Wine, love, pleasure

"Drink wine, since you ignore where you came from - live joyfully, since you ignore where you will go." The genius mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam, haunted by the unsolvable enigma of death and our reason for being on this Earth, offers us quatrains of striking beauty. By using the poetic form called robâ`î - a "quaternary" poem in Persian - the author harnesses mathematical rigor in the service of poetic art in an attempt to find answers to his existence. In Omar Khayyam's poetry, wine is a metaphor, just like the cup, the beauty mark, royalty, the rose, and the nightingale. It is a metaphor for awakened consciousness, beauty, and the moment turned into eternity. The poet takes this tradition and strengthens it by adding the deep darkness of his melancholy. Like an Eastern wisdom, the author takes us on a arabesque of words, brought to life by the brush of Lassaâd Metoui, a renowned calligrapher who presents us with captivating calligraphy.