From Persia to Ireland to America - The Rubá'iyat has many homes, the Rubá'iyat is beloved

The dark suede cover is faded, perhaps once a rich emerald green like the silk pages pressed into the front and back. As if the text has sat out in the sun, and passed through dozens, if not hundreds, of hands. The text is the Rubá’iyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Metrical Version Rendered into English From Various Persian Sources, translated by George Roe. The book jacket displays the title in gold, embossed in a black box, the words surrounded by smoke that rises from a censer. Sadly, part of the title is blocked by the library’s sticker coding the book. The title page includes…

Barbara J. Black’s description of the popularity of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward FitzGerald and the subsequent popularity via gift books can be summarized as  “‘instant exotica’” (64). Directly before providing this quote from George Steiner, Black states that “the Rubáiyát cannot, in short, divest itself of its oriental drag” (Black 64). Drag implies an exaggerated form of dress-up, that the text in its gift book form passed between devoted fans, is in short, an Englishman’s words dressed in an Oriental costume. As an Iranian* who grew up with…

To translate requires creativity and an openness to interpretation, as there are words and ideas which cannot be directly translated. Because of my bilingualism, despite knowing the limitations of my reading and written Farsi, I naively assumed this process would be much easier than it proved. I assumed I would go into Khayyam’s Farsi text with an ability to recognize the majority of the words, and only need the support of other texts and resources sparingly. I quickly learned that part of the openness and creativity of translation includes an ability to step back and recognize limitations…

Before arriving at Oregon State University, was George Roe’s Rubá’iyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Metrical Version Rendered into English From Various Persian Sources last available in San Francisco at Paul Elder and Company? How long had it sat on the shelf for $.75 before being marked down to $.50 [Image 1]? And when did it find its way to San Francisco? While Roe’s translation was published in New York City through Dodge Publishing, the publisher was originally founded in San Francisco in 1895, and moved to New York in 1898. Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, whose photograph is featured in…

22 August 1920

Dearest Agnes,

Your father has always known my love for poetry, especially our beloved poets back home. Tadgh Ó Donnchadha of our same Cork is a favorite for me, along with William Butler Yates, of course. I recall the first time I heard “A book of verses underneath the vine, A loaf of bread, a jug of ruby wine, And thou beside me, resting in the wild, Would make the dreary wilderness divine” - your father recited these words to me the day we learned you would come into our lives, the same day, he handed me this book, Rubá’…