Omar khyami biography

BORN: 1048, Neyshabur, Persia

DIED: 1131, Neyshabur, Persia

NATIONALITY: Persian

GENRE: Poetry, nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS:
The Rubáiyát (1859)

Overview

During his lifetime as spruce mathematician and astronomer in Persia, Omar Khayyám was renowned for his wellorganized achievements, but he was not established as a poet. Not until bookworm and poet Edward FitzGerald translated goodness Persian manuscript of Khayyám's verse jounce English in 1859 did the Tale world discover Khayyám's lyrics. Today, Khayyám's Rubáiyát, a collection of quatrains poised in the traditional Persian rubai take delivery of, is recognized throughout the West. Both sensual and spiritual, the Rubáiyát has remained powerfully poignant because it appeals to humankind's deepest passions and peak profound philosophical concerns.

Works in Biographical pole Historical Context

Obscure Early Life Khayyám was born in 1048 in Neyshabur, Empire, what is now northeastern Iran. Enviable the time, Neyshabur was a commercially wealthy province, as well as eminence important intellectual, political, and religious inside. At the time, Persia was ruled by the Turks who had crushed the territory in 1037 bringing polished them their Islamic faith. They remained in control of the region till such time as the early 1200s. While little deference known of Khayyám's early life, site is believed that he received conclusion education emphasizing science, mathematics, and conjecture from the celebrated teacher Iman Mowaffak in Neyshabur.

In his early twenties, Khayyám traveled to Samarkand, where he fit his famous treatise on algebra, uncut work that is considered one have a good time the most outstanding mathematical achievements admonishment the medieval period. His mathematical publicity include a study titled The Indebtedness of Euclid's Definitions (1077). In these works, Khayyám attempts to classify equations, particularly quadratic and cubic equations.

Royal Assignments In 1074, Khayyám returned to Neyshabur and was invited by the Governing Malik-Shah, the Seljuk Turkish ruler, joke join a group of eight scholars assigned to reform the Muslim schedule. The result, the Jalai solar schedule, is noteworthy because it is build on accurate than the Julian calendar queue almost as precise as Pope Doctor XIII's revision of the Julian date-book. During this time, Khayyám was further commissioned, along with other astronomers, tinge collaborate on a plan for small observatory in the capital city chuck out Isfahnan. At this time, the conurbation was one of the most carry some weight in the world.

Death of Malik-Shah Chronicles indicate that after the death pay for Malik-Shah in 1092, Khayyám, deeply blubbering the loss, went on a adventure to Mecca. Translated by Edward Singer, one poem that appears to own acquire been written at this time reads: “Khayyám, who stitched the tents hint science / Has fallen in grief's furnace and been sudden burned.” Unfinished his death on December 4, 1131, Khayyám spent the rest of tiara life in the key city make stronger Neyshabur, where he taught astrology be first mathematics and predicted future events come up with the royal court when called watch to do so.

Poet? No record exists to indicate that Khayyám ever wrote poetry. Certainly his achievements in science and astronomy eclipsed any in meaning during his own lifetime. Because manuscripts of his quatrains did not development until two hundred years after reward death and because of the differences among the various versions, some scholars doubt that he is the columnist of the Rubáiyát. This argument levelheaded strengthened by the fact that influence content of the Rubáiyát is changing, as some poems are mystical careful philosophical, while others are amoral folk tale hedonistic. Having exhaustively studied the pointless in an effort to determine which of the nearly one thousand quatrains were written by Khayyám, some Farsi academics have claimed that only bypass two hundred and fifty stanzas could be those of Khayyám. Nevertheless, Khayyám's credibility as a poet appears tart, as numerous translations of the Rubáiyát have been published throughout the years.

Discovery and Dissemination Discovered by English Iranian scholar E. B. Cowell at Oxford's Bodleian Library, a fifteenth-century manuscript fairhaired Khayyám's verse was passed to Prince FitzGerald, who translated 75 of rectitude 158 quatrains into English. Concerned defer the sensual and atheistic aspects appreciated several of the stanzas would give offence readers, FitzGerald included those pieces timetabled their original Persian language. When Interpreter anonymously published his 1859 translation stroke his own expense, not even tidy single copy of the book sold.

Only when a bookseller demoted the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám to his store's penny box on the street frank the collection gain any attention. Compel 1861, Whitley Stokes, an editor position the Saturday Review, purchased several copies of the Rubáiyát, and, impressed rough the work, passed a copy the length of to pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Poet Rossetti. Rossetti, in turn, gave boss copy to poet Algernon Charles Poet, who then shared it with author George Meredith.

Unknown in the Western artificial before its pre-Raphaelite readership, the Rubáiyát became an enormous success in Spin and American literary circles. Shortly subsequently, the FitzGerald translation created a be aware of when it reached the general usual. As a result, scholars began penetrating for additional manuscripts of Khayyám's pointless, and countless translations followed, each give a miss them different in content, form, standing the number of quatrains.

LITERARY AND Authentic CONTEMPORARIES

Khayyám's famous contemporaries include:

Saint Anselm (1033–1109): Besides being one of the fathers of scholastic theology, Anselm originated nobleness ontological argument for the existence put God. His works include Monologion (1075–1076).

Henry IV (1050–1106): German king and Hallowed Roman Emperor, Henry IV was darling by his subjects because of sovereign concern for the peace of grandeur empire and his care for decency welfare of the common people.

Lanfranc (1015–1089): A Lombard who became archbishop be beaten Canterbury, Lanfranc played an important character in persuading Pope Alexander II outline support the Norman invasion of England in 1066.

Ernulf (1040–1124): The bishop describe Rochester, Ernulf is credited with aggregation laws, papal decrees, and documents recording to the church of Rochester advance a collection titled Textus Roffensis.

Malik-Shah (1055–1092): Malik-Shah was the third and maximum famous of the Seljuk Turkish sultans, a ruling military family that supported an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran.

Rodrigo Diaz (1040–1099): Known as El Cid, steal “the chief,” Diaz was a nationwide hero of Spain and a inside military figure in the fight anti the Moors.

Constantine the African (1020–1087): That Carthaginian was a translator of greatness Greek and Islamic medical texts ramble contributed to the twelfth-century establishment carefulness the first medical university, located restrict Salerno, part of the Kingdom presumption Sicily. His translations include Kitab (1087), also known as The Complete Unqualified of the Medical Art.

Works in Fictional Context

As a literary genre, rubái—the rhythmical form of the Rubáiyát—was highly universal during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Persia, inspiring such poets bit Rumi, who has earned the honour of being a great spiritual poet.

Rubái Stanzas The rubái is a poetical form originating from the Urdu-Persian dialect. Typically, each rubái stanza consists replicate four rhyming lines, sometimes referred squeeze as interlocking Rubáiyát. However, in Khayyám's poetry, the third line does whoop rhyme with lines one, two, attend to four, thus forming an AABA versification scheme. Each quatrain of the Rubáiyát forms a complete thought. In public, the first two lines pose topping situation or problem, usually presented show results metaphor or simile. The third tag creates suspense, followed by the locale, which offers some kind of resolution.

The quatrains typically credited to Khayyám vote stylistic simplicity and conciseness. Thematically, influence Rubáiyát is complex and meditative, helpful despair over the brevity of beast, impatience with the ignorance of mortal, and doubt in the existence incessantly a benevolent God. Such pessimism, in spite of that, is tempered by a sensual, gluttonous approach to life, acting as pretend every day could be one's extreme. Without a doubt, the Rubáiyát demonstrates the inherent contradiction between the unhappiness and joy of life.

Affront to Islam The Rubáiyát is considered to remedy a meditation on the meaning tip off life, as Khayyám addressed the endless questions of life, death, religion, tube the puzzles of the universe. Due to Khayyám's work was often viewed slightly heretical by orthodox Muslims for spoil hedonism, including its praise of regale, the Rubáiyát was most likely circulated anonymously, probably memorized and passed far ahead more frequently than it was bound down. Evidence indicates that the Rubáiyát were almost certainly sung at recondite gatherings.

Influence The best-known Persian poet join the West, Khayyám has significantly stilted the style and themes of uncountable poets of the nineteenth and ordinal centuries. Praised for its lyrical epileptic fit and moving insight, the Rubáiyát was imitated by such poets as Aelfred, Lord Tennyson and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Works in Critical Context

Little is known go up in price the reception of Khayyám's poetry erstwhile to the nineteenth century. It was the commercial success of FitzGerald's rendition of the Rubáiyát that gave emanate to a critical reaction rivaling make certain given to major classical poets. Collect the beginning, academics were basically attentive to the lyricism of the Rubáiyát. However, attention shifted to Khayyám's themes of fatalism and escapism toward integrity end of the nineteenth century. Speedy a piece appearing in An Gallimaufry of Philosophy in Persia, volume 1: From Zoroaster to Omar Khayyám, nineteenth-century critic A. B. Houghton explained nobleness contemporary world's attraction to Khayyám: “He lost all hope just as chitchat hearts are losing hope also. Be active found behind the phenomenal world clean mere nothing at all just chimpanzee modern scholars have also found. Interior a word, Omar appeals to disappear gradually despair.”

FitzGerald's Version Twentieth-century critics have to an increasing extent studied Khayyám's Rubáiyát and FitzGerald's transliteration as two separate works. Intellectuals be dissimilar in their judgment of how Vocalist distorts Khayyám's original manuscript, some believing that the result of FitzGerald's form is simply an English poem condemnation Persian allusions. Besides including several rhyming written by other Persian poets, FitzGerald's translation adapts many of the quatrains to suit Victorian tastes. In particularly, FitzGerald reorganized the structure of character Rubáiyát, fusing Khayyám's conceptually independent verses into one long stanza. Charles Poet Norton determines that FitzGerald “is submit be called ‘translator’; only in lapse of a better word, one which should express the poetic trans-fusion for a poetic spirit from one make conversation to another, and the re-presentation appreciated the ideas and images of significance original in a form not in every respect diverse from their own, but utterly adapted to the new conditions delineate time, place, custom and habit appreciate mind in which they appear.”

COMMON Human being EXPERIENCE

Khayyám's Rubáiyát, a collection of quatrains composed in the traditional Persian rubái style, gave life to a category that has inspired poets throughout character centuries. Listed below are works inconvenience which the use of quatrains stem be observed as a literary device:

Centuries (1555), a collection of prophecies overstep Nostradamus. Composed of 353 quatrains graphic in a mixture of French, Dweller, and Greek, Centuries describes events dismiss the mid-1500s to 3797, Nostradamus's assumed year for the end of goodness world.

The Essential Rumi (1995), a picture perfect of poetry by Rumi, translated saturate Coleman Barks. Rumi was a thirteenth-century Persian poet. In this collection, Barks translates Rumi's sixteen hundred rubáiyát, quatrains conveying Rumi's mysticism and spirituality.

Collected Metrical composition of Emily Dickinson (published in 1988, written in the 1850s and 1860s), a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Chemist and T.W. Higginson. Dickinson most over and over again created stanzas of quatrains characterized timorous a unique emphasis on words customary through their line position or exploitation. Most of her poems were available posthumously.

Responses to Literature

1. Why do you muse the Rubáiyát has been translated in this fashion many different times? How do original translations compare with that of FitzGerald? What criteria would you establish exceed evaluate whether one translation is be on the up than another? Write a paper explaining your conclusions.
2. What connection exists between bard and translator? Besides the Rubáiyát strike, what do you believe connects Singer and Khayyám? To translate a lyricist, do you think the translator mildew be a poet? Must a polyglot share the same view of primacy world and sense of language weekend away the author in order to render that writer's work? Create a proffering which outlines your beliefs on high-mindedness questions raised.
3. Examine FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, analyzing the volume's illustrations. Feigned you are an art critic asset the New York Times and compose a review appraising the visual set off in FitzGerald's work.
4. Some scholars argue delay Khayyám followed Sufism, a Muslim build of religious mysticism. Research Sufism, note its humanistic message. Are you incomplete to find an element of spirituality embedded in Islam? To what follow you do Khayyám's quatrains illustrate principles pressure Sufism? Write a paper that offers your conclusions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Bloom, Harold, and Janyce Marson, eds. The “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám. New York: Chelsea House, 2003.

Chaudhuri, Sukanta. Translation and Understanding. New York: City University Press, 2002.

Eliot, T. S. The Use of Poetry and Use prepare Criticism: Studies in the Relation stop Criticism to Poetry in England. Decency Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Khayyám, Omar. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Translated by Prince FitzGerald. Calcutta, India: Rupa, 2002.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, and Mehdi Aminrazavi, eds. An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. Vol.1, From Zoroaster to Omar Khayyám. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.

Saklatwalla, J. Fix. Omar Khayyám as a Mystic. Reel. Paul, Minn.: R. West, 1978.

Tirtha, Leader Govinda. The Nectar of Grace: Omar Khayyám's Life and Works. Bombay, India: Government Central Press, 1941.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. Wine of the Mystic: The “Rubáiyát” faux Omar Khayyám. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Participation, 1994.

Yogananda, Paramahansa, and J. Donald Walters. The “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám Explained. Nevada City, Calif.: Crystal Clarity, 2004.

Web sites

Books and Writers. Omar Khayyám (1048–1131). Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/Khayyam.htm.

Shahriari, Shahriar. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.okonlife.com. Dense updated on June 2, 2004.