Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam. B. Crucifix.
Filter 21 (2014) 2, p. 7-19.

Paul Claes is a notorious Flemish translator, most famous for his translations of classic and modernist texts; but he is also a novelist and a poet, a critic and a scholar. This article examines how translation and writing interconnects in Claes’s translations and pastiche of Edward FitzGerald’s (free) translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Because of a cultural difference in legal status and representation, translating and writing are often considered to be strictly separate activities, establishing a hierarchical distinction between ‘creative’ and ‘derivative’ modes.