"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"

Pastoral (natural) imagery was an important feature of medieval Persian poetry; additionally, romanticized images of nature were popular in Fitzgerald’s England. England in the mid-19th century was also witnessing the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, painters and poets devoted to capturing the true essence of nature as shown in 14th- and 15th-century Italian painting. With England’s colonial enterprise at its zenith, images from the supposedly exotic, mystical Orient too were much in demand. Given all these factors, it is perhaps natural that Fitzgerald’s translation be filled with flowers, gardens, and birds. To the traditional Persian imagery, Fitzgerald brought an additional meaning of Victorian flower symbolism, making the pastoral images even richer in meaning to its Victorian reader. The rose in Persian tradition symbolized perfection and beauty, as well as inscrutable divinity. (The rose is similarly associated with Christ in Christian tradition). For Khayyam, flowers represent both the timelessness of nature, as well as the time-bound life of all natural living things. (“And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day / Woke—and a thousand scatter’d into Clay” (Lines 29-30); In Victorian floriography, the red rose symbolized love, while a deeper crimson shade stood for mourning.