The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

NOT A REVIEW: Pagination issue exists with this book. Book starts on xvi. so I was force to subtract "v" (5) from the total front matter pages xxxviii. My pagination tall reflects this and shows a front matter page count of xxxiii

The edition I read was a 1947 one translated by Fitzgerald. I guess this listing is the closest to what I read. See my blog post on it:

http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/11/booknote-rub225iy225t.html ( )

I feel like this translation was significantly coloured by Colonial perspectives of translator Edward FitzGerald and lacks the truth of the poetry I expected. ( )

When people say a book is difficult to read they normally mean there is something intrinsically challenging about the text. Ulysses is difficult because, well, it's by James Joyce; The Tale of Genji is difficult because there are five hundred characters spanning half a century, and no one has a name. But this edition of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the first book I've read that was difficult to read from a purely mechanical point of view.

After the book's thorough and interesting introduction we come to the reproduction of the original book. FitzGerald didn't want to ruin the text of the poem with footnotes, so uses endnotes, marked out by numeric superscripts. So far so good. Daniel Karlin, this edition's editor, wants to respect FitzGerald's wishes so also omits footnotes and moreover omits any superscripts to inform the reader of the presence of one of his endnotes. So now not only does the reader need to mark three pages simultaneously, the poem, FitzGerald's endnotes, and Karlin's end-endnotes, but also he must keep flicking to the latter of the three in case Karlin has just pointed out something useful. (In fact for the full experience one should mark a fourth set of pages where variants are included for each stanza from the five different editions of FitzGerald's work.)

Having virtually dislocated my fingers after three stanzas in order to keep up with this merry charade I felt obliged to utter a playground epithet pointing out that this style of reading was a poor substitute for a game of soliders. And so I gave up on Karlin's end-endnotes and made do with Fitzgerald's, referring to Karlin's only if something I really didn't understand came up. And then I re-read the poem using Karlin's notes rather than Fitzgerald's. And then I read the variant stanzas, and the intriguing appendices. Suffice it to that once I figured out how to read the book I really did enjoy it. ( )

When people say a book is difficult to read they normally mean there is something intrinsically challenging about the text. Ulysses is difficult because, well, it's by James Joyce; The Tale of Genji is difficult because there are five hundred characters spanning half a century, and no one has a name. But this edition of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the first book I've read that was difficult to read from a purely mechanical point of view.

After the book's thorough and interesting introduction we come to the reproduction of the original book. FitzGerald didn't want to ruin the text of the poem with footnotes, so uses endnotes, marked out by numeric superscripts. So far so good. Daniel Karlin, this edition's editor, wants to respect FitzGerald's wishes so also omits footnotes and moreover omits any superscripts to inform the reader of the presence of one of his endnotes. So now not only does the reader need to mark three pages simultaneously, the poem, FitzGerald's endnotes, and Karlin's end-endnotes, but also he must keep flicking to the latter of the three in case Karlin has just pointed out something useful. (In fact for the full experience one should mark a fourth set of pages where variants are included for each stanza from the five different editions of FitzGerald's work.)

Having virtually dislocated my fingers after three stanzas in order to keep up with this merry charade I felt obliged to utter a playground epithet pointing out that this style of reading was a poor substitute for a game of soliders. And so I gave up on Karlin's end-endnotes and made do with Fitzgerald's, referring to Karlin's only if something I really didn't understand came up. And then I re-read the poem using Karlin's notes rather than Fitzgerald's. And then I read the variant stanzas, and the intriguing appendices. Suffice it to that once I figured out how to read the book I really did enjoy it. ( )