R.I.P Rik Mayall



Rick: Absolutely pathetic! There's nothing on at all! Humph! Don't know why we bother to pay our license!
Mike TheCoolPerson: We don't.
Rick: But, haven't we got a license?
Mike TheCoolPerson: No.
Rick: But that makes me a criminal! Right on! Yeah, this will shake them up at the Anarchists Society! Occupying the refectories! So what? This is the real stuff! I'm a fugitive! A desperado! I'm going to form a new union society, right? With me a president! 'People Who Don't Pay Their TV Licenses Against the Nazis!' This is only the beginning!
Vyvyan Basterd: What are you going to do, Rick? Burn your bra?
Rick: Well, someone's got to do it, Vyvyan. It's very easy to sit on your backside, isn't it?
Vyvyan Basterd: Not if you haven't got a bottom!

Such a shame to die at 56.

Inevitable?

The Prime Minister of Australia, in an address to the US Chamber of Commerce, restated a commonly held belief amongst the Western political class (to the effect of): that it is inevitable that with rising prosperity amongst its middle class, Chinese citizen's will demand and receive incresing freedoms within the Chinese polity. I believe that this belief is a fallacy despite the fact that it is held, in various guises, across the political spectrum of Western political and academic elites.
The underlying assumption being adopted in this assertion is: that the way we developed is the way everyone will develop. In fact, this type of thinking, has its orgins in the 19th century Hegelian and Marxist social and political philosophies - that connect the social and economic development with the political structures that govern them. Developmental and progressive in character, these political philosophies tend to point toward a uni-directional and a fundamental similiar pathway across varied poltical cultures and traditions.
Whilst conservative or neo-conservative politicians would be horrified and denounce the Marxist origins of these predictions --> it is nevertheless true, if you preclude all other possible outcomes as being possibly or even likely. As far as I am concerned, there is little evidence to believe that the 'Middle Kingdom's" current political elite are likely to devolve power anytime soon nor is there any suggestion that the underlying political culture has the power or inclination for a sustained challenge to the status quo.
Just as now, in retrospect, the predictions of a warm embrace for democracy in the Middle East look like a neo-conservative pipedream; I would argue that you should have a cocked eyebrow for those that make statements about the inevitable march of Western liberalism in China. Which is not to say that it is impossible, it may indeed happen that way just treat the determinist political consensus with the skepticism such declarations deserve.
It is a vanity that to believe that everyone wants to be like 'us'.

Update

About halfway through A Colour Purple. As you can, obviously, calculate for yourself my reading pace has dropped off a cliff in recent weeks. I am still undecided as to whether I should lower my goals or not. That decision is for another day.

Finished up The Colour Purple. I went to the bookstore to purchase some more books for my reading list given I was down to Lolita (which I was not really looking forward to).
The books I purchased were:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf


Down through the Rabbit hole we go...

Love Alice. Enjoy

P40 Advice from a Caterpillar, Alice recites a poem:

You are old, Father William

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said the father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"


Which is a parody of:

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, father William, a hearty old man;
Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," father William replied,
"I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abus'd not my health and my vigour at first,
That I never might need them at last."

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,
"And pleasures with youth pass away.
And yet you lament not the days that are gone;
Now tell me the reason I pray."

"In the days of my youth," father William replied,
"I remember'd that youth could not last;
I thought of the future, whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past."

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,
"And life must be hast'ning away;
You are cheerful and love to converse upon death;
Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"I am cheerful, young man," father William replied,
"Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age"

Robert Southey 1799

Robert Southey (/ˈsaʊði/ or /ˈsʌði/;[1] 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has been long eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity.

Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The last has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson. He was also a renowned scholar of Portuguese and Spanish literature and history, translating a number of works from those two languages into English and writing a History of Brazil (part of his planned History of Portugal, which he never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the children's classic The Story of the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story, first published in Southey's prose collection The Doctor.



Robert Southey (c1806) by John Opie - Keswick Museum


The Battle of Blenheim

It was a summer evening;
Old Kaspar’s work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found.
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
“‘Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,
“Who fell in the great victory.

“I find them in the garden,
For there’s many here about;
And often, when I go to plow,
The plowshare turns them out;
For many thousand men,” said he,
“Were slain in that great victory.”

“Now tell us what ‘twas all about,”
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
“Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.”

“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
“Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That ‘twas a famous victory.

“My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

“With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby, died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

“They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

“Great praise the Duke of Marlboro’ won,
And our good Prince Eugene.”
“Why, ‘twas a very wicked thing!”
Said little Wilhelmine.
“Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he;
“It was a famous victory.

“And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he;
“But ‘twas a famous victory.”

Robert Southey


The Battle of Blenheim (referred to in some countries as the Second Battle of Höchstädt), fought on 13 August 1704, was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession.[1] Louis XIV of France sought to knock Emperor Leopold out of the war by seizing Vienna, the Habsburg capital, and gain a favourable peace settlement. The dangers to Vienna were considerable: the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin's forces in Bavaria threatened from the west, and Marshal Vendôme's large army in northern Italy posed a serious danger with a potential offensive through the Brenner Pass. Vienna was also under pressure from Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt from its eastern approaches. Realising the danger, the Duke of Marlborough resolved to alleviate the peril to Vienna by marching his forces south from Bedburg and help maintain Emperor Leopold within the Grand Alliance.

A combination of deception and brilliant administration – designed to conceal his true destination from friend and foe alike – enabled Marlborough to march 250 miles (400 kilometres) unhindered from the Low Countries to the River Danube in five weeks. After securing Donauwörth on the Danube, Marlborough sought to engage the Elector's and Marsin's army before Marshal Tallard could bring reinforcements through the Black Forest. However, with the Franco-Bavarian commanders reluctant to fight until their numbers were deemed sufficient, the Duke enacted a policy of plundering in Bavaria designed to force the issue. The tactic proved unsuccessful, but when Tallard arrived to bolster the Elector's army, and Prince Eugene arrived with reinforcements for the Allies, the two armies finally met on the banks of the Danube in and around the small village of Blindheim.

Blenheim has gone down in history as one of the turning points of the War of the Spanish Succession. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance. Bavaria was knocked out of the war, and Louis's hopes for a quick victory came to an end. France suffered over 30,000 casualties including the commander-in-chief, Marshal Tallard, who was taken captive to England. Before the 1704 campaign ended, the Allies had taken Landau, and the towns of Trier and Trarbach on the Moselle in preparation for the following year's campaign into France itself.

The Duke referred to in the poem is perhaps England's greatest general

On Lolita


We discussed this book at length in The Lounge 5 years ago: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/63...abokov-202870/


Contains a very, very fine and monstrous opening 2 paragraphs:

- Just saw your blog for the first time and it is pretty elite; I have read about half the books you've read so far in 2014. Are you looking for any back and forth discussion or do you just want to post in a relatively solipsistic manner?

- Anyways I was a TA for a course titled Existential Literature my last semester in college and for my weekly satellite course I taught "The Plague" . . . I have always considered it an allegory for any city of human civilization and how on the whole people need to band together to fight the plague of absurdity and to find a place in this world rather than struggle with it individually; this empathy and striving for real meaning and connectedness shown most obviously through the character of Dr.Rieux.

- The straight forwardness of how Camus writes is a plus, he just tells the world how he sees it. The stage he sets is a simple one with characters present in virtually any city; a doctor, a journalist, a pastor, a bureaucrat who longs to be a writer . . . standard archetypical roles; it is not a stage which is fantastical or deviates much at all from any city or principality in the real world, it is itself a portrait of the "regression to the mean" of society. And these fairly static characters represent basic societal roles and how when banded together they can combat the banality of the human condition and derive meaning at least from the daily duties of their roles -- sometimes it just takes a physical plague more than an existential one to realize this.

- My favorite Camus quote, which is from The Fall: "Every excess decreases vitality". Simple yet profound, and quite true.


PS: I have always considered The Plague to be somewhat of a sister novel to The Trial and there is a small paragraph in the former where I believe Camus makes a slight reference to Kafka's masterpiece, ever so subtle.

Daniel: So long as your contributions are polite then I welcome any comments or questions.

Thank you for your thoughts on The Plague. It occurred to me, having just read your above comments, that The Plague had a much more social philosophical underpinning than his essays in The Myth of Sisyphus. In many ways, I think Camus comes to the conclusion that, similiar to Levinas (although via a different route), that all philosophy is ethics; given the reduction of metaphysical and epistemological questions being inaccessible, absurd and dependent. Furthermore, the centre of the ethics of both appear to be dialogic or discursive: negotiated, social and "other" focussed. I think this is very well illustrated in his thematic concerns and character developments within The Plague, although not as much in his essays on the absurd.


One thing that I think I remember correctly: I think Camus did not like being classified as an 'existentialist' but I probably should check that to confirm.

Happy Bloomsday everyone.



I have finished Alice in Wonderland. I am going to start on Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. I will tidy most of the loose ends with my May update and some missing reviews, hopefully, over the course of this week.

Loved The Old Man and The Sea - very melancholic and, in some peculiar way, meditative tale.

Onward towards of David Malouf's Remembering Babylon.

May and June to date
35. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
36. Far from the Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy (owe a Review)
37. The Plague by Albert Camus
38. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
39. Hard Times By Charles Dickens
June
40. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
41. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker (Owe a Review)
42. Alice in Wonderland by C.S. Lewis (Owe a Review)
43. The Old Man and The Sea by E. Hemingway (Owe a Review)

Need to complete Labyrinths

Poems By Robert Southey
The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them
The Battle of Blenheim
Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
“The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still”
Poems by William Blake
The Shephard

To do List
Outstanding reviews

Lolita
Portrait of a Young Man
Remembering Babylon
Through the Looking Glass
The Winter's Tale

Need to Find

Pourtnoy's Complaint by Roth
Faulkner
Chekov
Rasselas
Voltaire? Candide

MB The Captain and The Enemy by Graham Greene
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Wallander
Some more classic poetry maybe a classic history or plays
The Inimitable Jeeves by P G Wodehouse Will go onto the to do list.
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. A wonderful, sad book.
Willa Cather, The Professor's House.
Flannery O'Connor, short stories--esp. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People." One of the best short story writers.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening.

poetry suggestion: The one that kept Nelson Mandela inspired during his incarceration: Invictus by Henley

It's short and Victorian and British. Same ballpark as Kipling's If

Perhaps the greatest strength of Malouf's writing style is the ability to communicate the affection that he has for his flawed characters to the reader. All of his narrators are very human (limited, flawed and yet coherently conceived as unitary). Young men, young women - each straddling cultural fences and struggling to conceive of themselves in the harsh wilderness of this southern Eden. Race relations - dealing with the Other - are ongoing struggles for this bare, nascent community. An important, non-romantic look at the frontier of 19th century Australia.

I am about 20 pages from the end. Perhaps not a giant piece of literature but it certainly deserves the tag of 'literature'.

Through the Looking-Glass by CS Lewis


1872
White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves.

1. Alice meets R.Q. R.Q. to K.R's 4th
2. Alice through Q's 3d (by railway) to Q's 4th
Tweedledum and Tweedledee W.Q. to Q.B's 4th (after shawl)
3 Alice meets W.Q. (with shawl) W.Q. to Q. B's 5th (becomes sheep)
4 Alice to Q's 5th (shop, river, shop) W.Q. to K. B's 8th (leaves egg on shelf)
5 Alice to Q's 6th (Humpty Dumpty) W.Q. to Q.B's 8th (flying from R. Kt.)
6 Alice to Q's 7th (forest) W. Kt. takes R. Kt. R. Kt. to K's 2nd (ch.)
7 W. Kt. takes R. Kt. W. Kt. to K. B's 5th
8 Alice to Q's 8th (coronation) R. Q. to K's sq. (examination)
9 Alice becomes Queen Queens castle
10 Alice castles (feast) W.Q. to Q. R's 6th (soup)
11 Alice takes R. Q. & wins


Preface to the 1896 Edition

As the chess-problem, given on the previous page, has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned. The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the “castling” of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace; but the “check” of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final “checkmate” of the Red King, will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game.

The solution displayed here in animated form (scrolling down, also more informations and links)

http://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com/ ... hess-game/


Nabokov engage in an intriguing duel
against Lewis Carroll - played out in the symbolic language of chess.
Nabokov's key chess problem and its accompanying commentary were
originally published in the article 'Exile' in the Partisan Review in
early 1951, following its earlier rejection by the New Yorker
magazine. A letter sent in March 1950 by Nabokov to his New Yorker
editor and friend Katharine White confirms that the author thought
this chess problem was extremely important and was related, in some
mysterious way, to the chess game plotted by Lewis Carroll in Through
the Looking-glass. As Nabokov explained:

"When coming to the last pages of the piece 'Exile,' please
remember that the frontispiece to the first edition of 'Alice in the
Looking Glass' carries a very subtle and difficult chess problem, and
I would not like to think that New Yorker readers could be more
bewildered by my chess problem (which occupies only a few lines) than
Dodgson's little readers" (Selected Letters, 99).

Shortly after its publication in the Partisan Review, the chess
problem in question was incorporated by Nabokov into Chapter Fourteen
of his autobiography, Speak, Memory/Conclusive Evidence. It has since
been reproduced in chess diagram format, in Poems and Problems (1972,
p.182) where it is accompanied by Nabokov's succinct comment "composed
in Paris, mid-May 1940…The irresistible try is for the bafflement of
sophisticated solvers".

Child of the pure unclouded brow is the prefatory poem to Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.


I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter;
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life's hereafter -
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.


A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing -
A simple chime, that served to time
The rhythm of our rowing -
Whose echoes live in memory yet,
Though envious years would say 'forget'.


Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.


Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind's moody madness -
Within, the firelight's ruddy glow,
And childhood's nest of gladness.
The magic words shall hold thee fast:
Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.


And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For 'happy summer days' gone by,
And vanish'd summer glory -
It shall not touch with breath of bale
The pleasance of our fairy-tale.

Susan Shannon 2005

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptized in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England".[1] His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.

Lewis is one of my old faves, though I'm guessing I'll come back to him eventually. What are you reading?

As a Joyce enthusiast, I can't let this little misnomer slip: I'm sure you meant to type Leopold Bloom!

Really enjoyed the first 8 pages of your thread Digger, and as an apology for my anality in correcting your typo, I look forward to reading the rest of your thread when I get home and hopefully contributing some thoughts.

Disappointed to see One Hundred Years of Solitude shelved at an early stage from the initial reading list; very much hoping once I've go through the remainder of your thread that you do return to it!

I must say, I'm a huge fan of your contextualizing of each text and subsequent thoughts around them. Great thread, just the kind of chat that I miss so much since graduating.

Obviously Leopold...

Remembering Babylon By David Malouf


Perhaps the plot could be more tightly drawn together, perhaps more time could have been spent on one particular time or with more depth into one character - having said that: the series of vignettes presented are insightful depictions of a diverse grabbag of perspectives. Malouf presents many of the underlying sores in the Australian psyche without being didactic, preachy or bombastic.

Update

What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabout.

This reading challenge has withered on the vine, somewhat. I underestimated the impact of more teaching work on my capacity to read in a concerted manner. Fortunately, the work has meant I have staved off homelessness or complete abject poverty - although having just read the aforementioned perhaps I am slightly exagerrating. Nonetheless, I have a small buffer to get me through another couple of months.
Tommorrow is the last day of term - so with two weeks of term holidays I should be able to get some good reading in.
I plan to make an effort to get to an independent book store during the holidays. Hopefully it will be a treasure trove of less widely distributed literary classics so that I can top up my reading list for July. In any case, I will be able to resort to reading Shakespeare if nothing much is to be found.

I went into the Independent bookstore near central station called 'Basement books'.
I bought 13 books for a grandtotal of $73 - talk about one satisfied customer. Add together the return railway ticket and the latte at the destination; I think all up $85 and an afternoon well spent.

11 Novels and two books of poetry.

Candide Voltaire
Brighton Rock Graham Greene
Agnes Grey Anne Bronte
Persuasion Jane Austen
Cannery Row John Steinbeck
A Passage to India E.M. Forster
Finnegans Wake James Joyce
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
The Odyssey Homer
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Omar Khayyam

+
Selected poetry of Lord Bryon
Everyman's poetry by Ovid

OOPS

The Rubaiyat is not a novel but a collection of poems as well.

Just noticed as I looked through it....haha you can tell I was sold on it by its mere title!!
Judged a book by its cover (although in this instance it was a positive assessment).

Bust of Omar Khayyam in Nishapur, Iran.

Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131; Persian: ‏غیاث *الدین ابوالفتح عمر ابراهیم خیام نیشابورﻯ‎, pronounced [xæjˈjɒːm]) was a Persian polymath, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, and Islamic theology.[3]

Born in Nishapur in North Eastern Iran, at a young age he moved to Samarkand and obtained his education there. Afterwards he moved to Bukhara and became established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which includes a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle.[4] He contributed to a calendar reform.

His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Al-Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Avicenna in Nishapur where Khayyám was born and buried and where his mausoleum today remains a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year.[5]

Outside Iran and Persian speaking countries, Khayyám has had an impact on literature and societies through the translation of his works and popularization by other scholars. The greatest such impact was in English-speaking countries; the English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him. The most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83),[6] who made Khayyám the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation and adaptations of Khayyám's rather small number of quatrains (Persian: رباعیات‎ rubāʿiyāt) in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Omar Khayyám died in 1131 and is buried in the Khayyam Garden at the mausoleum of Imamzadeh Mahruq in Nishapur. In 1963 the mausoleum of Omar Khayyam was constructed on the site by Hooshang Seyhoun.



Nishapur
Middle Ages[edit]

Nishapur occupies an important strategic position astride the old Silk Road that linked Anatolia and the Mediterranean Sea with China. On the Silk Road, Nishapur has often defined the flexible frontier between the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. The town derived its name from its reputed founder, the Sassanian king Shapur I, who is said to have established it in the 3rd century CE. Nearby are the turquoise mines that supplied the world with turquoise for at least two millennia. It became an important town in the Khorasan region but subsequently declined in significance until a revival in its fortunes in 9th century under the Tahirid dynasty, when the glazed ceramics of Nishapur formed an important item of trade to the west. For a time Nishapur rivaled Baghdad or Cairo: Toghrül, the first ruler of the Seljuk dynasty, made Nishapur his residence in 1037 and proclaimed himself sultan there, but it declined thereafter, as Seljuk fortunes were concentrated in the west. In the year 100 0CE, it was among the 10 largest cities on earth.[8] After the husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed at Nishapur in 1221, she ordered the death of all in the city (~1.7 million), and the skulls of men, women, and children were piled in pyramids by the Mongols. This invasion and earthquakes destroyed the pottery kilns. In 1979, the 15th World Scout Jamboree was scheduled to be held in Nishapur, but it was cancelled because of the uprising against the Shah of Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini .

The Rubiyait is one poem translated by Edward Fitzgerald. According to my father - I should be warned that the poem apparently bears no resemblance to the original.
It is published in quatrains:


Quatrain 46

For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-
show
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is
the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures
come and go

Anniversary today: