SOURCE: Leacock-Seghatolislami, Tracia. “The Tale of the Inimitable Rubaiyat.” In Edward FitzGerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 195-207. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004.

In the following essay, originally published in 2000, Leacock-Seghatolislami outlines the positive and negative effects of FitzGerald's liberal translation of Khayyám's Rubáiyát.

It is difficult to decide where to start with the Edward FitzGerald-Omar Khayyam debate, because so much has been written, it deserves its own library. Of course, most of the debate has been focused on decrying FitzGerald's liberal rendering of Khayyam. This essay is intended to give the lay reader of the Rubaiyat a more rounded picture of the situation.

Let it first be made clear that FitzGerald never set foot on Persian soil, or on that of any other Persophone region. He took up Persian at home in England, while in his forties...