Fitzgerald Edward: FITZGERALD, EDWARD (B. 31 March 1809 D. 14 June 1883 ), British Translator

FITZGERALD EDWARD
FITZGERALD, EDWARD (b. 31 March 1809; d. 14 June 1883; ), British translator

of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (London, 1859), as well as Jāmī’s Salāmān o Absāl (Salámán
and Absál: an Allegory, Translated from the Persian of Jámi, London, 1856) and ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭeq
al-ṭayr (Bird Parliament, first published as “A Bird’s Eye-View of Farid-uddin Attar’s Bird-
Parliament”; Fitzgerald, 1903, VII, pp. 255-312). The first of these is by far the most famous
translation ever made from Persian verse into English, and it had a considerable influence on the
development of late Victorian and Edwardian British poetry as well as the awakening of a much
wider interest, in English speaking countries and Europe, in Persian literature than had previously
been the case.
Edward FitzGerald (1809 - 1883) was an English author and poet, best known for the first
and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He was born Edward
Purcell, but his father, John Purcell assumed the name and arms of his wife's family, FitzGerald.
An amusing side-note: apparently Edward thought all of his relatives were mad, and that he was
also insane, but at least he was aware of the fact.
FitzGerald led a privileged life, growing up in both England and France, then attending
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became friends with Alfred Tennyson and William
Makepeace Thackeray, but did not show much interest striving for their literary success.
FitzGerald's first book was about his happy life at Cambridge titled Euphranor, a Platonic
dialogue in 1851.
A slow and diffident writer, FitzGerald published a few works anonymously, then freely
translated Six Dramas of Calderón (1853) before learning Persian with the help of his Orientalist
friend Edward Cowell. In 1857 FitzGerald “mashed together,” as he put it, material from two
different manuscript transcripts (one from the Bodleian Library, the other from Kolkata [Calcutta])
to create a poem whose “Epicurean Pathos” consoled him in the aftermath of his brief and
disastrous marriage.
In 1859 the Rubáiyát was published in an unpretentious, anonymous little pamphlet. The
poem attracted no attention until, in 1860, it was discovered by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and soon
after by Algernon Swinburne. FitzGerald did not formally acknowledge his responsibility for the
poem until 1876. Its appearance in the same year as Darwin’s Origin of Species, when the sea of
faith was at its ebb, lent a timely significance to its philosophy, which combines expressions of
outright hedonism (“Ah take the Cash, and let the Credit go”) with uneasy ponderings on the
mystery of life and death.
Beyond occasional contributions to periodical literature Fitzgerald does not appear to have
published anything till he wrote a short memoir of Bernard Barton, prefixed to a collection of his
letters and poems, which was made after the poet's death in 1849. In 1851 was issued 'Euphranor,
a Dialogue on Youth,' which contains some beautiful English prose. In 1852 appeared 'Polonius:
a Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances,' with a preface on proverbs and aphorisms. Both
these were anonymous. In 1853 he brought out the only book to which he ever attached his name,
'Six Dramas of Calderon, freely translated by Edward FitzGerald,' but the reception it met with at
the hands of reviewers, who did not take the trouble to understand his object, did not encourage
him to repeat the experiment. He consequently never issued, except to his personal friends, the
translations or adaptations of 'La Vida es Sueño' and 'El Mágico Prodigioso.' These translations
never professed to be close renderings of their originals. They were rather intended to produce, in
one who could not read the language from which they were rendered, something of the same effect
as is conveyed by the original to those familiar with it. On this principle he translated the
'Agamemnon' of Æschylus, which was first issued privately without date, and was afterwards
published anonymously in 1876. A year or two before his death he completed on the same lines a
translation of the 'Œdipus Tyrannus' and the 'Œdipus Coloneus' of Sophocles. But the work on
which his fame will mainly rest is his marvellous rendering of the 'Quatrains' of Omar Khayyám,
the astronomer poet of Persia, which he has made to live in a way that no translation ever lived
before. In his hands the 'Quatrains' became a new poem, and their popularity is attested by the four
editions which appeared in his lifetime. But when they were first published in 1859 they fell upon
an unregarding public, as heedless of their merits as the editor of a magazine in whose hands they
had been for two years previously. His Persian studies, which were begun at the suggestion of his
friend, Professor Cowell, first led him in 1856 to translate the 'Salámán and Absál' of Jámí. After
this he was attracted to Attar's 'Mantik-ut-tair,' and by 1859 he had made a kind of abridged
translation of it, which he called the 'Bird Parliament;' but it remained in manuscript till his death.
Fitzgerald was a great admirer of Crabbe's poetry, and, in order to rescue it from the disregard into
which it had fallen, he condensed the 'Tales of the Hall' by liberal omission and the introduction
of prose in place of the more diffuse narrative in verse. The preface to these 'Readings in Crabbe,'
in which he pleaded for more attention to a neglected poet, was the last work on which he employed
his pen.
FitzGerald's translations were popular in the century of their publication, and since its
publication humourists have used it for purposes of parody.[7]
The Rubáiyát of Ohow Dryyam by J. L. Duff utilises the original to create a satire commenting
on Prohibition.
Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten by Oliver Herford, published in 1904, is the illustrated story of a
kitten in parody of the original verses.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne by Gelett Burgess (1866–1951) was a condemnation of the writing
and publishing business.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr. by Wallace Irwin purports to be a translation from "Mango-
Bornese"; it chronicles the adventures of Omar Khayyam's son "Omar Junior" – unmentioned in
the original – who emigrated from Persia to Borneo.
Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington wrote a parody about his famous 1919 experiment to test Albert
Einstein's general theory of relativity by observing a solar eclipse.
The new Rubaiyat : Omar Khayyam reincarnated by "Ame Perdue" (pen name of W.J. Carroll)
Published in Melbourne 1943. Revisits the plaints of the original text with references to modern
science, technology and industry.
Bibliography:
A. J. Arberry, FitzGerald’s "Salámán and Absál,” Cambridge, 1956.
Edward FitzGerald, The Works of Edward FitzGerald, ed. W. A. Wright, 7 vols, London, 1903.
Idem, Edward FitzGerald, Rubaíyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition, ed. C. Decker,
Charlottesville, Va., and London, 1997.
Edward Heron-Allen, FitzGerald’s Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayam with Their Original Persian
Sources, Collated from His Own MSS., and Literally Translated, London, 1899.
R. Martin, With Friends Possessed, Princeton, 1985 (the best biography of FitzGerald).
A. G. Potter, A Bibliography of the Rubāiyāt of Omar Khayyām, London, 1929, reprint Zurich and
New York, 1994 (full textual history to 1929).
A. M. and A. B. Terhune, eds., The Letters of Edward FitzGerald, 4 vols., Princeton, 1980.

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FITZGERALD EDWARD

FITZGERALD, EDWARD (b. 31 March 1809; d. 14 June 1883; ), British translator

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