A translated work invariably teases the reader into measuring the distance between the minds behind the endeavor - to descry the giant shoulders that prop up a mediocre translation. And the dazzling flashes of imagination that blind the reader to the ordinariness of the original. In all but the most closely related pairs of languages, the exercise of translation confronts the translator with two irreconcilable choices – fidelity to the original as against sensitivity to the aesthetics of the language in which the work is reproduced.
If Omar Khayyam is a household name today, his legacy is much indebted to the brilliance of his best known translator – Edward Fitzgerald. The following variants of the opening stanzas of the Rubaiyat amply demonstrate that Fitzgerald’s effort was more an adaptation than a translation:
From the First Edition
"Awake, for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
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."
From the Fifth Edition
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 Worshiper outside?
Echoes of History
Any commonality of historical circumstances suggested by Fizgerald’s remarkably sensitive interpretation of Khayyam, seems belied by the remoteness of the British Empire, at the peak of its ever-shining glory, from the dismal rubble of post-Sassanid Persia. But the apparent differences overlook the suffocating similarity of their social environments – Shiraz’s vineyards were wrung dry by Islamic fanatics in much the same manner as Puritans and Calvinists throttled Victorian England.
It was perhaps a desire to break free from the corsets of 19th Century England that drew Fitzgerald to a work as heretical as Khayyam’s - one, that would surely have aroused as much indignation in the medieval Islamic world as Darwin’s postulations did in turn-of-the-century Europe, had it only been more widely known.
Philosophical Debt
It is difficult to ascertain how much of the metaphorical brilliance of the Rubaiyat would survive, stripped of Fitzgerald's translation although the exotic oriental flavor of his lyricism suggests that a good part of it might. But as regards the power of Khayyam’s ideas and the keenness of his philosophical inquiry, there is no room for any such doubt. Khayyam joins a gaggle of renegade philosophers from both the Eastern and the Western traditions, in particular the Epicureans and the Samkhyas, in divining the underpinnings of modern western society - materialism and rational secularism. He makes no bones of his contempt for the comforting teleological platitudes of the Semitic religions:
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
Khayyam’s erudition in scientific disciplines, astronomy in particular, leads to a more reverential tone when he contemplates the value of knowledge but, in the end, it does not offer him any more solace than religion:
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.
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."
Degrees of Disbelief
Questioning existence and mortality can hardly be described as a novel poetic theme, even in the 11th Century. But what does stand out in the Rubaiyat is the stridence of its tirade against God and spirituality coming as it did, at a time of unyielding religious orthodoxy. It is worth comparing Khayyam with two prominent examples of skepticism from classical English poetry, both from around the Elizabethan era.
Shakespeare’s views on God have been subjected to many literary debates but the matter would appear to be settled by one of his most famous speeches:
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause...
And continuing further along Hamlet’s soliloquy:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
…When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
If Shakespeare’s agnosticism comes across as terrified and ingenuous, Milton’s cynicism is subdued, going no further than a jibe at the received wisdom of his religion, with his thinly-veiled deification of Satan in Paradise Lost:
Let us not then pursue
By force impossible, by leave obtain'd
Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state
Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek
Our own good from our selves, and from our own
Live to our selves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easie yoke
Of servile Pomp.
Words, not entirely incompatible with present-day ideas of liberty and democracy! Satan’s only vice, until Milton’s survival instincts cause him to blacken his protagonist’s character, is that his aspirations lie outside the domain of his powers. But even though his insubordination invites Heaven's deadly retribution, the Devil is poignant in remorse:
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down
Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King:
Ah wherefore! he deservd no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
Milton’s God, on the other hand is cold, distant and autocratic - cruel to the rebellious Serpent and intolerant of Eve’s fickleness but obliging, so long as His Will is honored.
Caustic Brew
Khayyam is even less charitable. His universe has a mechanistic certainty, a perpetual motion machine flagged off by a God who’s is omniscient:
And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all--HE knows---HE knows!
But not omnipotent:
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help--for it
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
Even more scandalous is his questioning of God’s intent in plotting mankind’s destiny, brought out in a beautiful allegory that is introduced in the following stanza:
For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watch'd the Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd--"Gently, Brother, gently, pray !"
Expanding on the idea in a conversation among clay pots subsequently in the poem, Khayyam delivers his damning verdict on God’s malicious errors of commission:
Then said another--"Surely not in vain
"My Substance from the common Earth was ta'en,
"That He who subtly wrought me into Shape
"Should stamp me back to common Earth again."
Another said--"Why, ne'er a peevish Boy,
"Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;
"Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love
"And Fansy, in an after Rage destroy?
None answer'd this; but after Silence spake
A Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
"What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake!"
The pent up frustration seeps out slowly at first, in a resigned acceptance of the inevitable:
While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyám the Ruby Vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to Thee--take that, and do not shrink.
But eventually explodes in a defiant crescendo of rage:
Oh, Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
IS blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give--and take!
Incidentally, the reference to Satan is not corroborated by the original, leaving the reader to wonder once again, whether the fulmination is attributable to a scientific temper outraged by Islamic dogmatism or to a reluctant Calvinist indulging forbidden passions under the cloak of a translation.
Or, as is likely to be the case, a potent mixture of both.
