Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written inPersian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám(1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts per line, hence the word rubaiyat, meaning "quatrains".FitzGerald gave the Rubaiyat a distinct fatalistic spin, although it has been claimed that he softened the impact of Khayyam's nihilism and his preoccupation with the mortality and transience of all things. Even such a question as to whether Khayyam was pro- or anti-alcohol gives rise to more discussion than might at first glance have seemed plausible.