Show Notes
All week, host Kelly McEvers surfaces some of her favorite episodes from the archive. Here's today's story:
One of the many objects that went down with the ship during the sinking of the Titanic was a beautiful, jewel-encrusted edition of a poetry book called the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” The Rubaiyat was probably the most famous work of poetry in the English-speaking world at that time…which was somewhat unusual, as the book was written by a Persian mathematician 800 years before.
For more information about Omar Khayyam and the Rubaiyat, check out the books “Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry” by Taher-Kermani Reza, “The Wine of Wisdom: The Life, Poetry and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam” by Mehdi Aminrazavi, and the BBC documentary “The Genius of Omar Khayyam.”
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