{"id":3018,"date":"2009-04-03T21:41:38","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T21:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=3018"},"modified":"2009-04-03T21:41:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-03T21:41:38","slug":"2009-4-3-omar-khayyams-rubaiyat-and-western-ventriloquism-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=3018","title":{"rendered":"Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and Western “Ventriloquism”"},"content":{"rendered":"
There’s a great article<\/a>\u00a0by Marina Warner in the London Review of Books about the\u00a0Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/em>\u00a0by Edward FitzGerald–a work that is better understood as “channeling” than translating and that is remarkably reminiscent of the way the Thousand and One Nights was assimilated into Western literature.<\/p>\n

The consideration of FitzGerald’s–apparently quite inspired–rendering of Khayyam’s work turns into a reflection on the act of translation itself (something I’m alway fascinated with) and on the way Western authors have spoken through Eastern alter-egos. To some degree, FitzGerald seems to have well aware of what he was doing. I enjoyed this quote:\u00a0<\/p>\n

…FitzGerald wrote: \u2018But at all Cost, a Thing must\u00a0live<\/em>: with a transfusion of one\u2019s own worse Life if one can\u2019t retain the Original\u2019s better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(found via the Literary Saloon<\/a>).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a great article<\/a>\u00a0by Marina Warner in the London Review of Books about the\u00a0Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/em>\u00a0by Edward FitzGerald–a work that is better understood as “channeling” than translating and that is remarkably reminiscent of the way the Thousand and One Nights was assimilated into Western literature.
\nThe consideration of FitzGerald’s–apparently quite inspired–rendering of Khayyam’s work turns into a reflection on the act of translation itself (something I’m alway fascinated with) and on the way Western authors have spoken through Eastern alter-egos. To some degree, FitzGerald seems to have well aware of what he was doing. I enjoyed this quote:\u00a0<\/p>\n

…FitzGerald wrote: \u2018But at all Cost, a Thing must\u00a0live<\/em>: with a transfusion of one\u2019s own worse Life if one can\u2019t retain the Original\u2019s better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(found via the Literary Saloon<\/a>).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[519],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3018"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}