Rating: 
Summary: Omar and the Spice Girls
Review: "The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam" translated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs is available in two Penguin editions. This edition (ISBN 01400595447) comes in a larger format with 32 beautiful colored illustrations of Persian miniature paintings from the 16th and 17th century, and an essay on the history of the miniatures that points out the influence of Chinese painting on Persian graphic arts (an interesting subject in itself). The other edition is the Penguin Classics edition (ISBN 0140443843), which is identical to this edition but lacks the illustrations and the essay on Persian graphic arts. The illustrated, larger sized edition is definitely worth the slightly higher price, in my opinion.A reader who is familiar with FitzGerald's classic "re-creation" - "translation" is a term that is too weak in this context - will be surprised at the defiant materialism of Omar Khayyam's quatrains in Avery's literal translation stripped of the poetic spark of FitzGerald's work. For example, while the Victorian gentleman Edward FitzGerald chose to translate Omar Khayyam's praise of simple joys and poetry in his famous "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness - / Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!", Peter Avery gives us not only a more literal translation (#98) but also a much more worldly (and spicy) version of the same theme: If chance supplied a loaf of white bread,
Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton,
In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl
There'd be enjoyment no Sultan could outdo. (#234) In his introduction, Peter Avery points out that the ruba'i (quatrain) was the favorite verse form among intellectuals, "those philosophers and mystics in eleventh- and twelfth-century Persia who were in some degree non-conformists opposed to religious fanatism, so that they have often been called Islam's free-thinkers." And a free-thinker Omar Khayyam was. He did not believe in the cardinal Muslim tenet of the resurrection of the body after death, and he suggested that drinking wine was better than worrying about abstruse religious theories and dogmas. In an instance that must have been particularly enraging for orthodox Muslims he turned the argument for future rewards in paradise on its head by thinking it through to its logical end: They promise there will be Paradise and the houri-eyed,
Where clear wine and honey will flow:
Should we prefer wine and a lover, what's the harm?
Are not these the final recompense? (#88) (the "houri-eyed" are beautiful girls, by the way) In another slyly funny (and self-critical) quatrain, Omar Khayyam pushes his skepticism and blunt honesty even further: A religious man said to a whore, "You're drunk,
Caught every moment in a different snare."
She replied, "Oh Shaikh, I am what you say,
Are you what you seem?"(#86) Peter Avery's translations stress the worldly, materialistic side of Omar Khayyam, which is rooted in his conviction that nothing lasts but the joys experienced in the present moment. What I missed in Peter Avery's translations, though, was the joy Omar Khayyam must have felt when he created a new quatrain to remind himself to seize the day, to change his state of mind (that's a polite way of describing "to get drunk") or just to invent a polished metaphor or rhyme. FitzGerald captured this redeeming poetic beauty of Omar Khayyam's work so well that his rendition of the Rubaiyat remains a benchmark true to the spirit if not the letter of the Persian poet: And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help - for It
As impotently moves as you or I. (while Avery translates with the intention "to give as literal an English version of the Persian originals as readability and intelligibility permit":) The good and evil that are in man's heart,
The joy and sorrow that are our fortune and destiny,
Do not impute them to the wheel of heaven because, in the light of reason,
The wheel is a thousand times more helpless than you. (#34) Buy this edition for the invaluable introduction, for the contrast to FitzGerald's rendition, and quite simply to get a feeling for Omar Khayyam's blunt honesty; but do buy a book with FitzGerald's version, preferably the out-of-print edition with English novelist A.S. Byatt's introduction ("Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam", ASIN 0965231240). And lest anyone should think Omar Khayyam was only a frivolous, inebriated hedonist, here are two of my favorite quatrains from Peter Avery's and John Heath-Stubbs's book: If the heart could grasp the meaning of life,
In death it would know the mystery of God;
Today when you are in possession of yourself, you know nothing.
Tomorrow when you leave yourself behind, what will you know? (#5) It is we who are the source of our own happiness, the mine of our own sorrow,
The repository of justice and foundation of iniquity;
We who are cast down and exalted, perfect and defective,
At once the rusted mirror and Jamshid's all-seeing cup. (#211) (Avery explains that to the Persian culture hero Jamshid or Jam was attributed a magic cup in which he could see time past, present and future and all the world, and by which like Joseph with his silver cup, he could divine (Genesis xliv, 4-5).)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent translation and superb illustrations
Review: (This review refers to ISBN 0140059547, the translation by Avery and Heath-Stubbs of the Ruba'iyat.) Fans of Khayyam will undoubtedly want the Fitzgerald translation of the Ruba'iyat as well, but anyone who is interested in "what the original poems actually say" would do very well to pick this book up. The long introduction provides the historical context for Khayyam: in the Iran of his times there was a visible conflict between "Greek-influenced thinkers" and religious orthodoxy. (Hmm, does that sound familiar??) Khayyam, known in his own country as a mathematician not a poet, would have produced these rubai'yat on an unoffical basis for circulation among friends and like-minded thinkers. I have been reading the original Persian of these poems (with a transliteration to help me) and can verify what the translators say: the original Persian is extremely blunt and not at all flowery. It is absolutely impossible to miss the point. As an example, Khayyam speaking to God: You set a thousand traps in my path And tell me, if I fall in, you'll get me! Not one speck of the cosmos moves without your will Including me. How can you call me a rebel? Thus the mathematician exposes the perils inherent in an omniscient, omnipotent God-concept: predestination (which arrived in Europe 500 years later) and the death of human free-will. But the point remains that Khayyam's language is extremely blunt and impossible to misunderstand.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: After reading "The Rubaiyat," I was absolutley stunned. I have never read a more beautiful commentary on life and the world. This book's language and symbolism speaks to every human being on a very special, very personal level. I'd recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: eternal truths in poetic form...
Review: and the illustrations are instructive too. Khayyam offers the most brilliant truths in the condensed form of poetry. This is actually a scientific text, but easy to understand without mind numbing jargon. If one carefully studies this text you can come upon deep insights into the nature of the universe. The poem begins with a woman awaking from sleep and shows that life is to be enjoyed before one goes back to the eternal shores of nothingness. The searcher of truth, as shown here, goes to scholars who argue one position against another. He goes out the same way he came in; without truth. The rich man gains and gains and ends up dead with nothing to show for it. Life as Kayyam demonstrates is a magic show. It is the eternal forms taking an incarnation in this life. A show without beginning or end. A show that has its actors of genius and fool, rich man and poor man, saint and sinner, but a show nonetheless. What then does one do? Enjoy life writes Kayyam, taste the wine of life, but in a rational manner. Then when life is over one takes the camel caravan back to eternal nothingness and freedom from suffering. A most excellent and wise book. Another book I would recommend that is similar is; On the nature of the universe by Lucretius, which is outstanding and logical. These two books do not go into the endless and futile arguments of theists and atheists, but take the smatterings of truth in them. That is there is a God, but the God of the ancient philosphers ie, the unmoved mover of Aristotle. That is an eternal force that is life itself that has been putting things into motion from all eternity.
Rating:
Summary: eternal truths in poetic form...
Review: and the illustrations are instructive too. Khayyam offers the most brilliant truths in the condensed form of poetry. This is actually a scientific text, but easy to understand without mind numbing jargon. If one carefully studies this text you can come upon deep insights into the nature of the universe. The poem begins with a woman awaking from sleep and shows that life is to be enjoyed before one goes back to the eternal shores of nothingness. The searcher of truth, as shown here, goes to scholars who argue one position against another. He goes out the same way he came in; without truth. The rich man gains and gains and ends up dead with nothing to show for it. Life as Kayyam demonstrates is a magic show. It is the eternal forms taking an incarnation in this life. A show without beginning or end. A show that has its actors of genius and fool, rich man and poor man, saint and sinner, but a show nonetheless. What then does one do? Enjoy life writes Kayyam, taste the wine of life, but in a rational manner. Then when life is over one takes the camel caravan back to eternal nothingness and freedom from suffering. A most excellent and wise book. Another book I would recommend that is similar is; On the nature of the universe by Lucretius, which is outstanding and logical. These two books do not go into the endless and futile arguments of theists and atheists, but take the smatterings of truth in them. That is there is a God, but the God of the ancient philosphers ie, the unmoved mover of Aristotle. That is an eternal force that is life itself that has been putting things into motion from all eternity.
Rating:
Summary: A Poet with Timeless Vission and Passion!
Review: As an avid reader of poetry even though mostly Victorian, I recognize greatness. Through phantoms in rhythms, passion or despair, thrilling forms are shaped in a timeless prose that evokes
an awakening for the reader into the essence of human nature and love. FitzGerald's translation offers us a fashionable greeting into Omar's brilliant verse.
B.R.Akin
Rating:
Summary: Thou beside me in the wilderness
Review: Checking out of a supermarket recently with only a newspaper, a bottle of wine, and a long loaf of French bread, I remarked to the clerk, "All we need is thou sitting beside me in the wilderness." She looked at me as if I had either lost my mind or was suggesting an indecent proposal. Can our education have slipped so far that high schoolers no longer sigh over this marvelous book? These four line verses contain a wealth of thoughts and revealations which can be found no where else in literature. No home should be with out Omar the Tentmaker, who has, after all, been advising us since 1151 and still beats the sindicated columnists.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time With This Mush!
Review: Don't waste your time with this trite collection of vapid, paganistic, intellectually lazy and self-indulgent quatrains. The soul of Persia and Persian literature is poorly represented here. You are better off reading Rumi and Hafiz than this twaddle. What we have here is an unrepentant pagan being translated by a 19th Century neo-pagan, and the result is an incomprehensible, senseless mush. The writer and translator appear unwilling, or rather incapable, of plombing the depths of the questions raised here, rather opting for the trite, tired, vapid and unsatisfying answers of antiquity - -and this not out of any deep reflection, but rather as the result of intellectual laziness and epicurean self-indulgence. Make no mistake -- this is lightweight drivel.
Rating:
Summary: An intriguing literary achievement
Review: FitzGerald's "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" has been a huge
success in the English-speaking world: millions of copies
have been sold and it has been included in all the major
anthologies. It is now well-established as a minor
classic. As a result, many scholars have determined to read the
Persian original, since translations are always
unsatisfactory shadows of the glorious original (or so
we are usually told). However, while the quest for
the original quatrains by Khayyam makes an intriguing
journey, at the end one is forced to admit that the
FitzGerald poems far outshine the Persian originals! Borges wondered whether this might not be the case, but
was unable to consult the original Farsi. I have done
that (looked at the original) and can bring back the
following report: 1. Iranians in general are puzzled by the success of the
FitzGerald poem. For them, Khayyam has always been
renowned as a mathematician, philosopher, and man of
science; he wrote quatrains indeed, but is very definitely
not in the poetic league of Hafez, Sa'adi, and Rumi. 2. The standard texts of Khayyam have been stuffed with
imitations and forgeries over the centuries, so that
separating the real Khayyam from the spurious can get to
be a mare's nest. 3. FitzGerald definitely took themes, images, and moods
from Khayyam. Everyone who has ever looked into the matter
instantly realizes that his translation are very loose. And therefore, we are left to conclude that FitzGerald
composed something analogous to a "Rhapsody and Variations
on Themes of Omar Khayyam." To illustrate, consider a point made by Borges in his
lectures ("This Craft of Verse"): Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's liquor in its Cup be dry." The single word which turns the first line into something
magical and poetic is the word "left." It is very hard
to explain logically why this should be so (Borges has
a try at it) -- but in any case, that word "left" is not
in the original. What you will find in the original
are taverns, wine, cups, and cups being filled, along with
the "carpe diem" theme which has been around forever. But the beauty and the magic of the FitzGerald "Rubaiyat"
came from FitzGerald. The most impressive poetry is the
English "transation," not the Persian "original." Now there's a hat-trick for you!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Very different (and probably more accurate) Rubaiyat
Review: Fitzgerald's version of the Rubaiyat has long been one of my favorites, from a very early age. My son recently gave me Avery's version and it is ideed very different. His introduction does set the context squarely. None the less I felt there must be some relation between these versions. So far, I have been able to associate some verses from the two versions. In all cases, one or more from Avery to a single one from Fitzgerald. It would have been nice if(it were possible) the author had made some attempt to make that association. After all, the Fitzgerald version has a rather unique status. This version does not have the grace of Fitzgerald's but it is. nonetheless, worth having.
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