And this reviving Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean.-Omar
This advertisement, illustrated by later wartime propaganda artist Louis Fancher (1884-1944) plays on the connection between the brand name, Omar, and the Persian poet, Omar Khayyám. Omar, by Edward Fitzgerald. The advertisement quotes an excerpt of Edward Fitzgerald’s English translation of Khayyam’s poem, The Rubáiyát The advertisement takes the line literally, connecting tobacco to the “reviving Herb” of “tender Green,” and features a large turbaned man happily smoking a cigarette as a young woman leans in toward him on the riverbank. It’s interesting that The American Tobacco Company would quote a poem which so clearly evokes questions of death and dying; four stanzas after the quoted lines, the poem reads, “Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!” Still, the image depicted is one in which a beautiful, suggestive woman wearing a revealing outfit, leans in toward a smoking man. The exotic effect is enticing in itself.
couple, Female, Luxury, Male, man, Orientalist, romance, woman
