The Rubaiyat of Umar Khaiyam #231214

When it is taken into consideration that the universal Christian Church, it in all its denominations, has read an esoteric meaning into the sensual drama called the "Song of Solomon," it can be no matter of surprise that a Frenchman, who had spent the best years of his life in Persia, and thus knowing the language of the country and failing under the influence of the Sufis, should signalize the first complete translation of 'Umar Khaiyam into any modern language by discovering in every reference to wine a symbolical and wholly spiritual significance.<br><br>Readers of Edward FitzGerald's remarkable paraphrase of a part of the quatrains attributed to the Astronomer-Poet, have become so accustomed to think of "Old Omar" as a cosmopolitan, freed from the dictates of Time and Place, that they forget his real personality, which must have been conditioned by his age and his environment. He was an Oriental, and it is sadly difficult for a Westerner to interpret what an Oriental says. His words may have a specious sound, familiar to the ear, but may hide a meaning which he would not care for the uninitiated to understand.