Bowen, John Charles Edward

Translation or travesty? an enquiry into Robert Graves's version of some Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. John Charles Edward Bowen. Abingdon, Abbey Press (Berks), 1973. Freshet library, no. 2. IX, 43 p. ISBN: 0900012323.

Bowen discusses whether Edward FitzGerald's (1859) or Robert Graves's (1967) version of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat is a more accurate translation; it explains the scope of the great Islamic philosophy of Sufism, and questions whether a mystical interpretation of the quatrains accords with Khayyam's known scepticism; and it quotes conclusive evidence that Robert Graves's version of the Rubaiyat, so far from having been translated from a manuscript which has lain bidden in the Hindu Kush for the past 800 years, is based on the text of a book pubhshed in London in 1899.