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The Magic Lantern of Omar Khayyám
Optical projection techniques are mentioned in several translations of a quatrain from the poem “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” What is the true meaning of Khayyám’s metaphor of reality as a shadow show?
The “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation of nearly a thousand poems by Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. The book’s name comes from the word “rubáiyát”—derived from the Arabic root for “four” because the poem is composed of four-line quatrains.
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