h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...quite what Dim sees in this week's Post that suggested the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to his brain or the idea that members of the famously erudite h2g2 Community wouldn't recognise such a classic work straight away...

Drat! I was hoping to get there first.

But perhaps Dmitri thinks we should be sitting under palm trees, with a flask of and a book of verse.

My favourite verse is probably

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ
Moves on: not all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

I like that verse, too, MVP.

>>the idea that members of the famously erudite h2g2 Community wouldn't recognise such a classic work straight away...<<

I didn't know this poem - nor the author. But this is the beauty of h2g2: you learn something new every day.

I think it's sort of a difference in cultural baggages, Bel. And the younger crowd could care less about Fitzgerald - although if you read it in the original, it's probably popular in the Middle East...

Back a hundred years ago and more, people in the U.K. and some parts of the U.S. pretty much all had this poem on their shelves. Dunno why, other than that it's pretty...

Now, if we were not an English-only site, we could make headers about stuff everybody in Paris, Rome, or Berlin takes for granted...

(As it is, we're glad we can make them look up 'schadenfroh'...)

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam

There are several editions, the widest known (in English) is probably the 5th.

French, German, Polish, Swedish, Malayalam ... translations have been made.


Who the Potter, pray
And who the pot?

I looked it up, Rod, but I've neither heard of Graf something or other, nor of Bodenstedt. This is probably not a poem which is commonly known here in Germany. We know Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Lessing etc.

Pity, Bel. Despite Dmitri's comment, It has a lot to say.

My preferred version (in English) is here:
http://looklex.com/e.o/texts/literature/khayyam_rubayat.htm

The site below purports to show several languages but all I get is 'We're sorry, the document you requested is not available in your country.'
https://market.android.com/details?id=book-qfFG50NUhWUC

It's not a poem as such but a collection of verses from the Farsi.

Rod

I am so used to getting the message that this or that film/document/whathaveyou isn't available in my country that I hardly ever bother clicking on links now.