Rubai illustrations

Omar was an anti-intellectual and specifically anti-theologian. His goal was to refute and disparage all theological and “divine” ideology. He said it was bunk and worthless. At the same time Omar himself was plainly a person of thought. His rubai were best translated by Edward Fitzgerald, who tried 5 times to do it, and every time, he got some Rubai very well, and others not as well. There’s no single Fitzgerald translation that stands out as the “best”. The first and fifth may be better than the others, but the second, third, and fourth also have some uniquely good rubai. The idea of wine drinking as the ideal life is meant as satire. Omar spent very little time being tipsy on wine. His rubai are highly beautiful and consistent. They reflect great sharpness of wit, not a tipsy mind. Fitzgerald claims to just be a translator, but that is not true. In many cases he mashed several rubai from Omar into one rubai in “translation”. Getting this straight took me 40 years to do. The only good illustrator of the Rubaiyat was Tajvidi, a Persian, whose work I copied to make my own paintings which appear in my book on Amazon.com. Tajvidi’s drawings and designs were great his colors were weak, faded, blurry, and thin. So I fixed that using two layers, one with watercolors one with guasche. I used fauve style colors, like in Matisse and other fauvist painters in France.