Description
Fitzgerald’s masterful translation was first published as an anonymous pamphlet in 1859.
Its colourful, exotic and remote imagery greatly appealed to the Victorian age’s fascination with the Orient, while its luxurious sensual warmth acted as a striking counterpoint to the growth of scientific determinism, industrialisation and the soulless Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest.
The romantic melancholy of the poem anticipates the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy, while its epicurean motifs link it to the Aesthetic Movement.
Endorsements
Praised by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, Ruskin and William Morris.