ORIENTAL FAIRY TALES AND GERMAN LEGENDS--THE ANCIENT
ARABIAN STORIES AND THE NIBELUNGENLIED AMONG WORLD'S
GREATEST BOOKS.
The gap between the ancient writers and the modern is bridged by several
great books, which have been translated into all languages. Among these
the following are entitled to a place: _The Arabian Nights_; _Don
Quixote_, by Cervantes; _The Divine Comedy_, by Dante; _The Imitation of
Christ_; _The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam_, _St. Augustine's Confessions_,
and The _Nibelungenlied_.
Other great books could be added to this list, such as _Benvenuto
Cellini's Autobiography_, _Boccaccio's Tales_, the _Analects of
Confucius_ and _Mahomet's Koran_. But these are not among the books
which one must read. Those that I have named first should be read by
any one who wishes to get the best in all literature. And another reason
is that characters and sayings from these books are so often quoted that
to be ignorant of them is to miss much which is significant in the
literature of the last hundred years. Whatever forms a part of everyday
speech cannot be ignored, and the _Arabian Nights_, _Don Quixote_ and
Dante's _Divine Comedy_ are three books that have made so strong an
impression on the world that they have stimulated the imagination of
hundreds of writers and have formed the text for many volumes. Dante's
great work alone has been commented upon by hundreds of writers, and
these commentaries and the various editions make up a library of over
five thousand volumes. _The Arabian Nights_ has been translated from the
original into all languages, although the primitive tales still serve to
amuse Arabs when told by the professional story-tellers of today.
[Illustration:
EDMUND DULAC'S CONCEPTION
OF QUEEN SCHEHEREZADE, WHO TOLD THE
"ARABIAN NIGHTS" TALES]
In choosing the great books of the world first place must be given to
those which have passed into the common language of the people or which
have been quoted so frequently that one cannot remain ignorant of them.
After the Bible and Shakespeare the third place must be given to _The
Arabian Nights_, a collection of tales of Arabia and Egypt, supposed to
have been related by Queen Scheherezade to her royal husband when he was
wakeful in the night. The first story was told in order that he might
not carry out his determination to have her executed on the following
morning; so she halted her tale at a very interesting point and,
artfully playing upon the King's interest, every night she stopped her
story at a point which piqued curiosity. In this way, so the legend
goes, she entertained her spouse for one thousand and one nights, until
he decided that so good a story-teller deserved to keep her head.
Today these Arabian tales and many variants of _The Thousand and One
Nights_ are told by professional story-tellers who call to their aid all
the resources of gesture, facial expression and variety of tone. In
fact, these Oriental story-tellers are consummate actors, who play upon
the emotions of their excitable audiences until they are able to move
them to laughter and tears. This childlike character the Arab has
retained until today, despite the fact that he is rapidly becoming
expert in the latest finance and that he is a past master in the
handling of the thousands of tourists who visit Egypt, Arabia and other
Mohammedan countries every year.
The sources of the leading tales of _The Arabian Nights_ cannot be
traced. Such stories as _Sinbad the Sailor_, _Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves_ and _Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp_ may be found in the
literature of all Oriental countries, but the form in which these
Arabian tales have come down to us shows that they were collected and
arranged during the reign of the good Caliph Haroun al Raschid of
Bagdad, who flourished in the closing years of the eighth century. The
book was first made known to European readers by Antoine Galland in
1704. This French writer made a free paraphrase of some of the tales,
but, singularly enough, omitted the famous stories of _Aladdin_ and _Ali
Baba_.
The first good English translation was made by E. W. Lane from an Arabic
version, condensed from the original text. The only complete
translations of the Arabic version were made by Sir Richard Burton for a
costly subscription edition and by John Payne for the Villon Society.
Burton's notes are very interesting, as he probably knew the Arab better
than any other foreigner, but his literal translation is tedious,
because of the many repetitions, due to the custom of telling the
stories by word of mouth.
[Illustration:
THE JINNEE AND THE MERCHANT
A VIGNETTE WOODCUT BY WILLIAM HARVEY IN
THE FIRST EDITION OF LANE'S TRANSLATION
WHICH STILL REMAINS THE BEST
ENGLISH VERSION OF THE
"ARABIAN NIGHTS"]
The usual editions of _The Arabian Nights_, contain eight stories. Happy
are the children who have had these immortal stories told or read to
them in their impressionable early years. Like the great stories of the
Bible are these fairy tales of magicians, genii, enchanted carpets and
flying horses; of princesses that wed poor boys who have been given the
power to summon the wealth of the underworld; of the adventures of
Sinbad in many waters, and of his exploits, which were more remarkable
than those of Ulysses.
The real democracy of the Orient is brought out in these tales, for the
Grand Vizier may have been the poor boy of yesterday and the young
adventurer with brains and cunning and courage often wins the princess
born to the purple. All the features of Moslem life, which have not
changed for fourteen hundred years, are here reproduced and form a very
attractive study. For age or childhood _The Arabian Nights_ will always
have a perennial charm, because these tales appeal to the imagination
that remains forever young.
The great poem of German literature, _The Nibelungenlied_, may be
bracketed with _The Arabian Nights_, for it expresses perfectly the
ideals of the ancient Germans, the historic myths that are common to all
Teutonic and Scandinavian races, and the manners and customs that marked
the forefathers of the present nation of "blood and iron." _The
Nibelungenlied_ has well been called the German _Iliad_, and it is
worthy of this appellation, for it is the story of a great crime and a
still greater retribution.
It is really the story of Siegfried, King of the Nibelungs, in lower
Germany, favored of the Gods, who fell in love with Kriemhild, Princess
of the Burgundians; of Siegfried's help by which King Gunther, brother
of Kriemhild, secures as his wife the Princess Brunhilde of Iceland; of
the rage and humiliation of Brunhilde when she discovers that she has
been subdued by Siegfried instead of by her own overlord; of Brunhilde's
revenge, which took the form of the treacherous slaying of Siegfried by
Prince Hagen, and of the tremendous revenge of Kriemhild years after,
when, as the wife of King Etzel of the Huns, she sees the flower of the
Burgundian chivalry put to the sword, and she slays with her own hand
both her brother Gunther and Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried.
The whole story is dominated by the tragic hand of fate. Siegfried, the
warrior whom none can withstand in the lists, is undone by a woman's
tongue. The result of the shame he has put upon Brunhilde Siegfried
reveals to his wife, and a quarrel between the two women ends in
Kriemhild taunting Brunhilde with the fact that King Gunther gained her
love by fraud and that Siegfried was the real knight who overcame and
subdued her. Then swiftly follows the plot to kill Siegfried, but
Brunhilde, whose wrath could be appeased only by the peerless knight's
death, has a change of heart and stabs herself on his funeral pyre.
Intertwined with this story of love, revenge and the slaughter of a
whole race is the myth of a great treasure buried by the dwarfs in the
Rhine, the secret of which goes to the grave with grim old Hagen.
These tales that are told in _The Nibelungenlied_ have been made real to
readers of today by Wagner, who uses them as the libretto of some of his
finest operas. With variations, he has told in the greatest dramatic
operas the world has yet seen the stories of Siegfried and Brunhilde,
the labors of the Valkyrie, and the wrath of the gods of the old Norse
mythology. To understand aright these operas, which have come to be
performed by all the great companies, one should be familiar with the
epic that first recorded these tales of chivalry.
Many variants there are of this epic in the literature of Norway, Sweden
and Iceland, but _The Nibelungenlied_ remains as the model of these
tales of the heroism of men and the quarrels of the gods. Wagner has
used these materials with surpassing skill, and no one can hear such
operas as _Siegfried_, _The Valkyrie_, and _Gotterdammerung_ without
receiving a profound impression of the reality and the power of these
old myths and legends.
Perhaps for most readers Carlyle's essay on _The Nibelungenlied_ will
suffice, for in this the great English essayist and historian has told
the story of the German epic and has translated many of the most
striking passages. In verse the finest rendering of this story is found
in _Sigurd the Volsung_ by William Morris, told in sonorous measure that
never becomes monotonous. A good prose translation has been made by
Professor Shumway of the University of Pennsylvania. The volume was
brought out by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston in 1909. His version
is occasionally marred by archaic turns of expression, but it comes far
nearer to reproducing the spirit of the original than any of the
metrical translations.