On Life, Love and Happiness

A musical-poetic composition based on the poems of Omar Khayyam (transl. by G. Pletsetsky, N. Strizhkov). Omar Khayyam, like other Sufi poets, used metaphors and portrayed familiar joys of life so that an ordinary person could compare them with higher spiritual joys. And to people who are used to drinking wine to forget their life’s sorrows and difficulties, he offers the nectar of enlightenment and divine ecstasy that allow a person to get rid of all grief forever. His praises of wine and love are classic Sufi metaphors: under wine is meant spiritual joy, and love—rapturous devotion to God…