Omar Khayyám

In 11th-century Persia there lived an astronomer and mathematician by the name of Omar ben Ibrahim al-Khayyami, who, when he was not occupied with astronomical and algebraic calculations, for his pleasure wrote a series of verses which offer universal reflections on life, death and fate.

Seven centuries passed. Half a world away in Victorian England, a rather indifferent writer named Edward Fitzgerald decided to compose a translated version of the ancient Persian verses. Something mysterious happened. Between the alignment of minds that were the Persian astronomer and the Victorian writer emerged an extraordinary poet who resembled neither, and who - at least to English ears - eclipsed both. In the West we know those verses as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and it is Fitzgerald's translation (which is more of an interpretation) which from its first appearance established itself as the definitive English version.

In Fitzgerald's version, Omar Khayyám comes across as a wonderfully pragmatic character, as fond of a carafe of wine as he is of a bit of philosophy, full of good humor in the face of an unrelenting fate. Portraits of Khayyám have tended to treat him as a sort of Middle-Eastern Confucius, white-bearded and sagacious. But I wanted to portray him as he is reflected by Fitzgerald: someone whose spirituality has a definite earthy twinkle in its eye. My background contains all three elements of his character: an astrolabe from the world of astronomy, one of his treatises on algebra ('al-jabra', which is where the term comes from), and, of course, the calligraphed title of the Rubáiyát which secured his immortality.