The Persian word رباعی (rendered rubāʿī in English) refers to a poem of four lines or parts; in English terms, a quatrain. Following the traditional conventions of Persian poetry these were composed using one of two thirteen-syllable meters. رباعيّات (rubāʿiyyāt) is the plural form; so the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám could be literally rendered as The Quatrains of Omar Khayyám—but where’s the style in that?
In the 1850s, English poet and writer Edward FitzGerald was involved in translations of Spanish and Persian poetry and plays into English. In 1856-7, Edward Byles Cowell, a former professor under whom FitzGerald had studied the Persian language, sent him transcripts of two Persian manuscript with a series of quatrains by Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), a Persian polymath who lived in the Seljuk Empire. How much of the poetry which is attributed to Khayyám that he actually wrote is a matter of conjecture and debate. There are no known original manuscripts from Khayyám containing poetry, only verses that were quoted by others, decades or centuries after his death. So the poems that FitzGerald translated were from much-later collations of extant verse, some or all of which may never have been written by Khayyám itself.
FitzGerald took a free hand to translation; he rendered each rubāʿī into a four-line quatrain, often rhyming in an AABA form. The result was published as the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859, to little notice. However, subsequent editions were published over the years and decades, with FitzGerald taking advantage of the reprints to expand subsequent editions with more poems, and to tweak the translations. By the end of the 19th century, the work had achieved monumental popularity, reflecting in part the expansion of the British Empire and the pervasive Orientalism that occasionally peaked into popular phases, like the Egyptomania that swept the English-speaking world after the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
In addition to the authorized editions by FitzGerald, which could differ substantially from each other, there were innumerable other translations and pirated editions. The language and even numbering of the quatrains differ between editions. As a result, like the Christian Bible, it is difficult to talk about the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as a single text, but rather as a corpus of related works within which are distinct traditions. For our purposes, the text of FitzGerald’s 5th (1898) edition appears most influential.
Given the immense popularity of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it shouldn’t be surprising that several Weird Tales writers during the 1930s read and enjoyed some version of this book, and that it influenced them to greater or lesser degree, including the three most-remembered today: H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.
H. P. Lovecraft
The w. k. Khayyam-Fitzgerald reference to philosophy seems to shew an under-appreciation of the pure joy of argument. However—the genial maker of tents was none one to appreciate anything truly intellectual in a detached way.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 23 Feb 1918, LRKO 105-106
The first reference to the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in Lovecraft’s letters shows a familiarity with FitzGerald’s translation; the last name Khayyám had been literally translated as “Tentmaker”, hence Lovecraft’s reference to the “genial maker of tents.” The quatrain in question is probably:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
—XXVII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)
It is not exactly clear when Lovecraft read Khayyám/FitzGerald, although it seems to have been several years before 1918:
As to the Rubaiyat of Omar & FitzGerald, it is so long since I read the thing that I have forgotten its details. I did not especially like it—which is doubtless the reason I never perused it a second time.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 11 Jun 1920, LRKO 167-168
Lovecraft doesn’t explain further, but there are certainly some aspects of Khayyám’s poetry that might have rubbed the weird writer the wrong way—his meticulousness for meter, Khayyám’s topics including love and drinking, the obtuseness of some of the translated images—and perhaps the sheer prosaicness of the poetry, which were far less fantastic than the 1,001 Nights.
During the course of discussion [George Kirk] gave me two books—one a fine sidelight on colonial life at Princeton College, & the other a variorum edition of the Rubaiyat which I wanted to send my correspondent Woodburn Harris—an Omar enthusiast. Nothing could make him take pay for either.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 27-28 May 1930, LFF 2.855
Kirk was a bookseller and friend of Lovecraft’s; Harris was another correspondent, unfortunately none of their published letters attest to any conversations on Khayyám. Lovecraft’s final word on the poet and his work appeared in his suggestions for a reading guide, the final chapter for Anne Tillery Renshaw‘s textbook Well Bread Speech (1936), which never made it into the finished product:
In the Oriental field we do not have to be asked to read the Arabian Nights or Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar’s Rubiyat.
—H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 2.186
Lovecraft’s reading list didn’t necessarily reflect his personal tastes, only his professional assessment of what books qualified as those people should read as part of a literary education. It is a reflection of his acknowledgement of the tremendous popularity and influence of Khayyám’s poetry in FitzGerald’s translation as much as anything else.
It’s a pity we don’t have more of Lovecraft’s thoughts on Khayyám, and especially whether the Persian poet’s poetry was any inspiration at all to that of his famous Arabic poet, Abdul Alhazred and his Al Azif—which was at least partially written in poetry. Though aside from the common geographic origin in the Middle East (albeit different parts of it) and being poets, the biographies of Alhazred and Khayyám show few similarities.
Robert E. Howard
In the words of Omar Khayyam: “East is East and West is West To a ramblin’ gay galoot.”
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 8 Jun 1923, CL1.3
In the first surviving letter from Robert E. Howard, he mentions Omar Khayyám by name—although the poetic reference is actually to Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West” (1889). Howard’s interest in poetry is often overlooked, but poetry pervades his fiction, and Howard himself was lauded as a poet of considerable power by Lovecraft.
Howard’s letters to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith include a great deal of off-the-cuff poetry (some of it ribald, jocular, or doggerel verse), as well as quotations from other verses that Howard had read, heard, or memorized. For example:
“Methought a voice within the temple cried,
When all the temple is prepared within,
Why loiter drowsy worshippers outside?”
“I tell you this, when started from the goal,
Over the flaming shoulders of the foal,
Of heaven’d Parwin and Mushtari they flung,
In my predestined plot of dust and soul.”
“A book of verses underneath a bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou,
Beside me singing in the wilderness,
Ah, wilderness were Paradise enow!”
“Look to rose about us,” Lo,
“Laughing,” she says, “Into the world I blow,
“At once the silken tassel of my purse,
Tare [sic], and my treasures to the garden throw.— Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 6 Aug 1925, CL1.61-62
These are lines for quatrains II, LXXV, XII, and XIV of the 5th (1898) edition. It isn’t clear if Howard read this specific edition, but he seems to have read at least some version derived from the 5th edition text. Howard scholar Steve Trout noted Howard’s quotations may have come from Little Blue Book #1, which followed the text of FitzGerald’s 5th edition (Howard History).
In more serious letters, Howard would praise Khayyám, e.g.:
I have carefully gone over, in my mind, the most powerful men — that is, in my opinion — in all of the world’s literature and here is my list:
Jack London, Leonid Andreyev, Omar Khayyam, Eugene O’Neill, William Shakespeare.
All these men, and especially London and Khayyam, to my mind stand out so far above the rest of the world that comparison is futile, a waste of time. Reading these men and appreciating them makes a man feel life not altogether useless.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, week of 20 Feb 1928, CL1.166
Howard also wrote to Lovecraft, listing Khayyám among his favorite poets (MF1.510/ CL2.419). Although Howard was still just as likely to take the poet’s name in vain for the sake of a joke:
“Old Stiff had a friend, Hatrack by name;
The life he led was a sin and a shame.
He, lounged like Omar beneath a bough,
With a whore and jug of beer — and how!”
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. Mar 1929, CL1.319
The reference is to one of the most famous of Khayyám’s quatrains:
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
—XII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)
One of Howard’s greatest tributes to Khayyám and FitzGerald was to quote from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám‘s 1898 edition in the opening chapters of the serial “Skull-Face” (Weird Tales Oct–Nov–Dec 1929). And in One Who Walked Alone (1986) by Novalyne Price Ellis, it is written:
Bob’s attention was centered on a copy of The Rubáiyat. He already had a copy, but he said he might come back next week and pick up that book and another one—that one by Cabell. (92)
Price would herself quote from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in her memoir.
Upon his death, Howard’s father donated his library to Howard Payne University in nearby Brownwood; this included a copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a later edition which combined the aspects of FitzGerald’s previous translations, and is listed as “the First and Fifth versions.”
Clark Ashton Smith
Then I began to write verse, including, I remember, some rather lame imitations of the Rubaiyat. Gradually I acquired a feeling for meter and rhythm; and at sixteen or seventeen was able to sell a few poems to magazines.
—Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel J. Sackett, 30 Jun 1939, SLCAS 359Poe, not Omar Khayyam, was the first poet who impressed me, and I’ll never forget the thrill of finding his poems in a grammar-school l ibrary at the age of thirteen. I remember too that the librarian commented reprovingly on my morbid and unhealthy taste in reading-matter!
—Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel J. Sackett, 11 Jul 1950, SLCAS 364I did a lot of boyhood scribbling, imitations of Omar, lurid Oriental romances, etc;, and at 17 sold several pseudo-Orientales to the Black Cat and the Overland Monthly.
—Clark Ashton Smith to L. Sprague de Camp, 21 Oct 1953, SLCAS 371
Compared to Lovecraft and Howard, Smith was the most accomplished poet of the three, having collected and published a good deal of his poetry during his lifetime, and having achieved some small measure of fame for his poetry while breathing. Smith was not as hidebound as early Lovecraft was, and more experimental than Howard, even to the point of translating and writing poetry in other languages. His rich vocabulary, striking images, and the mentorship of poets like George Sterling steered made Clark Ashton Smith a weird poet par excellance—and Sterling was well-versed in poetry enough to comment on a perceived lift, intentional or not:
But here is your excellent poem to comment on, which I’ll venture to the extent of saying I like it very much, but am of the opinion that it’s first line is too suggestive of that which begins “The Rubaiyat.”
— George Sterling to Clark Ashton Smith, 14 Jul 1914, SU 109, SLCAS 23You’re quite right about the resemblance of the first line of my poem to the one in the Rubaiyat:—“Before the phantom of false morning died,” which begins the second quatrain of that poem. It’s strange that I’d not noticed the reminiscence before. I’ve not thought of a new line, so far.
— Clark Ashton Smith to George Sterling, 27 Jul 1914, SU 110
| Before the phantom of False morning died, Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, “When all the Temple is prepared within, “Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside?” | Ere yet the soaring after-fire was flown, I found a city in the twilight lone— Asleep in lapse of some forgotten land And griping horizons of deserts prone. |
| II. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898) | “A Phantasy of Twilight” by Clark Ashton Smith |
Unfortunately, Smith’s maturation as a poet came at a time when U.S. tastes in poetry were shifting away from his preferred style. As a consequence, despite initial fame as a young poet, Smith struggled throughout his adult life with poverty and the difficulty of making a living and supporting his parents. Selling poems and fiction were two ways Smith worked during the 1910s-1920s to sustain himself and his family, as well as gifts from friends, manual labor, and efforts to self-publish his own verse (among his enthusiastic customers were Lovecraft and Howard). Smith had literary appetites, but little cash to feed it.
Most of my reading now will have to be in the form of re-reading, since I can’t afford new books. The prices have gone up astoundingly. . . . I spent yesterday afternoon with Omar and Leopardi (the latter the volume you sent me) and found them better company than ever.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 7 Nov 1918, BUS 132My table is covered with a litter of borrowed books—“The Rubaiyat of Hafiz,” “Thus Spake Zharathtustra,” [sic] “A Feast of Lanterns,” and others . . . Do you know this rendering of Hafiz, by L. Cranmer-Byng? Much of it is excellent (d—d if I can see much difference between Hafiz and Omar, in regard to thought and feeling) and one stanza haunts me:
“That night we wrought Love’s miracle again;
For one brief gloom one soul was born of twain:
Now Death shall weary at the springs of Youth,
By singing water that he sealed in vain.”
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 15 Dec 1918, BUS 142-143
The Rubáiyát of Hafiz is another collection of Persian quatrains rendered into English. Hafiz (also as Hafez) had been translated into English before Khayyám, but the success of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám encouraged further translations of Persian poetry in the now-familiar mold of FitzGerald’s translations. Good marketing strategy, if nothing else.
Khayyám forms one of Smith’s poetic touchstones, at least in his letters, no doubt because of his re-reading of his poetry. The quotations from and allusions to Khayyám’s verses all seem to come from FitzGerald’s 1898 text, or a text derived from that edition.
It desolates me to hear that you have been unwell. There’s d—d little in life, beyond the brief Epicurean category of Omar’s stanza, “A book of verses underneath the bough, etc.” Even art is a kind of Barmecides-feast, when one is sick, or indisposed. As for the rest—the “wine” and “bread” are worse than mockery to a sick and queasy stomach. And love—love is the shadow of a dead, forgotten dream,—or a ravenous, writhing, serpent-shapen flame from the cauldron-fires of Malebolge.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 12 Aug 1919, BUS 169I can’t imagine what the place is like now, even with such oases, and “wells amid the waste” as will continue to exist.
— Clark Ashton Smith to George Sterling, 28 Aug 1919, SU 174
A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The NOTHING it set out from—Oh, make haste!
—XLVIII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)
Clark Ashton Smith shared Lovecraft’s love of the fantasy Middle East and Near East of the 1,001 Nights, but unlike his friend, Smith was very much fond of alcohol and the company of women, and so was more able to marry Khayyám into his fantasy Orientalist mindset:
I can readily imagine you in Alexandria or Lesbos, or, in a later incarnation, wandering through the Baghdad of Haroun or Almansour, after the journey of the Persian wastes. . . . Alas, for Omar, and Saddi, and Shiraz with its golden wine and golden roses! I wish we were there in Shiraz or Baghdad or Ispahan, with “Time’s purple” a thousand years deep between us and this nightmare of the modern world!
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 29 Aug 1919, BUS 171
In time, Smith’s appreciation of Khayyám/FitzGerald’s bore poetic fruit:
I’ve completed two longer poems, which I’ll send you in my next. One is an ode to Omar Khayam [sic], the other a fantastic dialogue entitled “The Ghoul and the Seraph.”
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 31 Aug 1919, BUS 191
The poem was “To Omar Khayyam.” It was well-received by Smith’s friends, but faced some initial difficulty getting published, apparently due to the stigma of Prohibition:
“Asia” has returned my “Omar” ode. They seemed to like the poem, but, I dare say, thought its publication in their pages not “advisable.” It might “get them in bad” with many of their readers. The hedonism (not to mention the pessimism) of the poem would be anathema to a lot of people in this Puritan paradise. It’s incredible, but ch is the fact . . . Even in San Francisco, people are being fined or imprisoned for carrying pocket-flasks! The old Blue Laws were nothing to some of these new statutes. I dare say they’ll want to stop the publication of such books as “The Rubaiyat.” Why not, when it’s against the law to publish or disseminate recipes for the manufacture of wine or beer, or even to use the word “beer,[”] “whiskey,” etc in an advertisement or label, or on a bill-board!
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 25 Feb 1920, BUS 202-203
Smith eventually sold the poem to The Lyric West in 1921 for $5. However, the magazine sat on the poem for years, so the first publications was actually Smith’s own 1922 self-published poem collection Ebony and Crystal, where Lovecraft and Howard would have read it. In June 1926, The Lyric West finally published Smith’s ode. It was well-received.
I won a poetry prize the other day, much to my amazement. I was awarded fifty dollars for the best poem published in volume 5 of “The Lyric West”, a Los Angeles poetry magazine. The poem was “To Omar Khayyam”, which they had held for years before printing. I had forgotten all about it, in fact.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Donald Wandrei, 13 Mar 1927, TWU 53
Three Weird Talers. Three different takes on the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. While an 11th/12th century Persian poet (as filtered through a 19th century Englishman) might not be the most obvious of influences, this work was part of the shared cultural heritage of weird fiction in the 1920s and 30s.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 
Thank you for this interesting and illuminating research!
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