137. Burton's Notes.
These Notes, indeed, are the great speciality of Burton's edition of the
Nights. They are upon all manner of subjects--from the necklace of the
Pleiades to circumcision; from necromancy to the characteristics of
certain Abyssinian women; from devilish rites and ceremonies to precious
stones as prophylactics. They deal not only with matters to which the
word erotic is generally applied, but also with unnatural practices.
There are notes geographical, astrological, geomantic, bibliographical,
ethnological, anthropomorphitical; but the pornographic, one need hardly
say, hugely predominate. Burton's knowledge was encyclopaedic. Like
Kerimeddin [480] he had drunk the Second Phial of the Queen of the
Serpents. He was more inquisitive than Vathek. To be sure, he would
sometimes ask himself what was the good of it all or what indeed,
was the good of anything; and then he would relate the rebuke he once
received from an indolent Spaniard whom he had found lying on his back
smoking a cigarette. "I was studying the thermometer," said Burton, and
I remarked, "'The glass is unusually high.' 'When I'm hot, it's hot,'
commented the Spaniard, lazily, 'and when I'm cold it's cold. What
more do I want to know?'" Burton, as we have seen, had for a long time
devoted himself particularly to the study of vice and to everything that
was bizarre and unnatural: eunuchs, pederasts, hermaphrodites, idiots,
Augustus-the-Strongs, monstrosities. During his travels he never drank
anything but green tea, and if Le Fanu's ideas [481] in In a Glass
Darkly are to be respected, this habit is partly responsible for his
extraordinary bias. He deals with subjects that are discussed in no
other book. He had seen many lands, and, like Hafiz, could say:
"Plunder I bore from far and near,
From every harvest gleaned an ear;"
and blighted ears some of them were. No other man could have written
these notes; no other man, even if possessed of Burton's knowledge,
would have dared to publish them. Practically they are a work in
themselves. That they were really necessary for the elucidation of
the text we would not for a moment contend. At times they fulfil this
office, but more often than not the text is merely a peg upon which to
hang a mass of curious learning such as few other men have ever dreamt
of. The voluminous note on circumcision [482] is an instance in point.
There is no doubt that he obtained his idea of esoteric annotation from
Gibbon, who, though he used the Latin medium, is in this respect the
true father of Burton. We will give specimens of the annotations, taken
haphazard--merely premising that the most characteristic of them--those
at which the saints in heaven knit their brows--necessarily in a work of
this kind exclude themselves from citations:
"Laughter. 'Sweetness of her smile'(Abu al Husn and Tawaddud). Arab
writers often mention the smile of beauty, but rarely, after European
fashion, the laugh, which they look upon as undignified. A Moslem will
say 'Don't guffaw (kahkahah) in that way; leave giggling and grinning
to monkeys and Christians.' The Spaniards, a grave people, remark that
Christ never laughed." [483]
"Swan-maidens. 'And became three maidens' (Story of Janshah). [484] We
go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high bred girl is
so much like a swan [485] in many points that the idea readily suggests
itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief
in pre-existence, and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of
Ante-Natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Josephus' Antiq.,
xvii., 153)."
"The Firedrake. 'I am the Haunter of this place' (Ma'aruf the Cobbler).
[486] Arab, Amir=one who inhabiteth. Ruins and impure places are the
favourite homes of the Jinn."
"Sticking Coins on the Face. 'Sticks the gold dinar' (Ali Nur al-Din).
[487] It is the custom for fast youths in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere
to stick small gold pieces, mere spangles of metal, on the brows, cheeks
and lips of the singing and dancing girls, and the perspiration and mask
of cosmetics make them adhere for a time, till fresh movement shakes
them off."
"Fillets hung on trees. 'Over the grave was a tall tree, on which hung
fillets of red and green' (Otbah and Rayya). [488] Lane and many others
are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are
suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to
the tree and to whoever shall touch it. The Sawahili people term such
articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the
tree, who prefers occupying it to the patient's person. Briefly the
custom, still popular throughout Arabia, is African and Fetish."
The value of the notes depends, of course, upon the fact that they are
the result of personal observation. In his knowledge of Eastern peoples,
languages and customs Burton stands alone. He is first and there is no
second. His defence of his notes will be found in the last volume of his
Supplemental Nights. We may quote a few sentences to show the drift of
it. He says "The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and
keep all ages in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations;
and the consequences of that imbecility are particularly cruel and
afflicting. How often do we hear women in Society lamenting that they
have absolutely no knowledge of their own physiology.... Shall we
ever understand that ignorance is not innocence. What an absurdum is a
veteran officer who has spent a quarter of a century in the East without
knowing that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without a notion of
how female circumcision is effected," and then he goes on to ridicule
what the "modern Englishwoman and her Anglo-American sister have become
under the working of a mock modesty which too often acts cloak to real
devergondage; and how Respectability unmakes what Nature made." [489]
Mr. Payne's edition contains notes, but they were intended simply to
elucidate the text. Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general
reader. Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note,
such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr.
Payne's musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical
point. He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references),
collated, and where needful corrected all the Koranic citations with
which the text swarms, a task which demanded great labour and an
intimate knowledge of the Koran. The appropriate general information
bearing on the work he gave in a succinct and artistic form in his
elaborate Terminal Essay--a masterpiece of English--in which he
condensed the result of erudition and research such as might have
furnished forth several folio volumes.
138. The Terminal Essay.
Finally there is the Terminal Essay, in which Burton deals at great
length not only with the origin and history of the Nights and matters
erotic, but also with unnatural practices. This essay, with the
exception of the pornographic portions, will be found, by those who take
the trouble to make comparisons, to be under large obligations to Mr.
Payne's Terminal Essay, the general lines and scheme of which it follows
closely. Even Mr. Payne's special phrases such as "sectaries of the
god Wunsch," [490] are freely used, and without acknowledgement. The
portions on sexual matters, however, are entirely original. Burton
argues that the "naive indecencies of the text of The Arabian Nights are
rather gaudisserie than prurience." "It is," he says, "a coarseness of
language, not of idea.... Such throughout the East is the language
of every man, woman and child, from prince to peasant." "But," he
continues, "there is another element in the Nights, and that is one of
absolute obscenity, utterly repugnant to English readers, even the least
prudish." Still, upon this subject he offers details, because it does
not enter into his plan "to ignore any theme which is interesting to
the Orientalist and the Anthropologist. To assert that such lore is
unnecessary is to state, as every traveller knows, an absurdum."
That these notes and the Terminal Essay were written in the interests of
Oriental and Anthropological students may be granted, but that they were
written solely in the interests of these students no one would for
a moment contend. Burton simply revelled in all studies of the kind.
Whatever was knowledge he wanted to know; and we may add whatever wasn't
knowledge. He was insatiable. He was like the little boy who, seeing the
ocean for the first time, cried, "I want to drink it all up." And Burton
would have drunk it all. He would have swallowed down not only all
the waters that were under the firmament but also all the creatures,
palatable and unpalatable--especially the unpalatable--that sported
therein.
139. Final Summing up.
To sum up finally: (1) Both translations are complete, they are the
only complete translations in English, and the world owes a deep debt of
gratitude to both Payne and Burton.
(2) According to Arabists, Payne's Translation is the more accurate of
the two. [491]
(3) Burton's translation is largely a paraphrase of Payne's.
(4) Persons who are in love with the beauty of restraint as regards
ornament, and hold to the doctrine which Flaubert so well understood
and practised, and Pater so persistently preached will consider Payne's
translation incomparably the finer.
(5) Burton's translation is for those who, caring nothing for this
doctrine, revel in rococo work, a style flamboyant at all costs, and in
lawless splendours; and do not mind running against expressions that are
far too blunt for the majority of people.
(6) Payne's rendering of the metrical portions is poetry; Burton's
scarcely verse.
(7) Burton's Terminal Essay, with the exception of the pornographic
sections, is largely indebted to Payne's.
(8) The distinctive features of Burton's work are his notes and the
pornographic sections of his Terminal Essay--the whole consisting of
an amazing mass of esoteric learning, the result of a lifetime's study.
Many of the notes have little, if any, connection with the text, and
they really form an independent work.
Burton himself says: "Mr. Payne's admirable version appeals to the
Orientalist and the Stylist, not to the many-headed; and mine to the
anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs." Burton's
Arabian Nights has been well summed up as "a monument of knowledge and
audacity." [492]
Having finished his task Burton straightway commenced the translation
of a number of other Arabic tales which he eventually published as
Supplemental Nights [493] in six volumes, the first two of which
correspond with Mr. Payne's three volumes entitled Tales from the
Arabic.
140. Mr. Swinburne on Burton.
Congratulations rained in on Burton from all quarters; but the letters
that gave him most pleasure were those from Mr. Ernest A. Floyer and Mr.
A. C. Swinburne, whose glowing sonnet:
"To Richard F. Burton
On his Translation of the Arabian Nights"
is well known. "Thanks to Burton's hand," exclaims the poet
magnificently:
"All that glorious Orient glows
Defiant of the dusk. Our twilight land
Trembles; but all the heaven is all one rose,
Whence laughing love dissolves her frosts and snows."
In his Poems and Ballads, 3rd Series, 1889, Mr. Swinburne pays
yet another tribute to the genius of his friend. Its dedication
runs:--"Inscribed to Richard F. Burton. In redemption of an old pledge
and in recognition of a friendship which I must always count among the
highest honours of my life."
If private persons accorded the work a hearty reception, a large section
of the press greeted it with no les cordiality. "No previous editor,"
said The Standard, "had a tithe of Captain Burton's acquaintance with
the manners and customs of the Moslem East. Apart from the language,
the general tone of the Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The
devotional fervour... often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism,
and the pathos is sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and
true.... In no other work is Eastern life so vividly pourtrayed. This
work, illuminated with notes so full of learning, should give the nation
an opportunity for wiping away that reproach of neglect which Captain
Burton seems to feel more keenly than he cares to express." The St.
James's Gazette called it "One of the most important translations to
which a great English scholar has ever devoted himself."
Then rose a cry "Indecency, indecency! Filth, filth!" It was said, to
use an Arabian Nights expression, that he had hauled up all the dead
donkeys in the sea. The principal attack came from The Edinburgh Review
(July 1886). "Mr. Payne's translation," says the writer, "is not only
a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of
rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal.... Mr. Payne
translates everything, and when a sentence is objectionable in Arabic,
he makes it equally objectionable in English, or, rather, more so, since
to the Arabs a rude freedom of speech is natural, while to us it is
not." Then the reviewer turns to Burton, only, however, to empty out
all the vials of his indignation--quite forgetting that the work was
intended only for "curious students of Moslem manners," and not for the
general public, from whom, indeed, its price alone debarred it. [494]
He says: "It is bad enough in the text of the tales to find that Captain
Burton is not content with plainly calling a spade a spade, but will
have it styled a dirty shovel; but in his notes he goes far beyond this,
and the varied collection of abominations which he brings forward with
such gusto is a disgrace and a shame to printed literature.... The
different versions, however, have each its proper destination--Galland
for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study and Burton
for the sewers." [495]
Burton's spirited reply will be found in the last volume of his
Supplemental Nights. Put compendiously, his argument is: "I had
knowledge of certain subjects such as no other man possessed. Why should
it die with me? Facts are facts, whether men are acquainted with them
or not." "But," he says, "I had another object while making the notes
a Repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric form. Having failed
to free the Anthropological Society [496] from the fetters of mauvaise
honte and the mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnographical
students to keep silence concerning one side of human nature (and that
side the most interesting to mankind) I proposed to supply the want in
these pages.... While Pharisee and Philistine may be or may pretend to
be 'shocked' and 'horrified' by my pages, the sound commonsense of a
public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from the prudish
and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of the
early 19th century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and
ample justice."
In order to be quite ready, should prosecution ensue, Burton compiled
what he called The Black Book, which consisted of specimens, of, to use
his own expression, the "turpiloquium" of the Bible and Shakespeare. It
was never required for its original purpose, but he worked some portions
into the Terminal Essay to The Arabian Nights. [497] And here it may
be said that when Burton attacks the Bible and Christianity he is
inconsistent and requires to be defended against himself. The Bible, as
we have seen was one of the three books that he constantly carried about
with him, and few men could have had greater admiration for its more
splendid passages. We know, too, that the sincere Christian had his
respect. But his Terminal Essay and these notes appeared at a moment
when the outcry was raised against his Arabian Nights; consequently,
when he fires off with "There is no more immoral work than the Old
Testament," the argument must be regarded as simply one of Tu quoque.
Instead of attacking the Bible writers as he did, he should, to have
been consistent, have excused them, as he excused the characters in The
Arabian Nights, with: "Theirs is a coarseness of language, not of idea,
&c., &c.... Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman
and child," [498] and so on. The suggestion, for example, that Ezekiel
and Hosea are demoralizing because of certain expressions is too absurd
for refutation. The bloodshed of the Bible horrified him; but he refused
to believe that the "enormities" inflicted by the Jews on neighbouring
nations were sanctioned by the Almighty. [499] "The murderous vow of
Jephthah," David's inhuman treatment of the Moabites, and other events
of the same category goaded him to fury.
If he attacks Christianity, nevertheless, his diatribe is not against
its great Founder, but against the abuses that crept into the church
even in the lifetime of His earliest followers; and again, not so much
against Christianity in general as against Roman Catholicism. Still,
even after making every allowance, his article is mainly a glorification
of the crescent at the expense of the cross.