Résumé
Résumé de Les Quatrains d’Omar Khayyam
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À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who enjoy brief poems for reading aloud, with gardens, wine, roses and ruined palaces, will love this collection. It also suits those drawn to Sufi imagery and to contrasting renderings of the same Persian quatrains.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Wake! A stone flies into the bowl of night, the stars run, and a voice from a tavern calls out that life's wine is running low. That is how the English poem of Omar Khayyam begins, and within seventy-five quatrains you meet roses, dead kings, a potter's shop full of talking pots, and one steady question: what should a person do with a short life?
This book gathers several ways into the same poems. It opens with Edward FitzGerald's English verse. Then come Edward Heron-Allen's study of its Persian sources, E. H. Whinfield's verse rendering and J. B. Nicolas's prose. Omar died in 1122, and his four-line poems have been read both as a toast to the moment and as a Sufi's hidden prayer. You will hear both voices, and each quatrain stands alone.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Omar's four lines pack a whole moodFree
- 2Dawn calls you to the tavern door
- 3Great kings end as dust and grass
- 4Take the cash and enjoy the wilderness
- 5Study brings no answer, only a closed door
- 6Wine answers what reason cannot settle
- 7Fate moves you like a chess piece
- 8Question the Maker and listen to pots
- 9Spring returns, but you must say farewell
- 10Read it as mystic or as pleasure seeker
Point clé 1 sur 10
Omar's four lines pack a whole mood
The ruba'i is a quatrain, a poem of four lines in which the first, second and fourth lines rhyme. Omar Khayyam left hundreds of these little poems, and each one is complete in itself. That makes the collection easy to enter at any page.
Nicolas tells a story handed down by Persian historians. Three students at Nishapur clasp hands and promise that whoever rises highest will help the other two. Khayyam asks only for the income of his native village, so that he can write poetry and contemplate the Creator's works. Hassan-Sebbah asks for a court post, then schemes to push his benefactor out.
Whinfield is more careful with such stories. He treats the poems as written at different times and in different moods, and sorts them into six kinds: complaints, satires, love poems, spring songs, defiant verses and prayers to God. One poet can mock a preacher in one quatrain and plead for mercy in the next. Four lines are enough room for a whole mood.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 83,500 words
- Reading timeAbout 5 h 50 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about Les Quatrains d’Omar Khayyam
What is a ruba'i or quatrain?
A ruba'i is a Persian poem of four lines, complete in itself. The first, second and fourth lines rhyme, which gives each poem a closing click. Ruba'iyat is the plural, and Omar's collection is made of them.
What does the Kuza-Nama section mean?
Kuza-Nama means the Book of Pots. In FitzGerald's poem, clay vessels in a potter's shop talk about their Maker, asking who is Potter and who is Pot, and why a maker would break what he has shaped.
Are Omar's poems about drinking or about God?
Both readings exist. Some quatrains plainly praise wine and pleasure, and others are prayers. Sufi readers take wine and the tavern as signs of divine love, while other readers take them literally. The book lets you hear each.
Is FitzGerald's poem a word-for-word version of Omar?
No. Heron-Allen shows that many stanzas paraphrase one Persian quatrain, many blend several, and a few come from other poets such as Attar and Hafiz. It reads as English poetry shaped by Persian sources.
Cite this edition
Omar Khayyam. The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sufistic-quatrains-of-omar-khayyam.
Omar Khayyam. (2026). The Sufistic quatrains of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sufistic-quatrains-of-omar-khayyam
Omar Khayyam. The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sufistic-quatrains-of-omar-khayyam.
@book{omarkhayyam2026sufistic,
author = {Omar Khayyam},
title = {The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sufistic-quatrains-of-omar-khayyam}
}
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