Omar Khayyam

The writer and erudite Persan Ghiyath ED-DIN Abdoul Fath Omar Ibn Ibrahim Al-Khayyām Nishabouri , more known under the name of Omar Khayyām (Persan: غياثالدينابوالفتحعمربنابراهيمخيامنيشابوري AD-dīn abū Al-fath' `umar Ben ibrāhīm xayām nīšābūrī) or of Khayyām (of the Persan one: خيام, in Arab: خَيَّميّ: manufacturer of tents ) would have been born the June 18th 1048 with Nichapur in Perse (current Iran) and dies the December 4th 1131.

One can also find his name spelled " Omar Khayam " as in the translation of Mr. F. Farzaneh and Jean Malaplate (in the edition criticizes of Sadegh Hedayat (Corti, 1993).

Biography

The life of Khayyam is surrounded by mystery, and few sources are available to enable us to recall it with precision. The researchers generally think that Omar Khayyam was born in a family from craftsmen from Nichapur (his/her father was probably manufacturing tents). It passed its childhood in the town of Balhi, where it studies under the direction of Sheik Mohammad Mansuri, one of the most famous researchers of his time. In her youth, Omar Khayyām also studies under the direction of Imam Mowaffak de Nishapur, considered as the best professor of the Khorasan. Under the direction of this Master two other people, Abou-Ali-Hassan (Nizam Al-Mulk) studied and Hassan ibn Al-Sabbah; what was going to give place to a kind of legendary pact between the three men. The popular belief wanted that any young man who studied under the orders of this eminent Imam knows one happiness day and honor. The three students, having become friendly, made the following oath: That among us who will reach glory or fortune will have to divide with equality with the two others .

After Nizam Al-Mulk became top dog of Persia, the two others will see it. Hassan Sabbah, who is ambitious, request a place with the government, which it obtains immediately and of which it was used for later to try to seize the power in the place of its benefactor. They are only after being made eliminate following this attempt that he becomes the chief of the Hashishins. Khayyam, which is less ambitious, does not require an official station, but just a place to live, study science and to request. It then receives a pension of 1.200 gold mithkals on behalf of the royal treasure; and this pension enables him to live until the end of its life.

This legend must be balanced by the fact that Hassan ibn Al-Sabbah was approximately 15 years old less than Khayyam, and Nizam Al-Mulk approximately 30 years more. Omar Khayyam, Hassan Sabbah, and Nizam El-Molk, thus did not make surely their studies together.

The name of Khayyam

If one deciphers it with the system Abjad , the result gives Al-Ghaqi, the wasteful of goods , expression which in the terminology soufie is allotted to " that which distributes or is unaware of the goods of the world constituting a burden in the voyage that it undertakes on the path soufi" (Omar Ali-Shah).

Khayyam, which bent the tents of the intelligence,

In a forging mill of sufferings fell, suddenly burned;

Of the scissors cut the fasteners of the tent of its life;

the second-hand dealer of destinies on sale put it against wind.

Omar Khayyam, Rubayat , editions Poetry/Gallimard

Mathematician and astronomer

Algebraic work of Omar Khayyâm was known in Europe only at the 18th century.

In its Demonstrations of problems of algebra of 1070, Khayyam shows that the cubic equations can have more than one root. It makes state also equations having two solutions, but does not find any with three solutions. It is the first mathematician who treated cubic equations systematically, by employing layouts besides the conical ones to determine the number of the real roots and to evaluate them roughly. In addition to her treaty of algebra, Omar Khayyâm wrote several texts on the extraction of the cubic roots and certain definitions of Euclide, and built astronomical tables known under the name of Zidj-e Malikshahi

Director of the observatory of Ispahan in 1074, it reforms, at the request of the sultan Malik Shah, the Persan Calendrier (the reform is known under the name of Jelaléenne reform). He introduces a Leap year and measures the length of the Année as being 365,24219858156 Jour S. Or the length of the year changes with the sixth decimal during an human life . The year djélaléenne is more exact than the Gregorian year created, five centuries later. At the end of the 19th century, the year makes 365,242196 days and today 365,242190 days.

Poet and philosopher

Its poems are called “Rubaïyat” (Persan: رباعى, plural), which means “Quatrains”. The quatrains of Khayyam, if they seem to be able to do without comments, conceal, according to Idries Shah, of the mystical pearls, making of Khayyam a soufi. He would have preached the intoxication of God , and said himself inaccurate but believing. Beyond the first hedonist degree, the quatrains would thus have according to this commentator a mystical dimension.

In practice, if one sticks to the text, Khayyam shows indeed strong critic with respect to the monks - and of the religion - of his time. As for the wine whose mention frequently returns in its quatrains, the context where it constantly places (pleasant company of young women or wine waiters, refusal to continue the search for this knowledge that Khayyam liked formerly so much) hardly leaves him latitude to be allegorical.

One can thus only note the existence from these two point of view of.

; Sorrow and despair (VIII)

In this world, is satisfied to have few friends.

does not seek to make durable

the sympathy which you can test for somebody.

Before taking the hand of a man,

wonders if it will not be struck, a day.

(CXX)

You can probe the night which surrounds us.

You can sink over this night… You will not leave there.

Adam and Eve, who it had to be atrocious, your first kiss,

since you created us despaired!

; Clearness and skepticism (CXLI)

Is satisfied to know that all is mystery:

the creation of the world and holds it,

the destiny of the world and holds it.

Mouse with these mysteries as with a danger which you would scorn.

do not believe that you will know something

when you cross the door of Death.

Peace with the man in the black silence of Beyond!

; Wisdom and epicureanism (XXV)

In spring, I sometimes will sit down with the edge of a flowered field.

When a beautiful young girl brings a wine cut to me, I hardly think of my safety.

If I had this concern, I would be worth less than one dog.

(CLXX)

Lutes, perfumes and cuts,

lips, chevelures and long eyes,

toys which destroyed Time, toys!

Austerity, loneliness and labor,

meditation, prayer and renouncement,

ashes which Time crushes, ashes!

It is on this 170e part, as in conclusion by what precedes, which finishes the collection.

; Outdistance compared to orthodoxe Islam (CVII)

Autrefois, when I attended the mosques,

I pronounced there no prayer,

but I returned rich from there from hope.

I always will sit down in the mosques,

where the shade is favourable with the sleep.

(CLIX)

“Allah is large! ”. This cry of the moueddin resembles an immense complaint.

Five times per day, is this the Earth which groans towards its indifferent creator?

(CLIII)

Since our fate, ici-bas, are to suffer then to die,

shouldn't we wish to return as soon as possible to the ground our miserable body?

And our heart, that Allah waits to judge it according to its merits, do you say?

I will answer you on top when I am informed by somebody returning from to deaths.

A universal notoriety; an ambiguous image

Western Agnostique S see in him one too early their brothers born, while certain Moslems rather perceive at his place a symbolism esoteric, attached to the Soufisme.

Khayyam would indicate, as Jalal Ud DIN Rumi will do it later, that the man on the way of God does not require for place dedicated to venerate his God, and that the frequentation of the religious sanctuaries is neither a guarantee of the contact with God, nor an indicator of the respect of an interior discipline.

This vision of Khayyam explains why some of these quatrains were censured by the current mode Iranian which does not appreciate this vision " libérale" Islam.

It should be noted that this esoteric vision of Khayyam is also savagely fought by those which see in him a precursor of later philosophies materialists. Indeed, so some could see in the use which it makes of the figure of the wine, a kind of basket celestial, one predicts divine, others refute this interpretation (the first of which Sedagh Hedayat) and regard it as a true materialist, cantor of individual freedom and defender of individuality vis-a-vis the destiny. The apology for the pleasure in some of its quatrains goes in this direction, once again discussed.

Translations

Controversies around the original text and of its translations

The nature of a translation depends much on the interpretation which one can make of the philosophy of Khayyam. The fact that the rubaiyat are a collection of quatrains - which can be selected and rearranged subjectively in order to show an interpretation or another - led to versions which differ largely. Nicolas took the party to say that Khayyam is regarded clearly as a soufi. Others saw signs of mysticism there, or even of atheism, and others on the contrary the sign of a devout and orthodoxe Islam. Fitzgerald gave to Rubaiyat a fatalistic atmosphere, but if it is known as that it softened the impact of the nihilism of Khayyam and its concerns of died and of nonthe permanence of any thing. The question of knowing if Khayyam were for or against the wine consumption even for certain would be discussed!

The quatrains of Khayyâm are the subject of some controversies of translation as well as editions. In Europe, Fitzgerald and All Saints' day are the most current references. It is however difficult, as in any poetic translation, to return all the original direction of the worms. The mystical direction of this poetry can escape the non-specialist. As for Fitzgerald, it combines sometimes distinct quatrains to make possible a rhyme (All Saints' day, dissatisfied with the translation of Fitzgerald, prefers a prose to which it gives a poetic breath ).

The original contents of the collection of quatrains of Kayyâm are also subjected to vast debates. Indeed, the tradition allots more than 1000 quatrains to Khayyam; whereas the majority of the researchers allot any to him with certainty only 50, with approximately 200 other quatrains subjected to controversy. At All Saints' day and Fitzgerald, the number is of 170.

The Iranian government made appear in the Années 1980 the list of the quatrains which he recognizes officially.

The discovery of Omar Khayyâm in Occident following the translations of Edward Fitzgerald

It was the English translation of Edward Fitzgerald which made known with the general public, in 1859, the poetic work of Khayyam and which was used as reference to the translations in much of other languages.

Fitzgerald had to carry out a choice among the thousand poems allotted to Khayyam by the tradition, because the literary kind that it had inaugurated had been such a success that one employed the generic term khayyam to indicate any disillusioned lamentation on the human condition. Fitzgerald establishes four editions of the quatrains including/understanding between 75 and 110 quatrains. Surprisingly, it is still often one of the compilations established by Fitzgerald which is used as reference to most of the other translations.

The translations of Fitzgerald still are very discussed, in particular in what their authenticity concerns, Fitzgerald having benefitted from these translations to completely rewrite passages out of the spirit of the original poet, as the majority of the translators of the time did it. Thus, Omar Ali-Shah takes the example of the first quatrain in order to show the astonishing divergences of direction between the English translation and the French literal translation.

Translation of Persan in French of the orientalist Franz All Saints' day

The orientalist Franz All Saints' day preferred to rather carry out a new translation since the Persan original text than English, with the bias not to seek to translate the quatrains into quatrains, but in a poetic prose which it considered more faithful. Its French translation, made up of 170 quatrains, was disputed by the ones, was defended by others with strength. Today, after the disappearance of the Éditions of art Henri Piazza which widely diffused it between 1924 and 1979, this translation does itself the object of translations in other languages. All Saints' day, deceased in 1955, was not pilot of this success.

The dilemma of the translators

Some quatrains seem to escape any final translation, because of the complexity of the language Persian. Thus, Khayyam mentions certain Bahram (probably Vahram V Gour) which of alive sound took great pleasure to catch onagers ( Bahram ke Gour migerefti hame 'omr ) and adds laconically that it is fall it which caught Bahram . The words onager and fall are phonetically close in Farsi, with a phone resembling gour ( Didi keh chegune gour bahram gereft ).

The recent edition of the French translation of the quatrains by critical Omar Ali-Shah majority of the former translations to start with that of Fitzgerald or certain French translations. According to Omar Ali-Shah, the Persan one of the quatrains of Khayyâm refers constantly to the vocabulary soufi and was wrongfully translated in the lapse of memory of the spiritual directions. Thus he affirms that the " Vin" of Khayyâm is a spiritual wine, that the Tariqa is the Way (under heard with the mystical direction soufi of way towards God ) and not the " route" or " road secondaire" , presents according to him in certain translations without it specifying which. Nevertheless the quatrains letting appear a disillusioned Scepticisme do not find any explanation accordingly.

It is not known if the translation carried out by the HMSO is faithful, but it does not contain for its part the metric one suggesting (or " rendant") the effect of a poetic work.

Khayyâm the inspirer

Omar Khayyâm, since her discovery in Occident, exerted a recurring fascination on European writers such as for example on Marguerite Yourcenar, which confessed an equal intellectual, human admiration and morals for the personalities of the emperor Hadrian and that of Omar Khayyam, and thus hesitated over that of both to which it would devote a biography.

It inspired also the novel Samarkand of Amin Maalouf.

Musicalement, it also inspired the following type-setters:

sir Granville Bantock : Omar Khayyam, great symphony for soloists, choruses and orchestra
Jean Cras: Roubayat, cycle of melodies
Sofia Goubaïdoulina: Roubayat, cycle of melodies.

Others

a lunar crater was baptized of its name in 1970.
the Astéroïde 3095 Omarkhayyam was named in its honor in 1980.

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