Page "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" Paragraph 16

In fact, FitzGerald himself referred to his work as " transmogrification ".

" My translation will interest you from its form, and also in many respects in its detail: very un-literal as it is.

Many quatrains are mashed together: and something lost, I doubt, of Omar's simplicity, which is so much a virtue in him " ( letter to E. B. Cowell, 9 / 3 / 58 ).

And, " I suppose very few People have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though certainly not to be literal.

But at all Cost, a Thing must live: with a transfusion of one ’ s own worse Life if one can ’ t retain the Original ’ s better.

Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle " ( letter to E. B. Cowell, 4 / 27 / 59 ).