The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included under the head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the most modern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, although they have come into our literature but recently, yet represent very ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern about them. They describe bed-rock human passions and longings, sorrowings and consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism.
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.