Edward FitzGerald and His Rubaiyat

by

Frank. X. Roberts, Ph.D.

This piece by occasional columnist Frank Roberts grew out of a literary factoid I had in the Literaria du Jour section on Sunday, April 25. “I found the entry,” Frank wrote, “somewhat inaccurate and more than somewhat misleading in places.  So I have been motivated to produce the attached article which I hope you will accept for publication in a future BibliOpinion column.” I am always open to being corrected, and especially to learning anything new so I am pleased to be able to present this essay on one of the most famous translators of all time.

The English writer Edward FitzGerald, best known for his so-called “translation” of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. was born Edward Purcell in 1809. Edward’s father, John Purcell, later changed the family surname to FitzGerald (his wife’s maiden name) to protect a large inheritance left to his wife. All of Edward FitzGerald’s published works, when not published anonymously, were published under the name “FitzGerald,” with a capital “G” in the middle, the correct form of the name.

Although Edward FitzGerald was a private person and at times eccentric in behavior, he was not a real recluse. Proof of this is shown (as the title of the book suggests) by Robert Bernard Martin’s biography of FitzGerald:  With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward FitzGerald (1985). FitzGerald had a wide circle of friends from all walks of life. He used his assumed “aloofness” only when he wished to avoid persons he did not wish to meet or to know for various reasons.

One nineteenth-century literary luminary FitzGerald knew very well was the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. The two men first met when they were students at Cambridge University and remained fast friends until Thackeray’s death in 1863. Another was the poet Alfred Tennyson who was also at Cambridge with FitzGerald. Later, after university, their friendship flourished and FitzGerald often supplied Tennyson with financial support in the lean years before Tennyson became England’s Poet Laureate and was able to support himself.

FitzGerald also knew Charles Dickens fairly well and admired his novels, but with the critical honesty with which he always approached the writing of his contemporaries. The prickly Scot, Thomas Carlyle, was another close friend of FitzGerald’s, and he often visited with Carlyle at Cheyne Row in London. FitzGerald also aided Carlyle with his historical research, especially on the Naseby battlefield (where FitzGerald’s father owned land) for Carlyle’s book on Oliver Cromwell.

It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin (born 1809) was also at Cambridge in the same period as FitzGerald. Although the two men did not know each other at the time, both were later (in 1859) to publish the two books which, each in its own way, shocked nineteenth-century sensibilities in the areas of faith and religion—Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Although FitzGerald is often thought of as a one-book author, he also published a number of other original works, and also loose translations of works by Spanish writers, and by Persian writers, among others.

In addition, FitzGerald’s extensive correspondence to friends worldwide is now recognized as one of the best collections of letters in the English language. FitzGerald’s correspondence is vastly interesting in both depth and breadth of coverage. It shows him (at least in the realm of letter writing) as open and warm in his relationships and far from aloof. FitzGerald’s collected letters are available in four volumes, edited by Alfred M. Terhune as The Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1980). For an interesting and revealing study of FitzGerald’s letters, see:  Robert Bernard Martin’s article “The Most Translatingest Man” in The American Scholar, Volume 52, No. 4, Autumn 1983.

A critical edition of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat… was published by Christopher Decker, and is the most scholarly study of the work now available. Two anniversary editions of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat… were published in 2009. Both have lengthy introductions which cover the life and writings of Edward FitzGerald. These are: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Daniel Karlin, and Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Tony Briggs. Briggs’s book also contains FitzGerald’s Bird Parliament, another of his free translations of a work by an eleventh-century Persian poet.

These two works together with an earlier Rubaiyat… edited with a long introduction by Dick Davis and published as part of the Penguin Poetry Library in 1989, and Robert Bernard Martin’s biography of FitzGerald mentioned earlier, should provide interested readers with all the basic information about Edward FitzGerald and his writings.

Finally, though much has been written about whether FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat… is a true translation or in fact an original English poem, the debate continues, especially amongst a small (perhaps ever shrinking) coterie of scholars and FitzGerald devotees. Yet one of the best summations of the pro side of the discussion was written by Charles Eliot Norton as far back as 1869.

Norton, editor of the influential North American Review, and a great promoter of FitzGerald in the United States, wrote an article in the October 1869 issue of the North American Review in which he says:  “It is the work of a poet inspired by a poet; not a copy, but a reproduction; not a translation [italics added] but a rediscovery of a poetic inspiration.”

While these early words by a highly respected critic do not settle the argument, they do state what many believe to be so—that FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat… is in fact an original English poem.

Books mentioned in this column:
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Christopher Decker (University of Virginia Press, 1997)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Daniel Karlin (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, edited by Anthony Briggs (Phoenix Books, 2009)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Penguin 1989)

Frank’s extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally  to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. Contact Frank.