by reciting to them their own folk-stories in their own tongue has at
least one indisputable qualification for translating the famous
collection of these stories embodied in the “_Alf Laylah wa Laylah_”—the
“Thousand Nights and a Night.”
But this is not all. Sir Richard Burton has a literary conscience which
craves to be satisfied, and an imitative faculty, supported by
exhaustless wealth and ingenuity of expression, capable of satisfying
it. Not content with giving us a faithful transcript both of the matter
and of the informing spirit of the great Arabian Saga-book, he is
careful to reproduce for us even its mechanism and its music—its
peculiarities of structure, the balance of its sentences, the rhyme, the
rhythm, the assonances, the cadences, the melody, the lilt, the very
jingle of its language. How necessary all this is to the preservation of
what may be termed the literary flavour of the original may be gathered
from the first few lines upon which we light on turning to a page at
random. A king sending gifts and a missive to another king by his wazir
commands that functionary “to shorten his skirts and strain his strength
and make all expedition in going and returning. ‘Hearkening and
obedience!’ quoth the minister, who fell to making ready without stay,
and packed up his loads and prepared all his requisites without delay.
This occupied him three days, and on the dawn of the fourth he took
leave of his king and marched right away, over desert and hill-way,
stony waste and pleasant lea, without halting by night or day,” and so
on—in which passage, as one sees, the recurrence of the same consonantal
sounds, and of rhyming and nearly rhyming words at irregular distances
gives a distinctive character to the style of the narrative. Many other
passages might be quoted in illustration of similar tricks and
subtleties of literary skill, which impart an additional charm to the
book, if for no other reason, because they are racy of the soil from
which it sprang, and give an air of greater vraisemblance to the
translation. But the space at our disposal is well-nigh exhausted, and
we are desirous of giving just one quotation from Sir Richard Burton’s
“Foreword” as to the matter of the _Nights_.
“The general tone” (he writes) “is exceptionally high and pure. The
devotional feeling often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The
pathos is sweet, deep and genuine: tender, simple, and true; utterly
unlike much of our modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid, and
multitudinous, is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism
and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root under the
brightest skies, and which sigh in the face of heaven. Poetical justice
is administered by the literary Kázi with exemplary impartiality and
severity, ‘denouncing evil-doers and eulogising deeds admirably
achieved.’ The _morale_ is sound and healthy, and at times we descry
vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates or Plato.
It is, indeed, this unique contrast of a quaint element childish
crudities, jostling the finest and highest views of life and character,
shown in the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the marvellous picture with many
a ‘rich truth in a tale’s pretence,’ pointed by a rough, dry humour
which compares well with ‘wut;’ the alternatives of strength and
weakness; of pathos and bathos; of boldest poetry (the diction of Job)
and the baldest prose (the Egyptian of to-day); and, finally, the whole
dominated everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy wherein the
spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the
natural; it is this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of
the _Nights_, which gives it the most striking originality, and which
makes it a perfect expositor of the mediæval Moslem mind.”
THE ACADEMY, _March 12th, 1887_.
The second volume contains _inter alia_, the delightful story of Prince
Camaralzaman and the Princess Badr ool Budoor, which loses none of its
old charm as “The Tale of Kamar al-Zaman,” and gains incalculably by
being translated into Sir Richard Burton’s rich, quaint, and picturesque
English. The third volume brings another, and a still more familiar
favourite, in the story of “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the
Landsman,” told with a force and vivacity which make it all seem as true
as it seemed in the days of our credulous childhood. In both volumes we
find a large number of minor tales which are not included in Lane’s
edition; as, for instance, the stories of four chiefs of police, and a
whole series of charming fables about beasts, and “other small game.”
The long chivalric history of “King Omar bin al-Nu’uman and his sons,
Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan” (also one of those omitted by Lane), is a
distinct gain in a collection so complete and extensive as the present.
As regards Sir Richard Burton’s _dramatis personæ_, treatment and style,
we need only say that his foul fiends and ancient duennas are more
variously hideous, his couplets more steeped in Oriental passion, his
descriptive passages more elaborately rhythmic than ever; while the
foot-notes are so interesting and full of information that one only
regrets that they are so sparingly inserted.
MANCHESTER EXAMINER, _March 16th, 1887_.
Whatever differences of opinion there may be concerning the translator’s
taste or judgment, all will agree that the work in its complete form is
emphatically a student’s book—that in the mind of the general reading
public it is an impossibility to reproduce the _naïf_ simplicity with
which the story-tellers of an earlier age and a warmer clime treated
those incidents which a contemporary essayist has happily termed “the
enclosed facts of life.” Concerning the original, it is not necessary to
speak at length. The _Arabian Nights_ is one of the great books of the
world, and as a revelation of the outer and inner life of the Orient is
quite unique, but it is only during quite recent years that the general
reader has had any opportunity of knowing the full extent of its riches.
True, English translations have been common enough for the last century,
but they have been, for the most part taken, _not_ immediately from the
Arabic, but immediately through a French reproduction, often so garbled
in substance, and in form as to convey nothing like a voracious
impression of the original. Of late, however, serious study of Arabic
has become more common among English scholars, and we have at least
three translations—those of Mr. John Payne, of Mr. Lane, and of Sir
Richard Burton—not one of which can be charged with doing injustice to
the great classic. As a mere translations each will have its supporters,
and it would be absurd for a critic who is unacquainted with Arabic to
say that this or that is the best; but it may be urged on behalf of Sir
Richard Burton that he is more than a mere translator, that he is an
accomplished Orientalist, and that the best years of his life have been
spent among the very scenes with which the ancient romancers deal. Then,
too, his personal idiosyncrasy is such that he can enter easily,
naturally, and without any strain into the life of which the stories are
a crowded panorama, can breathe the spirit of the times and manners, and
reproduce it in such wise that we can breathe it too. It is no
exaggeration to say that he possesses unique qualifications for the task
he has so laboriously and adequately performed.
COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _March 19th, 1887_.
Volume III. consists of no less than 83 tales, which bring down the
marvellous sequence of stories invented in self-defence by “the
liberator of her sex” to the 557th night. Of these tales, while many of
the less familiar are full of beauty and suggestiveness, the last,
relating the wonderful adventures of Sindbad the Seaman will be welcomed
as an old and much-esteemed friend. The old friend, too, though he does
not come to us with exactly a new face, offers to our charmed
recognition a face much brightened and beautified, and decked with the
goodly raiment of Sir Richard Burton’s inimitable translation. Many of
the tales are very short, but some of the shortest are really the most
delightful. Take, for example, the one recording the generous dealing of
Yahya, son of Khalid, with a convicted forger, and the one referring to
the Caliph Al-Maamun and the Strange Scholar. The directness and
forceful simplicity of these brief narratives, which would merit a high
place in any collection of succinct apologues of the virtues, as well as
the almost Christianity of their teaching, cannot fail to impress any
discerning reader. The note on page 58 to the first of these tales is
one of similar commentaries throwing light upon Eastern customs and
institutions. At the same time it marks the continuity of Oriental
political ideas.
ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _March 27th, 1887_.
This volume, bringing us down to the 557th night, and to the fifth
voyage of Sindbad the Seaman, includes a large number of stories quite
new to the reader, some of them brimful of humour, and others most
interesting from many points of view, from which it would be easy to
quote endless readable items. Harun al-Rashid, Al-Maamun, Isaac of
Mosul, and Ja’afar the Barmecide figure here very often; but more
amusement is to be derived from the doings of lesser people, as, for
example, the sharp-witted vagabonds who generally escape the
chastisement they deserve by some ingenious trick, such as the Oriental
mind delights in. The story of Al-Maamun and the Pyramids of Egypt
(omitted by Lane) illustrates the mediæval Arabic view of those
monuments—viz., that they were rich treasure-houses, which it was
desirable to plunder if possible; and there are other tales dealing with
crusading times, and with the relations of Christians and Moslems. One
great charm of these stories is their endless variety, which prevents
them from ever becoming monotonous, and Sir Richard Burton’s English has
a quaint and sometimes quite archaic cast which accords well with his
subject. As we said, in speaking of the earlier volumes, this is by far
the best translation of the _Nights_ for general reading, and we are
sure, in its present handsome form, it will find a place on most library
shelves.
LIVERPOOL MERCURY, _March 31st, 1887_.
Then Sir Richard goes on to tell us all about the origin of the
_Nights_, their birth-place, and their probable date; the means by
which, and the strangely incomplete and inaccurate forms in which they
found their way into Europe; the matter and the manner of the _Nights_,
the social condition of Al-Islam which they disclose, and the
peculiarities of the prose-rhyme and poetry in which they are written.
The work—translation and commentary alike—is done throughout with the
thoroughness which characterises everything Sir Richard Burton takes in
hand; and, in the result, we have such a conspectus of Arab life, Arab
thought, and Arab literature as could only have proceeded from the mind
of one who years ago was so soaked in Arabian customs and traditions as
to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, in the character of a good Moslem,
without detection. A complete index to the tales and proper names, and a
bibliography of all the principal editions of the _Nights_, fittingly
round off a work which, as it can never be superseded, must inevitably
take its place among the few achievements of human effort from which
Time reverently withholds his destroying hand.
CHRISTIAN UNION, _April, 1887_.
Those who are at all conversant with the old productions of this work
will readily discover the distinctive difference and characteristic
features of Sir Richard F. Burton’s translation, that it excels in
originality, style, and graphicness all other editions of the _Arabian
Nights_. No one who has read the work will hesitate to accept. Regard it
in whatever aspect we will, it is unique in its production, and will
henceforth take the precedence of all other translations.
MORNING ADVERTISER, _April 8th, 1887_.
As pointed out in previous notices of this admirable work, it possesses
many charms which have hitherto been lost to European readers by the
manner in which the tales have been presented to them in the current
versions of the narratives. Although these stories, among many other
collections, have been in circulation for ages through the East, they
have not yet been known in Europe for two hundred years. They were first
introduced into Christendom, indeed, by means of the translation of
Antoine Galland, a distinguished French Orientalist. They were, as a
matter of course, everywhere hailed with delight, although, with perhaps
rare exceptions, until the appearance of Lane’s edition, the many
translations of the tales into European languages, merely gave the
narratives themselves. The numerous and ample notes and philological
comparisons, which are profusely scattered through it, and which serve
to convey the exact meaning of important words in the text, are not only
most interesting in themselves, but are often of indispensable necessity
to the grasping of the point of the story. Several examples of this will
again be found in the present volume. In some places the translator is
completely at variance with Lane, who appears, in the instances cited,
to have missed the point of the story, from a misapprehension of the
true signification of an important word. A remarkable example of the
extent to which the force of the narrative is seen to depend on the
skill of the translator, occurs in the story of “the Illiterate, who sit
up as a teacher,” in which it is remarked in a foot-note, that Lane
appears to have mistaken for a girdle, a word which simply means the
usual brazier for the charcoal which serves for a fire, and so to have
missed the whole point of the tale. In this volume will also be seen
several fine examples of the rhymed prose, which form one of the great
beauties of the work. The translations of the many pieces of Eastern
poetry which adorn the tales, are most elegant and felicitous. They are
also most unique in their character. In many instances obsolete words
have been introduced with wonderfully pleasing effect, and in other
Saxon words and Saxon locutions in close relation with modern German,
from their immediate connexion with the text, the notes are full of
learning—geographical, philological, and antiquarian—which contains an
immense body of useful knowledge on the matters to which they relate.
DAILY NEWS, _April 28th, 1887_.
The present volume contains not many of our old friends, like “Aladdin”
and the “Forty Thieves,” but is rich in those Oriental stories of
beasts, which often much resemble the romances of “Uncle Remus.” The
tale of the Animals and the Son of Adam, if one remembers correctly,
does come, with a difference, in “Uncle Remus.” As an example of the
value and interest of the notes, may be cited the remarks on the “lucky
signs,” which add to the value of horses. Mohammed disliked horses with
white stockings on alternate hoofs. The tale of the Wolf and the Fox is
again in Uncle Remus’s style. It is a very difficult thing to account
for the migration of these stories. Even the bushmen have a version of
_vestigia nulla retrorsum_, and Professor Hartt was told similar fables
by the Indians of the Amazon. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, knew that such
stories were current among the Hurons and Iroquois, whose hero, if not
exactly Brer Rabbit, is usually Brer Hare. The Sawahílis, also, make an
animal very like a rabbit take the best parts. Occasionally, the
translation itself needs notes for some readers, who may ask what the
Fox means when he sings of the Wolf that “garred me drain eisel and
fell.” It will interest some mythologists to know that dawn, in Persian,
is called by a name meaning “Wolf’s tail.” Prince Kamar al-Zaman is in
this volume in all his glory, compared to which, that of Solomon was
mere tinsel. Probably only Orientalists can properly estimate the labour
and erudition of these _Arabian Nights_. The notes on the Diamond
Valley, and the Roc, and other pleasant marvels are very instructive.
The following note is curious. We say melanchólia, with the accent on
the o: the Arabs say Malikhulíya, with the accent on the penultimate,
and probably, or rather certainly, the Greeks from who we both borrowed
the word did the same, as the Greek accent indicates. But how they read
their own poetry, on this system, who can explain or understand?
SPECTATOR, _April 2, 1887_.
_THE ARABIAN NIGHTS._
Sir Richard Burton has certainly conferred a great boon on the reading
public, great and small, by this edition of _The Arabian Nights_. _The
Arabian Nights_ has hitherto been known to us chiefly as Aristotle is
said to have been known to the Schoolmen, in a translation of a
translation. The work of Galland, a Frenchman who was, according to Lane
and Burton, not over well-skilled in Arabic, and who knew little of
Arabic manners and customs, has hitherto, in various translations and
adaptations, been the source of popular knowledge of _The Arabian
Nights_. Lane’s own translation was a little too much like Sir Richard
Burton’s _magnum opus_, in being too close to the original for modern
manners or drawing room use. And, to tell the truth, it is also a trifle
bald and dull. Moreover, it is disfigured to the ordinary eye, much like
Grote’s _Greece_, by uncouth renderings of more or less familiar names.
It is terrible, for instance, to see Aziz and Azizah rendered by Azeez
and Azeezah, to find Sindbad converted into es-Sindhibad, and our old
friend the Vizier turned into a Weezer; and to be encountered on every
page by some terrible Arabic word for the meaning of which you have to
refer to notes, those torments of the interested reader. Sir Richard
Burton indeed, does not wholly spare our old friends. But Wazir for
Vizier is better than Weezer; and while Lane converts Noureddin and the
fair Persian into Noor ed-Deen and Enees-al-Jalees, Sir Richard Burton
only goes so far as Nur al-Din and Anis al-Jalis. The most striking
novelty in this translation is the preservation of the rhymed prose, a
jingle of assonance running through the more lively passages,
particularly where love or fighting are concerned. Thus, in the Second
Kalendar’s tale, we have,—“Her figure measured five feet in height: her
form was firm and upright: her cheek a very garden of delight: her
colour lively bright: her face gleamed like dawn through curly tresses
which gloomed like night;” and when Sharrkan, the Moslem cavalier fights
the Franks, “they fell to fighting and to wheeling left and right, and
necks were stretched out to see the sight, nor did they stint from
strife and sword-play, and lunge of lance with main and might, till the
day turned to night and darkness overwhelmed the light.” Taken in
connection with the context, the effect, though strange and bizarre, is
not unpleasing, and gives a sense of something outlandish which accords
well with the subject. Another novelty is the translation into verse of
the verses copiously scattered about the stories, which have hitherto
been omitted or turned into prose. It must be admitted that these verses
are rather boring. They are mostly of the ultra-sentimental and “high
falutin’” order, with exaggerated sentiment and metaphors. Here is a
sample:—
“Had we known of thy coming, we fain had dispread ✿ the cores of our
hearts or the balls of our eyes:
Our cheeks as a carpet to greet thee had thrown, ✿ and our eyelids had
strown for thy feet to betread.”
Some of them, however, are pretty enough in feeling and expression. But
the translator has invented a barbarous expedient for plaguing the
reader, and preventing his taking them quickly, by placing an asterisk
in the middle of each line to represent the couplets of the original. As
he does not really retain the metres of the original, there is no valid
excuse for thus disfiguring the page and trying the reader’s temper, and
we sincerely hope that, if not for later volumes, at all events for
later editions, he will abandon this excruciating invention.
With this exception, there is no doubt that this is the most readable as
well as the most complete, or probably because it is the most complete,
version of _The Arabian Nights_ yet produced. In this first volume we
have our old friends the Porter and the three Ladies of Baghdad, with
the three Kalendars, the Hunchback, and the silent Barber. But one of
the most striking of the stories has not appeared in any former
edition,—the tale, namely, of King Omar bin al-Nu’uman and his sons.
This is a Moslem chivalrous romance, with all the characteristics of a
mediæval romance founded on the Crusades; but, of course, the facts are
reversed. Instead of a Christian knight falling in love with a Moslem
maiden, and slaughtering her kith and kin by thousands and defeating
their treacherous attempts at murder by violence and stealth, by
ambuscade and poison, the hero is a Moslem prince and knight, and the
heroine is a Christian maiden, and the villains and villainesses are all
Christians, and it is the Christians who are slaughtered in their
thousands by his single arm. As in the Christian romances, too, the plot
wanders off from episode to episode, and, it must be admitted, becomes
insufferably tedious, for before the end the grandchildren of the
original hero are become the principal personages of the tale. But the
leading incident and the opening episode of Sharrkan and Abrizah are
worthy to rank with the tales of Sigurd and Brynhild. In fact, it may be
questioned whether there is any personage in mediæval romance who
outshines the fair Amazonian Abrizah in purity and nobility of womanly
character, or any more devoted and chivalrous lover than Sharrkan. But
the story does not remain throughout at the same high level, and the
fate of Aurora Leigh, which is inflicted on Abrizah by Sharrkan’s father
(only darkly hinted at in this edition), and her death by the hands of a
negro slave, and the horribly Eastern sufferings that befall Nuzhat
al-Zaman, are worse than those which befell the heroines of Western
tales of chivalry, bad as they often are. It would be interesting to
know the origin of this story, which certainly strikes one as out of its
place in the _Thousand Nights and a Night_; for though its adventures
are many of them exaggerated and improbable, yet they are more casually
connected, more coherent, and more natural and human and less inverted,
than the weird and monstrous incidents of the true Arabian tales. Among
these stand conspicuous the Third Kalendar’s tale, with its Loadstone
Mountain and its man of brass, its castle plated with red gold, and the
inevitable decree of blind Fate; the First Lady’s tale, with its city of
stone men; and above all, the delightful tale of the Fisherman and the
Ifreet,—the enchanted city with its King turned into marble from the
waist downwards, and its citizens into white, red, blue, and yellow
fishes that lift up their heads from the frying-pan and recite “verses
in writing.” Assuredly the tales that used to charm one’s childhood have
no less charm with the added anthropological interest which is lent them
by Sir Richard Burton’s translation and notes.
COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _May 14th, 1887_.
The well-known and widely appreciated yarns of Sindbad the Seaman and
Sindbad the Landsman are brought to a conclusion. The less familiar but
most powerful and typically Oriental story “The City of Brass” follows
and, though we are far from wishing to join the yelping pack already at
Mr. Haggard’s heels, readers of this colossal conception will feel
inclined to agree with Solomon that “there is nothing new under the
sun.”
ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _May 14th, 1887_.