From: Richard Horton <rhorton@mdc.com>
Subject: (urth) Translator/Author -Reply
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 08:47:18 


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]



>>> Joel Priddy <jpriddy@saturn.vcu.edu> 05/07/97 09:52am >>> writes


> Or is there something specific to the Rubaiyat that would lend itself to this
>distinction (the way some people have started listing Bacon as the credit
>for
>Shakespeare quotes, or the way you would consider the translator to be
>the key identifier/author of any given edition of the
>_Arabian_Nights_?).

A little more like the latter: IIRC, Fitzgerald's translations (he did several,
often quite different, editions) are very "free": it is quite common to regard
him as in a considerable sense at least a "co-author" of the English version
of the Rubaiyat.  This is rather unique to the Rubaiyat, though, in very few
other cases of translation would this be done.

I'm a little puzzled by the attributions to Bacon of Shakespeare quotes. 
This implies, I guess, an authorship question.  Bacon is not, I believe,
anymore taken seriously as a potential writer of Shakespeare's plays. 
Beside Shakespeare himself, the only serious candidate these days seems
to be Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.  In any case, even if William
Shakspere of Stratford did not write Shakespeare's plays, it would seem to
me to make sense to accept "Shakespeare" as the desired pseudonym of
the acutal author.  At any rate, I'm not aware of any controversy about
Omar Khayyam's authorship of the Rubaiyat.

Tusk