The following version of this book was used to make the guide: Omar Khayyam, et al. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Translated by Edward FitzGerald, Garden City Books, 1952. Note that, when quoting the text, the citation will use Quatrain number rather than page number.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, in the Fifth Edition of the translation by Edward Fitzgerald, is divided into one hundred and one quatrains. These, according to Fitzgerald’s dictum, adopt the rhyming structure of the three rhymed verses of four, interrupted by an unrhymed third verse.

The narration of the poem begins with the image of daybreak as, with the call to “WAKE!” (I) setting the tone for the revelatory address which unfolds. The narrator tells of empty temples prepared for religious worshippers while bustling crowds clamor to get inside a tavern. This dichotomy between the prescribed path to knowledge and salvation and the quotidian improvised one, is developed throughout the course of the poem.

As generation upon generation have come and gone throughout history, the only authentic patrimony left to humanity is wine and revelry. The narrator contemplates all the resplendent monarchs who have perished as well as prophets that supposedly live on eternally on some spiritual plane and can only conclude that life is fleeting and time precious for every human being. The best recourse in such a situation is to drink wine and seek merriment in the bounties of the natural world.

Indeed, the very nature of the earth, as a clearinghouse for generations of the dead, is obscured to living humanity. The very nature of human beings, as created from the same substance of the earth itself and destined to return to the earth as ashes, is not lost on the narrator. This predisposes him towards an embrace of the fruits of the earth, which he pursues without shame or penitence. Why, the narrator asks, would such supposed vices as wine be placed at the disposal of human beings if they were meant to be eschewed? This surely contradicts the idea of a just divine order.

That the narrator spent precious time in youth philosophizing and seeking spiritual and intellectual enlightenment is a pity, because in old age he understands that the tavern is the best teacher and source of salvation for mankind. Human beings are truly incapable of fathoming the impenetrable complexity of the universe and of understanding their fate beyond the staid recognition that they time to die will come and they will be plunged into nothingness for eternity. The journey of life is comparable to a caravanserai, traveling in directions unknown. It proceeds steadily, but the ultimate trajectory is not clear. Knowledge beyond death is not possible, and therefore the ultimate fate of humanity is unknowable. It is shocking in and of itself that humanity – a sentient something – emerged from the nothingness of the universe. And yet is fitting because human beings return to non-sentience for all eternity. The time of life is incredibly brief in the grand scheme of things.

From these stolid realizations, the narrator suggests that the best thing to do in the present, while alive, is to drink and carouse. The narrator speaks to his beloved at various moments, imagining them together defying death through the intercession of a benevolent angel. But in his heart of hearts he knows that this is not in the cards and merely requests that in his death he be commemorated by an upturned cup placed in a garden’s path where his ashes lay.