You should be reading Juan Cole's blog

[ritaxis]

Juan Cole is one of those brilliant, brilliant writers, full of facts and insight, and having a really bright moral center. At his blog, Informed Consent, he writes about current events, history, and everything connected, with special reference to the Middle East, but ranging all over.

He is also translating Omar Khayyam, a verse at a time, and it's heartbreakingly beautiful, much more beautiful than the traditional translation.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Cole's a genius, but FitzGerald did as much to create the Rubaiyat as the original writer did, culling, pruning, combining, shaping and giving a bunch of miscellaneous verses an overall sweep and message. That said, I'll be interested to read his phrasing of the individual verses. I've been quoting Cole on this and that, and for some reason it hasn't occurred to me to bookmark him, and I'm doing that now.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

By "much more beautiful" I didn't mean and the traditional version is crap. I almost went on about how moving FitzGerald's words are, and Cole's are better.

I read Juan Cole as an rss feed on my lj friends list. Honestly I use lj as an rss feed more than anything else.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Um, I think that's Informed Comment.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

You're right!

Oopsies.