Omar Khayyam: As A Poet Philosopher

In addition to the accusation of Sufl-like mysticism, Omar has frequently been charged with pandering to gluttony and drunkenness. It is true that many of the quatrains attributed to him in earlier times seemed to extol excess. However, it has been ascertained by modern Persian scholarship that these were later accretions, written either by his detractors or by supporters who understood neither his use of imagery nor his Epicurean philosophy. For Omar — as for Epicurus before him — wine and female beauty symbolized enjoyment of life in the here and now, rather than in some imagined heavenly paradise. He employed them as metaphors for that fellowship among human beings seen by Epicurus as both a means and tentative end of human existence. Similarly, the clay wine pot so often found in Omar's poetry represents the inorganic matter out of which humanity was formed. It is through the quatrains replete with such references that Omar is revealed as thoroughly Epicurean.