FIRST PAGE  

Rubaiyat Commentary
 4 › 1 › 9

THE SET
SITE MAP SECTION
SITE QUERIES
SITE SEARCH
YOGA TERMS

COLUMN SETTING
 
GATHERED RESERVATIONS   PREVIOUS A CONTENTS NEXT




Rubaiyat Introduction

Rubaiyat is a collection of Medieval Persian quatrains (verses of four lines). There are somewhere between 1,200 to over 2,000 such poems attributed to the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048-1123).

IMAGE
Yogananda's spiritual commentary of the Rubaiyat bored me terribly. By steps I found out why, and here I share it with you.


      Translations of these poems differ, in part depending on one's interpretation of Khayyam's stand as to life. Some find him to be a nihilist, others an anarchist, and still others a Sufi (Islamic mystic). Interpreters do not agree whether Khayyam was for or against alcohol either.
      The best known English versions (in five editions) were made by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83). Four editions were published by him while he was alive, and the fifth edition was edited after his death on the basis of manuscript revisions Fitzgerald had left. As it is said, Fitzgerald's versions are noted more for freedom than for fidelity to the original. Fitzgerald did not strive for any literal translation at all.
      Edward Henry Whinfield published his second edition of a literal translation of 500 verses in 1883.
      Arthur Talbot published his translation of 158 verses in 1908.
      Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah published their alleged translation of the Rubaiyat in 1967. Their work purported to be a translation of a twelfth-century manuscript in Afghanistan, "where it was allegedly used as a Sufi teaching document. But it proved impossible to produce the manuscript, and British experts in Persian literature had no difficulty in proving that the translation was . . . based on a study of the possible sources of FitzGerald's work by Edward Heron Allen." [Wikipedia, sv "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"]
      There are many other translations as well. The works of Fitzgerald, Whinfield, and Talbot can be easily compared on-line. [Link]
      In the following I will compare a few verses of the Fitzgerald version with the Graves-Shah work. And why? Yogananda furnished a "spiritual commentary" on Khayyam, and based his statements on Fitzgerald's many liberal renditions, whereas Graves and Shah stuck to "the possible sources of FitzGerald's work". Other translations - including that of A. H. Whinfield - are found by following the link just given.
      A problem ensues: Many of the phrases and key terms in Fitzgerald's work is missing in the original Persian, as may be ascertained by comparing some translations with one another. Yogananda's spiritual commentary contains a wealth of stock phrases, and as they are anchored in Fitzgerald's wording, something worth noting appears: A "commentary" of stock phrases that draws heavily on words and phrases missing in an "original Rubaiyat" of selected quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam.
      To complicate things a bit further, there are today two often differing, independent versions of Yogananda's commentary. You should not feel confident you get the true wordings of Yogananda either - after essentials of Khayyam perhaps have been done away with or distorted by Fitzgerald. It is first and foremost Yogananda's commentary that is exposed and discussed in the following. A confession: After reading his commentary of the first two or three verses in a magazine that published such verses over some years, Yogananda's spiritual commentary bored me tremendously. Other followers praise such a foot-loose work rather sheepishly - regrettably.


What Good Is There in Yogananda's Book?

Opinions differ, and some reviewers are less informed than others. That needs to be taken into account. Amazon.com [sv "The Wine of the Mystic"] is the host of the following comments and others.
Yogananda made the fatal error of believing that . . . he, himself, could discern it in all religions. He did that with the Bible. He does this here with a Sufi poem . . . But Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship was and is Hinduism . . . So this book is an Islamic poem as interpreted by a Hindu. [Bill Butler]
Yogananda said,
"One day as I was deeply concentrated on the pages of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, I suddenly beheld the walls of its outer meanings crumble away, and the vast inner fortress of golden spiritual treasures stood open to my gaze. Ever since, I have admired the beauty of the previously invisible castle of inner wisdom in the Rubaiyat. I have felt that this dream-castle of truth, which can be seen by any penetrating eye, would be a haven for many shelter-seeking souls invaded by enemy armies of ignorance."
      "Profound spiritual treatises by some mysterious divine law do not disappear from the earth even after centuries of misunderstanding, as in the case of the Rubaiyat. Not even in Persia is all of Omar Khayyam's deep philosophy understood in its entirety, as I have tried to present it."
Yogananda also tells FitzGerald was "divinely inspired to catch exactly in gloriously musical English words the soul of Omar's writings."
      One person finds Yogananda's commentary "irresistable immediately upon opening its pages".
      Another finds "Yogananda's commentaries on these poems will bring every scholar on mystical Islam to shame . . . I would love to recommend this piece of timeless art to all the Muslims in this sordid world . . . no one is in a better position than Yogananda (except for those souls who have God realization), to interpret these poems the way Khayyam had intended it to be understood."
      A third person: "This wonderful book is . . . a collection of deep spiritual discourses."

TO TOP


The First Verse (Quatrain)

Rubaiyat, Persian book illustration, detail
Many who read form wrong opinions. The forlorn ones seem to hail sayings and works that lack credibility.
Below is Yogananda's commentary to verse 1 in Edward Fitzgerald's adaptation-poem Rubaiyat, so you can see in detail how Yogananda made his book The Wine of the Mystic. I throw the Whinfield translation into the bargain too. Fitzgerald did not actually translate the poem, he wrote an adaptation.
      FitzGerald inflicted liberties on his purported source and also credits FitzGerald for the considerable portion of the very unliteral "translation" that is his own creation. "Many quatrains are mashed together," he informs. Many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to any one of Khayyam's quatrains at all.
      The content and phrasing of Fitzgerald's translations changes with the editions. I bring his verse 1 from five editions to document it.
      Yogananda makes use of the first Fitzgerald edition to "interpret Omar". Yogananda claimed he peered through the free-standing poem adaptation of Fitzgerald into the thoughts of the Medieval Persian author Omar Khayyam. Interesting claim. Can it be substantiated too? Yogananda's claims must be ascertained in the light of this:
  1. Fitzgerald's later translations do not all include the words Yogananda uses.
  2. The sources of many Fitzgerald verses are obscure, and may be lacking too.
  3. Other versions - translations - do not contain key words from Fitzgerald's first edition either, the edition that Yogananda uses to "psych out Omar", purportedly - by what is essentially a yogic interpretation.
In the first chapter that follows, Yogananda inspiration from ideas that are not found in the Graves-Shah work, is in blue. Much in Yogananda's twofold edited commentary may lack in substance and credibility when it comes to understanding Omar. However, there is no denying that Yogananda has some good points of his own too.

gyroscopic signal

Verse 1

FitzGerald 1 (1st ed)

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

2nd edition of FitzGerald

Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height
Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night,
And, to the field of Heav'n ascending, strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

3rd, 4th, and 5th edition of FitzGerald

Wake! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

Whinfield 233

The sun doth smite the roofs with Orient ray
And, Khosrau like, his wine-red sheen display;
Arise, and drink! the herald of the dawn
Uplifts his voice, and cries, "Oh, drink to-day!"

Graves and Shah 1

While Dawn, Day's herald straddling the whole sky,
Offers the drowsy world a toast "To Wine"
The Sun spills early gold on city roofs
Day's regal Host, replenishing his jug.



Yogananda's Approach

Here is how Yogananda approaches the Fitzgerald verse. He attaches outré meanings to some phrases and terms to promote his own pivoting ideas, which are found in other works by him too.
      It matters to know that many of the phrases that Fitzgerald concocted, are not found in other translations, literal and other ones, and correspondingly, they hardly take us straightway to Omar's poetic talk at all, and often represent his suggestive meanings rather poorly, if at all. It seems to me that Yogananda misuses Fitzgerald and makes strong claims on behalf of his own intuition, while his commentary result is far from ideal.
      The blue sentences in the following lack back-up from the Graves-Shah translation. In my added remarks, "Lacking" means "lacking in the Graves-Shah translation" at least. There are other valuable versions of the text than theirs.

YOGANANDA GLOSSARY

  • Morning: Dawn of awakening from delusive earthly existence.
  • Bowl of night: The darkness of ignorance, which imprisons the immortal soul in mortal consciousness.
  • Stone: Spiritual discipline.
  • Stars: The attractive twinkling of material desires.
  • Hunter of the East: Eastern wisdom, a mighty slayer of delusion.
  • Sultan's turret: The sovereign soul.
  • Noose of light: Divine illumination of wisdom.
In the first verse, a little less than 30% of the phrases Yogananda stands on - 2 key phrases out of 7 - could actually refer back to the original Persian poem, and slightly more then 70% appear unfounded. Details follow:

Lacking: Bowl of night, interpreted by the guru as "darkness of ignorance". That interpretation stands on his feet. We find no such mention in the Graves-Shah translation.
      In fact, there is no mentioning of night and darkness and bowl in a translation of Omar Khayyam's first verse, and therefore no reason to bring in Yogananda clichés about "darkness of ignorance" either. As you may glimpse below, Yogananda ends up with a cliché-ridden collection of phrases.

Lacking: Stone of spiritual discipline. And Yogananda interprets the 'Fitz stone' as 'spiritual discipline' at random it seems. Enjoy a little discussion around it here: [Link].

Lacking: Stars "the attractive twinkling of material desires". A Fitz image is made into another random Yoganandic metaphor, seemingly. It is not good enough.

Lacking: Hunter of the East somewhat arbitrarily taken to mean "Eastern wisdom, a mighty slayer of delusion" where 'the Sun' would suffice - and here is where propaganda sets in to some, sadly enough.

Sultan's turret "the sovereign soul" that is not there . . . (in the Graves-Shah translation, which has "city roofs".
      Noose of light becomes "shaft of light" in later Fitzgerald editions. Instead of Yogananda's quite elaborate "The divine illumination of wisdom, which destroys the captive darkness surrounding the soul" - what is talked of is after all early morning sunshine.

SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION BY YOGANANDA

The inner Silence sings:
"Awake! Forsake the sleep of ignorance, for the dawn of wisdom has come. Hurl the hard stone of spiritual discipline that breaks the bowl of dark unknowing, putting to flight the pale stars of mock-lustered material desires. "Behold, the Eastern Wisdom, the Hunter and Destroyer of delusion, has caught the proud minaret of the kingly soul in a noose of Light, dispelling its imprisoning mortal darkness."

m
      FitzGerald's later editions do not speak of "bowl of night", "flung the stone", "hunter of the East". "The sultan's turret" is intact in the five editions, though. Others translate the original into ""roofs" or city roofs", as you can see.
      The Graves-Shah verse involves a hailing of the dawn and sunlight in a direct and simple way.
      And Whinfield's take is in short: "A new morning. Arise, and drink! Oh, drink today!".
      How sensible is it to interpret "drink" spiritually? Opinions differ, as mentioned in the introduction. Should we adjust to what Yogananda puts into Fitzgerald's verse? Among Yogananda's key ideas are: Eastern wisdom, darkness of ignorance, spiritual discipline, soul, divine illumination. The fact that he elaborates on these pivotal concepts does not make them appear in any original text . . .

PRACTICAL APPLICATION BY YOGANANDA

Most people, though apparently awake, are really asleep in delusion. [That is not the main issue. - TK] Pursued by the compelling commands of their hounding habits, they have not yet been awakened by [sunlight - TK] wisdom to walk its pleasant pathways. Where life is in danger for lack of watchfulness, it is not safe to sleep. So it is unwise to slumber in the dark doorways of evil habits, which invite the danger of possible death to wisdom and true happiness.

Destroy false pride. [Unfounded - TK] Awaken the soul [yourself] and remain ever wakeful, striving each day to be different and better in all ways. Your soul was not meant to be a prisoner of passion, sleeping behind bars of ignorance. Jerk yourself from sloth; race forward with progressive activities, and catch success in the net of soul creativity.

m
      No substantial basis for most of Yogananda's elaborate oration is found. And what does that suggest?
      Yogananda seems to "spawn" his already established ideas over an adaptation of a Medieval poem. Actually, it is such essentially Hindu ideas that carry his commentary. It is not pleasant to think of how many of the Yoganandic "key symbols" in the poem are missing in a translation.

Yogananda source: Wim 3-4.

TO TOP


The Second Verse

Introduction. Yogananda chose to ignore words of a Persian scholar he consulted about the work and base his so-called commentary on Khayyam on the FitzGerald work. Yogananda's method was to pick seemingly central words and terms from FitzGerald's work and claim he had got to Khayyam's deep meanings through them. But most of these "central words" are missing in a at least one other translation. Besides, much of Yogananda's work is greatly cliché-ridden.
      As a result Yogananda's work may feel little rewarding, even boring. It does not get less intolerable by the added fact that there are two divergent versions of his commentary too. They are by two different publishers: Crystal Clarity and Self-Realization Fellowship. But here is a comparison between six verses. Yoganana's verbiage takes off from FitzGerald's adaptation, his first edition, from 1859. As with verse 1, there are only few and perhaps rudimentary connections between Yogananda's outpourings and later Fitzgerald editions, and to somewhat related original Khayyam poems.


gyroscopic signal

Verse 2

Fitzgerald at times managed to pick and choose from many rubaiyat verses to form one of of his. And that explains why four Whinfield poems are given below.

FitzGerald 2

Dreaming when dawn's left hand was in the sky
I heard a voice within the tavern cry,
"Awake, my little ones, and fill the cup
before life's liquor in its cup be dry."

2nd FitzGerald edition

Before the phantom of false morning died,
Methought a voice within the tavern cried,
"When all the temple is prepared within,
"Why lags the drowsy worshipper outside?"

The 3rd, 4th and 5th edition's last line - the 3 first lines are as in the 2nd verse:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"

Whinfield 1, 136, 200, 233

At dawn a cry through all the tavern shrilled,
"Arise, my brethren of the revelers' guild,
That I may fill our measure full of wine,
Or e'er the measure of our days be filled."

Life's caravan is hastening on its way;
Brood not on troubles of the coming day,
But fill the wine-cup ere sweet night be gone,
And snatch a pleasant moment, while you may.

When false dawn streaks the east with cold, gray line,
Pour in your cups the pure blood of the vine;
The truth, they say, tastes bitter in the mouth,
This is a token that the "Truth " is wine.

The sun doth smite the roofs with Orient ray
And, Khosrau like, his wine-red sheen display;
Arise, and drink! the herald of the dawn
Uplifts his voice, and cries, "Oh, drink to-day!"

Graves and Shah 2

Then shouts ring out among us at the tavern:
"Rise too, you good-for-nothing tavern lad!
Refill our empty bowls with today's measure
Before the measure of our lives be filled!"



Yogananda's Glossary, derived from FitzGerald's 1st edition

  • Dawn's left hand: The first yearning to solve the mystery of life. Not supported. Further, Fitzgerald has "false morning" in later editions.
  • A voice: Intuition of the soul. However, note that Winfield (233) says it is the reddened sun who cries "Drink!".
  • Tavern: Sanctum of inner silence. Well, taverns are not exactly quiet places. Yogananda's interpretation looks farfetched.
  • Little ones: Undeveloped thoughts, earliest intuitions of life's purpose. Not supported.
  • Fill the cup: Fill the consciousness. Fitzgerald 2-5 abandons this term. Winfield has a similar expression.
  • Life's liquour: Life's vitality.. Not fully supported.
  • It's cup: The human body. Not supported.
  • Be dry: Vanish. Hardly supported.

    The keys that are missing in later FitzGerald editions and Whinfield are marked blue.
          The informal stats: 2-3 out of 8 key terms with Yogananda are there in later FitzGerald editions and the translation of Whinfield. Yogananda's "in flagranti hit score" as to sustained key terms is somewhere between 25% and 38%, which is not good. In other words, there is awfully much in Yogananda's take that is not supported in later FitzGerald's and translations. Further, key parts in Whinfield's translation are wholly missing in FitzGerald's first edition too.
          It seems to me that verse 2 is another way of saying, "It's dawn already. Drink while you can." Whinfield (200) suggests that wine is truth.
          Now, some say the world is an inn, we are the travellers. Inside that tavern, some like to drink a lot and look at tits, while others strive for other outlets, such as doing one's duty.

    Yogananda source: Wine of the Mystic, p. 7 ff, and Self-Realization Magazine, Spring 1972:31-32.

    THIS COLLECTION  

    WAVE

    Literature  
          Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
          Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008.
          Sus: Graves, Robert and Ali-Shah, Omar: The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam. Cassell. London, 1967.
          Wim: Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Wine of the Mystic. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1994.

          Wikipedia information

    TO TOP SET ARCHIVE SECTION NEXT


       USER'S GUIDE to abbreviations, the site's bibliography, letter codes, dictionaries, site design and navigation, tips for searching the site and page referrals. [LINK]
       DISCLAIMER: [LINK]
       © 1997–2008, Tormod Kinnes. All rights reserved. [E-MAIL]