OMAR KHAYYAM

 The Rebel's Library.

THE VOLTAIRE OF PERSIA.

 "The appearance in a threepenny edition of Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyam,' makes one regret the days when mischievous books were burned by the common hangman." — 'Daily Mail' (London).

The above was the welcome given by the Daily Mail to a people's edition of Omar Khayyam's wonderful poem "The Rubaiyat."
 Omar, the poet and scientist, was born in the latter half of the eleventh century, about the time of the Norman conquest of Great Britain. A great scholar, he was one of the eight men who reformed the Calendar. He was the author of astronomical tables, treatises on cube roots, algebra, and of various poems.
 The verses of "The Rubaiyat" consist simply of quatrains, little epigrams of four lines each. They are characteristic of Persian poetry, the subject of which is usually praise of wine and women, with speculations on religion.
 Omar was an inveterate iconoclast, and the way he enforces his rationalism is by praising wine, for he was brought up as a Mahommedan, to whom wine was a forbidden thing. Wine, with Omar, is typical of the enjoyment of the world, a beverage for unconventional Bohemians.
 The writings of Omar remained forgotten for centuries, banned by the clergy and shunned by publishers. They ultimately fell into the hands of Edward Fitzgerald, a sceptic and a poet, who made Omar known to all parts of the world as one of the greatest of ancient poets. Omar's poem savors of the dreamy and languorous East, whence come tales of beautiful houris and scented gardens, witching music and graceful dances, the Orient of luxuriance and barbaric splendor. As he sings to us, the Persia of byegone days is recalled— the caravan track, the dreamy tinkling bells of the loaded camels moving slowly over the dusty roads of the deserted plains, the fierce warriors armed to the teeth, the manners and customs of the towns, and the religious speculations of the people.
 Tennyson said that nothing else of the kind had been done "so divinely well." Yet, for some time, the book made its way slowly. It had to fight many allies of entrenched superstition, but it eventually triumphed and became the most popular book in Britain, where it made a profound impression.
 The irresistible charm of "The Rubaiyat" is that it splendidly voices the scepticism that is growing in all thoughtful minds, and makes magnificent music of it. In it Omar is revealed as the Voltaire of ancient Persia. There is no doubt about his freethought. He fails to find any Providence but Destiny or any evidence of any other world than this, which he invokes us to make the best of.

 "And that inverted bowl they call the sky,
Whereunder crawling, cooped, we live and die,
 Lift not your hands to it for help, for it
As impotently rolls as you and I."

 The poetry of Omar, like that of Lucretius, is full of argument on destiny and man's conception of the Deity. Of man's contradictory conception of a supreme being he says :

"What, out of senseless nothing to provoke
A conscious Something, to resent the yoke
 Of unpermitted pleasure, under pain
Of everlasting penalties if broke!

"What! from His helpless creatures be repaid
Pure gold for what He lent us, dross allayed—
 Sue for a debt we never did contract,
And cannot answer — oh, the sorry trade!"

 A fierce revolutionary ardour lurks in these lines :

 "Ah, Love, could you and I with him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire;
 Would we not shatter it to bits — and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire?"

 On theological lies and fairy tales he makes a candid attack :

 "Oh, threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain— this life flies.
 One thing is certain, and the rest is lies,
The flower that once has blown forever dies."

 He foreshadowed in lines of magic sweetness the modern conception of the indestructibility of matter:

"I sometimes think that never blows so red
 The rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
 That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
 Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head.

 "And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean—
 Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
 From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!"

Of the world's pomps and vanities Omar, like Byron, had a supreme contempt. Byron longed for a desert for a resting place with some fair spirit for his minister, and Omar says:

"With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
 Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his throne.

"Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A flask of Wine, a Book of Verse— and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
And Wilderness is Paradise enow."

 Omar stood erect; he never grovelled to the Sultan or pandered to the prejudices of the ignorant. He loved liberty and fought for it with every gift nature endowed him with. He was a lover of nature, and under the witchery of his genius we scent across centuries of time and thousands of miles of space the aroma from the gardens he sang of. In fancy we see the roses, the flame of the tulips, the sparkling Persian wine; we look into the eyes and wind our fingers in the tresses of the beloved. Through Omar our enjoyment is made more perfect, our faith in the ultimate triumph of humanity over tyranny and oppression strengthened. Omar in his day was the champion of reason against a corrupt Church and special privilege. Omar laughed at the Sultan, mocked the priests, and in his contests with them proved himself the sublimest poet who ever swept the lyre under the Mohammedan crescent.
 A rebel's library would be incomplete without a copy of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat."

International Socialist (Sydney, 1916, )http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120110727