Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam of Nishapur: Translated From the Persian Into English Verse Including Quatrains Now for the First Time So Rendered
Since most foreign words, especially those expressing abstract qualities, cannot be adequately represented each by any one exact equivalent, it is evident that no translation of a masterpiece can be perfectly satisfactory. That is why so many are stimulated to keep trying to make an advance in accuracy, in felicity of phrase, in form, over the translations that have already been offered to the public. Thus in Homer we find the version in rimed couplets, in blank verse, in ballad form, in hexameters, in rhythmic prose, in Spenserian stanzas, and the student will find in each succes sive attempt to represent the original, something to praise and something to blame. The ideal can never be attained, because one language can never be another language. A hundred persons may try to put into English verse an ode of Horace or such a lyrical gem as Heine's Du bist wie eine Blume, but in each case the crux will arise in such a phrase as simplex munditiis or in such a word as Wehnmt, which do not mean quite what the lexicon attempts to give as the definition.
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