Representation of the Oriental Lovers in the Illustrations of Khayyam's Quatrains

Unlike the illustrations of poetry works such as Ferdawsi's Shahnameh or Nezami’s Khamseh, the illustration of Khayyam’s quatrains [ruba’iyat] do not originate from the Iranian painting [miniature] tradition, and can be considered as an imported phenomenon.  The present study has examined over 20 illustrated versions of Khayyam's Quatrains. By considering Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory, the discourse context of the poems, and the sociocultural settings of the 19th-century Europe, an answer can be given to the hypothesis that the illustration of lovers in Khayyam’s Quatrains and accentuation of the erotic elements in this representation is in fact the offset of the Western Orientalist mindset of depicting the East with dreamy hues and hints of the One Thousand and One Nights stories.
Lovers are not in fact the core concept of this literary work. Meanwhile, the subtleties of the form and content of the poems encouraged FitzGerlad to adeptly and creatively highlight those concepts that appealed to his target community in his translation of Khayyam. One of the themes centrally highlighted in the translation and particularly in the illustration of the quatrains was love and romance.  In the meantime, social and cultural causes such as the Oriental literary translation movement and especially the translations of Persian poetry works along with the representation of the Orient in visual arts factored in the formation of the Westerners’ mental representation of the East.  This fabricated mentality of the East gave a hue of fantasy to the representation of Oriental lovers in the illustration of Khayyam’s quatrains, and cast the concepts of love and romance in the shape of principles and standards of the 19th century Europe including the heterosexual passion.  The evident eroticism intertwined with the depiction of lovers in such illustrations accompanied by the images of wine, musical instruments, and books in gardens manifested and stabilized the archetypes of the harem, paradise, and the One Thousand and One Nights in the Occidental minds.  The fascinating fact was that even though the Eastern painters and particularly Iranian artists did not face language barriers in conceiving the culture and world view of the poet, they succumbed to the Orientalist expectations and desires of their Western audience and remained zealously loyal to their representation patterns of the Oriental lovers.  In fact, the representation of lovers in such images is a fabricated representation which is delivered by the Western mentality of love and romance within the moral norms of the western community, which are relatively in contrast with the norms of the Iranian society. Therefore, it would not be surprising that the illustration created by Ali Tajvidi of one of Khayyam's quatrains appeared on the chinaware and melamine bowls and plates gradually started to be referred to as that of Leyli and Majnun.  Thus, it is more feasible for them to credit this image as one of the works of lyric poetry, and in particular, one from Nezami’s Khamseh.  Denomination of such an image is also a matter of contemplation given how these images may vary based on the general public’s contextual features, perceptions, and collective memories.