Khayyam English

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Each book a treasure

The famous quatrains of the poet

Omar Khayyamare now available with modern illustrations

Lovers and collectors of beautiful books can look forward with pleasure to an extraordinary work:The poems of the world renowned Persian mathematician, philosopher and poet, Omar Khayyam,

are now presented in a four-language edition with contemporary illustrations.

On 88 illustrated pages illustrated and with 22 colour plates, the Iranian artist

Naghi Naghachian

interprets the quatrains with their timeless beauty in a strikingly new way.

The book is laid out in four languages, Persian, German, English and French. Naghachian understandshis selection of translations and his illustrations as an attempt to create a holistic interpretation of the

writings of Khayyam and as a visual tribute to his poetic, philosophical works.


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Page 3

Short Biographiy of Omar Khayyms

Page 4

The Artist

Page 5-21

Exampels of some illustrated pages

Page 22Imprint


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Omar Khayyam poet and philosopher of the 11th century

The poet Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 in Nischapur, a city in the Persian province of

Khorasan, and died there in 1123. He was also one of the greatest philosophers, mathematicians

and astronomers of his time, and concerned himself, among other things, with parallels and

irrational numbers.

In his quatrains, one encounters Omar Khayyam from his enlightened and sceptical side.

Only a few of these verses were published in his own lifetime. Not before the mid-19th century

was Omar Khayyam known to the West and Anglo-Saxon world through the translations of the

English scholar and writer, Edward FitzGerald.

Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack and Friedrich Bodenstedt translated the quatrains into German

in 1880, and this was followed from 1912 on by the translations of Friedrich Rosen. The largest

selection of translations of Omar Khayyams quatrains is in French. Most of these versions are in

rhyming quatrains which, for the greater part, are transcriptions of already existing translations.

Many translators, however, neglect or distort the spirit and meaning of Khayyams poetry for the

sake of making the quatrains rhyme. Only the version of Mahdy Fouladvind is true to the wording

of Khayyam and at the same time has an extraordinary lyrical quality. In selecting the translations,

Naghachian was therefore able to draw on many sources. The decisive criteria were, in the first

instance, trueness to the text, and secondly, poetic rendering in the respective language,

The poems of Omar Khayyam are, as with no other poet down the centuries, copied, interpreted

or imitated time and again in new versions. These imitations and copies are one of the reasons

for the enormous degree of awareness of Omar Khayyams poetry. This has led on the one hand to

great confusion but has also allowed his work to be like a musical theme or composition, which

has generated variations, improvisations and fresh interpretations.


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The artist Naghi Naghachian

Naghi Naghachian was born in Teheran. After completing his school education in Iran,

he studied illustration and book design at the Hochschule fr Gestaltung (HfG),

an academy of design, in Offenbach, Germany. Thereafter he was engaged as art director

in various advertising agencies in Germany, Switzerland and England. He also worked as

a freelance graphic designer with focus on illustration and brand designing for leadingproducers of brand articles in Europe, and also for broadcasting stations in Germany and

other European countries.

In addition, he was occupied with theoretical work in the field of colour and research in

the passive perception of colour and after image phenomena. He produced carried out

an analysis of the letters of the Arabic alphabet and a definition of their structure,

enabling him to design a number of modern types of Arabic script.

This publication of the illustrated quatrains of Omar Khayyam is his most recent project.

He devoted five years of intensive and creative study to produce the book.


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Phone: 069-56043482 Mail: [email protected]

Khayyam English

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