Omar Khayyam The Enigma :: essays research papers fc

PROLOGUEOmar Kahyyam was primarily a mathematician and an astronomer. He was an extremely intelligent individual who wrote many theories in physics and metaphysics. He is also attri hardlyed with the reformation of the Persian calender with seven other keen intellects to create a calender more accurate than the Gregorian calender. ironically he is cognize to the orbit today for his translated collection of lyrical quatrains called the Rubaiyat. His spiritedness and works are somewhat of a mystery because he was earlier unpopular until after his death. Yet the work he is most known and beloved for is considered to have been a gross mistranslation of both character and content.This physical composition will be divided into six partitionings. The first is the prologue. The prologue was used to declare Omar to the reader. Next there will be a apprize life-time of his life and major influences of his work. Following this will be a section on his magnum opus and only work, The R ubaiyat. This will include literary criticism of his famous work. After this there will be a brief conclusion to sum up the overall paper followed by an epilog with my opinion on Khayyam. Finally in my bibliography the reader will soak up my sources for research and my opinion on those books. I. OMAR KHAYYAM, THE ENIGMAIn the history of world literature Omar Khayyam is an enigma. No poet of any time period has received great recognition and fame through such a enormous misreading of his work. cognise today world wide, Khayyams works would undoubtable be unheard of in modern day literature in they were not translated by slope writer Edward FitzGerald. The paradox is that FitzGerald misinterpreted both Khayyam and his works in his translation to adopt an unending conflict1. FitzGerald added to his editions of the Rubaiyat a biographical sketch entitled Omar Khayyam The Astronomer Poet of Persia. In this he wrote his opinion that Khayyam was an anti-religious materialist who b elieved lifes only meaning was to be found in wine, song, and worldly pleasures 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 capability be.... He takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of sense above that of intellect, in which he moldiness have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the questions in which he, in commons with all men, was most vitally interested2.