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

1048 CE

May 15, Monday: Traditional date of birth of the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet يمغياث الدين ابو الفتح عمر بن ابراه Ghiyath al-Din Abu’l-Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi Khayyámi) in Nishapur, the provincial capital of Khurasan in northeastern , a town at an altitude of ,(خيام نيشابوري 3,920 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. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1068 CE

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.)

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OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM

1074 CE

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.

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1079 CE

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.)

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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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1131 CE

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.

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1637

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.

1809

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 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

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1826

Edward J. Fitzgerald matriculated at Cambridge University.

1830

Edward J. Fitzgerald graduated from Cambridge University.

1837

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

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1844

35-year-old Edward J. Fitzgerald met , 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.

1849

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: 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 ). “THE QUAKER POET”

1851

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s EUPHRANOR.

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1853

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s SIX DRAMAS OF CALDERON.

Edward Byles Cowell enrolled at Oxford University.

1856

James Robert Ballantyne’s of the initial part of THE MAHÁBHÁSHYA (PATANJALI’S GREAT COMMENTARY ON PÁNINI’S FAMOUS GRAMMAR), WITH COMMENTARIES and A SYNOPSIS OF SCIENCE IN 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 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).

1857

March: Edward Byles Cowell discovered in the library of 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.

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1859

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 BOTANY 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 BIOLOGY 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 Waste I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

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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 , 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 OMAR KHAYYAM 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 latter half of our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the 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 the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced, — may God rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honor and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah’s father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practise, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, “It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even

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OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us 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 fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself.” “Be it so,” we both replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan. He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier’s request; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians, a party of fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D. 1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin, which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur. One of the countless victims of the Assassin’s dagger was Nizam ul Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.2

Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to ask for title or office. “The greatest boon you can confer on me,” he said, “is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life and prosperity.” The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of Naishapur.

At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, “busied,” adds the Vizier, “in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered 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.’” 18 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king’s names) — “a computation of time,” says Gibbon, “which surpasses the 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 and translated 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, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk’s generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we have Attar, “a druggist,” Assar, “an oil presser,” etc.3 Omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical 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 that relates to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the Appendix to Hyde’s VETERUM PERSARUM RELIGIO, p. 499; 4 and D’Herbelot alludes to it in his BIBLIOTHEQUE, under Khiam. — It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled, — the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates the following story: “I often used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me, ‘My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.’ I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.5 Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon 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 A RCHIMEDES’ TOMB AT SYRACUSE, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, to return 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.’” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 19 HDT WHAT? INDEX

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM Though the Sultan “shower’d Favors upon him,” Omar’s Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar’s material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the Asiatic Society’s Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy), contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that number.6 The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar’s mother asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus: — “O Thou who burn’st in Heart for those who burn In 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 Creed Have 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.” 20 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM 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 as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme — a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here selected are strung into something of 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 sad enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO- DAY (which has outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.

Edward J. Fitzgerald8

7. Professor Cowell. 8. Actually I took this from the 3d Edition, not of 1859 but of 1872. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 21 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

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

1868

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

1870

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).

1872

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).

1878

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.

1879

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 . Bernard Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly, London. Fcap. 4to, half Roxburghe. 101 quatrains). 22 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1883

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

1884

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

1889

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

1899

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

1903

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.

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1919

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

1924

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. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

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 have taken. This case may not be as important as I think it is, and I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that for the countless unfortunates who must tread the same road in blind childhood that these poor boys have trod—that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love. I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts 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.

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1941

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). THE NECTAR OF GRACE

During the early 1940s we know that, in Europe, the poet , 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? WORLD WAR II

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 ....” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 25 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1945

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.

2008

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

26 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 20 Miles Avenue, Providence RI 02906. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 12, 2013

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OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

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

Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious 28 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.

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