abu ol-fath ebn-ebrahim ’omar ol-khayyÁmi of …gray would become darwin’s leading advocate in...

ABU OL-FATH EBN-EBRAHIM ’OMAR OL-KHAYYÁMI OF NISHAPUR

May 15, Monday: Traditional date of birth of the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyam (Ghiyath al-Din Abu’l-Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi Khayyámi راه ن اب ر ب ح عم و الفت دين اب اث ال مغي يابوري ام نيش in Nishapur, the provincial capital of Khurasan in northeastern Iran, a town at an altitude of ,(خي3,920 feet. There appears to be no evidence whatever that he was born on this traditional date. It is, presumably, a pious fabrication committed by someone sometime. We think actually he was born in about 1038 to 1048, most likely 1044 — but hey, what does it matter? “Khayyam” means the tent-maker, and although generally he is considered as a Persian, it has also been suggested that he could have belonged to a tribe of Arab origin that settled in Persia. Little is known about his early life except that he was educated at Nishapur and lived there and at Samarqand for most of his life. He was a contemporary of Nidham al-Mulk Tusi. He would be the 1st to be able to solve some cubic equations, to wit, equations of degree three with the unknown raised to the third power and eventually would be recognized as the only person we know of, who was recognizably both a poet and a mathematician. Although patronage opportunities would be available to him, and although he would visit the great centers of learning in Samarqand, Bukhara, Balkh, and Isphahan in order to study and to interact with other scholars, he preferred a calm life devoted to inquiry and did not avail himself of the shah’s court. While at Samarqand he was patronized by a dignitary, Abu Tahir.

1048 CE

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

2 Copyright Austin Meredith

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM

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http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf


“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3


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Omar Khayyam was 24 when he wrote his pioneering treatise on algebra, so it would have been in about this year. The MAQALAT FI AL-JABR WA AL-MUQABILA classified many algebraic equations based on their complexity and recognized 13 different forms of cubic equation. It pioneered a geometrical approach to solving equations which involved an selection of proper conics, which is to say, the mathematician was able to solve cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle. This was the first mathematical treatise to develop the binomial expansion when the exponent is a positive integer. Al-Khayyam has been considered to be the first to find the binomial theorem and determine binomial coefficients. He extended Euclid’s work giving a new definition of ratios and included the multiplication of ratios. He contributed to the theory of parallel lines. Although he referred in this Algebra book to another of his works, on what we now know as Pascal’s triangle, this other mathematical treatise is now unfortunately lost. (Ten books and thirty monographs have survived. These include four books on mathematics, one on algebra, one on geometry, three on physics, and three on metaphysics.)

1068 CE






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As astronomer to the Saljuq Sultan, Malikshah Jalal al-Din, Omar Khayyam was one of a group that was assigned to reform the solar calendar used for revenue collections and various administrative matters. To accomplish this task, a new observatory would be constructed at Ray, Iran.

1074 CE






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March 15: As astronomer to the Saljuq Sultan, Malikshah Jalal al-Din, Omar Khayyam had been one of a group that had been assigned in 1074 to reform the solar calendar used for revenue collections and various administrative matters. A new observatory had been constructed at Ray. This day’s date marked the beginning of the so-called Jalalian or Seljuk era in accordance with their new method of solar calculation. This “Al-Tarikh-al-Jalali” calendar was more accurate than the Julian Calendar and almost as accurate as the Gregorian intercalation system which the West would embrace in DATE, in that it is accurate to within one day in 3,770 years whereas the Gregorian error amounts to 1 day in 3,330 years. Specifically, this group of scholars measured the length of the year to eleven decimal places, as 365.24219858156 days. (This is not a fixed thing, but can and does exhibit real variance from epoch to epoch due to various peculiarities of the planets and satellites of our solar system, the length of the solar year in the 19th Century having been 365.242196 days but in our own era having become, at this point, 365.242190 days.)

1079 CE






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Omar Khayyam developed a method for accurate determination of specific gravity.

Omar Khayyam authored treatises in metaphysics, RISALA DAR WUJUD and NAURUZ-NAMAH. (Ten books and thirty monographs have survived. These include four books on mathematics, one on algebra, one on geometry, three on physics, and three on metaphysics.)






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December 4, Friday:Although this is the traditional date of death of the Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet Omar Khayyam in Nishapur, Iran, it is likely that he was already deceased by 1125 CE.

1131 CE






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In solving cubics in LA GÉOMÉTRIE, René Descartes applied the approach that had been used by the astronomer and poet Omar Khayyam during the 12th Century. (Although this was not worth a lot of money, it was worthy of recognition, as below.)

Also, by the way, Descartes’s DISCOURS DE LA METHODE.

March 31, Friday: In the Cossack village of Sorochyntsi in Russia’s Ukraine, Nikolai Gogol was born, and in Suffolk, England near Woodbridge, Edward J. Fitzgerald was born.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

6 day 31 of 3 M 1809 / Our friend E Thornton appointed a meeting at the 4th hour this Afternoon for the inhabitance of the Town, from which I have just return’d & may say that it was a time of rejoicing to me finding the current of Gospel communication to flow thro’ him copiously to the people & with good Authority

1637

1809

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS






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Edward J. Fitzgerald matriculated at Cambridge University.

Edward J. Fitzgerald graduated from Cambridge University.

Edward J. Fitzgerald returned from Cambridge University to Woodbridge in Suffolk, living at Boulge.

1826

1830

1837






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35-year-old Edward J. Fitzgerald met Edward Byles Cowell, an 18-year-old who had at the age of 15 in a public library come across THE WORKS OF SIR WILLIAM JONES and who had taught himself Persian grammar — young Cowell would introduce Fitzgerald as well to Persian studies.

February 19, Monday: Henry Thoreau was written to by Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem.

My dear Thoreau,The managers request that you will lecture before the Salem Lyceum on Wednesday evening after next — that is to say, on the 28th inst. May we depend on you? Please to answer immediately, if conve-nient.Mr Alcott delighted my wife and me, the other evening, by announc-ing that you had a book in press. I rejoice at it, and nothing doubt of such success as will be worth having. Should your manuscripts all be in the printers' hands, I suppose you can reclaim one of them, for a single evening's use, to be returned the next morning; — or per-haps that Indian lecture, which you mentioned to me, is in a state of forwardness. Either that, or a continuation of the Walden experi-ment (or, indeed, anything else,) will be acceptable.We shall expect you at 14, Mall-street.

Very truly Yours,Nathl Hawthorne.

19 of 2 mo 1849: Bernard Barton died. Lucy Barton allied with Edward J. Fitzgerald to produce a selection of her father’s materials, POEMS AND LETTERS OF BERNARD BARTON, SELECTED BY LUCY BARTON, WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY EDWARD FITZGERALD (this was long before Fitzgerald had even so much as heard of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam).

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s EUPHRANOR.

1844

1849

1851

“THE QUAKER POET”




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Byles_Cowell


http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/49/1849_BernardBarton.pdf



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Edward J. Fitzgerald’s SIX DRAMAS OF CALDERON.

Edward Byles Cowell enrolled at Oxford University.

James Robert Ballantyne’s translation of the initial part of THE MAHÁBHÁSHYA (PATANJALI’S GREAT COMMENTARY ON PÁNINI’S FAMOUS GRAMMAR), WITH COMMENTARIES and A SYNOPSIS OF SCIENCE IN SANSKRIT AND ENGLISH, RECONCILED WITH THE TRUTHS TO BE FOUND IN THE NYÂYA PHILOSOPHY (Mirzapore).

Edward Byles Cowell graduated from Oxford University. Before departing for his new post in India he came across in the Bodleian Library the Ouseley manuscript of the RUBAIYAT of Omar Khayyám and dispatched a copy to Edward J. Fitzgerald.

November: Friend Bernard Barton’s daughter Lucy Barton got married with Edward J. Fitzgerald (this was a lousy idea and the couple would soon separate).

March: Edward Byles Cowell discovered in the library of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta a manuscript of Persian quatrains by Omar Khayyám, and had a copy made and sent it to Edward J. Fitzgerald in England.

August: Friend Bernard Barton’s daughter Lucy Barton and her husband of nine months, Edward J. Fitzgerald, separated.

1853

1856

1857











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With funding from the Massachusetts legislature, the opening of Professor Louis Agassiz’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (FANFARE, APPLAUSE). But Harvard College’s department of natural history was under the control of Professor Asa Gray.

In this year Professor Gray published his idea that the north American and Eurasian floras had at one time been homogeneous. He proposed that Pleistocene glaciation had separated the floras and through evolution (a new concept he had learned through personal correspondence with Charles Darwin) the species had become distinct. Gray would become Darwin’s leading advocate in US debates.

Meanwhile, at the end of this year, Darwin was publishing his ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVORED SPECIES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. As explained by Darwin, evolution is a simple change in the overall character of a population of either plants or animals. Gradual change over countless generations can lead to origination of a population sufficiently different to be called a new species. The impact of Darwin’s work has been significant in all areas of biology, including the search for natural relationships of plants and interpretations of plant adaptations and ecology.

This year would mark the publication not only of the above science but also of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s very free “translation” known as THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. Did Henry Thoreau have an opportunity to read the following?

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:And out of it, as Wind along the WasteI know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

1859

BOTANY

BIOLOGY






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This version of the “quatrains” or rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam would attract little attention until it was discovered by other artists and literary figures, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in 1860. The original verses from which Fitzgerald had drawn his inspiration consist of a collection of isolated and separate “quatrains” or robái which resemble the Japanese haiku in function, if not in form. This robái form which is the only form of poetry attributed to Khayyám has remained popular in Persian poetry and nearly every poet who has ever written in Farsi –there happen to have been one whole lot of poets who have written in Farsi– has written some at one time or another.1






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1. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (London: Bernard Quaritch, Castle Street, Leicester Square. G. Norman, Printer, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London. Small quarto. Brown paper wrappers, 75 quatrains, 22 notes). By way of contrast, here is the most recent publication of these quatrains, by Ali Taghdarreh, done in 2008:






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OMAR KHAYYAM,

THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA.

BY

EDWARD J. FITZGERALD

(1859; REVISED IN 1868, 1872, AND 1879)

Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latterhalf of our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of ourTwelfth Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiouslytwined about that of two other very considerable Figures intheir Time and Country: one of whom tells the Story of all Three.This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier to Alp Arslan the Son, and MalikShah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrestedPersia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, andfounded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe intothe Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat –or Testament–which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future Statesmen —relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59,from Mirkhond’s HISTORY OF THE ASSASSINS.

One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was theImam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored andreverenced, — may God rejoice his soul; his illustriousyears exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universalbelief that every boy who read the Koran or studied thetraditions in his presence, would assuredly attain tohonor and happiness. For this cause did my father sendme from Tus to Naishapur with Abd-us-samad, the doctorof law, that I might employ myself in study and learningunder the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towardsme he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and ashis pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion,so that I passed four years in his service. When I firstcame there, I found two other pupils of mine own agenewly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated BenSabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and thehighest natural powers; and we three formed a closefriendship together. When the Imam rose from hislectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to eachother the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a nativeof Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah’s father was oneAli, a man of austere life and practise, but hereticalin his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me andto Khayyam, “It is a universal belief that the pupilsof the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even






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if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one ofus will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?”We answered, “Be it what you please.” “Well,” he said,“let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortunefalls, he shall share it equally with the rest, andreserve no pre-eminence for himself.” “Be it so,” weboth replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged ourwords. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorassan toTransoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul; and whenI returned, I was invested with office, and rose to beadministrator of affairs during the Sultanate of SultanAlp Arslan.

He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his oldschool-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share inhis good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizierwas generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in thegovernment, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier’s request;but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the mazeof intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attemptto supplant his benefactor, he was disgraced and fell. Aftermany mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of thePersian sect of the Ismailians, a party of fanatics who had longmurmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under theguidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D. 1090, he seizedthe castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which lies inthe mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was fromthis mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among theCrusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terrorthrough the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where theword Assassin, which they have left in the language of modernEurope as their dark memorial, is derived from the hashish, oropiate of hemp-leaves (the Indian bhang), with which theymaddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation,or from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we haveseen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur. One of thecountless victims of the Assassin’s dagger was Nizam ul Mulkhimself, the old school-boy friend.2

Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but notto ask for title or office. “The greatest boon you can conferon me,” he said, “is to let me live in a corner under the shadowof your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, andpray for your long life and prosperity.” The Vizier tells us,that when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, hepressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200mithkals of gold from the treasury of Naishapur.

At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, “busied,” addsthe Vizier, “in winning knowledge of every kind, and especiallyin Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence.Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtainedgreat praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultanshowered favors upon him.”

When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was

2. Some of Omar’s Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], “When Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, ‘Oh God! I am passing away in the hand of the wind.’”






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one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result wasthe Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king’snames) — “a computation of time,” says Gibbon, “which surpassesthe Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.”He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled“Ziji-Malikshahi,” and the French have lately republished andtranslated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra.

His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker,and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhapsbefore Nizam-ul-Mulk’s generosity raised him to independence.Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from theiroccupations; thus we have Attar, “a druggist,” Assar, “an oilpresser,” etc.3 Omar himself alludes to his name in the followingwhimsical lines: —

“’Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,Has fallen in grief’s furnace and been suddenly burned;The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!’

We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and thatrelates to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface whichis sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in thePersian in the Appendix to Hyde’s VETERUM PERSARUM RELIGIO, p. 499;and D’Herbelot alludes to it in his BIBLIOTHEQUE, under Khiam.4 —

It is written in the chronicles of the ancients thatthis King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapurin the year of the Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in sciencehe was unrivaled, — the very paragon of his age. KhwajahNizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relatesthe following story: “I often used to hold conversationswith my teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one dayhe said to me, ‘My tomb shall be in a spot where thenorth wind may scatter roses over it.’ I wondered at thewords he spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.5

Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I wentto his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outsidea garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched theirboughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowersupon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them.”

Thus far –without fear of Trespass– from the Calcutta Review.The writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar’s Grave,was reminded, he says, of Cicero’s ACCOUNT OF FINDING ARCHIMEDES’ TOMBAT SYRACUSE, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsendesired to have roses grow over him; a wish religiouslyfulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, toreturn to Omar.

3. Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling.4.“Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle,” no part of which, except the “Philosophe,” can apply to our Khayyam.5. The Rashness of the Words, according to D’Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: “No Man knows where he shall die.” –This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally –and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed –so pathetically told by Captain Cook –not by Doctor Hawkworth –in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, “Oreo’s last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him ‘Stepney’; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then ‘Stepney Marai no Toote’ was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, ‘No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.’”






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Though the Sultan “shower’d Favors upon him,” Omar’s EpicureanAudacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askancein his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especiallyhated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, andwhose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript ofthe Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under whichOmar would not hide. Their Poets, including Hafiz, who are (withthe exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia,borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar’s material, but turning it toa mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People theyaddressed; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; askeen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and delighting in acloudy composition of both, in which they could floatluxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and theNext, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serveindifferently for either. Omar was too honest of Heart as wellof Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of findingany Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set aboutmaking the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soulthrough the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them,than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they mightbe. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was notexorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perversepleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that ofthe Intellect, in which he must have taken great delight,although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in commonwith all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has neverbeen popular in his own Country, and therefore has been butscantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilatedbeyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are sorare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, inspite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is nocopy at the India House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale ofParis. We know but of one in England: No. 140 of the OuseleyMSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. Thiscontains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the Asiatic Society’s Libraryat Calcutta (of which we have a Copy), contains (and yetincomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds ofRepetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy ascontaining about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the LucknowMS. at double that number.6 The Scribes, too, of the Oxford andCalcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest;each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), takenout of its alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology;the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Noticeprefixed to the MS.) to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar’smother asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus: —

“O Thou who burn’st in Heart for those who burnIn Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn,How long be crying, ‘Mercy on them, God!’Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?”

The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.

“If I myself upon a looser CreedHave loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,

6. “Since this paper was written” (adds the Reviewer in a note), “we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.”






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Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:That One for Two I never did misread.”

The Reviewer,7 to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar’s Life,concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both asto natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by theCircumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle,strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Heartspassionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from theirCountry’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it;but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by suchbetter Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them,had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with suchmaterial as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with thetheory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and actingby a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himselfinto a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, satdown to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe whichhe was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his ownsublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with thelurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator andthe Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any socomplicated System as resulted in nothing but hopelessNecessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter orhumorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficientglimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensualpleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himselfwith speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit,Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start thanto run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sportat last!

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat(as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are moremusically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each offour Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes allrhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank.Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate lineseems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last.As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat followone another according to Alphabetic Rhyme — a strange successionof Grave and Gay. Those here selected are strung into somethingof an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the“Drink and make-merry,” which (genuine or not) recurs over-frequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sadenough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more aptto move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, aftervainly endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and tocatch some authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO-DAY (which has outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Groundhe had got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping fromunder his Feet.

Edward J. Fitzgerald8

7. Professor Cowell.8. Actually I took this from the 3d Edition, not of 1859 but of 1872.






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1st pirated edition of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (Madras, India).

2d version of THE RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM by Bernard Quaritch in London (again anonymously).

1st American edition of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (plus, his 2d version in a limited private printing).

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (2d Edition. London: Bernard Quarkch, Piccadilly. John Childs and Sons, Printers. Quarto. Paper wrappers, 110 quatrains, 25 notes).

Also a newly revised version of RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (London: Bernard Quaritch, Piccadilly. Quarto, half Roxburghe, maroon cloth. 101 quatrains).

1st published American edition of RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE, based on Edward J. Fitzgerald’s 3d version of 1872.

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM AND THE SÁLAMÁN AND ABSÁL OF JÁMI. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (4th version, together with his reduced translation of the Salaman and Absal story by Jami. Bernard Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly, London. Fcap. 4to, half Roxburghe. 101 quatrains).

1862

1868

1870

1872

1878

1879






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Edward J. Fitzgerald died and the moving finger moved on.

1st illustrated edition of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s THE RUBAIYAT, published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston.

LETTERS AND LITERARY REMAINS OF Edward Fitzgerald, edited by William Aldis Wright in 3 volumes. London: Macmillan and Co., and New York (this contained the 5th version of his THE RUBAIYAT).

Publication of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s version of Attar’s CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS, together with a version of Salaman and Absal.

Publication of a definitive edition of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s LETTERS AND LITERARY REMAINS, with details of all editions of his translation of the RUBAIYAT.

1883

1884

1889

1899

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The attorney Clarence Darrow provided a critical essay for a new edition of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s translation of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam.

September 10, Wednesday: From this day until Monday the 15th, US forces would yet again be needing to protect American lives and interests in Honduras during election hostilities.

The attorney Clarence Darrow quoted from Edward J. Fitzgerald’s translation of the quattrains of Omar Khayyam in the summation of his plea for mercy for the murderers Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb before an Illinois judge:

I feel that I should apologize for the length of time I havetaken. This case may not be as important as I think it is, andI am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friendsthat I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich.If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hopewill be that for the countless unfortunates who must tread thesame road in blind childhood that these poor boys have trod—thatI have done something to help human understanding, to temperjustice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persianpoet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I canvision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in thehearts of all.

“So I be written in the Book of Love,“I do not care about that Book above.“Erase my name or write it as you will,“So I be written in the Book of Love.”

They were then sentenced to life in prison plus 99 years for the kidnapping and murder of Robert Franks (Loeb would be killed by a fellow prisoner in 1936, and after 33 years of imprisonment Leopold would be paroled in 1958, dying at the age of 66 in 1971).

Moslems massacred Hindus in Kohat, Northwest Frontier Province, India.

1919

1924

US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb



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Concord’s “Great Elm,” or “Whipping Post Elm,” or “Town House Elm,” or as it had been known by Henry Thoreau, “Jones Elm,” ravaged by insects and damaged as it had been by the hurricane of 1938, was cut back to a standing trunk (which itself would be turned into kindling during the following spring).

Swami Govinda Tirtha’s THE NECTAR OF GRACE: OMAR KHAYYAM’S LIFE AND WORKS (Kitabistan, Allahabad).

During the early 1940s we know that, in Europe, the poet Ezra Pound, despite his virulent antisemitism,9 despite his affection for Hitler and Mussolini, despite his growing respect for Nazism and Fascism, in fact had been rereading Thoreau with enthusiasm!

Maybe he was being influenced? –Maybe enough contact might have brought this man back from his delusions? –Tugged him back from the rabid brink? Maybe, but we’ll never know — for this didn’t have a chance to happen. In this year, when Pound applied for permission to return to the USA, he got rebuffed by the federal government. “Get lost,” he was told in effect, “for we don’t need you.” Until 1943 therefore the poet would be broadcasting pro-fascist propaganda in English on Rome radio.Was this man unredeemable? Was the Jones Elm a goner? Did we chop them up unnecessarily? –Does this Pound thingie amount to one of the great missed opportunities in our history? Was the publication of that volume on Khayyam’s poetry by Swami Tirtha the sole event of lasting significance during this eventful year?

1941

9. “... my worst mistake was the stupid suburban anti-Semitic prejudice, all along that spoiled everything ... I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron ... I should have been able to do better ....”

THE NECTAR OF GRACE

WORLD WAR II




http://archive.org/stream/nectarofgrace031160mbp#page/n9/mode/2up



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In his A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, Bertrand Russell remarked that Omar Khayyam was the only person of whom he was aware, who had been both a poet and a mathematician.

Alireza Taghdarreh’s translation of the RUBAIYAT of Omar Khayyam into English:

1945

2008






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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 20 Miles Avenue, Providence RI 02906. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: April 12, 2013

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

mailto:[email protected]


Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?



Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.



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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.

Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious






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deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <[email protected]>.Arrgh.




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abu ol-fath ebn-ebrahim ’omar ol-khayyÁmi of …gray would become darwin’s leading advocate in...

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