2016年6月18日 星期六

"The Rubaiyat" (1120) by Omar Khayyam

這本翻譯應該可劃入英國文學。
'Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.'
--from "The Rubaiyat" (1120) by Omar Khayyam
The Middle Ages saw an extraordinary flowering of Persian poetry. Though translations began appearing in Europe in the nineteenth century, these remarkable poets--Omar Khayyam, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafiz, and Jami--are still being discovered in the West. The great medieval Persian poets owe much to the mystical Sufi tradition within Islam, which understands life as a journey in search of enlightenment, and, like their European contemporaries, they combine religious and secular themes. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine, and poetry itself, or telling humorous anecdotes of everyday life, they use these subjects to symbolize deeper concerns with wisdom, mortality, salvation, and the quest for God.

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