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Dr. C. R. REDDI

Omar khayyam was born in the latter half of the 11th century and died in the first quarter of the 12th. For a man of the 11th century. Khayyam is strangely modern. He was a scientist of no ordinary worth or distinction. His work entitled “Algebra� was trans­lated into some of the European lan­guages. As an astronomer he was amongst the foremost of the Middle Ages and the Christian calendar of the present day owes much of its perfec­tion to his labours. Not satisfied with being a scientist, he wanted to be a philosopher - the solver of life’s mighty riddle - with disastrous results to his peace of mind.

“Up from Earth’s centre through the Seventh gate I rose and on the throne of saturn sate and manu a knot unravelled by the Road: but not the master - knot of Human death and fate. There was the door to which I found no key.� He was too haughty a spirit to find consolation in faith and resigna­tion, the unfailing resources of the meek and humble. Supremely en­dowed with courage and audacity, he did battle with the orthodoxy of his days. He sneered at the mystical Sufis as a loquacious lot. He was not given the Robe of Honour, which his geni­ous deserved. He laughs, saying that it could only be purchased by bartering away his freedom of thought: certainly He is the richer by keeping the more precious stuff for himself. Like Mill and Morley of contemporary history, he was a sage and sceptic rolled into one. High office did not tempt him. He preferred instead a pension coupled with the pleasures and pursuits of private life.

The thoughts and feelings he expresses are astonishingly and sur­prisingly modern. There is not a single writer of the Middle Ages who has caught the fancy of the present day m such a close and mighty grip as Omar. One may not like him - his views may be abhorrent to you - but if there is any the least spark of serious intellectual purpose in your life he seizes on your attention. He has the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner and fasci­nates while perturbing the guest bent on attending the feast of faith. Fitzger­ald’s rendering of the Rubaiyat has become a classic - a leading classic in the literature of revolt - of revolt against accepted doctrines of human worth and destiny.

Khayyam can never become obsolete because the theme of his song belongs to the eternal element in the heart. Feeling minds and thinking heads will ask these questions. “What is truth? said Jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer�. Probably he knew it was no use waiting for an answer. But Pilate has left plenty of successors, more patient than he, and in consequence more miserable.

I shall briefly summarise the considerations that led Omar to deny the divine ordering of the world:

1. Intellectual despair

In his youth he frequented doc­tor and saint and heard great argu­ment about it. (It never is, on it I am afraid) but ever more came out by the same door as I went in. Great scientist as he was, he found it easier to solve the riddle of the material world rather than the spiritual. To his questioning there came not answer from the world without, nor yet from the world within. �And I heard, as from without, the Me within thee is blind�. What then were the questions that perplexed him?
“Into this Universe and why not knowing
            Nor whence, like water willy nilly flowing And out of it, as wind along the waste I know not whither willy-nilly blowing.�

Moreover he asks, Was I con­sulted by the Power that thus arrogated to itself the function of disposing my destinies?

            What without asking, hither hur­ried whence? And without asking, whither hurried hence! Despair is own cousin to blind fury and rage�

He adds:
            “In many a cup of this forbidden wine
            Must drown the memory of that insolence�.

Shall I seek for temporal good or for eternal happiness? the answer is the same to both: your reward is neither here nor there.

It will be observed that Omar parts company with Kantian ethics and the generally accepted theological views. According to these ethical codes imperfection pertains only to this world, and strangely enough, it is a fine reason for believing in the existence and perfection of a heavenly kingdom. The answer of Omar is clear though rude. He asks Who made this world? In his parable of the pot and the potter he makes one of the pots say.

            “They sneer at me for leaving all things awry
‘Why did the hand then of the potter shake�.

If the hand shook in making this world, why should we suppose it to have been steady in making that other world?

The result is he gives up asking these questions.
            “Perplex’t no more with, human or divine
            Tomorow’s tangle to the winds re­sign�.

This is more often attempted than achieved. In point of fact he did worry himself with problems which were most heart-breaking.

We have already seen that Omar khayyam was alive to the problem of evil - more especially as a wrong and injustice done to his own personality. Look, he says, how all is vanity!
            “You know how little while we have to stay
            And once departed may return no more�......
            The leaves of life keep falling one by one�.

It is argued that life is endless and persistent in its manifestations: what then?

            “Each mom a thousand roses brings, you say
            yes, but where leaves the Rose of yesterday?�....
            Ah! in the dust, dry, withered!

Moreover such is life, that no one wants to be reborn here, it is a sufficient verdict on its loathsome fu­tility: Both the good and the bad.
            “Alike to no such aureate earth are turned
            As buried once, men want dug up again�.

You may have been a hero, but once dead, what is left of you? Shakespeare dwelt gloomily on the probability of Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay being utilised by a most prosaic housewife for stopping a chink in the wall. In similar strain sings Omar.

            “The wild ass stamps over his head.
            But cannot break his sleep�

Too poor to resent even assinine indignities. Our friends are dead and (we) ourselves that once enjoyed with ­them and now sorrow for them must go too! Dust to dust and under to lie oh! the despair of the man.
Oh! Thou who man of baser earth didst make
            And even with paradise divine the snake
            For all the sin wherewith the face of man
            Is blackeened - Man’s forgiveness give and take.

It is the man of shallow sense and morbid impulses that looks on a revolt like this as the result of pride or frivolity. There is in it as fine and deep a feeling of moral obligation and as profound an insight into moral worth as was displayed by the saints of sacred calendars, by a St. Francis or a Buddha.

Povidence being out of the ques­tion, what else is there to afford us a rational ground of explanation? Destiny, hard, cold, inevitable and inexorable - a view not dissimilar to that propounded by Lucretius and accepted by the science of today as the only possible hypothesis.

�The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, Nor all your piety nor with shall lure it bade to cancel half a line.

            Nor all your tears wash out a word of it�.

The only religion that whole­heartedly accepts the supremacy of natural law is Himduism. Pantheism has its insoluble difficulties - but theo­retical absurdities are not part of its sacred repertoire. Would Omar have been a Hindu? Probably, but the conclusions he would have drawn from the identity of God with nature would have scared the orthodox Hindu into fits. If law is supreme, God is as      impotent as you or I - no better than inert matter.

“Lift not your hands to it  for help for It
            As impotently moves as you or I�.

That is so far as human conduct and yeanlings go, we are left to our­selves unaided, unguided. But, of course, this is better than to be under a regime where you have to worship a Power whom you can only hate.

Has our life any worth, any purpose? Are you and I necessary for the fulfilment of any of the world’s functions?

No, he says, the Idea is of no im­portance. The world goes on heedless of his coming and departure. Observe how similar the views of Athiests and Thiests are so far. The sentiments above expressed may have been those of a devout monk or nun; It is when they draw their conclusions or assign causes to the events described that they part company and go their oppo­site ways.

Omar denies human responsi­bility for this wretched state of affairs. It is either God or Destiny. He hopes it is not the former, as in that case be will have to form a low estimate of His power or benevolence. Few passages burn with more furious indignation than the one in which he assails the Personal God of Monotheistic theolo­gies:

            “What out of senseless nothing provoke
            A conscious something to resent the yoke
            of unpermitted pleasure, under pain
            of everlasting penalties, if broke�.

It is absurd for God who made man sinful to expect him to be virtuous! The same argument was em­ployed by Leslie Stephen with crushing effect in his Agnostic Apology.

What from his helpless creature be repaid
            Pure gold for what he lent him dross - alloy’d
            Sue for a debt he never did con­tract.
            And cannot answer, oh the sorry trade!

Here follows an apostrophe to God staggering in its audacity and full of the despairing fury of a heart tor­tured to the quick:

Oh Thou who didst with piifall and with sin
            Beset the Road I was to wander in
            Thou wilt not with predestined evil round
            Enmesh and then impute my fall to sin!

The world is bound in the chain of cause and effect�.

            With Earth’s first clay they did the last man knead. And there of the last harvest sowed the seed.�

What then is man to do? Since the Universe is such a cursed irrational affair, enjoy yourself while life lasts. Poet Gray said ‘Eat drink, be merry yourself and go the deuce - If there be a deuce�. He was not sure that the it was likely or desirable.

            Come fill the cup and in the fire of spring
            Your winter garment of repentance fling
            The bird of time has but a little way
            To flutter - and the bird is on the wing.

Don’t be too nice about it or apprehensive of future punishment or of the loss of happiness in the world to come:

            “Ah take the cash and let the credit go
            Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum�

the drum that calls up the dead to appear before the Judgement Seat of God. If you sought after the real solu­tion of life’s weary riddle who knows that the answer will be pleasant: �Better be joined with the fruitful grape than Sadden after none or bitter fruit�.

He has two lines of defence against the attacks of the believing gentry: Is not materialism also of God? Did he make everything and leave only this one out?

            Why, be this juice the growth of God. who dare
            Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a snare?
            A blessing, we should use it, should we not?
            And if a curse, why then who set it here?

Anatole France, the successor of Paul Verlaine and one of the finest of modern writers goes further and de­clares the gospel of pleasure as the only one worth having. In his fascinating little novel “Thais�, the heroine who did full justice to the lusts of the flesh, dies happily and contented and in the odour of sanctity, the monk who con­verted her wakes when too old to the value of the riches he had foolishly forsaken and dies the “Prey of gnaw­ing desire and the agony of unavailing regrets.� To my knowledge this is about the farthest limit to which revolt has been carried.

Omar has just a suspicion that his solution is not a reasonable one either. He thinks that his speculations may be indirectly of help to the be­liever.

“Of my base metal may be filed a key            .
            That shall unlock the door he how is without�

If he has not provided us with a key to the safe, he has given a file with which to prepare one to unlock the door. That is not a small achievement either.

But the worst of it is, omar has given us no solution and he knows it. The utmost he does is to soothe us by gratified sensuality into acquiescence of our fate. But sensuality is a variety like the rest of human endowments. It is evanescent, hard to please, quick to cloy and in its reaction most dismal and soul-destroying.

            And if the wine you drink, the lips you press,
            End in what all begins and ends in - yes.
            Think then you are today what yesterday you were ­
            Tomorrow you shall not be less.

In other words your consolation is that you are not worse off. What a very negative satisfaction it is! hardly enough to effect a reconciliation be­tween us and the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Disappointment.

Listen to his despairing tones:

            “yet Ah that spring should vanish with the Rose
            That youth’s sweet scented manuscript should close�.

The conclusion is that it is a bad bargain - this world we live in. It is not the work of a real artist with an eye for beauty or virtue:

... “Ah, how could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire?
            Would not shatter it to bits and then
Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire�.

Atrocious the thought is, it is yet the living faith of all reformers engaged in the thankless task of leaving the world better than they find it. One is also reminded of the reply of Helmholtz to a Glib Theist who was proving God from the wonderful and fine structure of the human eye.

Helmholtz said that if he had known mathematics and physiology he would have understood now badly the eye was termed and added that if he had been consulted in the matter, the result would have been different and better.

As the essay is already unwieldly I am not tempted to offer an exhaus­tive criticism of Omar. Two lines of attack on his position are possible,

(1) From the point of view of theo­retical reason, one can reconstruct monotheistic dogmas so as to make them more consistent and less revolt­ing. The Polytheist is not so out of date and I am not sure he is not the most modern of moderns� the one man who saves us from the Scylla of Theism and the Charybdis of Pantheism.

(2) The second remark is that the point of view of Omar is entirely a personal and individual one. It is doubtful how far this is valid.

Therefore the final criticism I would offer on Omar is that his point or view is too limited and too narrow. Happiness is possible only when the individual develops sympathy for the race or nation. It is true that history does not prove that right triumphs. But as I view it, it is obvious that one of the springs of human happiness is the possibility of being useful to our fellows. In fine, Sociology demon­strates that the scope of social utility is practically unlimited.