Fitzgerald, Edward
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Edward (1809-1883), an English poet and translator. He was born near Woodbridge, Suffolk. His education was received at Cambridge. While at college he formed a life-long friendship with Thackeray. Later friends were Carlyle, Tennyson, and George Crabbe, son of the poet of that name. It is interesting to note that, while Fitzgerald and Tennyson were close friends, Fitzgerald was exceedingly frank in his criticisms of Tennyson's poems. For the most part he did not like them as well as might have been expected. Crabbe was Fitzgerald's favorite poet. Fitzgerald passed the retired and uneventful life of a student and man of letters. His recreations were boating and gardening. His writings include Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth, Polonius, a Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Six Dramas of Colderon, translations from Aeschylus and Sophocles, and his most celebrated work, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam . Omar Khayyam (O'mar khiyam') was a Persian poet and astronomer who died early in the twelfth century. The word Rubaiyat signifies quatrains or four line stanzas. The Rubaiyat is the best known example of Persian literature . A few stanzas of the poem will give an idea of the style: Whether at Naishapur or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears Today of past Regret and future Fears: Tomorrow!--Why, Tomorrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years. There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was,--and then no more of Thee and Me. I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd, "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell." The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. Lowell wrote a poem, In a Copy of Omar Khayyam, of which the first stanza runs: These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread. See Omar Khayyam
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910 the Rubáiyát was near the peak of its vogue — a poem quoted on calendars and gravestones, with an Omar Khayyám Club in London and Lowell's tribute worth reprinting. Today FitzGerald (the capital G is now standard) is read rather differently: scholars treat the Rubáiyát not as a translation but as a free English recomposition, a view he half-conceded himself, and Persian specialists doubt how many of the quatrains can be attributed to the historical Omar at all. His verse has also been overtaken in critical esteem by his letters, which are now regarded as among the best in nineteenth-century English, while his Calderón and Greek versions are little read. Biographers since the mid-twentieth century have made much more of the private life the entry calls "retired and uneventful", including his brief unhappy marriage and his attachment to the Lowestoft fisherman Joseph "Posh" Fletcher.
Written for this edition, 2026.