Monday 16 June 2014

Orientalism...


ROTHENSTEIN, Jerome, Sketch of Rabindranath Tagore, 1912.

347mm x 257mm; pencil on buff paper stock, signed and dated by the artist; inscribed in ink with a dedication to Danish publisher Povl Branner by Rabindranath Tagore, May 23rd 1921; original wooden frame.

The story of Omar Khayyam and Edward FitzGerald is not unusual by any means; the tale of the visionary Easterner championed by the lettered Westerner has many historical precedents. Most put it down to the fascination which the East has for those of Occidental origins – Edward W. Said wrote all about it in his groundbreaking work Orientalism (1978).


The essence of the concept is that jaded Western palates find excitement and a certain frisson in what they perceive to be the licence and exoticism of the Orient; the East becomes a fantastic playground, filled with possibilities rendered incapable of fulfilment in the prosaic, workaday paradigm of Western culture. Whether or not such decadence and extravagance is the actual daily reality of Eastern individuals is rendered moot: the Orientalist ideal is a fantasy projected upon a foreign culture by those dwelling outside of its compass.

In no small part does this explain the fascination that the Rubaiyat has for many readers in the English-speaking world: the poem abounds with Eastern imagery and references. It also seems to espouse radical values, and to place those values – exciting and revolutionary as they seem – within the Oriental context. I question however, whether the sentiments credited to Omar and synthesised through the pen of FitzGerald, have made that journey entirely intact.

It’s easy to forget that Edward FitzGerald laid a heavy hand upon the quatrains penned by Khayyam; he re-wrote them quite loosely into the English idiom and he re-arranged them in an order that satisfied his aesthetic demands. It’s not entirely unreasonable to credit FitzGerald’s detractors with some degree of correctness when they say that his translation was imprecise. Even I recognise the dangers of taking Omar Khayyam at face value through the medium of Edward FitzGerald: in my case, it’s just that I prefer his version before all the others.

Still, the Orientalist sensibilities of the reader is mostly what draws them to this work. It’s no stretch of the imagination to grasp that that is what the Pre-Raphaelites took from it; or that it was the hook which snared the succeeding generations of Aesthetes, Symbolists, Decadents and other artists of the fin de siecle period of new century enthusiasm. It’s not hard to see how the poem’s carpe diem sentiments set fires among the hearts of the between-Wars survivors and jaded seekers after a new society: the mad iconoclasm of the Twenties and Thirties, with its desperate flailing around to find something of meaning and purpose to cling to, could latch onto many things but few better than FitzGerald’s truisms.

But, to reiterate, I can’t help but feel that most of the values expressed in the poem are FitzGerald’s and not, strictly speaking, Omar’s.


As an example of what I’m getting at, I’d like to turn to another Easterner whose vision and artistry forged inroads into the West. Rabindranath Tagore was the polymathic scion of a family blessed with equally-talented individuals, who almost single-handedly revived and energised the literary efforts of his homeland in Bengal. Born to a high-caste Hindu family, he was knighted by King George V and became the first non-Westerner to win a Nobel Prize for literature; he counted amongst his acquaintance Albert Einstein, Mahatma Ghandi and W.B. Yeats, who was instrumental in translating his poetry into English. His best-known work (in English translation) is entitled “Gitanjali” (1913) which was dedicated to William Rothenstein and is a collection of his spiritual poetry:


“When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony – and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.”



Reading about Tagore is quite a different experience to reading his writing (in translation as it is). Many commentators - Yeats amongst them, despite his complete absence of skill with the Bengali tongue - talk of the shimmering quality of his language, and the ecstatic fireworks of his written expression. For me, I find the poetry rather dull and somewhat trite. This is partly because I’m instinctively wary of ecstatic verse – I follow Confucius’ line of argument: “believe in the gods, but keep them at arm’s length”. Secondly, being told that the translation doesn’t do the original justice seems to be a pointless comment: it’s kind of like a “heads-up” before the fact that the writing is going to be bad, with the caveat that I’ll just have to take their word that for it that it’s worthwhile and go along with it. Can’t win; don’t try. I’m being asked to take on faith something I can’t test for myself. And perhaps there’s a bridge they want to sell me, too.

(This is not to say that Tagore’s writing is bad; it’s just not for me. There are some wonderful allusions and turns of phrase here; it’s just not my particular cup of tea.)

This probably sounds terribly cynical but there is a point: Tagore was alive and able to oversee the translation of his own poetry from the original Bengali; Omar Khayyam was not in so enviable a position. I’m pretty sure that Tagore’s writing is telling me exactly what he wanted it to tell me (as far as English can be bent into that shape); I’m fairly convinced that Omar’s poem is telling me largely what FitzGerald wanted it to tell me. On that basis, I’ll go with FitzGerald.

I didn’t just throw the word “cynical” in there on a whim. FitzGerald’s take on Khayyam has a jaded edge to it and I’m fairly sure (Robert Graves would back me on this point) Omar never intended his poems to be read in that way. Sad to say, I suspect that Omar’s quatrains would probably come across more like something written by Tagore if I could read them in the original language. The essential reality of all this is as follows:

FitzGerald’s translation is an Orientalist fantasy; it’s a Western vision dressed up in Persian costume to appeal to Occidental readers. Sure, it’s based on Omar Khayyam’s verses, and sure, those verses and Omar’s reputation in Iran are secure; it’s just that they read a little differently depending upon which side of the line you’re sitting.

Before we get to the end of this roller-coaster, there will be other Orientalist writings which we’ll be looking at for comparison purposes; some of those fall into the Orientalist camp and others don’t, but it’s always wise to keep notions of this distorting lens in mind when looking at these types of writings.



Saturday 14 June 2014

The Rose...


XIII.

Look to the Rose that blows about us – “Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”


At this point we encounter our second reference to a Rose in the poem and, for the second instance, also find a word that, over time, has fallen from common use, making understanding somewhat tricky. Since, in this verse, they occur together, it seems ideal to attack them both at once.

Firstly, the Rose is a standard image of Sufi iconography. Like many such images, it relates back to the idea of God and is an oft-used symbol of the Deity. Due to their range of colour and intense perfume, and given that they were quite difficult to grow and maintain throughout many water-poor Islamic regions, roses were much sought-after. Sufi adherents equated their heady aroma with the intensity of Divine inspiration and their thorns became symbols of the difficulty in attaining such a union with God.


Islamic art, denied the possibility of creating the likenesses of living beings or naturally-occurring phenomena, devoted itself to the creation of patterns, usually geometric forms of an intricate nature. Roses, in that they present a circular repeating pattern from the inner stamen to the outer petals, were a natural inspiration for many designs, from rugs, to wall or floor mosaics, to windows.


A common notion in spiritual art is the dissolution of matter into the spiritual. In Western cathedrals, the great stained windows (called, incidentally, “rose windows”) seek to dissolve the heavy masonry of the sacred enclosure by bathing the walls in coloured light; in the Islamic world, a similar effect was attained, but by means of patterning the walls in paint, cloth, or tiles.


As the Islamics exulted over the perfection of the rose, so too did the philosophers of the West. In Western thought from the earliest times, the world was considered to be arranged in hierarchies, or tiers of rank, creating an ordered universe. Plants and animals were listed from the “lowest” to the “highest” in terms of certain qualities equating to notions of virtue. This simplistic attempt at rationalising the universe remains with us: even today, we refer to the Lion as the “king of beasts”, and the Eagle as the “king of birds”; so too, is the Rose considered the “king of flowers”.

(Interestingly, this notion of a Universe ranked into order is also a mainstay of Confucian thought, the earliest state-sanctioned religion of China, pre-dating Western philosophy by several millennia. It seems that no matter how separate from each other we think we are, there are always fundamental ways in which we have common ground.)


With the symbolism of the rose firmly in mind, let’s turn to that word which nowadays causes some headaches. That word is “blow”.

In the language of FitzGerald’s day, flowers “blew” all the time. It doesn’t mean that they were tossed by the wind; rather it refers to them bursting open, or blooming. There’s an extra sense to the word in this context, referring to a flower as being just past the point of perfection; to be on its way out. From this sense, we get other expressions, such as “blowzy”, meaning to be colourfully dissipated, and of course “overblown” to mean decadently showy, or over-ripe.

In a sense, FitzGerald (possibly working from a notion only implied by Omar) seems not to be talking about the Rose as a symbol of perfection, but rather as an “everyman” cipher, referencing each individual’s potential rather than appearance. He seems to be saying that every person comes into their own and leaves behind something upon which future generations build. The “Treasure” of the Rose is the seeds of the future, stored in the “Purse” of the flower’s rosehips. FitzGerald devoted most of his life to the growing of flowers, so a botanical metaphor wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for him.


Here again is the idea that there is a finite amount of time for each of us, but coupled with it is the notion that everyone has the potential to create the future, to add something to the “Garden” of creation. That Bird of Time is still relentlessly flapping onwards and time, it seems now, is not the only thing that can be wasted.


Roses, in fact, caused Omar quite a bit of trouble as it turned out, and we’ll get into that further when we hit ruba’i 67; suffice it to say that he placed some value upon being buried by a rose garden when he died. Religious hardliners hunted him most of his life for this obscure reason (among others); nevertheless, roses do bow over his grave in Iran today, and cuttings from those same rosebushes were taken from Persia and planted over FitzGerald’s grave in England.


It’s a fitting symbol of unification and the fostering of peace if ever there was one. Just like the poem itself.




Saturday 7 June 2014

Small Rubaiyats...


The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (no. 6 in the Sesame Booklets series), George G. Harrap & Co., Covent Garden, London, nd.

Sextodecimo; suede yapp covers, with decorated endpapers and gilt spine title, with gilt upper board decoration; 69pp., top edges gilt, with a full-colour frontispiece. Wear and sunning to the binding; some browning to the text block edges; minor foxing to the preliminaries. Very good.

One thing which is a feature of collecting copies of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is that many versions are quite small. There are various reasons for this but the main one is that it became more economical for publishers to produce small copies in the duodecimo (12mo) or sextodecimo (16mo) format, as the amount of paper required to produce one octavo volume could be stretched to create four, six, or even more. While the poem was in its heyday and people often bought and exchanged copies which could be carried in a pocket or purse, this just made good sense from a monetary standpoint.

The giving of copies of the Rubaiyat to friends and lovers was a common occurrence, as we have already seen in the case of Somerton Man. Some publishers even produced their versions with this notion in mind, leading to various “Love and Friendship”, or “Fidelity” printings.


Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald, (Zodiac series), Chatto and Windus, London, 1940.

Octavo; hardcover with decorated boards; 32pp. Front free endpaper removed; previous owner’s inscription on half-title erased. Dustwrapper foxed and worn at the spine panel extremities; now protected by non-adhesive plastic wrap.

Too, the small format meant that other poems, from other favourite poets such as Tennyson, Longfellow, or Browning, could be produced in this size and the collected verses could be marketed as a specific series of favourite poetry. For the most part though, the process was an easy way of using up leftover paper, and other material, from larger print jobs: a common feature is the use of mis-matched illustrated endpapers which have little or no relevance to the work which they bracket, or which are used to identify a volume as being part of a series.


1 - Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia, translated into verse by Edward FitzGerald, with Biography and Notes and Twelve Illustrations, Gay & Hancock Ltd., London, nd. (c.1912).

Duodecimo; suede yapp covers, with illustrated endpapers, gilt spine title, and stamped upper board title and decoration; 80pp., top edge gilt, with a black and white frontispiece and 11 plates likewise. Previous owner’s ink inscription to the verso of the frontis.; wear to the cover edges with some minor loss; mild foxing confined mainly to the preliminaries; rear free endpaper has its lower corner missing. Good.

2 - Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Illustrated by Charles Robinson, Collins Clear-Type Press, London, nd.

Sextodecimo; suede yapp covers, with illustrated endpapers and gilt spine title; unpaginated (88pp.), with a tipped in full-colour frontispiece and title page and three plates likewise. An initial blank page excised; foxing to preliminaries; minor wear to the covers. Good.

3 - Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, W.P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, nd.

Duodecimo; suede yapp covers, with illustrated endpapers and gilt spine title; 80pp., all edges gilt, with a decorated title page. Retailer’s bookplate on front pastedown; light spotting to preliminaries. Very good.

4 – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: FitzGerald’s Translation with Notes; illustrated by Alice Ross, W.P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 1911.

Duodecimo; suede yapp covers, with illustrated endpapers, gilt spine title, and stamped upper board title and decoration; 62pp. [xxxipp. + 31pp.], top edge gilt, with a full-colour frontispiece. Spine split; previous owner’s pencil inscription to initial blank page; mild wear and sunning to the wrappers. Good.


Given that these small format printings were intended to be carried about in pockets or purses, it made sense to package them in sturdy bindings, such as suede or leather. The yapp binding, one where the wrapper is not stitched but is allowed to softly drape several millimetres beyond the edges of the text block, is uniquely suited to the small format since it requires no fiddly manipulation and is quick and cheap to produce. This does not mean that elaboration was not employed and there are many examples of gilt titling and embossed and coloured decoration. And of course, standard binding techniques were also employed:


1 - The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; rendered into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald, The Richards Press Ltd., London, 1943.

Sextodecimo; hardcover, with blind-stamped upper board design and gilt spine and upper board titling, with a red ribbon – torn, but still present; 96pp. Minor offset to the preliminaries; otherwise, very good.

2 - The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia, translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald (eighth edition), Methuen & Co. Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 1920.

Sextodecimo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 96pp. Shaken; covers well-rubbed and worn; spine split in many places; previous owner’s ink inscription to the front free endpaper; minor offset to endpapers. Good.

Another factor which brought pressure to bear were the World Wars. Paper restrictions meant that publishers needed to be canny about what they produced and how they produced it. Smaller formats with soft covers – usually of cheap materials, sometimes identical to those which comprised the text block – were an easy way of maximising production whilst reducing costs.


The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Astronomer-Poet of Persia, translated into English by Edward FitzGerald, Gilmour’s Bookshops, Pty. Ltd., George Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, nd. (c. 1943).

Duodecimo; paperback with staple-sewn printed yapp covers; 24pp. Previous owner’s ink inscription to the inside front cover along with the retailer’s ink stamp; minor foxing to preliminaries; Very good.

A feature of this mass-production – which may be unique to those editions produced in the southern hemisphere – is the wholesale pirating of designs and imagery from better-known versions of the work. Willy Pogany’s stylings, for example, show up again and again in these cheap reproductions – especially the font he created for his 1909 original version – and, despite the fact that it’s George Harrap & Co. that instigate most of these, it’s not always clear that the royalties, or credit, are being directed where they ought to be.


1 – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., High Holborn, London, 1957.

Duodecimo; hardcover, full red morocco, with gilt spine titling on a black label with gilt rules and decorations, a blind-stamped upper board, and marbled endpapers; 96pp., opened, top edge gilt, with a full-colour frontispiece and 8 plates likewise, along with many duochrome decorations and designs. Retailer’s bookplate to the front pastedown; previous owner’s ink inscription to the half-title; minor bumping to the corners and some light scraping to the boards. Very good.

2 – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., Parker Street, Kingsway, London, nd.

Duodecimo; hardcover, with upper board title and decoration; 96pp., with a full-colour, tipped-in frontispiece and 3 plates likewise, along with many duochrome decorations and designs. Slightly rolled; some softening to the spine extremities; retailer’s ink stamps to the front pastedown; offset to the endpapers; marginal notation in pencil throughout; mild scattered foxing throughout. Good.

3 – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., High Holborn, London, 1940.

Duodecimo; hardcover, with upper board titles and decorations; 96pp., with a full-colour, tipped-in frontispiece and 7 plates likewise, along with many duochrome decorations and designs. Slight softening to the spine extremities and mild corner-bumping; retailer’s bookplate to the front pastedown; previous owners’ ink inscriptions to the front free endpaper; faint scattered foxing throughout; some minor offset to the plates; text block edges lightly toned. Good.

4 – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; The Leisure Age Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd., Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1946.

Duodecimo; hardcover, quarter-bound in printed card-stock boards with a cloth spine; 88pp., with a duochrome frontispiece and many red and black internal decorations. Shaken; top corners bumped and spine sunned and softened; retailer’s bookplate to the front pastedown; previous owner’s ink inscription to the front free endpaper; some old tape stained and minor surface tears to the pastedowns; text block edges toned and top edge dusted. Good.

This is not to say that there was a dearth of creativity abounding when it came to decorating copies of the Rubaiyat; it’s just that, ever since the days of Elihu Vedder, piracy has been part and parcel of the tale of this work. Despite Pogany’s designs and images being poached or re-used many times over and over (along with those of Gilbert James and René Bull) there were certainly many other illustrators and designers out there trying to leave their mark upon FitzGerald’s translation


1 - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Engravings by George Buday A.R.E., Frederick Muller Ltd., London, 1947.

Duodecimo; hardcover, in decorated papered boards with an upper board title on a white label and illustrated endpapers; 30pp., with many engraved illustrations. Somewhat rolled; boards well-ribbed and spine heel chipped. Good.

2 - The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia, A. & C. Black Ltd., London, 1930.

Octavo; hardcover, with upper board titles and decorations; 80pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and 11 plates likewise. Text block dished; softening to the spine head; a dark stain to the bottom of the upper board; text block edges toned. Very good

3 - Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, A Calendar for the Year 1912, Ernest Nister, London/E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, NY, USA/Angus & Robertson Ltd., Sydney, NSW, Australia; printed in Bavaria; 1912.

No. 2940 of a limited series: duodecimo; hardcover, in papered boards with upper board title and decorations, a illustrated endpapers; unpaginated [28pp.], each page bordered in red and blue with gilt decorations. Previous owner’s ink inscription to the verso of the front free endpaper; mild scattered foxing mainly confined to the preliminaries; some heavy bumps to the board corners and edges. Dustwrapper is heavily foxed and chipped, not affecting the titles; now protected by non-adhesive plastic film. Very good.

Perusing this list, one might come to think that the small Rubaiyat might have faded from view and become a thing of the past: not so. These days the term “gift book” no longer identifies a quarto-sized volume elaborately produced and decorated in time for Christmas; rather, it refers to those palm-sized catchpenny volumes that litter the area surrounding the cash registers at your local bookstore, with titles like “50 hilarious Cricket Jokes!” or “Amazing Photos of Things that Cats do when You’re not at Home!”. Here too, can be found copies of FitzGerald and Omar’s work, even with (despite the litigious times in which we live) some unacknowledged and re-used artwork (this time by René Bull):


The Little Book of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Vega/Chrysalis Books plc., London, 2002.

Sextodecimo; hardcover with illustrated boards; 48pp., decorated, with many full-colour illustrations throughout. Near fine.

I’m often asked what the smallest volume in my collection is and it’s the one at the top of this list, with the dimensions added. This is another early entry into my collection, gifted to me by a friend of my mother who discovered what my obsession was. It’s the smallest one I’ve seen to date, but there might be even teensier ones out there somewhere: the quest continues!