English writer and poet Edward purcell He was born on March 31, 1809, at Bredfield House in Bredfiel, Suffolk. His father, John Purcell, Member of Parliament for Seaford, Sussex, took on his wife’s family name, the Fitzgerald, a wealthy Anglo-Irish family. In 1816, the family moved to France.
Considered a slow writer, Fitzgerald published some of his works anonymously. He published his free translation Six Dramas Calderón before learning Persian.
His work translating a selection of poems was titled The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which was originally written thousands of years ago in Persian. The work was attributed to the mathematician, astronomer, and famous Persian poet, Omar Khayyam.
A Rubaiyat is a two-line stanza, divided into two parts and is Arabic for the word “four” (quatrains). FitzGerald’s translation was made available in five different editions, the fifth, made posthumously, in the 19th century.
His works were considered more creative than literal, taking the liberty of renewing the focus of Omar Khayyam’s original work. He emphasized the religious skepticism he encountered in Khayyam and rejected all notions of a Sufi interpretation of the poems.
Edward he married Lucy Barton, but the couple separated within a year. There was always a clear homoerotic element in the friendships of Fitzgerald, which was also a probable cause for their separation.
His interest in Persian poetry was an important factor in his relationship with Edward Byles Cowell. It was Cowell who taught Persian to Fitzgerald and thus came to the language through friendship and shared literary interests.
Later, in 1856, Cowell traveled to take an academic post in India. Edward he also lost his mother in 1855, and a crucial period in his life began. He worked on Khayyam’s translations while he was homeless.
Initially unnoticed, after a few years FitzGerald had achieved fame among Victorian artists. After the early 1860s, Fitzgerald he diverted his attention from the Persian translation to Spanish and then to Greek.
His “orientalist” comments may have been due to his association of the Persian with his feelings for Cowell, and his hidden feelings given the repressive attitude towards homosexuality of the Victorians.
Fitzgerald he died in 1883 while visiting his friend George Crabbe, whose works FitzGerald had been editing. His achievement in being the person behind one of the most popular English poems and in drawing the attention of Westerners to rich Persian medieval verses, remains unsurpassed.