Omar Khayyam and the climate

As the waters slowly settle on the ETS debate in the Senate last week, the realisation emerges that it all had very little to do with scientific argument and reason and nearly everything to do with economics and politics. Saving the planet gave way to saving face … which at least was a saving grace. 

So, as the carbon atoms are settling, an excellent escape for the enquiring mind, this week, might just be dash of poetry that has been warming the planet for the past 150 years. 

                   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. 

The notion of science and poetry exquisitely comes together in the life of the Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam (1048AD to 1123AD). Emeritus Professor Tony Briggs of Birmingham University, has chosen the 150th anniversary of Edward FitzGerald’s monumental translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to produce the most exquisite little book onthe history of the Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam himself and Edward FitzGerald, that you are ever likely to find. 

Omar Khayyam was a Persian philosopher, astronomer and poet and as a mathematical scientist gave the world the “x” we now use to name the unknown factor in an equation. In Persian he called it shiy which was to become xay in Spanish and abbreviated to X by European sums-men. And as Tony Briggs tells us, Khayyam also was the force behind the measurement of the solar year at 365.2425 days. He also found the solution of the cubic equation, and is considered the father of algebraic geometry. 

So what is he doing writing a poem that has become the most published work in the world after The Bible and Shakespeare. Well, he actually didn’t write it— or at least not The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as we know it. Edward FitzGerald did. 

Tony Briggs aim is to get Edward FitzGerald recognised as one of the world’s great poets. When FitzGerald, who had studied Persian at Cambridge, was given a copy of a ancient Persian text he found he had a mishmash of of over 100 four line stanzas — unrelated and seemingly random jottings. 

Nearly all followed a theme that implied a delight in wine and drinking. Or as Professor Briggs says, “ …the overall impression gained from the quatrains is compounded of rationalism, light cynicism and a hedonistic spirit.” 

Out of this jumble Edward FitzGerald set about to create, not a translation, but his own poetic interpretation of the basic notions set out by Khayyam. Briggs says that the poetic art is FitzGerald’s, not Omar Khayyam’s. 

                   A book of Verses underneath the Bough,
                   A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
                           beside me singing in the wilderness—
                   O Wilderness were Paradise enow!

But what an extraordinary story unfolds when we realise that the most popular writing in the world since Shakespeare should be a book of little under 20 pages of four line stanzas, written by the shyest of souls, who didn’t even put his name to his first five editions — and never lived to see the fame, of his work, as it gather popularity and spread across the world. 

Tony Briggs says of the Rubaiyat’s preoccupation with wine, “Our sadness derives not from the awfulness of living, but from too much enjoyment of it. Much of this thinking derives from the Persian, of course, but there can be little doubt that the flavour of the English version depends upon the poetic authority of FitzGerald’s lovely pentameters.” 

This is a wonderful book. Professor Briggs introduces FitzGerald, and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in a way that old readers will relish and with undiminished hope, young readers will discover. 

Yes, gone are the days when students and adults learnt a poem by heart.

The key word here is “heart”.

It is a rare bird today that can recite a poem. Even ‘modern poets’ have trouble remembering what they have written and need a page to remind them when they recite. 

And talking of birds, Tony Briggs has included a virtually unknown poem by Edward Fitzgerald, called “The Bird Parliament”. Which is an added bonus, and a delight to read. A pity we didn’t send copies to our own Parliament last week. The comparisons are extraordinary.  

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Tony Briggs, translated by Edward FitzGerald — a Phoenix hardback at $17.99 — beautifully presented—the best book bargain in town.