Each book a treasure The famous quatrains of the poet

Omar Khayyam
are 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 understands his 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.

Page 3 Short Biographiy of Omar Khayyms Page 4 The Artist Page 5-21 Exampels of some illustrated pages Page 22 Imprint

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.

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 leading producers 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.

Eichendorffstrasse 11 D-60320 Frankfurt Phone: 069-56043482 Mail: naghi@naghachian.com