Rubaiyat

Rubaiyat, << ROO by yaht or ROO bee yaht, >> is the shortened form of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This title was given by English writer Edward FitzGerald to his translation of a group of short poems attributed to the Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald published four editions of the Rubaiyat—in 1859, 1868, 1872, and 1879. He changed the work considerably each time.

The title of the collection comes from the plural of the Arabic word rubai, which the Persians used to refer to a form of poetry. A rubai is a quatrain (four-line stanza) in which usually the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme with each other. Occasionally all four lines rhyme. In theory, the name rubaiyat can be used to refer to any group of such quatrains by any poet. In English, however, it is almost always used to refer to FitzGerald’s version of Khayyam.

In the original Persian, each quatrain is a separate poem. FitzGerald made a selection from the many hundreds of these poems attributed to Khayyam and arranged them into one long poem forming a continuous narrative. The narrative describes a day in the life of a disillusioned would-be philosopher. Finding no meaning in the world and its hardships, he looks for comfort in friendship, wine, and love.

Many of FitzGerald’s quatrains are frequently quoted in English. They include:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. A book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

A few of FitzGerald’s quatrains are translated from passages written by other Persian poets. One or two quatrains are entirely his own creation.