The Persian Literature Volume I Part 37

[Footnote 46: Jemshid's glory and misfortunes, as said before, are the constant theme of admiration and reflection amongst the poets of Persia.]

[Footnote 47: These medicated draughts are often mentioned in Romances.

The reader will recollect the banter upon them in Don Quixote, where the Knight of La enumerates to Sancho the cures which had been performed upon many valorous champions, covered with wounds. The Hindus, in their books on medicine, talk of drugs for the recovery of the dead!]

[Footnote 48: Zuara conducted the troops of Afrasiyab across the Jihun.

Rustem remained on the field of battle till his return.]

[Footnote 49: Manijeh was the daughter of Afrasiyab.]

[Footnote 50: Theocritus introduces a Greek singing-girl in Idyllium xv, at the festival of Adonis. In the Arabian Nights, the Caliph is represented at his feasts surrounded by troops of the most beautiful females playing on various instruments.]

[Footnote 51: Kashan is here made to be the deathplace of Alexander, whilst, according to the Greek historians, he died suddenly at Babylon, as foretold by the magicians, on the 21st of April, B.C. 323, in the thirty-second year of his age.]

THE RUBaIYaT OF OMAR KHAYYaM

[_Translation by Edward Fitzgerald_]

Introduction

It is seldom that we come across a poem which it is impossible to cla.s.sify in accordance with European standards. Yet such a poem is Omar's "Rubaiyat." If elegiac poetry is the expression of subjective emotion, sentiment, and thought, we might cla.s.s this Persian masterpiece as elegy; but an elegy is a sustained train of connected imagery and reflection. The "Rubaiyat" is, on the other hand, a string of quatrains, each of which has all the complete and independent significance of an epigram. Yet there is so little of that lightness which should characterize an epigram that we can scarcely put Omar in the same category with Martial, and it is easy to understand why the author should have been contented to name his book the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains, leaving it to each individual to make, if he chooses, a more definite description of the work. To English readers, Mr. Edward Fitzgerald's version of the poem has provided one of the most masterly translations that was ever made from an Oriental cla.s.sic. For Omar, like Hafiz, is one of the most Persian of Persian writers. There is in this volume all the gorgeousness of the East: all the luxury of the most refined civilization. Omar's bowers are always full of roses; the notes of the nightingale tremble through his stanzas. The intoxication of wine and the bright eyes of lovely women are ever present to his mind. The feast, the revel, the joys of love, and the calm satisfaction of appet.i.te make up the grosser elements in his song. But the prevailing note of his music is that of deep and settled melancholy, breaking out occasionally into words of misanthropy and despair. The keenness and intensity of this poet's style seem to be inspired by an ever-present fear of death. This sense of approaching Fate is never absent from him, even in his most genial moments; and the strange fascination which he exercises over his readers is largely due to the thrilling sweetness of some pa.s.sage which ends in a note of dejection and anguish.

Strange to say, Omar was the greatest mathematician of his day. The exactness of his fine and a.n.a.lytic mind is reflected in the exquisite finish, the subtile wit, the delicate descriptive touches, that abound in his Quatrains. His verses hang together like gems of the purest water exquisitely cut and clasped by "jacinth work of subtlest jewelry." But apart from their masterly technique, these Quatrains exhibit in their general tone the revolt of a clear intellect from the prevailing bigotry and fanaticism of an established religion. There is in the poet's mind the lofty indignation of one who sees, in its true light, the narrowness of an ignorant and hypocritical clergy, yet can find no solid ground on which to build up for himself a theory of supernaturalism, illumined by hope. Yet there are traces of Mysticism in his writings, which only serve to emphasize his profound longing for some knowledge of the invisible, and his foreboding that the grave is the "be-all" and "end-all" of life. The poet speaks in tones of bitterest lamentation when he sees succ.u.mb to Fate all that is bright and fresh and beautiful.

At his brightest moments he gives expression to a vague pantheism, but all his views of the power that lies behind life are obscured and perturbed by sceptical despondency. He is the great man of science, who, like other men of genius too deeply immersed in the study of natural law or abstract reasoning, has lost all touch with that great world of spiritual things which we speak of as religion, and which we can only come in contact with through those instinctive emotions which scientific a.n.a.lysis very often does so much to stifle. There are many men of science who, like Darwin, have come, through the study of material phenomena in nature, to a condition of mind which is indifferent in matters of religion. But the remarkable feature in the case of Omar is that he, who could see so clearly and feel so acutely, has been enabled also to embody in a poem of imperishable beauty the opinions which he shared with many of his contemporaries. The range of his mind can only be measured by supposing that Sir Isaac Newton had written Manfred or Childe Harold. But even more remarkable is what we may call the modernity of this twelfth century Persian poet. We sometimes hear it said that great periods of civilization end in a manifestation of infidelity and despair. There can be no doubt that a great deal of restlessness and misgiving characterizes the minds of to-day in regard to all questions of religion. Europe, in the nineteenth century, as reflected in the works of Byron, Spencer, Darwin, and Schopenhauer, is very much in the same condition as intellectual Persia in the twelfth century, so far as the pessimism of Omar is representative of his day.

This accounts for the wide popularity of Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat." The book has been read eagerly and fondly studied, as if it were a new book of _fin du siecle_ production: the last efflorescence of intellectual satiety, cynicism, and despair. Yet the book is eight centuries old, and it has been the task of this seer of the East to reveal to the West the heart-sickness under which the nations were suffering.

Omar Khayyam--that is, Omar the tent-maker--was born in the year 1050 at Nishapur, the little Damascus (as it is called) of Persia: famous as a seat of learning, as a place of religion, and a centre of commerce. In the days of Omar it was by far the most important city of Khorasan. The poet, like his father before him, held a court office under the Vizir of his day. It was from the stipend which he thus enjoyed that he secured leisure for mathematical and literary work. His father had been a khayyam, or tent-maker, and his gifted son doubtless inherited the handicraft as well as the name; but his position at Court released him from the drudgery of manual labor. He was thus also brought in contact with the luxurious side of life, and became acquainted with those scenes of pleasure which he recalls only to add poignancy to the sorrow with which he contemplates the yesterday of life. Omar's astronomical researches were continued for many years, and his algebra has been translated into French: but his greatest claim to renown is based upon his immortal Quatrains, which will always live as the best expression of a phase of mind constantly recurring in the history of civilization, from the days of Anaxagoras to those of Darwin and Spencer.

E.W.

OMAR KHAYYaM By John Hay

_Address delivered December 8, 1897, at the Dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, London_.

I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's translations of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's Homer, has described the sensation once for all:

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken."

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those amazing stanzas were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and death.

Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has a.s.sailed many as ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet or the translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of an antique song, or a mystification of a great modern, careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khorasan, so accomplished a man of letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusions, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this "Weltschmerz," which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? My doubt only lasted until I came upon a literal translation of the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of Fitzgerald's poem was its fidelity to the original.

In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar. It was not to the disadvantage of the latter poet that he followed so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius had appeared in the world, had sung a song of incomparable beauty and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sang it anew with all its original melody and force, and all the acc.u.mulated refinement of ages of art. It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master; each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the poets, there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half-barbarous province: Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the "Rubaiyat" have taken their place as a cla.s.sic. There is not a hill post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union.

In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in any club library. I heard them quoted once in one of the most lonely and desolate spots in the high Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the s.p.a.ce of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its waters to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise, as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of sombre majesty:--

"Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest."

I thought that sublime setting of primeval forest and pouring canyon was worthy of the lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air never vibrated to strains of more solemn music. Certainly, our poet can never be numbered among the great writers of all time. He has told no story; he has never unpacked his heart in public; he has never thrown the reins on the neck of the winged horse, and let his imagination carry him where it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant," as Browning sang.

Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eyes no glitter can dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited number, who, like Lucretius and Epicurus--without range or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth, look deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the absurd, and allegiance to arrogant authority; sufficiently conscious of fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions; with a faith too wide for doctrine and a benevolence untrammelled by creed; too wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely poets to be implacably wise.

THE RUBaIYaT

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

Before the phantom of False morning died, Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, "When all the Temple is prepared within, Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?"

And, as the c.o.c.k crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door!

You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more."

Now the New Year reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose, And Jemshid's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine, And many a Garden by the Water blows.

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine High-piping Pehlevi, with "Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!"--the Nightingale cries to the Rose That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

Whether at Nishapur or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?

And this first Summer month that brings the Rose Shall take Jemshid and Kai-kobad away.

Well, let it take them! What have we to do With Kai-kobad the Great, or Kai-khosrau?

Let Zal and Rustem bl.u.s.ter as they will, Or Hatim call to Supper--heed not you.

With me along the strip of Herbage strewn That just divides the desert from the sown, Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot-- And Peace to Mahmud on his golden Throne!

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!

Some for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow, At once the silken ta.s.sel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."

And those who husbanded the Golden grain, And those who flung it to the winds like Rain, Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

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.

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.