The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (classic literature list TXT) 📕

THE BOOK OF THE

THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT

A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments Translated and Annotated by Richard F. Burton VOLUME ONE

Inscribed to the Memory of

My Lamented Friend John Frederick Steinhaeuser, (Civil Surgeon, Aden) who

A Quarter of a Century Ago Assisted Me in this Translation.

“To the pure all things are pure” (Puris omnia pura) - Arab Proverb.

“Niuna corrotta mente intese mai sanamente parole.”

- “Decameron” - conclusion.

“Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia librum Sed coram Bruto. Brute!

reced, leget.

- Martial.

“Miculx est de ris que de larmes escripre, Pour ce que rire est le propre des hommes.”

- Rabelais.

“The pleasure we derive from perusing the Thousand and One Stories makes us regret that we possess only a comparatively small part of these truly enchanting fictions.”

- Crichton’s “History of Arabia.”

Contents of the First Volume Introduction

Story Of King Shahryar and His Brother a. Tale of the Bull and the Ass 1. Tale of the Trader and the Jinni a. The First Shaykh’s Story b. The Second Shaykh’s Story c. The Third Shaykh’s Story 2. The Fisherman and the Jinni

a. Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban ab. Story of King Sindibad and His Falcon ac. Tale of the Husband and the Parrot ad. Tale of the Prince and the Ogress b. Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince 3. The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad a. The First Kalandar’s Tale b. The Second Kalandar’s Tale ba. Tale of the Envier and the Envied c. The Third Kalandar’s Tale d. The Eldest Lady’s Tale

e. Tale of the Portress

Conclusion of the Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies 4. Tale of the Three Apples

5. Tale of Nur Al-din Ali and his Son 6. The Hunchback’s Tale

a. The Nazarene Broker’s Story b. The Reeve’s Tale

c. Tale of the Jewish Doctor d. Tale of the Tailor

e. The Barber’s Tale of Himself ea. The Barber’s Tale of his First Brother eb. The Barber’s Tale of his Second Brother ec. The Barber’s Tale of his Third Brother ed. The Barber’s Tale of his Fourth Brother ee. The Barber’s Tale of his Fifth Brother ef. The Barber’s Tale of his Sixth Brother The End of the Tailor’s Tale

The Translator’s Foreword.

This work, labourious as it may appear, has been to me a labour of love, an unfailing source of solace and satisfaction. During my long years of official banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western Africa, and to the dull and dreary half clearings of South America, it proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and despondency. Impossible even to open the pages without a vision starting into view; with out drawing a picture from the pinacothek of the brain; without reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which are not the common property of travellers, however widely they may have travelled. From my dull and commonplace and “respectable” surroundings, the Jinn bore me at once to the land of my pre-direction, Arabia, a region so familiar to my mind that even at first sight, it seemed a reminiscence of some by gone metem-psychic life in the distant Past. Again I stood under the diaphanous skies, in air glorious as aether, whose every breath raises men’s spirits like sparkling wine. Once more I saw the evening star hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of the western firmament; and the after glow transfiguring and transforming, as by magic, the homely and rugged features of the scene into a fairy land lit with a light which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and gazelle brown gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the village centre. Presently, sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild weird song of lads and lasses, driving or rather pelting, through the gloaming their sheep and goats; and the measured chant of the spearsmen gravely stalking behind their charge, the camels; mingled with bleating of the flocks and the bellowing of the humpy herds; while the reremouse flitted overhead with his tiny shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through deepening glooms, and—most musical of music—the palm trees answered the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling water.

And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and “white beards” of the tribe gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp fire, whilst I reward their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well as with ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them utterly natural, mere matters of every day occurrence.

They enter thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author: they take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature and knightly prowess of Taj al-Mul�k; they are touched with tenderness by the self sacrificing love of Az�zah; their mouths water as they hear of heaps of untold gold given away in largesse like clay; they chuckle with delight every time a K�zi or a Fak�r—a judge or a reverend—is scurvily entreated by some Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal solemnity and impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes rolling upon the ground till the reader’s gravity is sorely tried, at the tales of the garrulous Barber and of Ali and the Kurdish Sharper. To this magnetising mood the sole exception is when a Badawi of superior accomplishments, who sometimes says his prayers, ejaculates a startling “Astagh-faru’llah”—I pray Allah’s pardon!—for listening, not to Carlyle’s “downright lies,” but to light mention of the sex whose name is never heard amongst the nobility of the Desert.

Nor was it only in Arabia that the immortal Nights did me such notable service: I found the wildlings of Somali land equally amenable to its discipline; no one was deaf to the charm and the two women cooks of my caravan, on its way to Harar, were in continently dubbed by my men “Shahrazad” and “Dinazad.”

It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a natural outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah.

Arriving at Aden in the (so called) winter of 1852, I put up with my old and dear friend, Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume is inscribed; and, when talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at once came to the same conclusion that, while the name of this wondrous treasury of Moslem folk lore is familiar to almost every English child, no general reader is aware of the valuables it contains, nor indeed will the door open to any but Arabists.

Before parting we agreed to “collaborate” and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the Brazil, Steinhaeuser died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in Switzerland and, after the fashion of Anglo India, his valuable MSS. left at Aden were dispersed, and very little of his labours came into my hands.

Thus I was left alone to my work, which progressed fitfully amid a host of obstructions. At length, in the spring of 1879, the tedious process of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form. But, during the winter of 1881-82, I saw in the literary journals a notice of a new version by Mr. John Payne, well known to scholars for his prowess in English verse, especially for his translation of “The Poems of Master Francis Villon, of Paris.” Being then engaged on an expedition to the Gold Coast (for gold), which seemed likely to cover some months, I wrote to the “Athenaeum” (Nov. 13, 1881) and to Mr. Payne, who was wholly unconscious that we were engaged on the same work, and freely offered him precedence and possession of the field till no longer wanted. He accepted my offer as frankly, and his priority entailed another delay lasting till the spring of 1885. These details will partly account for the lateness of my appearing, but there is yet another cause. Professional ambition suggested that literary labours, unpopular with the vulgar and the half educated, are not likely to help a man up the ladder of promotion. But common sense presently suggested to me that, professionally speaking, I was not a success, and, at the same time, that I had no cause to be ashamed of my failure. In our day, when we live under a despotism of the lower “middle class”

Philister who can pardon anything but superiority, the prizes of competitive services are monopolized by certain “pets” of the M�diocratie, and prime favourites of that jealous and potent majority—the Mediocnties who know “no nonsense about merit.” It is hard for an outsider to realise how perfect is the monopoly of common place, and to comprehend how fatal a stumbling stone that man sets in the way of his own advancement who dares to think for himself, or who knows more or who does more than the mob of gentlemen employee who know very little and who do even less.

Yet, however behindhand I may be, there is still ample room and verge for an English version of the “Arabian Nights’

Entertainments.”

Our century of translations, popular and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland’s delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster’s, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey’s, which is a re-correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d’oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy book, a nice present for little boys.

After nearly a century had elapsed, Dr. Jonathan Scott (LL.D.

H.E.I.C.‘s S., Persian Secretary to the G. G. Bengal; Oriental Professor, etc., etc.), printed his “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters, translated from the Arabic and Persian,” (Cadell and Davies, London, A.D. 1800); and followed in 1811 with an edition of “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” from the MS. of Edward Wortley Montague (in 6 vols., small 8vo, London: Longmans, etc.).

This work he (and he only) describes as “Carefully revised and occasionally corrected from the Arabic.” The reading public did not wholly reject it, sundry texts were founded upon the Scott version and it has been imperfectly reprinted (4 vole., 8vo, Nimmo and Bain, London, 1883). But most men, little recking what a small portion of the original they were reading, satisfied themselves with the Anglo French epitome and metaphrase. At length in 1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer (“of the Inner Temple”) and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right direction; and began to translate, “The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” (1 vol., 8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.) from the Arabic of the �gyptian (!) MS. edited by Mr.