The older translators of this "New Arabian Night" have made wild work with
this Novel at least as the original is given by my text and the edition of
Gauttier (vii, 60-90): in their desire to gallicise it they have invested it
with a toilette purely European and in the worst possible style. Amongst the
insipid details are the division of the Crystalline Islands into the White,
Yellow, Green and Blue; with the Genies Abarikaff, the monstrous Racachik,
Ilbaccaras and Mokilras; and the terrible journey of Habib to Mount Kaf with
his absurd reflections: even the "Roc" cannot come to his aid without "a
damask cushion suspended between its feet by silken cords" for the greater
comfort of the "Arabian Knight." The Treasury of Solomon, "who fixed the
principles of knowledge by 366 hieroglyphics (sic) each of which required a
day's application from even the ablest understanding, before its mysterious
sense could be understood," is spun out as if the episode were copy intended
for the daily press. In my text the "Maidens of the Main" are introduced to
say a few words and speed the action. In the French version Ilzaide the elder
becomes a "leading lady," whose rôle is that of the naïve ingénue, famous for
"smartness" and "vivacty": "one cannot refrain from smiling at the lively
sallies of her good nature and simplicity of heart." I find this young person
the model of a pert, pretty, prattling little French soubrette who, moreover,
makes open love to "the master." Habib calls the "good old lady," his
governess "Esek! Esek!" which in Turk. means donkey, ass. I need hardly
enlarge upon these ineptitudes; those who wish to pursue the subject have only
to compare the two versions.
At the end of the Frenchified tale we find a note entitled:--Observations by
the French Editor, on the "History of Habib and Dorathil-goase, or the Arabian
Knight," and these are founded not upon the Oriental text but upon the
Occidental perversion. It is described "from a moral plane rather as a poem
than a simple tale," and it must be regarded as "a Romance of Chivalry which
unites the two chief characteristics of works of that sort,--amusement and
instruction." Habib's education is compared with that of Telemachus, and his
being inured to fatigue is according to the advice of Rousseau in his
"Emilius" and the practice of Robinson Crusoe. Lastly "Grandison is a here
already formed: Habib is one who needs to be instructed." I cannot but
suspect when reading all this Western travesty of an Eastern work that M.
Cazotte, a typical littérateur, had prepared for caricaturing the unfortunate
Habib by carefully writing up Fénélon, Rousseau, and Richardson; and had
grafted his own ideas of morale upon the wild stem of the Arabian novel.
Appendix.