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Born to one of the wealthiest families in England in 1809, Fitzgerald was a typical example of a Victorian gentleman of leisure. His wealth enabled him to pursue his interests without
the worry of having to earn an income. Some of the happiest years of his life were spent as a pupil of King Edward VI Grammar School in Bury St. Edmunds. Interestingly, headmaster
Dr. Benjamin Heath Malkin was a friend of William Blake’s and Fitzgerald was aware of the poet and artist long before his posthumous rise to fame.
Fitzgerald, who was often plagued by loneliness, valued friendship most highly and among his friends were poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.
Throughout his life, he kept up correspondence with numerous friends and acquaintances.
Fitzgerald was first introduced to Persian poetry by his friend and Persian tutor Edward Cowell. He became obsessed with Khayyam after Cowell sent him quatrains attributed to the
Persian he had found in the Ouseley manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Cowell later went to work as a history professor in Calcutta where he discovered more quatrains
attributed to Khayyam in the Asiatic Society Library. Fitzgerald, a devotee of ancient Roman Epicurean philosopher Lucretius, viewed Khayyam as a kindred spirit and emphasised
this philosophical bent in the work.
The work was interpreted by many as a meditation on death and fate and the transience of life, confronting the reader with the reality of mortality and disregarding the consolation
traditionally offered by religion and faith. The message that only the present is valid comes through particularly strongly in quatrain 12 of the fifth edition, which inspired the cement
sculpture of two figures pouring out wine on the back veranda of the Owl House, in the line: “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou.”
Perhaps the work resonated so strongly and widely because it emerged into a world undergoing profound cultural, political and religious changes. It has been observed that in the
USA, where it was ubiquitous for decades, the poem appeared in the aftermath of the Civil War and the upheavals that followed. The country Helen was born in underwent a similarly
traumatic event in the form of the South African War from 1899 to 1902. She was born in the Cape, a colony of Britain, and by the time she reached her teenage years, she was a
citizen of the Union of South Africa. Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat clearly made an impression in South Africa as well with two translations published in Afrikaans, one by CJ Langenhoven
and another by Herman Charles Bosman. Helen owned a copy of the Langenhoven translation.
The book’s popularity has been credited to its rejection of religious hypocrisy and bourgeois respectability during a period where moral codes and behaviour were often strictly enforced.
Recalling his first experience of reading the poem at the age of 14, the modernist poet TS Eliot later wrote: “It was like a sudden conversion; the world appeared anew, painted
with bright, delicious and painful colours.” In contrast, the conservative writer GK Chesterton condemned the work as the bible of the “carpe diem religion”.
For many, the Rubaiyat was a celebration of hedonism and it inspired the creation of Omar supper clubs across the USA and Britain where likeminded individuals could meet in
friendship over wine and food. Among the famous names that were recorded attending club dinners were writers such as Thomas Hardy, JM Barrie, George Meredith, George
Gissing and Henry James and the publisher Charles Scribner. In Oscar Wilde’s famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton, who seduces the title
character to sell his soul, refers to “wise Omar”.
186 FOR THE LOVE OF LIGHT
FOR THE LOVE OF LIGHT 187