The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night/Terminal Essay. From Wikisource Nights and a Night. "Arabian Nights' Entertainments translated from the French, London, , 12mo, 6 vols." and a footnote states that this translation, very inaccurate and vulgar in its diction, was often reprinted It is certainly interesting that, after his lengthy work of translation on the Arabian Nights, Burton thought it necessary to write a long terminal essay explaining the reasons both why the Arabian Nights included so much about sexuality and unusual forms of sex and also why he himself had seen fit to interpret this sexuality so clearly for his rather faint-hearted Victorian blogger.comted Reading Time: 13 mins A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Now Entituled. Thousand Nights and a Night. With Introduction Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. Translated and edited by Richard Francis Burton. First edition of in ten volumes
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night/Terminal Essay - Wikisource, the free online library
The reader who has reached this terminal stage will hardly require my assurance that he has seen the mediaeval Arab at his best and, arabian nights terminal essay, perhaps, at his worst.
In glancing over the myriad pictures of this panorama, those arabian nights terminal essay can discern the soul of goodness in things evil will note the true nobility of the Moslem's mind in the Moyen Age, and the cleanliness of his life from cradle to grave.
As a child he is devoted to his parents, fond of his comrades and respectful to his "pastors and masters," even schoolmasters. As a lad he prepares for manhood with a will and this training occupies him throughout youthtide: he is a gentleman in manners without awkwardness, vulgar astonishment or mauvaise-honte. As a man he is high-spirited and energetic, always ready to fight for his Sultan, his country and, especially, his Faith: courteous and affable, rarely failing in temperance of mind and self-respect, self-control and self-command: hospitable to the stranger, attached to his fellow citizens, submissive to superiors and kindly to inferiors--if such classes exist: Eastern despotisms have arrived nearer the idea of equality and fraternity than any republic yet invented.
As a friend he proves a model to the Damons and Pythiases: as a lover an exemplar to Don Quijote without the noble old Caballero's touch of eccentricity. As a arabian nights terminal essay he is the mirror of chivalry, doing battle for the weak and debelling the strong, while ever "defending the honour of women. Lastly, his death is simple, pathetic end edifying as the life which led to it, arabian nights terminal essay.
Considered in a higher phase, the mediaeval Moslem mind displays, like the ancient Egyptian, a most exalted moral idea, the deepest reverence for all things connected with his religion and a sublime conception of the Unity and Omnipotence of the Deity.
Noteworthy too is a proud resignation to the decrees of Fate and Fortune Kaza wa Kadarof Destiny and Predestination--a feature which ennobles the low aspect of Al-Islam even in these her days of comparative degeneration and local decay. Hence his moderation in prosperity, his fortitude in adversity, his dignity, his perfect self-dominance and, lastly, his lofty quietism which sounds the true heroic ring.
This again is softened and tempered by a simple faith in the supremacy of Love over Fear, an unbounded humanity and charity for the poor and helpless: an unconditional forgiveness of the direst injuries "which is the note of the noble" ; a generosity and liberality which at times seem impossible and an enthusiasm for universal benevolence and beneficence which, exalting kindly deeds done to man above every form of holiness, constitute the root and base of Oriental, nay, of all, arabian nights terminal essay, courtesy.
And the whole is crowned by pure trust and natural confidence in the progress and perfectability of human nature, which he exalts instead of degrading; this he holds to be the foundation stone of society and indeed the very purpose of its existence.
His Pessimism resembles far more the optimism which the so-called Books of Moses borrowed from the Ancient Copt than the mournful and melancholy creed of the true Pessimist, as Solomon the Hebrew, the Indian Buddhist and the esoteric European imitators of Buddhism. He cannot but sigh when contemplating the sin and sorrow, the pathos and bathos of the world; and feel the pity of it, with its shifts and changes ending in nothingness, its scanty happiness and its copious misery.
But his melancholy is expressed in Nor does he mourn as they mourn who have no hope: he has an absolute conviction in future compensation; and, meanwhile, his lively poetic impulse, the poetry of ideas, not of formal verse, and his radiant innate idealism breathe a soul into the merest matter of squalid work-a-day life and awaken the sweetest harmonies of Nature epitomised in Humanity.
Such was the Moslem at a time when "the dark arabian nights terminal essay of ignorance and superstition hung so thick on arabian nights terminal essay intellectual horizon of Europe as to exclude every ray of learning arabian nights terminal essay darted from the East and when all that was polite or elegant in literature was classed among the Studia Arabum"[FN ] Nor is the shady side of the picture less notable.
Our Arab at his worst is a mere barbarian who has not forgotten the savage. He is a model mixture of childishness and astuteness, of simplicity and cunning, concealing levity of mind under solemnity of aspect. His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler: arabian nights terminal essay mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful: his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance, arabian nights terminal essay.
His crass and self- satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble superstitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond the pale of Al-Islam, arabian nights terminal essay. Here occur the questions, Where and When was written and to Whom do we owe a prose-poem which, like the dramatic epos of Herodotus, has no equal?
I proceed to lay before the reader a proces-verbal of the sundry pleadings already in court as concisely as is compatible with intelligibility, furnishing him with references to original authorities and warning him that a fully-detailed account would fill a volume. Even my own reasons for decidedly taking one side and rejecting the other must be stated briefly. And before entering upon this subject I would distribute the prose-matter of our Recueil of Folk-lore under three heads.
The Apologue or Beast-fable proper, a theme which may be of any age, as it is found in the hieroglyphs and in the cuneiforms. The Fairy-tale, as for brevity we may term the stories based upon supernatural arabian nights terminal essay this was a favourite with olden Persia; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of the "Prophets," strongly objected to it because preferred by the more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud and the Koran, quite as fabulous without the halo and glamour of fancy.
The Arabian nights terminal essay and historical anecdotes, analects, and acroamata, in which the names, when not used achronistically by the editor or copier, give unerring data for the earliest date a quo and which, by the mode of treatment, arabian nights terminal essay, suggest the latest, arabian nights terminal essay. Each of these constituents will require further notice when the subject-matter of the book is discussed.
The metrical portion of The Nights may also be divided into three categories, viz. The oldest and classical poetry of the Arabs, e. the various quotations from the "Suspended Poems. The mediaeval, beginning with the laureates of Al-Rashid's court, such as Al-Asma'i and Abu Nowas, and ending with Al-Hariri A.
The modern quotations and the pieces de circonstance by the editors or copyists of the Compilation. In considering the uncle derivatur of The Nights we must carefully separate subject-matter from arabian nights terminal essay. The neglect of such essential difference has caused the remark, "It is not a little curious that the origin of a work which has been known to Europe and has been studied by many during nearly two centuries, should still be so mysterious, and that students have failed in all attempts to detect the secret, arabian nights terminal essay.
One held the work to be practically Persian: the other as persistently declared it to be purely Arab. Professor Gallandin his Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquise d'O, daughter of his patron M. de Guillerague, showed his literary acumen and unfailing sagacity by deriving The Nights from India via Persia; and held that they had been reduced to their present shape by an Auteur Arabe inconnu.
This reference to India, also learnedly advocated by M. Langles, arabian nights terminal essay, was inevitable in those days: it had not then been proved that India owed all her literature to far older civilisations and even that her alphabet the Nagari, erroneously called Devanagari, was derived through Phoenicia and Himyar-land from Ancient Egypt.
So Europe was contented to compare The Nights with the Fables of Pilpay for upwards of a century. At last the Pehlevi or old Iranian origin of the work found an able and strenuous advocate in Baron von Hammer-Purgstall [FN ] who worthily continued what Galland had begun: although a most inexact writer, he was extensively read in Oriental history and poetry. His contention was that the book is an Arabisation of the Persian Hazar Afsanah or Thousand Tales and he proved his point.
Von Hammer began by summoning into Court the "Herodotus of the Arabs, Ali Abu al-Hasan Al-Mas'udi who, in A. The Styrian Orientalist[FN ] quotes with sundry misprints[FN ] an ampler version of a passage in Chapter lxviii. Barbier de Meynard. Of such fashion[FN ] is the fashion of the books which have come down to us translated from the Persian Farasiyahthe Indian Hindiyah ,[FN ] and the Graeco-Roman Rumiyah [FN ]: we have noted the judgment which should be passed upon compositions of this nature, arabian nights terminal essay.
Such is the book entituled Hazar Afsanah or The Thousand Tales, which word in Arabic signifies Khurafah Facetioe : it is known to the public under the name of '[he Boot of a Thousand Nights and a Night, Kitab Alf Laylah wa Laylah. Von Hammer adds, quoting chaps. of Al-Mas'udi that Al-Mansur second Abbaside A. Mansur, c'est-a-dire trente ans avant le regne du Khalife Haroun al-Raschid, qui, par la suite, devait lui-meme jouer un si grand role dans ces histoires.
Von Hammer some twelve years afterwards Journ. Asiat August, brought forward, in his "Note sur l'origine Persane des Mille et une Nuits," a second and an even more important witness: this was the famous Kitab al-Fihrist,[FN ] or Index List of Arabic works, written in A.
Mohammed ibn Is'hak saith: The first who indited themes of imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to the libraries, and who ordered some of them as though related by the tongues of brute beasts, arabian nights terminal essay, were the palaeo-Persians and the Kings of the First Dynasty.
The Ashkanian Kings of the Third Dynasty appended others to them and they were augmented and amplified in the days of the Sassanides the fourth and last royal house. The Arabs also translated them into Arabic, and the loquent and eloquent polished and embellished them and wrote others resembling them. The first work of such kind was entituled 'The Book of Hazar Afsan,' signifying Alf Khurafah, the argument whereof was as follows. A King arabian nights terminal essay their Kings was wont, when he wedded a woman and had lain one night with her, to slay her on the next morning.
Presently he espoused a damsel of the daughters of the Kings, Shahrazad[FN ] hight, one endowed with intellect and erudition and, whenas she lay with him, she fell to telling him tales of fancy; moreover she used to connect the story at the end of the night with that which might induce the King to preserve her alive and to ask her of its ending on the next night until a thousand nights had passed over her.
Meanwhile he cohabited with her till she was blest by boon of child of arabian nights terminal essay, when she acquainted him with the device she had wrought upon him; wherefore he admired her intelligence and inclined to her and preserved her life.
That King had also a Kahramanah nurse and duenna, not entremetteusehight Dinarzad Dunyazad? It is also said that this book was composed for or, arabian nights terminal essay, by Humai daughter of Bahman[FN ] and in it were included other matters. Mohammed bin Is'hak adds: --And the truth is, Inshallah,[FN ] that the first who solaced himself with hearing night-tales was Al-Iskandar he of Macedon and he had a number of men who used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to laughter: he, however, designed not therein merely to please himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and alert.
After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book entitled 'Hazar Afsan. I have seen it complete sundry times; and it is, in truth, a corrupted arabian nights terminal essay of cold tales. A writer in The Athenoeum,[FN ] objecting to Lane's modern date for The Nights, adduces evidence to prove the greater antiquity of the work.
Tunis A. This Spanish poet and historian wrote Al-Muhalla bi al-Ash'ar The Adorned with Versesarabian nights terminal essay, a Topography of Egypt and Africa, which is apparently now lost. In this he quotes from Al-Kurtubi, the Cordovan;[FN ] and he in his turn is quoted by the Arab historian of Spain, Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Mohammed al Makkari, in the "Windwafts of Perfume from the Branches of Andalusia the Blooming"[FN ] A.
Payne x. Dozy's published text. sets forth in his book, El Muhella bi-s-Shaar, quoting from El Curtubi the story of the building of the Houdej in the Garden of Cairo, the which was of the magnificent pleasaunces of the Fatimite Khalifs, the rare of ordinance and surpassing, to wit that the Khalif El Aamir bi-ahkam- illah[FN ] let build it for a Bedouin woman, the love of whom had gotten the mastery of him, in the neighbourhood of the 'Chosen Garden'[FN ] and used to resort often thereto and was slain as he went thither; and it ceased not to be a pleasuring-place for the Khalifs after him.
The folk abound in stories of the Bedouin girl and Ibn Meyyah[FN ] of the sons of her uncle cousin? and what hangs thereby of the mention of El-Aamir, so that the tales told of them on this account became like unto the story of El Bettal[FN ] and the Thousand Nights and a Night and what resembleth them. The same passage from Ibn Sa'id, corresponding in three MSS. in the British Museum by Mr.
John Payne ix, arabian nights terminal essay. Quoth Ibn Said, arabian nights terminal essay, in the book El-Muhella bi-l-ashar, from the History of El Curtubi, concerning the traditions of the folk of the story of the Bedouin maid and Ibn Menah Meyyah of the sons of her uncle and what hangs thereby of the mention of the Khalif El Aamir bi-ahkam-illah, so that their traditions or tales upon the garden became like unto El Bettal[FN ] and the Thousand Nights and what resembleth them.
This evidently means either that The Nights existed in the days of Al-'Amir xiith cent. or that the author compared them with a work popular in arabian nights terminal essay own age. Payne attaches much importance to the discrepancy of titles, which appears to me a minor detail.
The change of names is easily explained. Amongst the Arabs, as amongst the wild Irish, there is divinity the proverb says luck in odd numbers and consequently the others are inauspicious. Hence as Sir Wm. Ouseley says Travels ii. Kaempfer Amoen, Exot. Lastly, in India and throughout Asia where Indian influence extends, the number of cyphers not followed by a significant number is indefinite: for instance, to determine hundreds the Hindus affix the required figure to the end and for write arabian nights terminal essay for But the grand fact of the Hazar Afsanah is its being the archetype of The Nights, unquestionably proving that the Arab work borrows from the Persian bodily its cadre or frame-work, the principal characteristic; its exordium and its denouement, whilst the two heroines still bear the old Persic names.
Arabian nights terminal essay Silvestre de Sacy[FN ]--clarum et venerabile nomen--is the chief authority for the Arab provenance of The Nights. Apparently founding his observations upon Galland,[FN ] he is of opinion that the work, as now known, was originally composed in Syria[FN ] and written in the vulgar dialect; that it was never completed by the author, whether he was prevented by death or by other cause; and that imitators endeavoured to finish the work by inserting romances which were already known but which formed no part of the original recueil, such as the Travels of Sindbad the Seaman, the Book of the Seven Wazirs and others.
He accepts the Persian scheme and cadre of the work, but no more. He contends that no considerable body of prae-Mohammedan or non-Arabic fiction appears in the actual texts[FN ]; and that all the tales, even those dealing with events localised in Persia, India, China and other infidel lands and dated from ante-islamitic ages mostly with the naivest anachronism, confine themselves to depicting the people, manners and customs of Baghdad and Mosul, Damascus and Cairo, during the Abbaside epoch, and he makes a point of the whole being impregnated with the strongest and most zealous spirit of Mohammedanism.
He points out that the language is the popular or vulgar dialect, differing widely from the classical and literary; that it contains many words in common modern use and that generally it suggests the decadence of Arabian literature, arabian nights terminal essay. Of one tale he remarksThe History of the loves of Camaralzaman and Budour, Princess of China, is no more Indian or Persian than the others.
The prince's father has Moslems for subjects, his mother is named Fatimah and when imprisoned he solaces himself with reading the Koran. The Genii who interpose in these adventures are, again, those who had dealings with Solomon. In fine, all that we arabian nights terminal essay find of the City of the Magians, as well as of the fire-worshippers, suffices to show that one arabian nights terminal essay not expect to discover in it anything save the production of a Moslem writer.
Arabian Nights by Shmoop
, time: 4:18Internet History Sourcebooks Project
The Arabian Nights: The terminal essay, bound signed handwritten manuscript, 1 August From the Hanley Collection. Container A literal and unvarnished translation of the Arabian nights' entertainment with introduction notes, and a terminal essay by Richard F. Burton, London, Proof sheets with handwritten revisions A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Now Entituled. Thousand Nights and a Night. With Introduction Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. Translated and edited by Richard Francis Burton. First edition of in ten volumes Jan 26, · Sir Richard Francis Burton: "Terminal Essay", Richard Burton's ten--volume translation of the The Arabian Nights was followed by a 'Terminal Essay' addressing a number of interpretative issues. Section D addressed "pederasty". Although Burton is careful to use words like "vice" and "inversion", this essay represents one of the earliest modern efforts to collect
No comments:
Post a Comment