Word: persian
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...proceeds to detail to us some gratuitous information about Omar Khayyam, alias Chiam, whom he thinks Mr. Emerson has failed to treat with proper deference and appreciation. In spite of his specious remarks on Khayyam, appearances tend to prove that either our reviewer had a very slight acquaintance with Persian poets, or, happening to stumble on Mr. Fitzgerald's translation of Khayyam, tried to show an acquaintance and familiarity with Persian literature which he did not possess, or had thought he had caught Mr. Emerson napping, - a thing, by the way, which is not often done...
...would have been better for our Advocate reviewer to have confined his unchivalrous and uncharitable attacks to Mr. Emerson's advancing age, to grandiloquent remarks on Immortality, and to hunting out obscure passages in these essays, instead of criticising the best Persian scholar in America; for therein he shows a censurable lack of respect for an acknowledged authority and a lamentable amount of ignorance and unfamiliarity with the subject. The writer is surprised that Mr. Emerson did not devote more attention to Omar Khayyam. Why should he? The fact that Omar Khayyam, previously almost unknown from the rarity...
Rather than why he did not cite more of Khayyam, the question arises why he did not cite more of poets greatly his superiors. Firdansi, for instance, a remarkably learned and talented poet, made out of the Persian Chronicle a most perfect poem which well repays perusal in a translation ca va sans dire. He has been translated in German, I believe, by Friedrich von Schack, probably with German thoroughness and accuracy. Why did he not say more of Nizami, who celebrated the exploits of Alexander in a long epic called "Sekander-Kamed," and who, besides writing "Khosau and Shirin...
...This game the Persian magi did invent...
Gird thyself with this Persian veil...