The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Illustrated by Willy Pogany (1909) - Meganne Patterson

The version of the well-known and incredibly popular Rubaiyat that I have chosen to become my best friend is an absolutely gorgeous edition printed in London, England, in 1909. The Rubaiyat is a poem highlighting the feelings of impending death, making the most of life while one is in it, and the barriers of pleasure and religion. The poem was originally published in 1859, but didn't reach popularity until the 1880s. It was a very popular gift around Christmastime and New Year’s, especially in the years following the Civil War. Nowadays, the poem has been copied and re-…

Barbara Black has some opinions about the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Some of them are questionable and some are widely accepted. Her argument about the original Farsi poem being translated by Edward FitzGerald and sold as a gift book for decades centers around the words being sold and marketed as FitzGerald’s work. The use of the poem as a gift book is inherently Orientalist in Black’s eyes. We can no longer read the poem at its face value, and instead must jump through hoops in order to get a clear reading that's free from Orientalist views and the eventual fascination with the…

Many of the illustrations done by Hungarian artist Willy Pogany during his lifetime tell entire stories all by themselves. While some of them make considerably more sense in context with the poem’s stanzas, several of them create entire epics that sprawl off of the page. The illustration of stanza fifty-seven highlights this intimacy between poetry and artist, due to the presentation of how Willy Pogany depicts temptation of the human spirit, but it is also a limited point of view, since it fails to depict the fine line between enemy and ally. 

The fifty-seventh stanza…

The British wanted to hold onto India, and they wanted it desperately. In the early 1800s, Great Britain began to view Persia and parts of the Middle-East as crucial partners in their quest to hold onto power. India being firmly under English rule, Great Britain turned their sights onto Persia itself, its initial ally, turned conquest, at the turn of the 20th century, the beginning of the 1900s. One year in particular, 1908, to be exact, saw British interest in Persia for a second time. This time, for oil rigs and the eventual “ownership” of Persian oil. While the British used…

(Letter #1, photos 1 and 2)

Peter, 

Happy, happy graduation. It's all gone by in a flash, hasn’t it? Ever since you were little, you have always been drawn to art, be it on paper, in song, or on stage. Now that you have graduated high school, I hope you will take the words of this amazing poem to heart. 

In summary, 

“Live in the moment. Have our pleasures, since we will all be gone in the blink of an eye. Keep your happiness close, and you will never be lost.”

I found this edition in the thrift store when I was visiting London, and I…