Title Meaning

.......Rubái is a Farsi word for quatrain, a four-line poetry stanza. The plural of rubái is rubáiyát. Thus, a literal English rendering of the title of this famous poem is The Quatrains of Omar Khayyám. (Farsi is the language that has been spoken in Iran since the about the ninth century AD. It is written with Arabic characters.) 

Authors

.......The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the work of two authors, Omar Khayyám (1048-1131) and Edward FitzGerald (1809-1893). Khayyám wrote quatrains in his native Iranian language, Farsi. Each quatrain, though consisting of only four lines, stood alone as a separate work, usually an epigram or a special insight. FitzGerald translated many of Khayyám's quatrains and combined them into a single work with a central theme, carpe diem. But he also added his own insights and couched the quatrains in his own style. Some critics maintain that the poetic quality of FitzGerald's finished product exceeded that of Khayyám's original quatrains. In other words, Khayyám supplied the lumber, and FitzGerald built the house. In 1869, scholar and critic Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908) wrote in The North American Review that the Rubáiyát "is the work of a poet inspired by the work of a poet; not a copy, but a reproduction, not a translation, but the redelivery of a poetic inspiration.” In the same article, Norton, who himself was a translator of foreign-language literary works, wrote that

There is probably nothing in the mass of English translations or reproductions of the poetry of the East to be compared with this little volume [the Rubáiyát] in point of value as English poetry. In the strength of rhythmical structure, in force of expression, in musical modulation, and in mastery of language, the external character of the verse corresponds with the still rarer qualities of imagination and of spiritual discernment which it displays.

.......The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is a lyric poem in quatrains (four-line stanzas). Rather than telling a story with characters, a lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet on subjects such as life, death, love, and religion. The Rubáiyát was published in March 1859 but received little attention. However, after poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) read and praised it in 1860, the poem became highly popular. FitzGerald revised it four times thereafter so that there are five published editions of the poem in all. This study guide uses the first edition. Some changes FitzGerald incorporated in subsequent editions are significant, as in the wording of the eleventh stanza in the first edition, which became the twelfth stanza in the fifth:
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Meter and Rhyme Scheme

The poem is in iambic pentameter. In most stanzas, the rhyme scheme is aaba—that is, the first, second, and fourth lines have end rhyme. However, in a few stanzas, all four lines rhyme. Here are examples of both rhyme schemes.

Stanza 1 Rhyme Scheme: aaba

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
  And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Stanza 10 Rhyme Scheme: aaaa

With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
  Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his Throne.

Themes

Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)

.......The poet, who refers to himself as "old Khayyám," is unable to commit himself to belief in an afterlife. Consequently, he believes in living for today:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
 Before we too into the Dust Descend;
   Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
 Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and—sans End!

Wine as the Water of Life

.......In a universe that refuses to reveal the ultimate destiny of man, the only intelligent way for one to relieve the anxiety about his fate, old Khayyám says, is to drink the Lethe of wine. In its intoxicating nectar, one may forget the past and the future, living only for the pleasure of the moment. Wine, of course, can symbolize aesthetic and intellectual pleasures, as well as physical ones. 

Fate

.......Pervading the poem is a sense of helplessness against forces beyond the control of man. The universe, time, and of course fate will have their way no matter what man does to counteract their power. Stanza 51 presents fate as a Moving Finger that writes man's destiny:

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.

.......Khayyám strikes a somber, melancholy note when he continually reminds the reader that death will ultimately claim everyone. And after it does, he says, what then?
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Imagery Popularizes the Poem

.......The Rubáiyát is one of the most popular poems in the English language, thanks in good measure to the soaring imagery. Consider, for example, the first stanza:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
  And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
  And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
  The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!.

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Note: The following uses first-person point of view in summarizing and paraphrasing the speaker of the poem. Indented passages and words in quotation marks are exactly as they appear in the poem.

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare,
And those that after a TO-MORROW stare,
  A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."
(A muezzen is a crier who calls Muslims to prayer from the tower of a mosque.)

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
  One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
  Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seemed—and then no more of THEE and ME.

.........to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide
  Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"
And—"A blind understanding!" Heav'n replied.

And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
  One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
  For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give—and take!

Then said another—Surely not in vain
My substance from the common Earth was ta'en,
  That He who subtly wrought me into Shape
Should stamp me back to common Earth again."

Another said—"Why, ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;
  Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love
And Fancy, in an after Rage destroy!"

None answer'd this; but after Silence spake
A Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
  "They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What? did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. The Rubáiyát was published in 1859, the same year that Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. What do Darwin's book and the Rubáiyát have in common in terms of their attitude toward religious dogma and traditional theological opinions?
3. Why are some views in the Rubáiyát characterized as hedonistic?
4. Write an essay explaining the difficulties a writer faces when translating into English a literary work written in another language? 
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