Although he was ignored to some extent, he is famous all over the Iran for his Four-line verses. But the theme of his peotry is against popular religious beliefs. It rejects some religious beliefs, so some poeple do not consider him as a great poet. But there is more than this anti-religious theme. And he is famous for the theme of Carpe Diem, too.
خيام اگر ز باده مستى خوش باش
با ماه رخى اگر نشستى خوش باش
چون عاقبت كار جهان نيستى است
انگار كه نيستى، چو هستى خوش باش
which translates in Fitzgerald's work as:
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in — Yes —
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be — Nothing — Thou shalt not be less.
A more literal translation could read:
If with wine you are drunk be happy,
If seated with a moon-faced (beautiful), be happy,
Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness;
Hence picture your nothing-ness, then while you are, be happy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam
