Khayaam Looks West

Fülszöveg

Arnold Hawkins was born in Oporto, the northern capital of Portugál, where he spent his early years. His father was an engineer, his mother one of the Scottish Dows, port shippers for a century and a half. Educated at Rugby and (like Edward Fitzgerald, author of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayaam) at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in French and Portuguese; after a spell in which, among other occupations, he farmed in central Portugál, he joined the British Council and founded the British Institute in Oporto, subsequently served in Czechoslovakia before, during and after the Communist takeover in 1948; Oxford, Francé, Belgium, London and Austria where, by way of an academic farewell, he gave an illustrated talk on the translation of poetry in the Universities of Vienna, Graz and Salzburg. Partly from linguistic curiosity, partly because of what he had heard about Magyar poets he began learning Hungárián at the age of 69.
Throughout his life Hawkins has... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Arnold Hawkins was born in Oporto, the northern capital of Portugál, where he spent his early years. His father was an engineer, his mother one of the Scottish Dows, port shippers for a century and a half. Educated at Rugby and (like Edward Fitzgerald, author of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayaam) at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in French and Portuguese; after a spell in which, among other occupations, he farmed in central Portugál, he joined the British Council and founded the British Institute in Oporto, subsequently served in Czechoslovakia before, during and after the Communist takeover in 1948; Oxford, Francé, Belgium, London and Austria where, by way of an academic farewell, he gave an illustrated talk on the translation of poetry in the Universities of Vienna, Graz and Salzburg. Partly from linguistic curiosity, partly because of what he had heard about Magyar poets he began learning Hungárián at the age of 69.
Throughout his life Hawkins has written 'vers d'occasion' and humorous verse but KHAYAAM LOOKS WEST is in very different vein. In reality by no means the hedonist Fitzgerald's sparkling transmogrification made him appear, the 1 lth century Persian sage, here resurrected in spirit, contemplates Western civilization. An admirer of Christianity from a remote age and another faith, he is almost like a visitor from another planet. The poem depicts in polished but forceful verse the dismay of such a visitor, the jolt he would experience at the contrast between the gods he sees us worshipping and the God we profess to. For him there is no remedy in governments, institutions or plans, only in individuals, in each and every one. His conviction is echoed in a different way in the short poem DREAM.
Introduced by George Mikes under the title THREE INTO ONE verse translations from three languages complete the book. Vissza