Omar Khayyam’s Bodleian Rubaiyat Retransmogrified: The Text

By Austin P. Torney

Herein are the 158 quatrains by Omar Khayyam from the Bodleian Rubaiyat retransmogrified, more than 100 of them omitted by FitzGerald. I’ve added 14 more that came to me, as a kind of ending, so there are 174 quatrains altogether.

Coumans’ quatrain correspondence table at his fine website, showing the Bodleian Rubaiyat manuscript’s various public domain quatrains’ translations and/or stylizations, allows one to home in on the real Omar Khayyam by reading between the lines of literal and the poetic.

How ever so many quatrains dealing with drinking came to be written indicates how prime the theme of wine was meant to be, or at least the useful connections to thereof, plus the connotation of drinking wine extending unto the enjoyment of life in in general through its drinking in. Nevertheless, descriptions of total drunkenness are unmistakable and ever-present.

To force myself to really get into it, instead of just tending to skim, I took on the daunting task of totally re-transmogrifying them, excluding FitzGerald’s, for the most part, to make them new and different, but great, too, by absorbing them all, then vaporizing them, and redistilling them, with some of my own take, too, into reflected but new Persia-fumes faithful to the spirit of Omar.

For more conciseness, preciseness, readability, and speakability, I also required ten-syllable lines and the usual rubaiyat rhyming scheme, but with different and even more difficult rhyme words when possible. FitzGerald employed only 35 directly, so there is much that is new, and many of those are quite astounding. What a windfall!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin P. Torney
• Release date: Mar 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310264085

Austin P. Torney

Austin began writing for real around the age of forty, a respite from working as an Information Engineer in the field of Computer Science, doing programming, an art, as it turned out. He calls himself a humanist, and is one who enjoys the liberal arts, utilizing science, for it pervades every discipline. He is currently retired and lives in the mountains of Poughquag, NY, near the Appalachian Trail. He enjoys tennis, writing, fun, humor, thinking, sleeping, poetry, music, dining, travel, romance, reading, swimming, and life.

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Introduction

Coumans’ quatrain correspondence table at his fine website shows the Bodleian Rubaiyat manuscript’s various public domain quatrains’ translations and/or stylizations, and so these allow one to home in on the real Omar Khayyam by reading between the lines of literal and the poetic.

How ever so many quatrains dealing with drinking came to be written indicates how prime the theme of wine was actually meant to be, or at least the useful connections to thereof, and the idea of drinking wine extending unto the enjoyment of life in general through life’s drinking-in. Nevertheless, descriptions of total drunkenness are unmistakable and ever-present.

To force myself to really get into the manuscript, instead of just tending to skim, I took on the daunting task of pretty much totally re-transmogrifying them all, but excluding FitzGerald’s, for the most part, to make them new and different, but great, too, by absorbing them all, then vaporizing them, and redistilling them, with some of my own take, as well, into reflected but new Persia-fumes faithful to the spirit of Omar.

For all the more conciseness, preciseness, readability, and speakability, I also required ten-syllable lines and the usual rubaiyat rhyming scheme, but with different and even more difficult rhyme words when possible. FitzGerald employed only 35 directly, so there is much that is new, and many of those are quite astounding. What a windfall of a find due to their consolidation in one place!

Let’s call FitzGerald’s renderings to be about 40, since he got two from a couple and also used some bits and pieces. His Rubaiyat of 114 quatrains, of which about 70 he obtained from other manuscripts, made for the greatest poem in history.

—Austin P. Torney

P. S. Extra from Omar’s vapours after the manuscript’s end.

1

Ne’er I’ve strung Thy rosarium deeds pearled

Nor swabbed sin’s