{"id":67946,"date":"2018-03-27T20:50:37","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T01:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=67946"},"modified":"2020-04-15T09:54:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T14:54:15","slug":"omar-khayyams-rubaiyat-quatrains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2018\/03\/27\/omar-khayyams-rubaiyat-quatrains\/","title":{"rendered":"Om\u00e1r Khayy\u00e1m\u2019s Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t (Quatrains)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joobin Bekhrad \u2014
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1909, two London bookbinders were commissioned to create a book that would become one of the most bedazzling the world had beheld. Joobin Bekhrad reveals how it ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic \u2013 and how it still influences today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Titanic went down on the night of April 14 1912 in the sea off the New World, its most eminent victim was a book\u2026\u201d French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf may have been stretching it a bit in his 1988 historical novel Samarkand.\u00a0<\/em>Or not, depending on whom you were to ask at the time. The book in question was a fictional manuscript of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t (Quatrains) by the 11th-Century Iranian polymath Om\u00e1r Khayy\u00e1m, prized because it was the only one in existence. In fact, a plethora of copies of the volume of Persian poems existed. There was, however, at the time the Titanic made its ill-fated voyage, one that outshone them all \u2013 not in terms of what was written within, but rather, it\u2019s almost otherworldly appearance. It was\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0very real manuscript that served as the inspiration for Maalouf\u2019s acclaimed novel. \u201cAt the bottom of the Atlantic there is a book,\u201d he writes in its introduction. \u201cI am going to tell you its history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Whoso desireth a peacock must endure the trials of Hindustan\u2019, says a popular Persian proverb. While this particular one refers to the Iranian monarch Nader Shah Afshar\u2019s sacking of Delhi and looting of the famed Peacock Throne (amongst other things) in the mid-18th Century, it might just as well have been coined a few centuries later in London. With a desire to revive medieval traditions of bejeweled bookbinding, George Sutcliffe and Francis Sangorski were renowned throughout the city in the early 1900s for their opulent and over-the-top designs. Accordingly, it was to them that Henry Sotheran\u2019s, a bookstore on Sackville Street, went to commission a book like no other.<\/p>\n

Over 1000 precious and semi-precious stones \u2013 rubies, turquoises, emeralds, and others \u2013 were used in its making, as well as 600 sheets of 22-karat gold leaf<\/em><\/p>\n

Cost, according to Sotheran\u2019s, was to be no object; the bookbinders were given carte blanche to let their imagination go wild and conjure the most bedazzling book the world would ever behold. Completed in 1911 after two years of intensive labor, the book \u2013 of Edward FitzGerald\u2019s loose Victorian interpretations of Omar Khayy\u00e1m\u2019s poems, illustrated by Elihu Vedder \u2013 came to be known as \u2018The Great Omar\u2019, as well as \u2018The Book Wonderful\u2019, on account of its sheer splendor. Gracing its gilded cover were three peacocks with bejeweled tails, surrounded by intricate patterns and floral sprays typical of medieval Persian manuscripts, while a Greek\u00a0bouzouki\u00a0<\/em>could be seen on the back. Over 1000 precious and semi-precious stones \u2013 rubies, turquoises, emeralds, and others \u2013 were used in its making, as well as nearly 5000 pieces of leather, silver, ivory, and ebony inlays, and 600 sheets of 22-karat gold leaf.<\/p>\n

The Great Omar<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although intended to be shipped to New York by Sotheran\u2019s, the booksellers declined to pay the heavy duty imposed on it at US customs. It was returned to England, where it was bought by Gabriel Wells at a Sotheby\u2019s auction for \u00a3450 \u2013 less than half its reserve price of \u00a31,000. Wells, like Sotheran\u2019s before him, intended to have the masterpiece shipped to America. Unluckily for him \u2013 and the world \u2013 it couldn\u2019t be taken aboard the ship originally chosen.<\/p>\n

The Titanic was next in line, and the rest needs no explanation. The story, however, didn\u2019t end with the sinking of the Titanic,\u00a0<\/em>or even Sangorski\u2019s strange death by drowning some weeks afterwards. Sutcliffe\u2019s nephew Stanley Bray was determined to revive not only the memory of the Great Omar, but also the book itself. Using Sangorski\u2019s original drawings, he managed \u2013 after a grueling six years \u2013 to replicate the book, which was placed in a bank vault.<\/p>\n

The Great Omar, it seemed, had been born under a bad sign, for, during the London Blitz of World War Two, it was \u2013 not unlike the poet\u2019s wine jugs, symbolic of human frailty \u2013 dashed to pieces. Shaken, but not shattered, Bray once again rolled up his sleeves to produce yet another version of his uncle\u2019s swan song. This time, however, its making wasn\u2019t a matter of years, but decades. Completed after 40 years of on-and-off work, Bray\u2019s tribulations were realized in another stunning reproduction, which he loaned to the British Library, and which his estate bequeathed to the institution following his death, where it can be seen today. \u201cI am not in the least bit superstitious,\u201d Bray remarked shortly before his demise, \u201ceven though they do say that the peacock is a symbol of disaster\u201d.<\/p>\n

FitzOmar<\/strong><\/p>\n

What was the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m, and who was this enigmatic personage with whom Sotheran\u2019s, as well as innumerable others, were fascinated? An 11th-Century polymath from eastern Iran, Khayy\u00e1m was revered in his lifetime for his groundbreaking work in astronomy and mathematics. As with other Iranian polymaths like Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Khayy\u00e1m was also a poet. That said, his poetry was unlike that of any other Persian poet before him, and he has occupied, for centuries, a place wholly unique in the grand corpus of classical Persian literature.<\/p>\n

He well understood the transience of life and the inevitability of death, and the importance of seizing the all-too-brief moment we are allotted on earth<\/em><\/p>\n

Owing to his inquisitive nature, Khayy\u00e1m questioned things most around him took for granted: faith, the hereafter, and the meaning of life itself. He had little confidence in the promises of religion, with its talk of Heaven and Hell, and even expressed doubts regarding the logic of God. There was only one thing Khayy\u00e1m was certain about, and which he cherished:\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>life.<\/p>\n

He well understood \u2013 perhaps owing to the turbulent times during which he lived (Iran, then under Turkic occupation, had recently been invaded by Arabs, and the Mongol hordes would soon raze his homeland to the ground) \u2013 the transience of life and the inevitability of death, and the importance of seizing the all-too-brief moment we are allotted on earth. Any talk of the afterlife or religion he deemed hot air. As he wrote:<\/p>\n

No one has seen Heaven or Hell, O heart of mine;<\/em><\/p>\n

Who, say you, has come from that realm, O heart of mine?<\/em><\/p>\n

Our hopes and fears are pinned to that to which,<\/em><\/p>\n

Save a name and notion, we can naught else assign.<\/em><\/p>\n

Although he often lamented the ephemerality of life, he also resolved to enjoy himself \u2013 with copious amounts of wine (and a few sweethearts, too).<\/p>\n

If Goethe had been enamoured of Hafez, and Voltaire Sa\u2019di, the Victorian poet Edward FitzGerald found a kindred Iranian spirit in Khayy\u00e1m, \u2018The Old Tentmaker\u2019.<\/p>\n

When he turned his attention to Khayy\u00e1m, he had already translated from the Persian Jami\u2019s Salaman and Absal, as well as an abridged version of Attar\u2019s Conference of the Birds.<\/p>\n

It was the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t, however, that was to prove his magnum opus. Although not exactly a translation of the original Persian poems, Fitzgerald\u2019s very loose interpretation captured, to no small degree, the spirit of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t and the poet\u2019s\u00a0Weltanschauung \u2013\u00a0<\/em>hence the reference to the author as \u2018Fitz Omar\u2019.<\/p>\n

While it enjoyed little popularity upon its release, the slim yet profound volume soon came to enjoy a popularity Fitzgerald could never have imagined. In the late 19th Century, an elite literary salon in London \u2013 the still-active Omar Khayy\u00e1m Club \u2013 was named after Khayy\u00e1m. Fitzgerald\u2019s rendition of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t also served as a source of inspiration for Pre-Raphaelite artists such as William Morris, who produced two illuminated manuscripts of it, the second of which also contained illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones.<\/p>\n

Countless other editions were also produced, with every manner of illustration, by artists such as Edmund Dulac and Edmund Joseph Sullivan. One illustration by the latter, in fact, later came to grace the Grateful Dead\u2019s self-titled 1971 album.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the acclaimed short story writer Hector Hugh Munro chose the\u00a0nom de plume\u00a0<\/em>\u2018Saki\u2019 (the title Khayy\u00e1m used to address his cupbearer), while Agatha Christie\u2019s 1942 novel The Moving Finger had a Fitz Omar poem as its namesake. That\u2019s not to mention the 1957 Hollywood film made about Khayy\u00e1m, US actor Alfred Drake\u2019s\u00a01960 recitation<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of the entire Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t, and Martin Luther King\u2019s quotation of him in a 1967 anti-war speech (he beat Bill Clinton to it by a few decades), amongst many other instances. In the 1950s, the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t was so popular that more than half of it could be found in the compendiums Bartlett\u2019s Quotations and The Oxford Book of Quotations.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Not-so-Old Tentmaker<\/p>\n

Khayy\u00e1m\u2019s poetry has, undeniably, stood the test of time. In his native Iran, he is a towering figure whose book of verse, like that of Hafez\u2019s, is very much a household staple.<\/p>\n

FitzGerald\u2019s rendition of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t is still, in spite of the prodigious liberties he took, the most well-known English version of it by far, and an English classic in its own right. Elsewhere around the world, his poems can be read in virtually every language imaginable. As such, it\u2019s perhaps no mystery why Sotheran\u2019s chose the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t as the raison d\u2019\u00eatre of Sutcliffe and Sangorski\u2019s bound marvel. But why? How could the words of an 11th-Century polymath have any relevance not only in the Victorian era and the mid-20th Century, but also today?<\/p>\n

The answer lies in the timelessness of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t, and its universal truths that know not culture, religion, or creed. Indeed, in today\u2019s uncertain times, the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t may be even more relevant than during the tumultuous times in which it was originally written. What would the author of the most luxurious book of poetry ever made have to say about our mad, mad world, were he around today? Perhaps, to quote the sage:<\/p>\n

How swiftly does this caravan of life pass;<\/em><\/p>\n

Seek thou the moment that with joy does lapse.<\/em><\/p>\n

Saghi, why lament tomorrow\u2019s misfortunes today?<\/em><\/p>\n

Bring forth the chalice, for the night shall pass.<\/em><\/p>\n

All poetry translations by the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joobin Bekhrad \u2014 In 1909, two London bookbinders were commissioned to create a book that would become one of the most bedazzling the world had beheld. Joobin Bekhrad reveals how it ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic \u2013 and how it still influences today. \u201cWhen the Titanic went down on the night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookrev"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}