Sipping From The Rubaiyat's Chalice

By Martin Kimeldorf

During the 1100s, Omar Khayyám contributed to the fields of astronomy, math, poetry, and philosophy. This Renaissance man questioned the orthodoxy and academics of his time. His poetry celebrates enjoying simple pleasures. Then 700+ years later in 1859 the bohemian English poet Edward FitzGerald made the defining translation of Khayyám’s Rubáiyát. The verse resonated deeply with the 19th and 20th Century artists, writers and everyday people looking for meaning and comfort.

This symbolic East-West collaboration became the most widely read, translated and published poem in the modern literature. Now over 150 years later this magical work is being rediscovered by Millennial to Boomer generations.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line...

...Ah, make the most of what we may yet spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Kimeldorf
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386134671

Book preview

PREFATORY MAP

This preface is written by Barbara Cooke, my highly regarded editor and Rubáiyát-lover. In this front piece she charts the ebb and flow of this book, mapping the various tributaries pouring into my river of words.

—Martin Kimeldorf

Whether traveling to new lands or revisiting common territory, maps enhance the experience. They point out the basic path and also show the byways that branch off in diverse directions. My Prefatory Map serves a similar purpose, presenting you with an overview and highlighting the many possible side trips available in this book. These serendipitous wanderings may actually turn out to be the highlights of your journey.

Martin Kimeldorf’s Sipping from the Rubáiyát’s Chalice: My Journey with the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám unveils the landscape behind the mystical, lyrical poetry of one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages, a Persian polymath (Renaissance man). Khayyám looked at both the world around him and the world within his own heart and soul in a quest for discovering life’s meanings.  In this book, Kimeldorf invites you to join him on a similar journey. He deploys different styles and internal themes blending them within personal narrative, history, philosophy, poetry and speculation. 

In Part I, Kimeldorf shares a very personal history of how he was introduced to the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. He describes how his childhood introduction to the Rubáiyát led to an evolving lifelong appreciation of the poetry. He shares how the poetry helped him to cope with later challenges and find a deeper meaning in his near-death experience. Kimeldorf’s Rubáiyát Memoir includes a wide range of lessons he has learned through Khayyám’s poetry. Topics include laughing at life’s irony, remaining skeptical of both science and religion, and how pondering our mortality teaches us a great deal about life itself. In addition, Kimeldorf introduces some of his own poetry written in the Omarian style.

In Part II, travelers are asked to pause in their journey to drink in several of the author’s favorite verses.  Kimeldorf has uniquely arranged the quatrains by topic, rather than in the order they appear in published collections. This gives you the advantage of focusing on distinct topics while pondering the deeper meanings of the verses.

As Kimeldorf sipped deeper from the Rubáiyát’s chalice, he discovered the amazing similarities between the two key figures responsible for the collection of poems we have today. He reveals an invisible and powerful thread connecting the author Omar Khayyám with his most famous translator Edward FitzGerald. Part II shows how, while separated by centuries in time, they lived in similarly changing social, political and religious environments. On a personal level they faced similar challenges. This similarity likely enhanced FitzGerald’s understanding of Khayyám ’s poetry, and thereby contributes to ours as well. Part II concludes by returning you to the historic times when the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám nourished the poets, writers, thinkers and artists in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Refreshed by the Rubáiyát’s beauty, Kimeldorf swirls the contents of the Rubáiyát’s chalice once again in Part III to show how Khayyám’s poetry and approach to life have inspired and connected with artists throughout the ages.  He spirals his analogy out to include cave paintings, contemporary graffiti and street art, and art on interstellar spacecraft.  His commentary touches down on the most inventive and frightening disruptive events of 2016: granting the Nobel Prize for Literature to the prolific and mercurial Bob Dylan, and handing over the American economic and military might to the unpredictable and unsettling Donald Trump party.

As I read an advance copy, I returned at times to the Rubáiyát volumes gathering dust on my bookshelf. As I reviewed and reminisced, I re-discovered two editions passed along to me by my grandfather.  Each book contained pencil checkmarks of quatrains that spoke to his mind and heart.  It has been a joy to see how the marked verses mirror universal truths belonging to most of the major religions.  I now add Kimeldorf’s book to the library shelf holding my Rubáiyát collection.

I join with Martin in hoping your experience with this book will be enlightening and inspiring. All best wishes in your journey....

—B.E. Cooke

INTRODUCTION

You are holding my personal homage to a favorite Persian poem. I, and many others, feel the Victorian Englishman Edward FitzGerald provided the best transformation from the Persian into English. The Englishman’s rendering of the Iranian’s poetry was entitled the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.In the end, this is a tribute to both the English and Persian poets.

An Omarian Martini is built with an ironic wink, an ounce of fatalism and epicurean delight; stirred, not shaken, and poured into a chalice. My father introduced me to the work when I was about eight years old. I have recited the verse out loud when toasting special occasions. And during challenging, painful times, I found comfort in sipping from the Rubáiyát’s chalice. This special cocktail has accompanied me all my life.

Appreciating the Grand Collaboration

I did not realize until my sixth decade that the Rubáiyát is not so much a translation but rather a majestic collaboration between a genius Persian poet/scientist/philosopher and a bohemian/Victorian/free-thinking poet. This magical collaboration across time and space, between East and West has special import to us today. It illustrates an alternative to the current windy hateful rhetoric promoting nativism, invasion, jihadist exploits, xenophobia, regime change, and war. The collaboration between Fitzgerald and Omar began a little over 150 years ago, and now we need that spirit more than ever.

Over time I have come to view the Omar-Edward team first and foremost as a pair of healthy skeptics, lovers of both science and mysticism. These epicurean souls delighted in simple pleasures. I read them both as humanists and progressive freethinkers. The poets struck an anti-authoritarian pose that excluded dogmatic fundamentalism from their view.

Omar and Edward both experienced enough delights and sorrows to appreciate the impermanent nature of our destinies. Many lines are about the shortness of life and the unknowable future. The poems outline our individual insignificance in the larger scheme of things. Still the poets found ways of infusing their worldview with wit, hope and joy. They understood that an awareness of our mortality increases our focus on the time we have left. This sobering outlook does not mean we must live in the shadow of death, rather it is a call to pursue the good things in life—in the here and now.

These gourmets of the soul pursued the pleasures of wine, love, and reading poetry beneath a spreading tree as they contemplated the eternal horizon. Their brightest verses are filled with romance and are often expressed in the exciting language of longing and ecstasy. Our two soul-brothers found solace in the human connection.

Their readers have found enjoyment or comfort while reciting the verse during celebratory, challenging, or reflective moments. In the process, many of their readers have deepened their appreciation for fatalistically accepting their life story as it unfolds. These booklovers have come to view their own personal stories in a more complete and satisfying frame of mind.

In Praise of the Scholars Who Came Before

While I claim no academic expertise, I am deeply thankful to those experts and authors who took the time to reintroduce the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in to our pulsing 21st Century. I profited greatly from those scholars who expanded my understanding of the wisdom found in the Rubáiyát’s chalice. With so many works being recently released, it is beginning to feel like an Omarian mini-Renaissance could be unfolding before us.

While I consulted many sources online and through correspondence, I am particularly reliant on three well-researched and masterful books. The first book to school