Exhibit:

Rubáiyát Edition Analysis

Preview of images

A detailed analysis of Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát sourced from The Memorial Book Fund of Oregon State University, and labelled #65 within the Dr. Sigurd H. Peterson Memorial Collection. This 1946 edition was published by Grosset & Dunlap and illustrated by Sarkis Katchadourian. The vibrant images greatly impact the reading experience of the volume. Katchadourian includes either a wine glass or bottle in every image within this book, leaving no question that this imagery is important to the reader. Other analogies from the text such as the potter make an appearance alongside their respective stanzas. This edition contains both the Fourth Version of the Rubáiyát from 1879 and the First Version of the Rubáiyát from 1859. Boasting both saturated illustrations and an embossed hardback cover, this beautiful Rubáiyát is classified as a gift book, and is individual from others due to it's inclusion of alternate translations. One of the many unique Rubáiyát editions protected by the Special Collections and Archives Research Center at Oregon State University, this volume holds much to be explored. 

Images in this Exhibit

Edition Description

 

For my edition of the Rubáiyát, I selected #65 from the SCARC inventory. Published in 1946, this volume contains both the fourth and first edition of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyám’s poem. 138 pages are bound and protected by a hard cover enveloped in red cloth. Intricate and colorful illustrations frame each stanza, alongside artwork with pages dedicated solely to the designs. The artwork within this printing of the Rubáiyát was created by an Iranian artist named Sarkis Katchadourian. Katchadourian is well known for his work travelling India and Ceylon...
Gift Books and Orientalism

Within Barbara Black’s On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums, the author explains many criticisms for Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát, as well as the book’s status as a gift book. One of Black’s main points is the power dynamic between the original text and the westernized translation. “The Rubáiyát, then, as both an exotic wonder and a tamed, familiarized object, becomes one of the age’s most vivid examples of the domesticated exotic… it at once satisfies the possessor’s curiosity for the strange and confirms his superiority” (Black 50)....
Stanza Analysis

Within stanza 95 Khayyam writes, "And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,/And robb'd me of my Robe of Honor - Well,/I wonder often what the Vitners buy/One half so precious as the stuff they sell". Adjacent to these phrases, Katchadourian has illustrated a man lounging beside the riverbed. He is accompanied by a cask of wine, a tome, and the setup to burn incense. This verse follows the greater theme of the Rubáiyát in that it tackles the pull between earthly pleasures and viewing oneself as a man who has spent his life well. 

Wine is frequently written about within the...
How This Edition Was Made

The edition of Omar Khayyam's Rubáiyát that I have chosen is a 1946 publication produced by the Grosset & Dunlap publishing house. These details are included in a small attribution behind the cover page of this edition, alongside the notation that the volume was "Printed in the United States of America". As Grosset & Dunlap was based in New York City, this is no surprise. Another page found in the back of the book describes the printing process in great detail. Printed by The Meehan-Tooker Company, Inc., the copies were then sent to another location, H. Wolff Book...
Archival Speculation

To my dearly missed peer,

In the past few weeks I have reflected fondly on our time at university together. Your letters bring me great joy, and I am so happy you have been able to chase your dreams and travel India as you once wished to. The painter you wrote me about, Katchadourian, actually illustrated an edition of Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát, which I have been teaching to the students in my class. His artwork is very intricate and vivid on the page and I understand why his work stirs something within you. I am sending you one of these illustrated copies, as you mentioned a...