Strophes of Omar Khayyám: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Strophes of Omar Khayyám, credited to Omar Khayyám, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Strophes of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyám. (Translated by John Leslie Garner.) Read in English by Algy Pug One of the earliest versions of Omar Khayyam's quatrains by an American translator is John Leslie Garner's collection, published in 1888. It contains 152 quatrains, which the translator calls "Strophes." The collection is divided into eleven books, introduced by quotations from Bourne's "Anacreon," Leconte de Lisle, Giordano Bruno, Goethe, Alfred de Musset, Paul Bourget, Marcus Antoninus, St. James, Sully-Prudhomme, Edmund Waller, and Escriva. In his preface Garner says: "The collection might have been made much larger, but it was deemed inadvisable, as Omar's themes are not many, and the ever-recurring Wine, Rose, and Nightingale are somewhat cloying to Occidental senses." Garner further states: "The great questions of human life are of all times and of all ages, and although Omar never tired of struggling with them, he discovered nothing new, and at last, feeling that Death alone was certain, he resigned the task in despair,...." Hence, Garner's version is pervaded by a gentle melancholy, and provides a striking contrast with the rubric splendour of Fitzgerald's famous rendering, and is therefore more consonant with current thinking about Persia's most celebrated classsic poet. (Summary by Algy Pug)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Strophes of Omar Khayyám
• Author credits: Omar Khayyám
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 12
• Listed recording duration: 51:39

Catalogue topics

• love
• Persia
• quatrain
• wine
• omar
• khayyam

Track guide

1. 00 - Section 0 - Introduction — 11:00
2. 01 - Section 1 — 9:13
3. 02 - Section 2 — 3:36
4. 03 - Section 3 — 2:10
5. 04 - Section 4 — 1:35
6. 05 - Section 5 — 3:23
7. 06 - Section 6 — 6:11
8. 07 - Section 7 — 2:42
9. 08 - Section 8 — 3:18
10. 09 - Section 9 — 2:13
11. 10 - Section 10 — 3:15
12. 11 - Section 11 — 3:03

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.