By Lou. Francis

As already mentioned, these sonnets attempt to capture the essence of Omar Khayyam’s Quatrains within the formal decasyllabic metres of the English Sonnet. However the Persian quatrain (or‘ Rubá’í ‘a) to usethe correct term consists of four lines known as ‘hemistichs’ these being subsequently divided into two ‘distichs’, each consisting of two hemistichs. The second of these, comprising the third and fourth lines of the quatrain, is always in the nature of a witty or epigrammatical observation, adding point or counterpoint to the whole quatrain. Therefore, in order to ‘import’ this sort of poetical structure into a sonnet form it has been necessary to use paraphrases of three distinct quatrains to form the first twelve lines of each sonnet, connecting them into a plausible commentary. The last two lines, which in all sonnets encapsulate and summarise the argument of the whole, are themselves paraphrases of the final distichs of separate individual quatrains. The former requires a distillation of a total of forty-five quatrains and the latter a further fifteen.. Thus, this sonnet cycle contains the essence of sixty quatrains ( or Rubá’í’s) altogether.

Although this work may seem to be in the nature of a literary heresy, the author feels that it should be regarded as a logical, modern day observation of Edward Fitzgerald’s great work, rather than an impertinent conceit. While the impact of Fitzgerald’s work on the Victorian poetical psyche was enormous and invigorating, the four line epigramatical nature of its component verse form fell neatly into the everyday rhythm of the times. However, with modern language usage and the development of doggerel, four line verse forms, Fitzgerald’s work can carry unfortunate echoes that easily lead to bowdlerisation where the beauty and resonance of the original is castrated and thus cheapened.