The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
'I found Robert Wilson's 'Omar Khayyam' very readable. It will stand well in print in Scotland' EDWIN MORGAN
Product Description
Perhaps this is not so much a translation as a rendering in Scots. Rab Wilson's quatrains tackle the same themes as the original 'Ruba'iya't but with a Scottish take, not only in language but also in tone and reference. It shows that the fundamental problems of everyday existence have not really changed for any of us over the last thousand years.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Although I have a handsome face and colour. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Although I have a handsome face and colour. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WHICH BOOK OF VERSE?,
By DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
Intending purchasers of the Rubaiyat with this particular ISBN need to be wary. What I got here was exactly what I wanted, namely FitzGerald's first version, the version familiar to many of us from our schooldays as it is given in the additional poems at the end of Palgrave's Golden Treasury. FitzGerald revised the work no fewer than four times, and so far as I can see there is also a version in circulation with this same ISBN but giving one of the later texts and having a different editor as well as a different picture on the cover.
Presumably FitzGerald thought he was making improvements as he went along. For me, although some of the revised stanzas are probably better than his first attempts, and those that are completely new are very welcome, each successive version is a little weaker than the one before. He abandons, for instance, the magnificent and unique metaphor in the first quatrain, and the very effective quatrains where all four lines are made to rhyme disappear as well. The general feel of it all stays the same of course, but I sense a loss of vividness in the afterthoughts by and large. The edition as I have it is edited by Alexander Hutchison who contributes a helpful short introduction. There is in addition a set of notes at the back, and these are thoughtful and informative also. I would imagine that for Eng Lit students this little book will be a godsend at such modest cost. Enthusiasts for the poem in general will find the printing beautifully clear, and I did not spot any misprints or inaccuracies. What I wanted is what I have been given here, but that was more by luck than by judgment on my part.
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Once upon a time in Persia.....,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
"Awake! For morning in the bowl of night, has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight". Fitzgerald's (1851) masterful translation of Khayyam's 11th century poem evokes a romantic Persian landscape of minarets and rose-gardens by babbling streams. A Sufi, or religious mystic, Khayyam nonetheless extolled the virtues of wine, women and song in his humanistic view of the world. If our life on earth is so short, why not live every day as if it were our last?, he seems to say. His emphasis on the pleasures of drinking has curried much opposition from proponents of modern-day Islam, who would like to claim Khayyam as their own, but perhaps he is just using drunkenness as a metaphor for the ecstasy of love and spiritual fulfilment. For many readers, myself included, for whom the book has become a kind of textbook for life, it comes as a great relief to know that the path to happiness and spiritual enlightenment may involve no more than drinking wine in the company of friends. At this price the book is an excellent chance to fill in the gaps between the few quotations we all know and love. Give a copy to a friend as well and it will never be far from their bedside.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good edition of one of the greatest English poems.,
By
This review is from: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Kindle Edition)
'The moving finger writes; and, having writ,/Moves on.'
'Tomorrow! Why tomorrow I may be/ Myself with Yesterday's seven thousand years.' There are countless phrases that have entered into the English language from Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Its wonderfully expressed poetic fatalism and its message of 'Enjoy the day' are a delight to read. This text contains both the first edition of the poem running to 75 stanzas and the fifth edition which had 101 stanzas; so a good opportunity to see how Fitzgerald tinkered with the translation over a period of years. There is also a short life of Omar Khayyam written by Fitzgerald by way of introduction. A staple text to have on your Kindle. A second free copy of the Rubaiyat has also been recently added to the Kindle store. That also contains another Persian poem, Salaman and Absal, translated by Fitzgerald, a short life of Fitzgerald and an essay on Persian poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The two copies are complementary and as they are free it's well worth collecting them both.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
