The Strophes Of Omar Khayyam

The Strophes of Omar Khayyam is another English collection of Khayyam quatrains, presenting the Persian poetry in a different selection and arrangement from the famous Edward FitzGerald 1859 Rubaiyat translation. The Khayyam material exists in many manuscript variations and various English translators across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced their own selections and approaches.

Omar Khayyam (c. 1048-1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet whose lasting Western reputation rests on the quatrains that FitzGerald translated as the Rubaiyat. The original Persian quatrains take up themes of mortality, the brevity of life, the pleasures of wine and friendship, and skepticism about religious certainty, all of which carry across the various English versions.

The Strophes collection offers another window onto the Khayyam material for readers who have read the standard FitzGerald translation and want to explore the broader Persian poetry tradition that produced it.