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Les Quatrains de
Khéyam
, translated from the Persian by J.B. Nicolas, formerly chief dragoman of
the French Embassy to Persia, published in 1867 by the Imperial Press. My
father had in his luggage the 1868 edition of Edward FitzGerald’s
The Rubáiyát
of Omar Khayyám
.
‘Your mother’s rapture was no better hidden than mine. We were both sure
that our life lines were going to join. At no moment did we think that it could
just be a simple coincidence that we were reading the same book. Omar
appeared to us instantly like fate’s password – to ignore it would have been
almost sacrilegious. Naturally, we had said nothing of what was going on inside
us, the conversation centred on the poems. She informed me that Napoleon III in
person had ordered the publication of the work.’
At that time, Europe had just discovered Omar. Some specialists, in truth, had
spoken of him earlier in the century, his algebra had been published in Paris in
1851 and articles had appeared in specialized reviews. But the western public
was still unaware of him, and, in the east itself, what was left of Khayyam? A
name, two or three legends, some quatrains of indefinite authorship and a hazy
reputation as an astrologer.
When an obscure British poet, FitzGerald, decided to publish a translation of
seventy-five quatrains in 1859 there was indifference. The book was published
in an edition of two hundred and fifty copies; the author offered some to his
friends and the rest were selling very slowly at the book-shop of Bernard
Quaritch. ‘Poor old Omar, he apparently was of interest to no one,’ so FitzGerald
wrote to his Persian teacher. After two years the publisher decided to sell off the
stock: from an initial price of five shillings, the
Rubaiyaat
went down to a
penny, sixty times less. Even at this price, few were sold until the moment when
two literary critics discovered it. They read it and were amazed by it. They came
back the next day and bought up six copies to give out. Feeling that some
interest was about to be aroused, the editor raised the price to two pence.
And to think that on my last trip to England I had to pay the same Quaritch,
now finely established in Piccadilly, four hundred pounds sterling for a copy
which he had kept from that first edition!
However, success was not immediate in London. It had to come from Paris
where M. Nicolas published his translation, where Théophile Gautier had to
write, in the pages of the
Moniteur Universel
a resounding ‘Have you read the
Quatrains of Kéyam?’ And welcome ‘this absolute freedom of spirit which the
boldest modern thinkers can hardly equal’, and Ernest Renan had to add:
‘Khayyam is perhaps the most curious man to study in order to understand what
the unfettered genius of Persia managed to become within the bounds of Muslim
dogmatism’ – in order for Fitzgerald and his ‘poor old Omar’ to come out of
their anonymity. The awakening was thunderous. Overnight all the images of the
orient were assembled around the sole name of Khayyam. Translation followed
translation, editions of the work multiplied in England and then in several
American cities ‘Omar’ societies were formed.
To reiterate, in 1870 the Khayyam vogue was just starting. The circle of fans
of Omar was growing every day, without yet having transcended the circle of
intellectuals. After this shared reading matter brought my father and mother
together, they started to recite the quatrains of Omar and to discuss their
meaning: were wine and the tavern, in Omar’s pen, purely mystical symbols, as
Nicolas stated? Or were they, on the other hand, the expression of a life of
pleasure, indeed of debauchery, as FitzGerald and Renan claimed? These
debates took on a new taste in their mouths. When my father evoked Omar, as he
caressed the perfumed hair of his beautiful girl, my mother blushed. It was
between two amorous quatrain that they exchanged their first kiss. The day they
spoke of marriage, they made a vow to call their first son Omar.
During the 1890s, hundreds of little Americans were also given that name:
when I was born on 1 March 1873 it was not yet common. Not wishing to
encumber me too much with this exotic first name, my parents relegated it to
second place, in order that I might, if I so desired, replace it with a discrete O;
my school friends supposed that it stood for Oliver, Oswald, Osborne or Orville
and I did not disabuse anyone.
The inheritance which was thus handed down to me could not fail to arouse
my curiosity about this remote godfather. At fifteen I started to read everything
about him. I had made a plan to study the language and literature of Persia and to
make a long visit there. However, after a bout of enthusiasm I cooled down.
Indeed, in the opinion of all the critics, FitzGerald’s verses constituted a
masterpiece of English poetry, but they had only a remote connection with what
Khayyam could have composed. When it came to the quatrains themselves,
some authors quoted almost a thousand, Nicolas had translated more than four
hundred, while some thorough specialists only recognized a hundred of them as
being ‘probably authentic’. Eminent orientalists went as far as to deny that a
single one could be attributed to Omar with certainty.
It was believed that there could have existed an original book which once and
for all would have allowed the real to be distinguished from the false, but there
was nothing to lead one to believe that such a manuscript could be found.
Finally I turned away from the person, as I did from the work. I came to see
my middle initial O as the permanent residue of parental childishness – until a
meeting took me back to my first love and directed my life resolutely in the
footsteps of Khayyam.
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