Graves & Shah
I was recently gifted a copy of The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam. An impromptu and tender gesture given that I have over the years had more than a few copies. And myself gifted others almost every one of those copies. It was however the first time I had held in my hands the version translated by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah.
A thin volume of just under a hundred pages, this book contains more within its covers than I had bargained for. And having been reading and re-reading it for days on end at the expense of actual paid work being done, it has affirmed the adage that we can only see what we need to see when we’re ready to. I have quoted Khayaam’s quatrains in social posts, in real life and quietly to myself when finding a moment of peace and beauty in Life. If I recall clearly enough, I think I might have referenced what I had known up to this point whenever it was fitting to do so. It mattered little to me that the poem seemed erratic in its flow, contradictory at times, even making little sense in other parts of the hundred or so quatrains. I loved it fully, with all these flaws. I revered Khayyam for his completeness and daring to write of the deep mysteries of Life, love, G-d, sin and mercy. Or so I had thought from my knowledge of what shall from now on be the infamous Fitzgerald translation. Or as I have learnt the Fitzgerald transmogrification to be correct.
The Graves / Shah translation of Khayaam’s most widely know work is a revelation. Like knowing every feature of a beloved’s face and then seeing them with fresh eyes. Everything I thought I knew and loved of Khayaam’s Rubaiyyat based on the Fitzgerald translation was tosh. Graves and Shah use more than half their book to deep dive into the Fitzgerald versions of Khayaam’s work and they spare no effort to absolutely rip the translation to shreds. In the most polite way of course, this being the heady world of literature itself we’re dealing with. Reading their deeply referenced and wide ranging account of the follies and foibles of the Fitzgerald version is almost as interesting as the Rubaiyyat itself. No, it can never be but what it does is to shine a light on a work so many of us have come to know intimately and debunks so much of the misinformation presented in the Fitzgerald versions about Khayaam himself.
The Graves / Shah preface, introduction and translation is also an abject lesson on how easy it was and (likely) remains for some people to wholly misrepresent the work of others. It makes me shudder at the thought that everything I thought I knew about The Rubaiyyat was put together by a pair of undergraduates that did not bother with asking any actual Persians much less Sufis anything about what they were doing. It’s the insidious colonial mentality we find in so much of what many of us think we know or have learnt about the world, its history, architecture, its people and yes; especially the literature.
Fitzgerald presented his version of Khayaam’s Rubaiyyat as an orderly arrangement and translation of the jumbled mass of quatrains of a Sufi heretic, the drunken ramblings of a Muslim unbeliever, the writings of a denier of G-d and a whole host of other rubbish. And if, like me, you’ve never had sight of the Graves / Shah work; you’d be inclined to accept or at the very least note Fitzgerald’s view as truth. After all, Fitzgerald’s work has been published and re-published many times over with millions of copies in circulation.
But no, it’s not like that at all. Khayaam was nothing like Fitzgerald set him out to be. And this on the authority of a direct scholarly lineage that goes back almost a thousand years. And an original copy of Khayaam’s work that’s been in the stewardship of a single family for over eight-hundred years. The Graves / Shah translation also relies on native Persian speakers and not some concocted Persian/English dictionary. Critically, Shah is an actual Sufi scholar and sets out a nuanced narrative of the intricacies of Sufi poetry, Sufism itself and the reminder that as much remains hidden in Khayaam’s work, as is revealed. This however means little as even a cursory online search will show that for the most part; scholarly opinion of The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam remains firmly on the side of the initial Fitzgerald version. The work of Graves and Shah is reduced to being a ‘scandalous’ take, an outlier in the grand game of literature and scholarship. Whatever. That this opinion stems from a system that relies on holding together its prejudices and mistakes is apparent.
Now having read the Graves / Shah translation of Omar Khayaam’s Rubaiyyat a few times over, I remain in love with this landmark work of Sufi poetry. I’d daresay, it’s likely, I am in love with this work for the first time. The Rubaiyyat as presented by Graves / Shah now reads like a flowing ode to life, from start to end. With all its experiences, choices and fate itself intermingled effortlessly and beautifully. Does this version strip away all the mystery and imperfection that existed in the Fitzgerald version? Absolutely not. If anything, the Graves / Shah version reignites the mysticism of The Rubaiyyat in a more powerful way.
You can almost feel the depth of Khayaam’s devotion pour out on the page, you can taste the (metaphorical or actual, choose your fighter) wine, sense his powerful spirit wrestle with making sense of his being while trapped in this base human form.
But while we are here, in this form, and before our clay is mixed with elder clay, allow me to leave you with these words of Khayaam:
‘Allow no shadow of regret to cloud you,
No absurd grief to overcast your days.
Never renounce love-songs, or lawns or kisses
Until your clay lies mixed with elder clay’
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The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam
Translated by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah
Cassell, 1967 and Penguin Books, 1972
Graves & Shah is a poor rendition of entirely heartfelt gratitude to the generous muse that has brought me; ever so beautifully, to my own heart.
© Jesh Baker, 2023
