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Forgetting FitzGerald's Rubaiyat

2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sel.2001.0038

1522-9270

Erik Gray,

Literature: history, themes, analysis

Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám constantly advises the reader to forget--preferably with the help of a drink: "Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears / To-day of past Regret and future Fears." And again--"Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine / Must drown the memory of that insolence!" 1 Readers have not forgotten the Rubáiyát: by the end of the nineteenth century, it "must have been a serious contender for the title of the most popular long poem in English," and since then it has steadily continued to appear in innumerable (usually illustrated) editions. 2 Critics, on the other hand, seem to have taken FitzGerald at his word. The critical corpus is small; even major recent studies of Victorian poetry scarcely mention the poem. 3 Yet, ironically, it is the Rubáiyát's treatment of forgetting that marks it as a central text not only of Victorian poetry but of a rich and continuing literary tradition.