COVE

This edition of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is illustrated by Ronald Balfour. This book was translated by Edward Fitzgerald and published in 1920 by Dodd Mead and Company, New York and printed in Great Britain by Chiswick Press: Charles Wittingham and Griggs, London. This book is 156 pages and uses FitzGerald's fourth edition of translation. 

Looking at general details, this book has a green hardcover with many illustrations throughout. The illustrations take up every- other page of the book, taking up almost more space than the poem itself. The illustrations vary in style and subject but the majority are thin line work of naked, or mostly naked women. The text and illustration are a dark red ink, although there are multiple colorful images throughout the book. This edition has a circular illustration of a woman with a head covering right in the center of the cover. The pages of this edition are very thick and a dark brown color instead of the typical “printer white” used in the modern day. This, in combination with the illustrations, gives the book a mystical, historical feel. 

One important note is that many drawings seem to be added into this edition through adhesive. These are the images that are in black and white or in color. I am curious if these were added in after the original printing, or if they are a more recent edition. The images seem very stuck onto the page so I am inclined to think that they were printed separately and then added later, which highlights how much effort was put into the inclusion of these illustrations.

What makes my edition stand out the most is the hypersexualization of women. Not only do women appear naked more than they do clothed, even when they are clothed you can often see their nipples through cloth. On the contrary, a man is seen completely naked only once. Every other time a man appears he is covered in rich cloth or wearing something around his waist. The only picture where a man is completely naked is figure a, where the man is seen as powerful and lifted up. The man is facing directly forward and has his arms out wide, while every woman we see in the illustrations is either turning away or using her arms trying to cover herself.

After flipping through the book originally I went back to the cover and found it interesting that this version was illustrated by a man. Most of the drawings of women seem to very much fall under the idea of the “male gaze” that so often hypersexualizes women. I think it is especially prevalent here as Ronald Balfour is a British white man and his subject for his illustrations are Persian women. You can see the influence of Orientalism through the idea of Persian women being exotic and sensual in their poses and drawings.

Even without the hypersexulization, the men are drawn as more powerful than women in the images. In one image (shown below) there is a man drawn disproportionately taller and larger than the woman by his side. It could be argued that the man is only a representation of a powerful god and that is why his size is dramatized, but then why didn’t Balfour use a mortal man for a size comparison?