OMAR KAYYÁM
In the twelfth century, at Khorassán in Persia Omar Kayyám the poet was born. He lived and died at Naishápúr, following the trade of a tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the Rubáiyát, was first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the Omar Kayyám Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations."
In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Súfis, or religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It was against the poetry of such Súfis that Omar Kayyám rose in revolt. Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed.
A fair specimen of the finest Súfi poetry is The Rose Garden of Sa'di, which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility in English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although of a later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, and he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war. His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in hand through a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primary conviction that the soul is essentially part of God, and will return to God again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints and half-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and there you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines—
"Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs,
Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries.
The guardian of the store-house of the wind
Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies."
These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate—
"To God's beloved even the dark hour
Shines as the morning glory after rain.
Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power
Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain."
It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyám revolted. He had not any proof of such spiritual assurances, and he did not want that of which he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, both in its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any other world. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, and protested against the vague spirituality of the Súfis by an assertion of what may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much as they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who "failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb—"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with such inscriptions on them—"The future is utterly useless, make the most of to-day,"—and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and the inscription.
The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. In his view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means God; when he speaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, no man has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left his meaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine and love—earthly things, which may or may not have their spiritual counterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. The same persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, and wine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life for Omar as he knows it.
"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.
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!
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show."
It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained. When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him. That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it would have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have found the fashions of China somewhat risqué. One remembers that introductory note to Browning's Ferishtah's Fancies—"You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."[1] The only safe way of dealing with Omar Kayyám is to insist that his garments be not changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide.
Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr. Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons." That is the root of the matter after all—the soul and horizons. He who says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent has certainly not lessened.
The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always will be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we have already found to be the keynote of Goethe's Faust. Kingsley, in one of the most remarkable passages of Westward Ho! describes two of Amyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the march. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil. But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O Lord Jesus," said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!"
It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce the element of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his Conspiracy of Pontiac, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the Ojibwa Indians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; ... or he lifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles on the grass-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs
away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.... But when winter descends upon the North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs."
Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the time trying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked up again, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, that impossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Those who choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that the song of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt at singing and fall into an earth-bound silence.
Thus Omar Kayyám has brought us a rich treasure from the East, of splendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness of poetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and a decoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are taken more seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as other Eastern things have sometimes done.