"Through the Seventh Gate:" FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:31

"Through the Seventh Gate:" FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:31

The thirty-first quatrain in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám continues the existentialist theme of the unknowable character of our fates and of our deaths. That is, the underlying Persian poetry as well as FitzGerald’s mid-Victorian rendering questions whether it all has a purpose. XXXI. Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,     And many Kno…