by A. S. Byatt
31. Lane translates “Ánisa-kum” by “he hath delighted you by his arrival;” Mr. Payne, “I commend him to you.”
32. Arab. “Fatúrát,” = light food for the early breakfast of which the “Fatírah”-cake was a favourite item. See [here Burton cross-references a note to a tale not included in this edition that reads:] This “Futur” is the real “breakfast” of the East, the “Chhoti házri” (petit déjeuner) of India, a bit of bread, a cup of coffee or tea, and a pipe on rising. In the text, however, it is a ceremonious affair.
33. A dark red dye (Lane).
34. Arab. “Jadíd;” see [here Burton cross-references a note to a tale not included in this edition that reads:] Arab. “Judad,” plur. of Jadíd, lit. = new coin, ergo applied to those old and obsolete; 10 Judad were = one nusf or half dirham.
35. Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little sense. Ma’aruf probably would say, “I fear that my loads will be long coming.”
36. One of the many formulas of polite refusal.
37. Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall and heavy wooden doors which are locked every evening and opened in the morning by the Ghafir or guard. The “silver key,” however, always lets one in.
38. Arab. “Wa lá Kabbata hámiyah,” a Cairene vulgarism meaning, “There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him.”
39. Arab. “Kammir,” i.e., brown it before the fire, toast it.
40. It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth—not an uncommon process, I may remark.
41. Arab. “Rijál” = the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rijál al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in [here Burton refers to a note to a tale not included in this edition that reads:] Arab. “Rijál al-Ghayb,” somewhat like the “Himalayan Brothers” of modern superstition. See Herklots (Qanoon-e-Islam) for a long and careful description of these “Mardán-i-Ghayb” (Pers.), a “class of people mounted on clouds,” invisible, but moving in a circular orbit round the world; and suggesting the Hindu “Lokapálas.” They should not be in front of the traveller nor on his right, but either behind or on his left hand. Hence tables, memorial couplets and hemistichs are required to ascertain the station, without which precaution journeys are apt to end badly.
42. A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good enough to be his: the Persians say, “Cut not down the tree thou plantedst,” and the idea is universal throughout the East.
43. A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash’ab (ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of “windfalls.” The Scholiast Al-Sharíshi (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake…. When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said, “Yes; a sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof, seeing a rainbow, mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!” Hence “Ash’ab’s sheep” became a byword (Preston tells the tale in full, p. 288).
44. i.e., “Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can.”
45. He wants £40,000 to begin with.
46. Arab. “Sabíhat al-’urs,” the morning after the wedding.
47. Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman II.
48. Arab. “Al-Jink” (from Turk.) are boys and youths, mostly Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman’s dress with long hair braided. Lane (M. E. chaps. xix. and xxv.) gives some account of the customs of the “Gink” (as the Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites. Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghawázi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum. When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a glance at them makes a European’s blood run cold.
49. Lane translates this, “May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!”
50. As we should say, “play fast and loose.”
51. Arab. “Náhí-ka,” lit. = thy prohibition, but idiomatically used = let it suffice thee!
52. A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes ample amends for a book full of abuse of women. And yet the superficial say that none of the characters have much personal individuality.
53. This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes all the world kin.
54. As we are in Tartary “Arabs” here means plundering nomads, like the Persian “Iliyát” and other shepherd races.
55. The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a rejected lover. The Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be merely romancing, but speaking with the second sight, the clairvoyance, of perfect affection. Men seem to know very little upon this subject, though every one has at times been more or less startled by the abnormal introvision and divination of things hidden which are the property and prerogative of perfect love.
56. Euphemistic: “I will soon fetch thee food.” To say this bluntly might have brought misfortune.
57. Arab. “Kafr” = a village in Egypt and Syria, e.g., Capernaum (Kafr Nahum).
58. He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a kindness whenever he can.
59. i.e., the Father of Prosperities: pron. Aboosa’ádát; as in the “Tale of Hasan of Bassorah.”
60. Koran, lxxxix. “The Daybreak” which also mentions Thamud and Pharaoh.
61. In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at a hotel table d’hôte.
62. The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled hoards; see note 30 for “The City of Brass.”
63. Arab. “Asákir,” the ornaments of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chap. xxiv.) the sketch of the Mahmal.
64. Arab. “Amm” = father’s brother, courteously used for “father-in-law,” which suggests having slept with his daughter, and which is indecent in writing. Thus by a pleasant fiction the husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.
65. i.e., a calamity to the enemy: see [Burton here refers to a note for a tale that is not included in this edition. It reads:] “Dawáhí,” plur. of Dáhiyah = a mishap.
66. Both texts read “Asad” (lion) and Lane accepts it: there is no reason to change it for “Hásid” (Envier), the Lion being the Sultan of the Beasts and the most majestic.
67. The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be taken in by him.
68. Arab. “Hizám”: Lane reads “Khizám”=a nose-ring for which see appendix to Lane’s M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes these decorations and there is certainly no beauty in the hoops which Hindu women insert through the nostrils, camel-fashion, as if to receive the cord-acting bridle. But a drop-pearl hanging to the septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which some European women lengthen their ears.
69. Arab. “Shamtá,” one of the many names of wine, the “speckled” alluding to the bubbles which dance upon the freshly filled cup.
70. i.e., in the cask. These “merry quips” strongly suggest the dismal toasts of our not remote ancestors.
71. Arab. “A’láj,” plur. of “’Ilj” and rendered by Lane “the stout foreign infidels.” The next line alludes to the cupbearer who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.
72. As if it were a bride. See [Burton here refers to a note to a tale not included in this edition. It reads:] Arab. “Ijtilá” = the displaying of the bride on her wedding night so often alluded to in The Nights. The stars of Jauzá (Gemini) are the cupbearer’s eyes.
73. Compare the charming song of Abu Miján translated from the German of Dr. Weil in Bohn’s Edit. of Ockley (p. 149),
When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave ’mi
d the vines on the hill’s fair side;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide.
Ah, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear!
While fearless I’ll wait what he hath in hand
An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.
The glorious old drinker!
74. Arab. “Rub’a al-Kharáb,” in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa south of the Nile sources, one of the richest regions in the world. Here it prob. alludes to the Rub’a al-Khálí or Great Arabian Desert: for which see [Burton here refers to a note to a tale not included in this edition. It reads:] Arab. “Ruba’al-Kharáb” or Ruba’al-Khálí (empty quarter), the great central wilderness of Arabia covering some 50,000 square miles and still left white on our maps. (Pilgrimage, i. 14.) In rhetoric it is opposed to the “Rub’a Maskún,” or populated fourth of the world, the rest being held to be ocean.
75. This is the noble resignation of the Moslem. What a dialogue there would have been in a European book between man and devil!
76. Arab. “Al-’iddah,” the period of four months and ten days which must elapse before she could legally marry again. But this was a palpable wile: she was not sure of her husband’s death and he had not divorced her; so that although a “grass widow,” a “Strohwitwe” as the Germans say, she could not wed again either with or without interval.
77. Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a fling at the “timeserving” of the Olema, a favourite theme, like “banging the bishops” amongst certain Westerns.
78. Arab. “Umm al-raas,” the poll, crown of the head, here the place where a calamity coming down from heaven would first alight.
79. From Al-Hariri (Lane): the lines are excellent.
80. When the charming Princess is so ready at the voie de faits, the reader will understand how common is such energetic action among women of lower degree. The “fair sex” in Egypt has a horrible way of murdering men, especially husbands, by tying them down and tearing out the testicles. See Lane, M. E. chap. xiii.
81. Arab. “Sijn al-Ghazab,” the dungeons appropriated to the worst of criminals where they suffer penalties far worse than hanging or guillotining.
82. Very simple and pathetic is this short sketch of the noble-minded Princess’s death.
83. In sign of dismissal; I have noted that “throwing the kerchief” is not an Eastern practice: the idea probably arose from the Oriental practice of sending presents in richly embroidered napkins and kerchiefs. [After “noted,” above, Burton refers to a note to a tale not included in this edition. It reads:] This shaking the kerchief is a signal to disperse and the action suggests its meaning. Thus it is used in an opposite sense to “throwing the kerchief,” a pseudo-Oriental practice whose significance is generally understood in Europe.
84. Curious to say, both Lane and Payne omit this passage which appears in both texts (Mac. and Bul.). The object is evidently to prepare the reader for the ending by reverting to the beginning of the tale; and its prolixity has its effect as in the old romances of chivalry from Amadis of Gaul to the Seven Champions of Christendom. If it provoke impatience, it also heightens expectation; “it is like the long elm-avenues of our forefathers; we wish ourselves at the end; but we know that at the end there is something great.”
85. Arab. “alà malákay bayti ’l-ráhah;” on the two slabs at whose union are the round hole and longitudinal slit. See note 51 to “Nur al-Din Ali and His Son.”
86. Here the exclamation wards off the Evil Eye from the Sword and the wearer: Mr. Payne notes, “The old English exclamation, ‘Cock’s ’ill!’ (i.e., God’s will, thus corrupted for the purpose of evading the statute of 3 Jac. I against profane swearing) exactly corresponds to the Arabic”—with a difference, I add.
87. Arab. “Mustahakk” = deserving (Lane) or worth (Payne) the cutting.
88. Arab. “Mashhad,” the same as “Sháhid” = the upright stones at the head and foot of the grave. Lane mistranslates, “Made for her a funeral procession.”
89. These lines have occurred before. I quote Lane.
90. There is nothing strange in such sudden elevations amongst Moslems and even in Europe we still see them occasionally. The family in the East, however humble, is a model and miniature of the state, and learning is not always necessary to wisdom.
CONCLUSION
1. Arab. “Fárid,” which may also mean “union-pearl.”
2. Trébutien (iii. 497) cannot deny himself the pleasure of a French touch, making the King reply, “C’est assez; qu’on lui coupe la tête, car ces dernières histoires surtout m’ont causé un ennui mortel.” This reading is found in some of the MSS.
3. After this I borrow from the Bresl. Edit., inserting passages from the Mac. Edit.
4. i.e., whom he intended to marry with regal ceremony.
5. The use of coloured powders in sign of holiday-making is not obsolete in India. See Herklots for the use of “Huldee” (Haldí) or turmeric-powder, pp. 64–65.
6. Many Moslem families insist upon this before giving their girls in marriage, and the practice is still popular amongst many Mediterranean peoples.
7. i.e., Sumatran.
8. i.e., Alexander, according to the Arabs; see [here Burton refers to a note to a tale not included in this edition. It reads:] the Koranic and our mediæval Alexander, Lord of the two Horns (East and West) much “Matagrobolized” and very different from him of Macedon. The title is variously explained, from two protuberances on his head or helm, from two long locks and, possibly, from the ram-horns of Jupiter Ammon. The anecdote in the text seems suggested by the famous interview (probably a canard) with Diogenes: see in the Gesta, Tale cxlvi., “The answer of Diomedes the Pirate to Alexander.” Iskandar was originally called Marzbán (Lord of the Marches), son of Marzabah; and, though descended from Yunán, son of Japhet, the eponymus of the Greeks, was born obscure, the son of an old woman. According to the Persians he was the son of the Elder Dáráb (Darius Codomannus of the Kayanian or Second dynasty), by a daughter of Philip of Macedon; and was brought up by his grandfather. When Abraham and Isaac had rebuilt the Ka’abah they foregathered with him and Allah sent him forth against the four quarters of the earth to convert men to the faith of the Friend or to cut their throats; thus he became one of the four world-conquerors with Nimrod, Solomon, Bukht al-Nasr (Nabochodonosor); and he lived down two generations of men. His Wazir was Aristú (the Greek Aristotle) and he carried a couple of flags, white and black, which made day and night for him and facilitated his conquests. At the end of Persia, where he was invited by the people, on account of the cruelty of his half brother Darab II, he came upon two huge mountains on the same line, behind which dwelt a host of abominable pygmies, two spans high, with curious eyes, ears which served as mattresses and coverlets, huge fanged mouths, lions’ claws and hairy hind quarters. They ate men, destroyed everything, copulated in public and had swarms of children. These were Yájúj and Májúj (Gog and Magog) descendants of Japhet. Sikandar built against them the famous wall with stones cemented and riveted by iron and copper. The “Great Wall” of China, the famous bulwark against the Tartars, dates from 320 B.C. (Alexander of Macedon died 324 B.C.); and as the Arabs knew Canton well before Mohammed’s day, they may have built their romance upon it. The Guebres consigned Sikandar to hell for burning the Nusks or sections of the Zendavesta.
9. All these coquetries require as much inventiveness as a cotillion; the text alludes to fastening the bride’s tresses across her mouth giving her the semblance of beard and mustachios.
10. Arab. Sawád = the blackness of the hair.
11. Because Easterns build, but never repair.
12. i.e., God only knows if it be true or not.
COMMENTARY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON
THE NATION
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
LADY ISA
BEL BURTON
Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights was a much anticipated work which, when it was finally published, met a stormy and varied reception. While there were many critics who loved the work for its scholarly completeness and faithfulness to the original text, there were just as many who censured it for its unseemly content. The following quotes and extracts from various sources provide insight into the critical response elicited by Burtons frank and literal translation.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
John Addington Symonds was a well-known critic and historian in the nineteenth century who argues in the following excerpt that it is inconsistent to censor Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights while allowing free access to complete texts of classical literature.
There is an outcry in some quarters against Captain Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights. Only one volume of that work has reached me, and I have not as yet read the whole of it. Of the translator’s notes I will not speak, the present sample being clearly insufficient to judge by; but I wish to record a protest against the hypocrisy which condemns his text. When we invite our youth to read an unexpurgated Bible (in Hebrew and Greek, or in the authorised version), an unexpurgated Aristophanes, an unexpurgated Juvenal, an unexpurgated Boccaccio, an unexpurgated Rabelais, an unexpurgated collection of Elizabethan dramatists, including Shakespeare, and an unexpurgated Plato (in Greek or in Prof. Jowett’s English version), it is surely inconsistent to exclude the unexpurgated Arabian Nights, whether in the original or in any English version, from the studies of a nation who rule India and administer Egypt.