Selection of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated for UNESCO

TEHRAN,Oct.21(MNA)-- An Iranian translator recently rendered a selection of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into English. The selection will be published in a book, which will be kept at UNESCO, translator Saeid Saeidpur told on Saturday. No details were mentioned about how he was commissioned for the job. The book composed of 104 quatrains in Persian and English will be unveiled during a special ceremony on November 16 in Tehran. The book will be embellished with Persian miniatures by masters of this genre. Saeidpur has also written a preface illustrating the place of Khayyam in modern poetry and in the history of poems in the world. “I have also explained about the history of the quatrain and from where this form of poetry has come,” he said. “In this book, I have also explained that the quatrain is a form of Iranian poetry that I have called minimal poetry,” he added. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam had previously been translated into English by the English writer Edward FitzGerald in 1859. Edward Henry Whinfield also published an initial series of 253 quatrains in 1882, as “The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam”. Saeidpur is currently working on a comparative study of Shakespeare and Hafez poems, which will be published in book.