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Edward FitzGerald |
Edward FitzGerald came from one of the wealthiest families in England, and with nothing else to do, he grew interested in Persian literature. When a friend sent him an eleventh-century poem, he found his life’s work. The author, Omar Khayyam, was an Iranian mathematician and philosopher of extraordinary wisdom, and over the next thirty years FitzGerald paraphrased his quatrains (rubaiyaas) and put them into a new sequence, following from morning to night.
A shy and unambitious man who rarely left the grounds of his estate, he gave new and eloquent voice to the ancient poet’s advice: live and be merry for life is short. FitzGerald did the opposite, and died quietly in his sleep at the age of seventy-four.
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |