Introduction

Omar Khayyam, The Astronomer-Poet of Persia.

Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of
our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth
Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that
of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one
of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier
to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the
Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the
Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe
into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat--or
Testament--which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future
Statesmen--relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review,
No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins.

"'One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam
Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced,--may God
rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it
was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied
the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honor and
happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur
with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in
study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher.
Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his
pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed
four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other
pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-
fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the
highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship
together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me,
and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was
a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a
man of austere life and practise, but heretical in his creed and
doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, "It is a universal
belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune.
Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us
will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?" We answered,
"Be it what you please." "Well," he said, "let us make a vow, that to
whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the
rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself." "Be it so," we both
replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years
rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to
Ghazni and Cabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and
rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp
Arslan.'

"He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-
friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good
fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and
kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the
Sultan granted at the Vizier's request; but discontented with a
gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental
court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he
was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan
became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of
fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil
eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D.
1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which
lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was
from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the
Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through
the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin,
which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark
memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the
Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch
of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the
dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur.
One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul
Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.[1]

"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to
ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he
said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune,
to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life
and prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was
really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted
him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of
Naishapur.

"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in
Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise
for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
him.'

"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali
era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and
approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the
author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and
the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
of his on Algebra.

"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before
Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we
have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc.[2] Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--

"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!'

"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot
alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam.[3]--

"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his
age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my
teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses
over it.' I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
no idle words.[4] Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden,
and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden
wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
hidden under them."'"

Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.

Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the
most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's
material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to
Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this.
Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but
Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it;
preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into
Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain
disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that
his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a
humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense
above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great
delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in
common with all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has never been
popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily
transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the
average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East
as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the
acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India
House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of
one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written
at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the
Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy),
contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds
of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as
containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at
double that number.[5] The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta
MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning
with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its
alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with
one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.)
to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother asked about his
future fate. It may be rendered thus:--

"O Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn,
How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'
Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"

The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.

"If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did misread."

The Reviewer,[6] to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life,
concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to
natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in
which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and
cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for
Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country's false
Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of
replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no
better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves.
Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied
himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed,
and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing
himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat
down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was
part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime
description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of
the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more
desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted
in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning
with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their
insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual
pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with
speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and
Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and
the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as,
missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically
called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of
equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as
here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek
Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave
that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental
Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic
Rhyme--a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here selected are
strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal
proportion of the "Drink and make-merry," which (genuine or not)
recurs over-frequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad
enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more apt to
move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly
endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some
authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO-DAY (which has
outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand
upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.

[From the Third Edition.]

While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing,
Monsieur Nicolas, French Consul at Resht, published a very careful and
very good Edition of the Text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran,
comprising 464 Rubaiyat, with translation and notes of his own.

Mons. Nicolas, whose Edition has reminded me of several things, and
instructed me in others, does not consider Omar to be the material
Epicurean that I have literally taken him for, but a Mystic, shadowing
the Deity under the figure of Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., as Hafiz is
supposed to do; in short, a Sufi Poet like Hafiz and the rest.

I cannot see reason to alter my opinion, formed as it was more than a
dozen years ago when Omar was first shown me by one to whom I am
indebted for all I know of Oriental, and very much of other,
literature. He admired Omar's Genius so much, that he would gladly
have adopted any such Interpretation of his meaning as Mons. Nicolas'
if he could.[7] That he could not, appears by his Paper in the
Calcutta Review already so largely quoted; in which he argues from the
Poems themselves, as well as from what records remain of the Poet's
Life.

And if more were needed to disprove Mons. Nicolas' Theory, there is
the Biographical Notice which he himself has drawn up in direct
contradiction to the Interpretation of the Poems given in his Notes.
(See pp. 13-14 of his Preface.) Indeed I hardly knew poor Omar was so
far gone till his Apologist informed me. For here we see that,
whatever were the Wine that Hafiz drank and sang, the veritable Juice
of the Grape it was which Omar used, not only when carousing with his
friends, but (says Mons. Nicolas) in order to excite himself to that
pitch of Devotion which others reached by cries and "hurlemens." And
yet, whenever Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., occur in the Text--which is
often enough--Mons. Nicolas carefully annotates "Dieu," "La Divinite,"
&c.: so carefully indeed that one is tempted to think that he was
indoctrinated by the Sufi with whom he read the Poems. (Note to Rub.
ii. p. 8.) A Persian would naturally wish to vindicate a
distinguished Countryman; and a Sufi to enroll him in his own sect,
which already comprises all the chief Poets of Persia.

What historical Authority has Mons. Nicolas to show that Omar gave
himself up "avec passion a l'etude de la philosophie des Soufis"?
(Preface, p. xiii.) The Doctrines of Pantheism, Materialism,
Necessity, &c., were not peculiar to the Sufi; nor to Lucretius before
them; nor to Epicurus before him; probably the very original
Irreligion of Thinking men from the first; and very likely to be the
spontaneous growth of a Philosopher living in an Age of social and
political barbarism, under shadow of one of the Two and Seventy
Religions supposed to divide the world. Von Hammer (according to
Sprenger's Oriental Catalogue) speaks of Omar as "a Free-thinker, and
a great opponent of Sufism;" perhaps because, while holding much of
their Doctrine, he would not pretend to any inconsistent severity of
morals. Sir W. Ouseley has written a note to something of the same
effect on the fly-leaf of the Bodleian MS. And in two Rubaiyat of
Mons. Nicolas' own Edition Suf and Sufi are both disparagingly named.

No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccountable unless mystically
interpreted; but many more as unaccountable unless literally. Were
the Wine spiritual, for instance, how wash the Body with it when dead?
Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with--"La Divinite," by
some succeeding Mystic? Mons. Nicolas himself is puzzled by some
"bizarres" and "trop Orientales" allusions and images--"d'une
sensualite quelquefois revoltante" indeed--which "les convenances" do
not permit him to translate; but still which the reader cannot but
refer to "La Divinite."[8] No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the
Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious; such Rubaiyat being
the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as
much one way as another; nay, the Sufi, who may be considered the
Scholar and Man of Letters in Persia, would be far more likely than
the careless Epicure to interpolate what favours his own view of the
Poet. I observed that very few of the more mystical Quatrains are in
the Bodleian MS., which must be one of the oldest, as dated at Shiraz,
A.H. 865, A.D. 1460. And this, I think, especially distinguishes Omar
(I cannot help calling him by his--no, not Christian--familiar name)
from all other Persian Poets: That, whereas with them the Poet is lost
in his Song, the Man in Allegory and Abstraction; we seem to have the
Man--the Bon-homme--Omar himself, with all his Humours and Passions,
as frankly before us as if we were really at Table with him, after the
Wine had gone round.

I must say that I, for one, never wholly believed in the Mysticism of
Hafiz. It does not appear there was any danger in holding and singing
Sufi Pantheism, so long as the Poet made his Salaam to Mohammed at the
beginning and end of his Song. Under such conditions Jelaluddin,
Jami, Attar, and others sang; using Wine and Beauty indeed as Images
to illustrate, not as a Mask to hide, the Divinity they were
celebrating. Perhaps some Allegory less liable to mistake or abuse
had been better among so inflammable a People: much more so when, as
some think with Hafiz and Omar, the abstract is not only likened to,
but identified with, the sensual Image; hazardous, if not to the
Devotee himself, yet to his weaker Brethren; and worse for the Profane
in proportion as the Devotion of the Initiated grew warmer. And all
for what? To be tantalized with Images of sensual enjoyment which
must be renounced if one would approximate a God, who according to the
Doctrine, is Sensual Matter as well as Spirit, and into whose Universe
one expects unconsciously to merge after Death, without hope of any
posthumous Beatitude in another world to compensate for all one's self-
denial in this. Lucretius' blind Divinity certainly merited, and
probably got, as much self-sacrifice as this of the Sufi; and the
burden of Omar's Song--if not "Let us eat"--is assuredly--"Let us
drink, for To-morrow we die!" And if Hafiz meant quite otherwise by a
similar language, he surely miscalculated when he devoted his Life and
Genius to so equivocal a Psalmody as, from his Day to this, has been
said and sung by any rather than spiritual Worshippers.

However, as there is some traditional presumption, and certainly the
opinion of some learned men, in favour of Omar's being a Sufi--and
even something of a Saint--those who please may so interpret his Wine
and Cup-bearer. On the other hand, as there is far more historical
certainty of his being a Philosopher, of scientific Insight and
Ability far beyond that of the Age and Country he lived in; of such
moderate worldly Ambition as becomes a Philosopher, and such moderate
wants as rarely satisfy a Debauchee; other readers may be content to
believe with me that, while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply the
Juice of the Grape, he bragg'd more than he drank of it, in very
defiance perhaps of that Spiritual Wine which left its Votaries sunk
in Hypocrisy or Disgust.

Edward J. Fitzgerald

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the
instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men,
recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-Mulk
use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], "When Nizam-ul-
Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am passing away in
the hand of the wind.'"]

[Footnote 2: Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc.,
may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling.]

[Footnote 3: "Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa
Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle,"
no part of which, except the "Philosophe," can apply to our Khayyam.]

[Footnote 4: The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in
being so opposed to those in the Koran: "No Man knows where he shall
die."--This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally--and when
one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed--so
pathetically told by Captain Cook--not by Doctor Hawkworth--in his
Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, "Oreo's last request was
for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he
asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as
this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him 'Stepney'; the parish in
which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over
till they could pronounce it; and then 'Stepney Marai no Toote' was
echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same
question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a
different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, 'No man who used
the sea could say where he should be buried.'"]

[Footnote 5: "Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we
have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in
1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54
others not found in some MSS."]

[Footnote 6: Professor Cowell.]

[Footnote 7: Perhaps would have edited the Poems himself some years ago. He may
now as little approve of my Version on one side, as of Mons. Nicolas'
Theory on the other.]

[Footnote 8: A note to Quatrain 234 admits that, however clear the mystical
meaning of such Images must be to Europeans, they are not quoted without
"rougissant" even by laymen in Persia--"Quant aux termes de tendresse
qui commencent ce quatrain, comme tant d'autres dans ce recueil, nos
lecteurs, habitues maintenant a 1'etrangete des expressions si souvent
employees par Kheyam pour rendre ses pensees sur l'amour divin, et a la
singularite des images trop orientales, d'une sensualite quelquefois
revoltante, n'auront pas de peine a se persuader qu'il s'agit de la
Divinite, bien que cette conviction soit vivement discutee par les
moullahs musulmans, et meme par beaucoup de laiques, qui rougissent
veritablement d'une pareille licence de leur compatriote a 1'egard des
choses spirituelles."]