A critical appreciation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

A critical appreciation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam :

     Edward Fitz-Gerald was a Victorian poet who was a pessimist and skeptic. He was an exquisite proseman and a fine translator. He made several translations from Greek, Persian, and Spanish into English. But he is noted for his last and greatest work- his, translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

It was in the form of a little paperbound pamphlet. It was published anonymously and attracted little attention. In 1860, the famous pre-Raphael poets Swinburne and Rosseth discovered the poem. The second edition was published after eight years. Suddenly the poem became a favorite.

     The Rubaiyat is originally written by the twelfth century. Persian poet who was also an astronomer and mathematician. 'The Rubaiyat' is a beautiful collection of verses on wine roses and love before his death 1123, Omar Khayyam had composed about 500 epigrams in quatrains or 'rubais', rhyming a a b a, in iambic pentameter. They are full of "philosophy of the joyful acceptance of all that life brings".

The verses are beautifully translated Fitz-Gerald's translation has the same features but from a translation, it develops into an exquisite composition of the poet's own. The verses are peculiar in rhyme and pungent in effect. Each verse has to syllables and in iambic pentameter. The stanzas are independent, yet they embody a terse and self-contained idea. They are connected by a central philosophy, a vigorous, free-thinking hedonism, a casual but frank appeal to enjoy the pleasure of life.

The theme of the work is both pessimistic and optimistic. In its belief in determinism and disbelief in immortality, it is a product of the skeptical tendencies of the age, but in its call to make the most of this life-"Ah, take the cash in hand and waive the rest".- it strikes a note that thrills every heart. Fitz-Gerald is supremely successful in this criticism of life. He expresses Epicurean philosophy and frank fatalism. He finds the meaning of life inscrutable and he is filled with sadness:

" Yet Ah! that spring should vanish with the Rose!

That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!

The Nightingale that in the branches sang.

                    Ah whence and whither flown again, who knows!"

The message of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat was something of a slogan and something of an escape. It turned imperial commercialism to idealized paganism. Half-defiantly, half desperately the younger men and women made Fitzgerald-Omar a vogue. Perhaps the most-quoted quatrain of the century was:

" A Book of verses underneath the bough

A Jug of wine, a Loaf of Bread-and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness -

Oh, wilderness were paradise enow!"

Here was an infectious panacea, half tonic, half opiate. It was not so much a compromise of values as a combination of desirables. This was a very denial of negations." Wine, woman and song" were affirmed and glorified in a mounting paean of pleasure. The poem assured a perplexed generation that all was vanity, that the glories of this world are better than paradise to come, that it is wise to take the cash and let the credit go; that life is a meaningless game played by helpless pieces; that worldly ambitions turn into ashes; that in the end - an end which comes all too quickly wine is a more trustworthy friend friend a better comforter than all the philosophers.

The entire poem is marked with a note of pessimism and despair. It was an emphasis on the power of destiny in human life. All our tears and prayers are of no avail. The moving finger writes and having writ moves on. In such a state of life where much has to be endured the best way out of the stew is to eat, drink and be merry without caring for the future.

"Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday

why fret about them if today be sweet ?"

There had always been an undercurrent of protest against the rigid moral earnestness of the period. The Rubaiyat served as a small but concentrated expression of the revolt against Victorian conventions and the prevailing smugness. The care-free quatrains were used as a challenge by the 19th-century under-graduates, repeated by rebellious lovers and flung out as a credo by the men and women who were growing restless.

The quatrains were enthusiastically if inconsistently, compared to the choruses in the Greek dramas. It is said that when Thomas Hardy lay dying in his eighty-eighth year, he asked to have one particular stanza read to him. It was:

" Oh, Thou, who man of base earth didst make,

And even with paradise devise the snake:

for all the sin wherewith the face of a man

Is blackened - man's forgiveness give - and take!

The verses are not only charming to read but easy to understand, their meaning lying all on the surface. The verses are full of ease and grace. The Rubaiyat has outlived cults and commentaries. It has had its influences and imitators. It is not properly speaking a single poem but a sequence of loosely connected quatrains. For all these reasons, it proved one of the most popular writings of the age. It has become a beautiful and permanent gift to English literature.

' The Rubaiyat' is a work of art, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The poet lays emphasis on hedonism grounded on skepticism. He advocates a life of sensual pleasure with undertones of philosophic searching and echoes of gnomic wisdom. The grim philosophy scarcely matters. The tune is so gay that even the pessimism seems blithe. The quick but melodic turns of the poem "tease us out of thought".

Time can not wither, nor custom stales the lovely beauty of this lyric poem of Omar Fitz-Gerald.

George Herbert: Life and works a metaphysical poet