SOURCE: Schenker, Daniel. “Fugitive Articulation: An Introduction to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” Victorian Poetry 19, no. 1 (spring 1981): 49-64.

In the following essay, Schenker discusses the Rubáiyát's metaphorical devices and its garden setting, suggesting that its readers found it an appealing escape into an exotic and amoral, but still somewhat secure, world. Schenker suggests that the poem became overly familiar and popular and that this resulted in a decline in scholarly interest in and analysis of the work.

Over a half century ago Ezra Pound remarked that FitzGerald's re-creation of Omar Khayyám was one of the finest works bequeathed by a generation of Victorian poets.¹ Today, the Rubáiyát receives little attention from critics, although the poem is frequently reprinted in sumptuously designed and illustrated trade editions. Probably few poems are so widely circulated (whether read I do not know) and...