A Presentation on Rubaiyat

After several attempts, I finally managed to convert my presentation from .ppt to .jpeg file format. I'm adding my presentation slides in this post along with my explanation beneath each of these images. But first, allow me to give a brief introduction about my presentation. In the beginning, this work mainly was to inspect Fitzgerald's well-known translations of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as well as some of the Fernando Pessoa's attempted translations of Fitzgerald's the aforementioned. Nevertheless, the project elaborated itself and gave me much excitement to not only present the Rubaiyat but also include other Persian translators and some lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in order to draw some comparison among the works of these writers. Also, I combined my work with some traditional Persian paintings, calligraphy artworks, architectural designs (backgrounds shown in transparent) to demonstrate the artistic skills of the Iranian culture. 

 This slide was about the life, work and contributions of the popular eleventh-century the Persian poet who wrote the Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald's five edition of the Rubaiyat and the main two tropes in Khayyam's Rubaiyat.

 Here, I selected two approaches to translation, namely literal and free translation. The first quatrain shows Fitzgerald's faithfulness to the source. While the second two quatrains shows the difference between a Persian translator with Fitzgerald's version. 

The theme in the content of these two quatrains is about the cycle of the human body undertakes when it's dead, i.e the decomposition process from body to dust, and the same dust is used in manufacturing other materials, for example pots that are made from the clay.

 After reading an article, I discovered some Iranian scholars were not satisfied with the way Fitzgerald treated the Rubaiyat:

 “It is interesting because [Fitzgerald’s work] seems to have lost almost every connection with its Persian source in the process of its appropriation, and one wonders how English readers could appreciate it as non-English, oriental poetry, and what would happen if they had been better informed of what Khayyam presented in his quatrains.” Farahzad (2004) link to the article

Consequently, they proposed to translate their works by themselves. This made me search for the most accurate Iranian versions of the Rubaiyat. One among these translators was the well-known Iranian poet Karim Emami who together in a collaboration with an Iranian photographer managed to publish a book called The Wine of Nishapur. The first two quatrains in this slide shows the same Rubayi or quatrain of Khayyam attempted by Emami and Fitzgerald, respectively. The followings are Pessoa's Portuguese version of Fitzgerald and my translation on Pessoa.

The metaphor in these two quatrains chiefly is that flowers that bloom from the earth are carrying the substance of the dead.

If you read what Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet you will be surprised to see how his lines relate to Khayyam's. I had two aims from introducing Shakespeare into my work. First, was that for my colleagues to see the potentiality of considering the lines as translations of Khayyam's former quatrains. Second, rather an external purpose, to show how two great minds who lived in two different worlds and two different times could cross on the same ideas.

What comes after Shakespeare was actually my idea. How I read this theory from my own perspective. To justify my idea in a brief explanation; I see that we (including creatures and plants) are all comprised of the three main elements, Soil, Water and Air. And we have the ability to assist in this process of procreation. However, without these elements it is impossible to live and proliferate.

I concluded my presentation by bringing a small selection from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that are my favorite. 

In the end I recommend you to:

Read, Drink some Wine from your Pot and Enjoy!