
Original Publisher's Footnote
Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyami is better known to us as Omar Khayyám. He
lived from c. 1048 to 1131, and few today realize how extensive
his interests were.
As a mathematician he greatly expanded on al-Khwarizmi's algebraic principles and on Euclid's geometry.
As an astronomer he spent 18 years working in an observatory in Isfahan, where he measured the length of the solar year more accurately than any previous astronomer (at 365.24219858156 days). He also devised a solar calendar with eight leap years every 33 years, a great deal more accurate than the Gregorian correction of the Julian calendar (which was finally promulgated in 1582). Knowing this we can better appreciate:
LVII
Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? - Nay,
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday.
* * *
Dissident Editions' Footnote:-
The
references to Wine and the Grape are,
in the Sufi tradition, metaphorical and mystical:
wine represents abandonment of the banalities of this world, but it
also represents itself, for Sufis understand that there is more than
one Way, and a little insight might be inspired by the fermented juice
of the grape as well as much benefit in mystical companionship.
Khayyám is also saying that
the seeker-after-truth would find more substance in wine than in the
teachings of the mullahs and imams, or even of the Prophets. Since we
are clay and return to clay, he pointed out, we are ideally suited to
contain liquids (and each other) rather than gas.
Drunkenness is the Sufi term
(or code) for Wisdom.
The Tavern of Omar
Khayyám may correspond to theTekke
or Lodge of the Bektashis
- or to the small fellowship of the Wise.
The
first stanza can be interpreted thus:
Awaken
from the Unawareness you have been 'educated' into and let the dawn
of Awareness strangle
the arrogance of mere knowledge. Let the cruel light of Wisdom, gentle
at first, irradiate your consciousness.
It
is not known which and how many of the rubáiyát attributed to
him (over 300) were written by Khayyám. Many rubáiyát 'migrated'
from anonymous sources. The earliest manuscript dates from the XVth
century.
In Iran Khayyám is regarded only for his scientific work, and is not
considered a great (or even morally acceptable) poet.
with two of the original illustrations
by Edmund Dulac
|