رباعیّات خیّام در انگلستان از آغاز تا عصر ویکتوریا

ادوارد فیتزجرالد با‌وجودِ شهرتِ بسیاری که از رهگذر ترجمۀ رباعیّاتِ حکیم عمر خیّام نیشابوری فراچنگ آورده است، اوّلین کسی نبود که این اشعار را به انگلیسی ترجمه و منتشر کرد. پیش‌از او مترجمانی چند در این وادیِ ناایمن طبعِ خویش را آزموده بودند و طرفه اینکه یکی از اینان الهام-بخش فیتزجرالد بوده است. این مترجمان پیشکسوتِ رباعیّات خیّام به ترتیبِ تاریخِ انتشار ترجمه-هایشان عبارت‌اند از: سر تامس هاید، هنری جورج کین، لویزا استوارت کاستلو، سِر گور اوزلی، رابرت بنینگ، ادوارد بایلز کاول و ادوارد فیتزجرالد. گفتنی است که برخی از این مترجمان تعداد انگشت شماری و بعضی از آنان مجموعه ای از رباعیّات خیّام را، یا به نظم یا به نثر، ترجمه کردند.

Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat in England from 1700s to 1859

Although FitzGerald gained much of his fame through the translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, he was not the first English translator who translated a host of his quatrains. Before him a group of translators tried their hands at his poems, and interestingly one of them was a source of inspiration for him. The first Western scholar who studied Omar Khayyam, as a scientist, philosopher, and poet, was Thomas Hyde. He translated one of Omar’s quatrains into Latin. It is regarded as the first introduction of Omar’s poetry into the West. Omar’s first quatrain in English was rendered by Henry Keene. In 1845 Louisa Costello in her anthology of Persian poetry entitled The Rose Garden of Persia devoted some pages to Omar Khayyam and arranged a number of Khayyam’s quatrains into a narrative sequence. Sir Gore Ouseley translated some of Omar’s quatrains into English prose before his death in 1844, but they were published posthumously in 1846 in his book Biographical Notices of Persian Poets with Critical and Explanatory Remarks. Robert Binning was the next Englishman who translated one of Omar’s quatrains. In 1858 Edward Cowell submitted an article on Omar Khayyam to the Calcutta Review entitled “Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia”. He included his translation of thirty two of Omar’s quatrains in it. Then we come to FitzGerald’s famous translation. Undoubtedly, these translators paved the way for his translation. FitzGerald’s translation appeared in the same year as Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Until the end of his life, FitzGerald kept working on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, adding to or reducing the number of quatrains, changing their order, their phrasing, striving for a perfection that forever eluded him.