The Fire of Spring...

VII.

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly – and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”*

 

This verse is one of the more memorable ones and deftly encapsulates one of the running themes of the whole collection: namely that our time here on Earth is finite and that it should not be wasted. We are still in the Spring section of FitzGerald’s arrangement here and like many of these verses, the tone is imperative and urgent, calling us to hurry up or miss out. Here also is the notion of not wasting time on regret: guilt should not weigh us down or prevent us from moving forward; this new re-awakening allows us to cast off our old cares and make a new start.

 

 

FitzGerald’s later re-workings of this verse resulted in only minor alterations: “The Winter Garment” became “Your Winter Garment” and the final line was changed to “To flutter – and the Bird is on the Wing”. These changes arguably made the tone less pompous and melodramatic (“Lo!”) and the use of the pronoun makes the impact of the verse more immediate and personal; but the meaning is not altered in any fundamental sense. Personally, I prefer “fly” to “flutter” – because it makes that Bird of Time seem more dramatic and capable – but, each to their own.

 

This is probably a good time to discuss the other translations which FitzGerald undertook and the differences that appear as a result. My sense is that, whichever version of the Rubaiyat you encounter first, that’s the version you stay with. I read the First Translation and that’s the one that feels the most natural to me. I find that some of the later re-workings seem a bit tortured and less spontaneous; that’s not to say that I can’t see why FitzGerald made the alterations, it just boils down to a matter of personal preference. Take this for example:

“Wake! For the Sun beyond yon Eastern height

Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night;

And to the field of Heav’n ascending, strikes

The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.”

(From the Second Edition, 1868)

“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 Third, Fourth & Fifth Editions, 1872, 1879 & 1889)

Reading through the variations, you can see the progression of thought leading to the point where FitzGerald was finally happy with the sense of the verse. Just being able to do this – comparing variants towards a final polished state – is just one of the pleasures of reading the Rubaiyat.

Personally though, the first stabs, for me, seem the more spontaneous and instinctive. I wonder if FitzGerald felt driven by the criticism he attracted to polish, polish, polish. I hope not; I like to think that he fiddled around with it as a purely pleasurable exercise and I believe that he was epicurean enough for that to have been his sole motivation.

As we’ve seen, the Bird of Time is a living, breathing, growing sparrow; no paralysed eagle.

 

*The British writer and poet Robert Graves didn’t like this poem. Or rather, he particularly didn’t like Edward FitzGerald, and made a point of tearing him down and nit-picking his efforts at every opportunity. As we shall see later, he should have left well enough alone.

With this stanza, Graves pointed out that it derives ultimately from a poem called “Mantiq Taiyur”, penned by another Persian poet named Attar; FitzGerald had previously translated this verse under the title “The Bird Parliament”. Regardless of the source, the sentiment expressed here ties in with and supports Omar’s central theme; and since this is a free translation anyway, who really cares if FitzGerald took a little inspiration on the side?