Sales catalogue: Quaritch

Date:
June 1885
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/17/38
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Quaritch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the eleventh century, but a sage, whose philosophy is for all time. ‘a fa Hence, those who go to his “accompaniment” for Persian tile-patterns, arched recesses copied from Flandin and Coste, and the details of the archzeological costwmier, are. foredoomed to disappointment. Vedder’s’Omar has no fixed place in history, and belongs to no century. He moves among people and places [astern and remote ; but the people are not distinctively Persian, and the places may not be identfied upon the map of Iran. The loose robes, the easy slippers, the simple caps of the philosopher and his friend. are of a fashion as ancient as that of to-day. Their wine-cups and amphore are moulded after patterns which were already of immemorial antiquity in the times of the Pharaohs. Such architectural accessories as here and there occur are of a massive primeval character, and bear no stamp of style. The very plains and uplands of Mr. Vedder’s which the gazelle drinks, the wooded solitude where the poet lies reading in a morn of spring, the desert sands and distant lonely hills, wear a strange and unaccustomed aspect, as if they belonged to the first ages of the world. Mr. Vedder has also forborne to ally himself with, either school of interpreters. His creed varies with his subject, and he is by turns mystic or sceptic, Sufi or Muslim. Love, he renders simply and humanly. God-like youths, and such fair maidens as strayed of old through vine. The tavern, the wine-cup, and the bliss of the reveller are also, of necessity, treated in the Anacreontic sense. ‘To give artistic form to the Nirvana of Sufism is obviously impossible. Though comparatively few in number, these idyllic and Bacchanalian scenes supply just that element of warmth and beauty which is needed to relieve the sterner stuff of Mr. Vedder’s other illustrations, That his noblest work comes out in that sterner stuff need scarcely be said. _ Himself always more or less a mystic, he has foundin the Rubd@ iydt a mine of subjects after his own heart. Fortunately for him, the mine has lain unworked from ?Omar’s day to his. Had the Rubd’iydt been translated into Latin or German four centuries ago, or into English within the memory of many still living, Albert Direr and Blake would asguredly been beforehand with Elihu Vedder. But neither Albert Diirer nor Blake, nor any other master dead and gone, could, I venture to think, have succeeded in sublimity and subtlety of conception at least a score of these extraordinary designs. presented. As selected and manipulated by “Ne ra design which ‘as a writer inthe Indian Pioneer long since pointed out) is not only arbitrary but illusory. For the Rubd’iyat are in truth mere isolated epigrams, tersely expressive of passing moods and. phases, and as far from partaking of the nature of an ‘“eclogue”’ as of Each editor or trans- lator is, however, obviously free to arrange this heterogeneous material according to his own: judgment; and Mr. Vedder, having due regard to the rendering of his “accompaniment,” has wisely used the same librety. - Thus he begins with sunrise, the promise of the budding spring-time, and “the glories of this world ;” next follow subjects dealing with the poct’s meditations on the emptiness of creeds, systems, and sciences ; and these again are succeeded by loftier and more solemn con- siderations of the futility of efforts, the hollow- ness and hopelessness of achievement, and the mystery of death. Finally, as he began with spring, so he ends with autumn, and the failing year. The potter’s workshop supplies store of amphore for the new vintage. The philo- and “ drowns his glory in a shallow cup ;”’ men and maidens quaff last year’s juice under vine- boughs which are once again laden with grapes; and when the poet himself passes away, the handmaiden, who so often filled his cup in the pleasant garden where the revellers meet, turns down an empty glass upon the spot where he was wont to recline. Not having a copy of Mr. Fitzgerald’s earlier edition at hand, I am unable to detect to what extent the artist has departed from the order adopted by his translator ; but as regards the sequence of the designs, nothing can be better than his harmo- nious crescendo and decrescendo of passion. To convey in words, to those who have not seen Mr. Vedder’s illustrations, any definite idea of the tragic pitch to which that crescendo rises, is simply impossible. Like another Dante he takes us literally out of this little world and through the realms of space; but unlike Dante he gently brings us home again Want of space forbids me to do more than very briefly indicate a few of these fifty-six plates, upon most of which many pages of descriptive analysis might easily be written. Take for instance No. 13, which in the list of illustrations is called “ The Long Rest.” A beautiful woman languidly descends a narrow flight of steps leading to the door of a tomb. Outside this door, which stands ajar, lie the faded palms and extingusihed lamps of those who have gone before. Her own lamp, which she has just set down, is spent and flickering. stuff, vaporous, smokelike, interpenetrated with floating shreds of leaves and blossoms, As — she descends, this marvellous garment -drifts — upward, its component parts returning to resume their place in the scheme of nature. The quatrain here illustrated contains none of.
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