Page 13 - Omar!

angel enters left with more wine, pours it, and exits. Omar and the
Vine-daughter sing a duet, “Fancy while Thou art” before they exit
right. This scene elicited some negative comments from the
prohibitionists.”
“I’m not surprised, given their reaction to the earlier bar scene.”
Fey rubbed his jaw. “They may not like it, but this scene is crucial.
Here Omar finally states his message, bizarre though it may be: since
philosophy and religion have no answer, it is best to get drunk. Why?
Because intoxication leads to both merriment and forgetfulness.
Time, the mathematically precise and physically unavoidable measure
of our mortality, is distorted and distended under the influence of
drugs like alcohol. Omar even disparages his own considerable
accomplishments in such logic-determined fields as astronomy and
calendar-reckoning:

For “Is” and “Is-not” though with Rule and Line
And “Up-and-down” without, I could define,
I yet in all I only cared to know,
Was never deep in anything but—Wine.

Amazing, isn’t it? Omar anticipated the modern fields of Boolean
algebra and symbolic logic, and at the same time condemned their
sterility; he saw that science was just as unable as mysticism to answer
the big questions. You know, his sort of hedonism sounds to me a lot
like the dictum of another Fitzgerald, F. Scott: ‘living well is the best
revenge.’ To many people that is an attitude of sour grapes, not
fermented ones. This may have led to the plethora of
misinterpretations and reinterpretations of the Rubaiyat; it’s just too
harsh a philosophy for the average person.”
Baron drummed his fingers on the desk. “The average person, Mr.
Fey, is not going to get past the picket lines to find out what the
deeper meaning of this opera might or might not be.” He extracted a
sheet from the stack of letters. “The rehearsal of the final scene had
relatively few observers; most of them seem have departed as soon as
they witnessed their first outrage. So we have only this note from a
professor of Middle Eastern history at the university. He writes that
you—the dramatist, that is—have played fast and loose with
historical fact. Omar, according to him, did not die as a result of
some sexual peccadillo.”

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