The Influence of Rubaiyat Omar Khayyam on the Poetry of Housmen

With no doubt, the newly founded discipline of Comparative Literature has a very close relationship with translation and translations studies. If we accept the fact that Comparative Literature, at least in one of its school, deals with influence studies, then, we are in the realm of translation studies. Translation can serve as a force for literary renewal and innovation. This is one of the ways in which translation studies research has served comparative literature well. Now it is acknowledged that translation has played a vital role in literary history and that great periods of literary innovation are preceded by periods of intense translation activity. The significance of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam lies in how the poem was read when it appeared and in the precise historical moment when it was published. The impact of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat was such that on the one hand it could serve as models for a new generation of poets struggling to make the skepticism and pessimism a proper subject for poetry, while on the other hand it established a benchmark for future translators because they set the parameters in the minds of English-language readers of what Persian poetry could do. The present study tries to show that FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat had a role in forming pre-modern English poetry, notably Housman’s poetry, in terms of form and content.