Oft-repeated Thoughts

It is possible to get badly battered by oft-repeated thoughts that cause some melting in the mind, muddles it too, or bury better purpose, says Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952). Health and successful living also depend on sane thoughts and actions and good company. And whereas some books are called good company, a lot of books are not. [Yi 45; Ak 35]

Yogananda initially employed a Persian scholar to help him translate the original into English, but, "After I compared that translation with FitzGerald's, I realized that FitzGerald had been divinely inspired to catch exactly in gloriously musical English words the soul of Omar's writings." [From an article in Hinduism Today, October 1994]

"The soul of Omar's writings" — Yogananda's great claim of finding Omar's real meanings in FitzGerald's work should not be allowed to go all unchecked and uncommented. First some basics: Edward FitzGerald's (1809-83) "translation was so free in its rendition as to be virtually an original work," writes Encyclopaedia Britannica [Ebu] And he was not very well versed in Persian.

Best known for his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, which, though it is a free adaptation and selection from the 12th-century Persian poet's verses, stands on its own as a classic of English literature. It is one of the most frequently quoted of lyric poems. [Ebu, sv "Rubaiyat"]

However:

Some scholars have doubted that Omar wrote poetry. His contemporaries took no notice of his verse, and not until two centuries after his death did a few quatrains appear under his name. Even then, the verses were mostly used as quotations against particular views ostensibly held by Omar, leading some scholars to suspect that they may have been invented and attributed to Omar because of his scholarly reputation. [Ebu, sv "Omar Khayyam"].

The encyclopedia also tells of "FitzGerald's ingenious and felicitous paraphrasing" and "His translations ... are, however, extremely free translations, and more recently several more faithful renderings of the quatrains have been published [Ibid.]."

Yogananda used the subjective and in part free renditions of FitzGerald to tell what the Medieval Persian Omar Khayyam allegedly mean, to the effect that Yogananda's output in the matter seems rather foot-loose. That does not seem to be a problem in his sect, realise it or not.

The Whinfield translation and the work of Graves-Shah to Compare With

Yogananda's purport and Rubaiyat comments have been studied somewhat on the previous page. What could be at stake for ourselves here is growth into (more) maturity, which can be stunted by much servility even in the face of a flop marked by highly idiosyncratic and tendentious procedures, unsustained interpretations and "spiritualised misinterpretations". Against such failures, judiciousness and mature methods of presentation can assist thinking.