MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IHAVE been reading this week Professor Arberry's new version of the Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyam. I trust that I have correctly spelled the title of the poem arid the name of its author. .Orientalists are touchy about such things; they suffer pain if one says " Omar " when one ought to say " Umar," or write " Rubayat " when one should write " Rubdiyat." This fresh translation of the quatrains is based upon two manuscripts which Edward Fitzgerald and Edward Byles Cowell had never seen. The first manuscript is one in the collection of Mr. Chester Beatty: it contains 172 quatrains and bears in the colophon the date of 658. Professor Arberry "needed only one glance" to realise that this manuscript was older than any other known copy of Omar Khayyam's poems. Hardly had the Beatty manuscript been reproduced and translated, when another even older manuscript was discovered at Tehran. "Again a single glance was enough: the date 604 was genuine." This, the Tehran manuscript, was immediately purchased by the University Library at Cambridge; it was found to contain some 252 quatrains and Professor Arberry has satisfied himself that the version was written only seventy- five years after the death of Omar Khayyam. These biblio- graphical facts are of importance; in the last fifty years there have been scholars who have advanced the disgusting theory that no such poet as Khayyam ever existed. "His name," said H. A. Schaeder, "must be struck out of the history of Persian literature." Even Professor Arberry was at one stage of his distinguished career inclined to fear that the name " Omar " was used as a ,convenient peg on which to hang verses of a bibulous nature. The discovery of these two ancient manuscripts now convinces him that the famous mathematician of Nishapur really did compose quatrains, that he really did recite these poems after supper, and that some of his friends learnt them by heart and subsequently wrote them down. Even so did that great Latinist, Professor A.., E. Housman, scribble some occasional verses about Shropshire lads, or that excellent mathematician, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, write books regarding the adventures of Alice in wonderland and elsewhere. So Omar lives again.
* * * * We are always assured that the Persians themselves do not regard Omar as a great poet and are irritated when we British speak of him as if he were the sole glory of their national literature. It is as if a citizen of the Uzbeg Republic, whom one had met by chance at Irkutsk, were to spend several hours expounding the glories of that greatest of English, nay of world, poets, Mr. Abraham Cowley. That is not wholly true. Persians are amused by our interest in Omar Khayam (henceforward I shall adopt my own spelling of the name) whom they regard as an elegant mystic and an excellent writer of light verse. It is incorrect to contend, as I have heard it contended, that the Persians really admire Khayam enormously, but that they hesitate -!-- express their admiration, partly because he openly advocates the drinking of wine, and partly because of his abominable blasphemies. It is not my impression that the Persians mind either of these defects very much. It is rather that they do not consider him in any way comparable to their real poets, Firdousi, Sheikh Sadi, Jalal ad-din Rumi, or Hafiz; and that they are quite justifiably hurt when foreigners place him out of his right order. I remember a former Persian Prime Minister, Ferooghi, who was also a scholar and a gentle- man, telling me that he personally would have enjoyed Khayam if we English hadn't inflated him so wrongly. In the same sort of manner do we ourselves react unkindly to English authors who are over-praised in France.
* * * * It was all the fault of Edward Fitzgerald. That lonely man managed to hit upon a tune that was so easily memorised that men and women, who had never bother.ed about poetry before, started to recite with pleasure these catchy little songs. Moreover Fitzgerald was able, by toning down Khayam's outrageous debauchery, by moderating the Persian's outbursts of angry atheism, by veiling the sex of the cypress-tall and moon-lovely beauties to whom the poems are addressed, to render such philosophy as runs through the Rubaiyat accept- able and indeed welcome to two generations of demure northerners. For the last fifty years copies of the Rubaiyat, bound in limp leather, illustrated lavishly, have graced side- tables in many a respectable home. People have been so intoxi- cated by the lilt of Fitzgerald's tune that they, have not paid strict attention to the truly horrible ethics that the poems advocate; numeros memini si verba tenerem. In fact the Fitzgerald version is not a translation at all; it is not even an accurate paraphrase. Fitzgerald omitted most of the really unpleasant poems and added bright phrases that be had thought of himself. Some of his omissions were justified, but others were not. For instance, Fitzgerald never rendered what I regard as one of Khayam's best lines : "I have learnt nothing from life except my own amazement at it." Professor Arberry's present version is, as one would have expected, far closer to the original. He has chosen for his rendering the metre of Tennyson's In Memoriam. This was a daring and successful choice. He handles those slow sequences with skill and gaiety; his metre rings out as a carillon rather than as a dirge.
Professor Arberry, in his most interesting introduction, draws attention to many of Fitzgerald's crimes. We may forgive the English poet for having omitted the leg of mutton and intro- duced a book of verse into the famous "beneath the bough" quatrain. We may forgive him for having changed Baghdad and Balkh into "Whether at Nishapur or Babylon," in that the latter version is more attuned to our English tongue. We may forgive him for his frequent introduction of sentimental associations which appealed to the mid-Victorian ear but which bore no relation at all to the Persia of A.D. 1119. We can forgive the fact that, not being in any sense an orientalist or a scholar, Fitzgerald was completely unaware that many of Khayam's lines were parodies of other poets, or grossly humorous puns on words. But it is not easy to forgive a person who pretends to be translating a foreign poet and who deliber- ately falsifies the thought and expression of that poet in order to render his verses pleasant to more modern minds. Fitz- gerald himself was not entirely devoid of humour, but his sense of the ludicrous was as gentle as the pigeons that he loved; he had no sympathy for the harsh derision of the old mathematician; so he just left it out. Professor Arberry draws attention to one specially flagrant instance of misrepresentation. The quatrain which Fitzgerald has begun with the words "And lately by the Tavern Door agape" contains in its second line A reference to "An Angel Shape." Now there is no hint at all of anything angelic in Khayam's four lines; the shape is that of a reverend elder, a pir, who is dead drunk. The Victorians did not enjoy, any more than we do, the spectacle of an intoxicated old man. Thus the pir is dismissed from Fitzgerafa's version and the utterly meaningless "Angel Shape" is introduced.
It is perhaps unkind to examine Fitzgerald's tunes too closely. " Ah, Moon of my delight that know'st no wane" is a pretty line; yet the line it is supposed to translate is harsher and more gifted: Mai malt banur-i mob ai malt ki mah, "drinks oh my moon, the wine in moonlight, since the moon . . " The Persians, when they can be persuaded to quote Omat Khayam, adopt an ironical expression; they are probably correct in so doing; but their sneer separates us very widely from Liza Lehmann. I fear that those who read Professor Arberry's fine translation will regret the lilt of Fitzgerald's paraphrase. But it is helpful to dispel illusions; therefore I beg you to buy the book, which is published by John Murray.
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