Genre: Poetry
Chapter: 6
Listen: 3
The translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald has remained the most celebrated rendering in English of the Persian poet’s work. While several other scholars produced their own translations of the Rubaiyat, yet others contented themselves by just paraphrasing the work of Fitzgerald. This recording features three reworkings of previously published translations. Arthur Guiterman and Ruel William Whitney based their renderings on the Fifth Edition of Fitzgerald’s translation and Richard Le Gallienne, a distinguished poet in his own right, compiled his version from a variety of sources, in particular the prose translation by Justin Huntly McCarthy. The edition of the Le Galliene version used in this recording is a special selection made for an American friend by the poet from his larger collection of 261 quatrains, which has previously been recorded for LibriVox. (Summary by Algy Pug)