Quatrain 53

 

در کارگه کوزه گران رفتم دوش

 

دیدم دو هزار کوزه گویای خموش

 

این کوزه بدان کوزه همی گفت به جوش

 

کو کوزه گر و کوزه خر و کوزه فروش

Dashti, quatrain 42, p. 251

dar kaargah-e kuze garaan raftam dosh
didam do hazaar kuze guyaa-ye khamosh
'in kuze bedaan kuze hami goft be josh
ku kuze gar o kuze khar o kuze forosh

In the warehouse of the potters last night
two thousand pots spoke out their silence...
this one to that one swelling and seething:
'Where 's potter, buyer -- and where's the seller?'

در کارگه کوزه گران رفتم دوش

دیدم دو هزار کوزه گویای خموش

ناگاه یکی کوزه بر آورد خروش

کو کوزه گر و کوزه خر و کوزه فروش

Saidi, quatrain 104

dar kaargah-e kuze garaan raftam dosh
didam do hazaar kuze guyaa-ye khamosh
naagaah yaki kuze bar aavard khorosh
ku kuze gar o kuze khar o kuze forosh

I saw at potter's shop  one dusk of day,
Two thousand voiced but silent pots of clay;
One vessel then on sudden cried aloud:
"Where are they, potter, seller, buyer--pray?"
Saidi

Note on variants:
The last line of this quatrain reads the same in Dashti and Saidi (above) as well as in Forughi-Ghani (117), Hedayat (73) and Whinfield (283).  In the first line, Forughi, Hedayat and Whinfield agree with Saidi's reading کوزه گری, kuze gari -- 'a potter' ; Hedayat has budam instead of raftam.  In the second line, Forughi, Hedayat and Whinfield read: گویا و خموش, guyaa wo khamosh - 'speaking and silent'; Forughi and Whinfield, along with Saidi above, have identical 3rd lines.  Hedayat has instead:  هر یک بزبان حال با من گفتند, har yak bezabaan-e haal baa man goftand -- 'every one spoke to me like they would speak if they could speak.'

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:

In the latinization of the Persian in this quatrain, I have preferred the endrhyme -osh over -ush because -osh more closely represents Khayyam's day; however, as I have said previously, I have not yet tried to approximate classical speech throughout this weblog, which I may correct at a later date.  1.  In the warehouse of the potters I went last night  2.  I saw two thousand pots speakers of silence -- I believe this means that they broke their silence by speaking out -- they emerged from silence, they spoke be zabaan-e haal,  in language and sentiment which speaker and hearer of this quatrain know the pots would have expressed 3.  This pot to that pot said over and over on the boil/This pot to that pot spoke boiling over and over  and over ... 4. Where is the potter and the buyer and the seller -- I emphasize 'and' since the conjunction و, o/wo/yo is in this mesra' uncharacteristically 'long' and will receive stress, which to my untrained ears, ironically links the three together, sarcastically may be a better word -- the potter, the seller and buyer who in the end are all broken under the march of fate.  I am curious about Hazhir Teimourian's rendering of this quatrain (I have just received his Omar Khayyām: Poet, Rebel, Astronomer, Sutton Publishing, 2007):

To a potter's shop did I go last night,
To my eyes his art made a soothing sight.
Suddenly murmured a tall jug of clay:
'May to December, December to May!'

What does he mean 'May to December, December to May!'?  The expression 'six of one, half dozen of another' first comes to mind: it's all the same, these three will all pass out of existence.  Quatrain 59 in this weblog confirms the cycle of ceaseless repetition: 'The endless round of Teer and Dey has flung/A hundred thousand Jams and Keys on clay' (Saidi, quatrain 6 -- see weblog Quatrain 59).  Is it  a stretch to say the ku-repetitions in the last line of this quatrain will remind the viewer (they remind me) of the last sad line of Dashti's quatrain 31 (found in the Update sequel to Quatrain 24 in this weblog), in which the lone ring-dove coos her 'where/ku have all past kings and heroes gone':  coo-coo her refrain, gone where, gone where ?

benshaste hami goft ke ku ku ku ku
(Dashti, quatrain 31)
بنشسته همی گفت که کو کو کو کو
ku kuze gar o kuze khar o kuze forosh

کو کوزه گر و کوزه خر و کو زه فروش

FitzGerald in his 4th and posthumous editions:

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot--

I think a Súfi pipkin--waxing hot--
"All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then,
"Who makes--Who sells--Who buys--Who is the Pot?"
FitzGerald, stanza 87, 4th ed

This stanza as previous kuze stanzas we have quoted are part of a kuze sequence in FitzGerald.  Iran Hassani Jewett unfolds the arrangement and changes throughout FitzGerald's editions (Edward FitzGerald, 109-111--see full citation in bibliography). Both of FitzGerald's MS sources apparently concur with the text of Saidi's above (Arberry, Romance... 228).

 a brief note de re kuze:
FitzGerald in his note on this stanza (4th ed) remarks on the 'relation of Pot and Potter to Man and his Maker' in world literature; and Saidi on FitzGerald's association and on pottery references in the Old Testament (note 90, p. 251).
And this thought:
'These ceramics are like our life: colorful, fragile yet robust, full of hidden meaning yet easily understood (especially if we let a few years pass by ...), sweet and pure, simple and fraught with mystery.  Like each of us, an unrepeatable miracle of creation.  Man made of clay and ceramics made of clay: surely there is reason for this, and if we stop to think for a moment, this is something we have always known.'

(Persian Ceramics: From the 9th to the 14th Century, Giovanni Curatola ed., Skira, Milan, 2006, p. 23)