THE RUBA’IYAT OF OMAR KAYYAM, translated...

THE RUBA’IYAT OF OMAR KAYYAM, translated by Peter Avery & John Heath-Stubbs (Penguin: $9.95, illustrated). A learned mathematician and astronomer, Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam (Omar, son of Ibrahim the tent maker) is known to English readers through Edward Fitzgerald’s translations of the ruba’is, or four-line verses, attributed to him. Dismissing the Fitzgerald versions as “fantasias” lacking the immediacy of the Persian originals, Avery and Heath-Stubbs offer literal translations of these celebrated verses. Their versions may be more accurate, but they suffer from an utter lack of poetic impulse. Contrast their rendering “I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry,/ Half a loaf for a bite to eat,/ Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot,/ Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm” with Fitzgerald’s “Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,/ A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse--and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness--/ And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” Poetry inevitably loses something in translation, but most readers would prefer that Kayyam lost something to Fitzgerald rather than to Avery and Heath-Stubbs.