On adapting the Bard

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of my favourite books.  I do not, however, know Farsi, and the Rubaiyat I know are the 19th century translations by an Englishman named Edward Fitzgerald.  Rushdie waxes lyrical in Shame about such translations being new creations — at the risk of a grossly inarticulate simplification, the point is: what we love should really be called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald.