« Sois heureux un instant, cet instant c'est ta vie ».
Remède à tous nos états d'âmes, la lecture des Quatrains d' Omar Khayy m est une joie dont on ne se lasse pas.
Le poète perse du XIe siècle appelle aux plaisirs simples, aux soirées amicales faites d'ivresse, de musique et de danse.
Une ode à la liberté toujours aussi lue, citée et adorée dans le monde entier.
Omar Khayyam célèbre ici les femmes et la beauté, l'ivresse et la poussière du néant. Ennemi de l'esclavage de la pensée, il s'élève aussi dans ces vers contre l'imposture religieuse et politique. Mystique en apparence, débauché en réalité, préférant les jouissances de l'éphémère aux vérités érigées en dogmes, Khayyam ne souhaite à l'humanité qu'ivresse et amour. Le manteau des explications mystiques couvre, dans ses poèmes, toutes les hardiesses. Qu'un pareil livre ait pu circuler librement dans un pays musulman ne laisse pas de surprendre : la littérature européenne peut-elle citer un ouvrage où toute croyance soit niée avec une ironie si fine et si amère ?
Né en 1048 à Nishapour en Perse, Omar Khayyam a contribué à la réforme du calendrier en 1079. Après une période d'activité scientifique intense, il choisit de se retirer de la vie publique. Éminent savant mais être épris de liberté, il s'éloigne vers 30 ans du pouvoir. Mathématicien et astronome, ses calculs sur l'infiniment grand l'ont rendu proche de l'infiniment petit. À force de sonder le ciel, il a mesuré la durée dérisoire des hommes. Ce buveur invétéré meurt probablement mort en 1131.
The best-loved, bestselling poem ever published - a poem that embraces the theme 'seize the moment'
'One thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies'
The epic, beautiful poem Rubaiyat is widely attributed to Omar Khayyam. As much a philosopher as a poet, he was a Persian astronomer, who praised the beauties of nature, the essence of love, the mysteries of existence, the limits of private life and the joys of wine.
Translated in 1857 by Edward Fitzgerald it was originally published in English anonymously, but was later discovered and promoted by the Pre-Raphaelites, who would have emphathised with many of the poem's themes.
Published here as part of the Great Poets series, it is without doubt one of the greatest works of literature of all time.
Omar Khayyam pratique, en toute sérénité d'âme, « l'indifférence à la foi et au doute ». Ni l'étude, ni le raisonnement, ni l'intuition ne peuvent nous éclairer, et l'impuissance est égale de ceux qui par la science ou par la religion espèrent résoudre l'énigme de ce monde. Nous n'atteignons à aucune vérité et il n'est pas de bonheur ou de châtiment supraterrestre. Entre les deux néants qui la limitent, la vie n'est que le temps d'une respiration. Sachons en tirer des joies précaires. Le vin, l'amour des femmes, la lune sur les terrasses, la flûte de l'Irak dans les vergers, le vent frais du matin, les roses à peine écloses, voilà la seule réalité de nos jours qui passent comme un songe. Après l'Ecclésiaste, il nous répète de cent façons « Tout est vanité et poursuite du vent, » mais il ajoute : « Réjouis-toi dans le présent : c'est là le but de la vie. » La pénétration de la pensée, son aigu, la qualité cristalline de la forme, la richesse contenue des images, l'absence de toute amplification lyrique, mettent Omar Khayyam au rang des plus rares poètes.
One of the greatest works of poetry in history, this lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet on subjects such as life, death, love, God and destiny.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward Fitz-Gerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A Persian ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts per line, hence the word "Rubáiyát" , meaning "quatrains". The translations that are best known in English are those of about a hundred of the verses by Edward FitzGerald . Of the five editions published, four were published under the authorial control of FitzGerald. The fifth edition, which contained only minor changes from the fourth, was edited after his death on the basis of manuscript revisions FitzGerald had left. FitzGerald also produced Latin translations of certain rubaiyat. As a work of English literature FitzGerald's version is a high point of the 19th century and has been greatly influential. Indeed, The term "Rubaiyat" by itself has come to be used to describe the quatrain rhyme scheme that FitzGerald used in his translations: AABA. However, as a translation of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, it is not noted for its fidelity. Many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to any one of Khayyam's quatrains at all. Some critics informally refer to the FitzGerald's English versions as "The Rubaiyat of FitzOmar", a nickname that both recognizes the liberties FitzGerald inflicted on his purported source and also credits FitzGerald for the considerable portion of the "translation" that is his own creation. In fact, FitzGerald himself referred to his work as "transmogrification". "My translation will interest you from its form, and also in many respects in its detail: very unliteral as it is. Many quatrains are mashed together: and something lost, I doubt, of Omar's simplicity, which is so much a virtue in him" .
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.
In 1867 Jean Baptiste Nicolas , scholar and career diplomat, published the first major French translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This version is in prose and the collection contains 464 verses.In Nicolas' view, Omar was no Epicurean reveler but rather a relentless spiritual seeker - his frequent allusions to wine and lovers are metaphors, expressive of a divine discontent that can only be resolved by union with a mystical beloved. However, most other translators and commentators regard Omar as a man who sampled and enjoyed both earthly and philosophical delights.In 1903 Frederic Rolfe, the self styled "Baron Corvo", published an English translation of Nicolas' version. In the same year Robert Arnot published a collection of translations which also included an English version of Nicolas' text. While both these translations are in prose, Rolfe's version, with its heraldic and evocative verbiage, and its presentation of Omar as a more rounded personality than Nicolas' etiolated mystic, can be considered, as with Fitzgerald's celebrated translation, as an independent work of art.
