SOURCE: Jewett, Iran B. Hassani. “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” In Edward FitzGerald, pp. 73-111. London: George Prior Publishers, 1977.

In the following excerpt, Jewett compares FitzGerald's Rubáiyát to its source, maintaining that the original contains greater variance in theme and mood, and more humor, while FitzGerald's version contains more vivid imagery, as well as more action and movement.

Fitzgerald's Version of the Rubáiyát

FitzGerald's Rubáiyát—the “Epicurean Eclogue” as FitzGerald once described it—follows a pattern that is lacking in the original. By their very genre, Omar Khayyam's quatrains are individual entities that formulate and present a complete idea in each stanza and follow no set arrangement. The Persian manuscripts that FitzGerald used for his translation had the quatrains arranged in an alphabetical order, a method often used for the convenience of both the copyist and the reader. The...