Selected Passages from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat

Omar Khayyam exudes the familiar serenity and
peaceful expression even in his monument built
in a garden in his place of birth in Nishapur, Iran

Abe V Rotor
from The Rubaiyat by Omar Kayyam

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness -
And wilderness is Paradise enow.

The rustic imagery lures the busy mind and body to a retreat, a kind of escape temporary from the cares and troubles of the world. This passage must have influenced authors centuries later in alluring Paradise to basic Nature - Nature unspoiled and unscathed by human hand.

"How sweet is mortal Sovanty!" - think some:
Others - "How blest the Paradise to come!"
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum.

Paradise is just a passage long enough for man's mortality to reach and experience. Others think otherwise - the true one does not come while man lives. It lies in the afterlife, Omar Khayyam might have called Heaven, a collective Paradise of the good souls and spirits. In John Milton's sequel of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, there is a part Eve after the Fall said to Adam, "Go, for as long as I am with you, I'm in Paradise." Where lies that distant drum?

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

This passage speaks of the genius of the poet - mathematician and astronomer. Learned men in his time were few. As true learned, Omar Khayyam painfully deciphered knowledge into arts and sciences, for the dichotomy of knowledge is that, either one lends itself to proof, or does not. And yet at the end, man is always in futile grasp of the real mystery of knowledge - which is wisdom.

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes - or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two - is gone.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

Such futility is often reflected in the Rubaiyat like a given factor in mathematics or in empirical inferences. Which points to human frailty and imperfection. The beauty of poetry lies in this theme. At the end, futility is the gateway to freedom. "Rubaiyat warns us of the danger of Greatness, the instability of Fortune , and while advocating Charity to all, recommending us to be too intimate with none." (Omar Khayyam: The Astronomer-P0et of Persia)

The Rubaiyat is perhaps the most popular poetry in its time - in the eleventh century in then Persia. It lives among the great poems today. Omar Khayyam is a master of this quatrain style, also used by Nostrodamus: ten syllables per line, in coordinated rhyming, leaving the third hanging as if to enable the reader to pause, take a breath, before regaining momentum for the finality of the whole passage. The Rubaiyat touches quite often the theme of ephemeral pleasure and fleeting moments of life, the instability of Fortune - and inevitability of death in any hour. Generally quatrain is difficult to interpret for its ambiguous nature that open wider view and perspective, and for the economy of expression as if the poem is merely a structural framework of a greater whole. It takes an analytical mind to read in between lines, so to speak.

And yet as one becomes familiar to the style he begins to unlock the meaning of each line, then the whole stanza, and proceeds to the numbered series. It is not unusual to go through the whole Rubaiyat book (159 pages) skimming every page, or skipping some in the process. Strangely enough acquiring separate images as if one gets "lost" only to find his way back later. Why not? Omar Khayyam talks of wine, of ephemeral beauty, imagined paradise, women and song, of science and seance, reality and dream, before man reaches the inevitability of his existence. And even in death and after, Khayyam expertly portrayed scenarios turning back the wheels of time - as if man lives a second life, man taken away from his real self by a jug of wine and pleasure of the flesh, and sweet idleness. These of course set the genius to explore and discover. Such is the man of the hour in Omar Khayyam's time as reflected in his masterpiece.

Read the Rubaiyat. Then try writing poetry in quatrain. It's a great experience. ~

NOTES: Khayyám's full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nishapuri al-Khayyami and was born in Nishapur, Iran.

Omar Khayyám was famous during his times as a mathematician. He wrote the influential Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070), which laid down the principles of algebra, part of the body of Persian Mathematics that was eventually transmitted to Europe. In particular, he derived general methods for solving cubic equations and even some higher orders.

Like most Persian mathematicians of the period, Omar Khayyám was also famous as an astronomer. Khayyám and his colleagues measured the length of the solar year as 365.2425 days. Omar's calendar was more accurate than 500 years later the Gregorian calendar. The modern Iranian calendar is based on his calculations.

Reference: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. English translation by EJ Fitzgerald