[53] _The Thousand Nights and a Night_, translated by Sir Richard F.
Burton, and printed by the Burton Club for private subscribers only:
Lauristan Edition, limited to 1,000 numbered sets. As the story in the
original is of considerable length, we have summarised portions of it,
retaining in its entirety that part of the text which will appeal most
to the bibliophile. The paragraphing, also, is in many cases our own.
_King Shahriman had a son, Kamar al-Zaman, who “grew up of surpassing
beauty ... and symmetry,” but was unwilling to marry. For this he is
eventually cast into prison. A similar fate has befallen Princess
Budur, daughter of King Ghayur, Lord of China Islands and Seas, and for
a similar reason. The maiden is pictured as one “than whom Allah hath
made none fairer in her time ... with cheeks like purple wine ... lips
as coral ... breasts like two globes of ivory, from whose brightness
the moons borrow light, and a stomach with little waves as it were a
figured cloth ... with creases like folded scrolls, ending in a waist
slender past all imagination; based upon back parts like a hillock of
blown sand, that force her to sit when she would lief stand....”_
_Two genii, Maymunah, a woman, and Dahnash, a man, now come into the
story, the former as a champion of Kamar, the latter as Princess
Budur’s. After a long dispute as to the rival charms of Prince and
Princess, they convey the latter to the Prince’s side, the test of
beauty to be as follows_:--
_Each is to be awakened in turn, without knowledge of the other, and
whichever is the more enamoured will be held inferior in comeliness._
_Dahnash then changes himself into a flea, and bites Kamar al-Zaman,
who wakes up. The text continues_:--
... Then turning sideways, he found lying by him something whose breath
was sweeter than musk and whose skin was softer than cream. Hereat
he marvelled with great marvel, and he sat up and looked at what lay
beside him; when he saw it to be a young lady like an union pearl, or a
shining sun, or a dome seen from afar on a well-built wall: for she was
five feet tall ... bosomed high and rosy-cheeked....
And when Kamar al-Zaman saw the lady Budur, daughter of King Ghayur,
and her beauty and comeliness, she was sleeping clad in a shift of
Venetian silk, without her petticoat trousers, and wore on her head
a kerchief embroidered with gold and set with stones of price; her
ears were hung with twin earrings which shone like constellations, and
round her neck was a collar of union pearls, of size unique, past the
competence of any king.
When he saw this, his reason was confounded and natural heat began to
stir in him; Allah awoke in him the desire of coïtion and he said to
himself:
“Whatso Allah willeth, that shall be, and what he willeth not shall be!”
So saying, he put out his hand, turning her over, loosed the collar of
her chemise; then arose before his sight her bosom, with its breasts
like double globes of ivory; whereat his inclination for her redoubled
and he desired her with exceeding hot desire. He would have awakened
her but she would not awake, for Dahnash had made her sleep heavy; so
he shook her and moved her, saying:
“O my beloved, awake and look on me; I am Kamar al-Zaman.”
But she awoke not, neither moved her head; whereupon he considered her
case for a long hour and said to himself:
“If I guess aright, this is the damsel to whom my father would
have married me, and these three years I have refused her; but
Inshallah!--God willing--as soon as it is dawn, I will say to him:
Marry me to her, that I may enjoy her; nor will I let half the day pass
ere I possess her and take my fill of her beauty and loveliness.”
Then he bent over Budur to buss her, whereat the Jinniyah Maymunah
trembled and was abashed and Dahnash, the Ifrit, was like to fly for
joy. But as Kamar al-Zaman was about to kiss her on the mouth, he was
ashamed before Allah and turned away his head and averted his face,
saying to his heart: “Have patience.”
Then he took thought awhile and said:
“I will be patient; haply my father when he was wroth with me and sent
me to this jail, may have brought my young lady and made her lie by my
side to try me with her, and may have charged her not to be readily
awakened when I would arouse her, and may have said to her:
“‘Whatever thing Kamar al-Zaman do to thee, make me ware thereof’;
“Or belike my sire standeth hidden in some stead whence (being himself
unseen) he can see all I do with this young lady; and to-morrow he will
scold me and cry:
“‘How cometh it that thou sayest, I have no mind to marry; and yet thou
didst kiss and embrace yonder damsel?’
“So I will withhold myself lest I be ashamed before my sire; and the
right and proper thing to do is not to touch her at this present, nor
even to look upon her, except to take from her somewhat which shall
serve as a token to me and a memorial of her; that some sign endure
between me and her.”
Then Kamar al-Zaman raised the young lady’s hand and took from her
little finger a seal-ring worth an immense amount of money, for that
its bezel was a precious jewel ... and set it on his own; then, turning
his back to her, went to sleep.[54] ...
[54] “The young man,” says Sir Richard Burton, in a footnote, “must
have been a demon of chastity.”
Thereupon Maymunah changed herself into a flea and entering into the
raiment of Budur, the loved of Dahnash, crept up her calf and came
upon her thigh and, reaching a place some four carats[55] below her
navel, there bit her. Thereupon she opened her eyes and sitting up in
bed, saw a youth lying beside her and breathing heavily in his sleep,
the loveliest of Almighty Allah’s creatures, with eyes that put to
shame the fairest Houris of Heaven; and a mouth like Solomon’s seal,
whose water was sweeter to the taste and more efficacious than a
theriack, and lips the colour of coral-stone, and cheeks like blood-red
anemone....
[55] Carat = one finger-breadth here. The derivation is from the Greek
_Keration_, a bean, the seed of the _abrus precatorius_.--Note by Sir
Richard Burton.
Now when Princess Budur saw him, she was seized by a transport of
passion and yearning and love-longing, and she said to herself:
“Alas, my shame! This is a strange youth and I know him not. How cometh
he to be lying by my side on one bed?”
Then she looked at him a second time and, noting his beauty and
loveliness, said:
“By Allah, he is indeed a comely youth and my heart is well-nigh torn
in sunder with longing for him! But alas, how am I shamed by him! By
the Almighty, had I known it was this youth who sought me in marriage
of my father, I had not rejected him, but had wived with him and
enjoyed his loveliness!”
Then she gazed in his face and said:
“O my lord and light of mine eyes, awake from sleep and take thy
pleasure in my beauty and grace.”
And she moved him with her hand; but Maymunah the Jinniyah let down
sleep upon him as it were a curtain, and pressed heavily on his head
with her wings so that Kamar al-Zaman awoke not. Then Princess Budur
shook him with her hands and said:
“My life on thee, hearken to me; awake and up from thy sleep and look
on the narcissus and the tender down thereon, and enjoy the sight of
naked waist and navel; and touzle me and tumble me from this moment
till break of day! Allah upon thee, O my lord, sit up and prop thee
against the pillow and slumber not!”
Still Kamar al-Zaman made her no reply but breathed hard in his sleep.
Continued she:
“Alas! Alas! thou art insolent in thy beauty and comeliness and grace
and loving looks! But if thou art handsome, so am I handsome; what then
is this thou dost? Have they taught thee to flout me or hath my father,
the wretched old fellow, made thee swear not to speak to me to-night?”
But Kamar al-Zaman opened not his mouth neither awoke, whereat her
passion for him redoubled and Allah inflamed her heart with love of
him. She stole one glance of eyes that cost her a thousand sighs:
her heart fluttered, and her vitals throbbed and her hands and feet
quivered; and she said to Kamar al-Zaman:
“Talk to me, O my lord! Speak to me, O my friend! Answer me, O my
beloved, and tell me thy name, for indeed thou hast ravished my wit!”
And during all this time he abode drowned in sleep and answered her not
a word, and Princess Budur sighed and said:
“Alas! Alas! why art thou so proud and self-satisfied?”
Then she shook him and turning his hand over, saw her seal-ring on his
little finger, whereat she cried a loud cry, and followed it with a
sigh of passion and said:
“Alack! Alack! By Allah, thou art my beloved and thou lovest me! Yet
thou seemest to turn thee away from me out of coquetry, for all, O my
darling, thou camest to me, whilst I was asleep and knew not what thou
didst with me, and tookest my seal-ring; and yet I will not pull it off
thy finger.”
So saying, she opened the bosom of his shirt and bent over him and
kissed him and put forth her hand to him, seeking somewhat that she
might take as a token, but found nothing. Then she thrust her hand into
his breast and, because of the smoothness of his body, it slipped down
to his waist and thence to his navel and thence to his yard, whereupon
her heart ached and her vitals quivered and lust was sore upon her, for
that the desire of women is fiercer than the desire of men,[56] and she
was ashamed of her own shamelessness.
[56] ... In hot-damp climates the venereal requirements and
reproductive powers of the female greatly exceed those of the
male.... In cold-dry or hot-dry mountainous lands the reverse is
the case; hence polygamy there prevails whilst the low countries
require polyandry in either form, legal or illegal, _i.e._,
prostitution.--Note by Sir Richard Burton. See, also, _excursus_ to
this story, where the subject is dealt with at length.
Then she plucked his seal-ring from his finger, and put it on her own
instead of the ring he had taken, and bussed his inner lips and hands,
nor did she leave any part of him unkissed; after which she took him to
her breast and embraced him and, laying one of her hands under his neck
and the other under his arm-pit, nestled close to him and fell asleep
by his side.
... When Princess Budur fell asleep by the side of Kamar al-Zaman,
after doing that which she did, quoth Maymunah to Dahnash:
“Sawst thou, O accursed, how proudly and coquettishly my beloved bore
himself, and how hotly and passionately thy mistress showed herself to
my dearling? There can be no doubt that my beloved is handsomer than
thine; nevertheless I pardon thee.”
... The two Ifrits went forward to Princess Budur and upraising her
flew away with her; then, bearing her back to her own place, they laid
her on her own bed, while Maymunah abode alone with Kamar al-Zaman,
gazing upon him as he slept, till the night was all but spent, when she
went her way. As soon as morning morrowed, the Prince awoke from sleep
and turned right and left, but found not the maiden by him and said in
his mind:
“What is this business? It is as if my father would incline me to
marriage with the damsel who was with me and have now taken her away by
stealth, to the intent that my desire for wedlock may redouble.”
Then he called out to the eunuch who slept at the door, saying:
“Woe to thee, O damned one, arise at once!”
So the eunuch rose, bemused with sleep, and brought him basin and ewer,
whereupon Kamar al-Zaman entered the water-closet and did his need;[57]
then, coming out, made the Wuzu-ablution and prayed the dawn-prayer,
after which he sat telling on his beads the ninety-and-nine names of
Almighty Allah....
[57] “This morning evacuation,” says Sir Richard Burton, in a
footnote, “is considered, in the East, a _sine qua non_ of health....
The natives of India ... unlike Europeans, accustom themselves to
evacuate twice a day, evening as well as morning. This may, perhaps,
partly account for their mildness and effeminacy; for:--’C’est la
constipation qui rend l’homme rigoureux.’”
_Strictly speaking, the rest of the story, which is of great length,
is somewhat out of place in this volume. The reader, however, may be
interested to know the upshot of the stratagem adopted by the genii, so
we take leave to give it, summarising where necessary._
_Kamar al-Zaman and the Princess Budur, madly in love but
grief-stricken by their separation, are eventually brought together
and married. Later while on a journey, they are again separated by
divers mischances, Kamar becoming an assistant to a gardener, while
Budur, having adopted male garb to preserve her chastity, reaches the
dominions of King Armanus. Here she is taken for a king’s son, and
Armanus, who is old, gives her his daughter Hayat al-Nufus in marriage
and makes her lord of his kingdom. An embarrassing situation now
arises, Budur being unable to consummate the marriage or to explain her
failure to the bride. Matters come to a crisis on the third night when
Hayat speaks out. The text continues_:--
... Hayat al-Nufus caught her by the skirt and clung to her, saying:
“O my lord, art thou not ashamed before my father, after all his
favour, to neglect me at such a time as this”
When Queen Budur heard her words, she sat down in the same place and
said:
“O my beloved, what is this thou sayest?”
She replied:
“What I say is that I never saw any so proud of himself as thou.
Is every fair one so disdainful? I say not this to incline thee to
me; I say it only of my fear for thee from King Armanus; because he
purposeth, unless thou go in unto me this very night, and do away my
maidenhead, to strip thee of the kingship on the morrow and banish thee
his kingdom; and peradventure his excessive anger may lead him to slay
thee. But I, O my lord, have ruth on thee and give thee fair warning;
and it is thy right to reck.”
Now when Queen Budur heard her speak these words, she bowed her head
groundwards awhile in sore perplexity and said in herself:
“If I refuse I’m lost; and if I obey I’m shamed. But I am now Queen
of all the Ebony Islands and they are under my rule, nor shall I ever
again meet my Kamar al-Zaman save in this place; for there is no way
for him to his native land but through the Ebony Islands. Verily, I
know not what to do in my present case, but I commit my care to Allah
who directeth all for the best, for I am no man that I should arise and
open this virgin girl.”
Then quoth Queen Budur to Hayat al-Nufus:
“O my beloved, that I have neglected thee and abstained from thee is in
my own despite.”
And she told her her whole story from beginning to end and showed her
person to her, saying:
“I conjure you by Allah to keep my counsel, for I have concealed my
case only that Allah may re-unite me with my beloved Kamar al-Zaman and
then come what may.”
... The Princess heard her with extreme wonderment and was moved to
pity and prayed Allah to re-unite her with her beloved, saying:
“Fear nothing, O my sister; but have patience till Allah bring to pass
that which must come to pass.... O my sister, verily the breasts of
the noble and brave are of secrets the grave; and I will not discover
thine.”
Then they toyed and embraced and kissed and slept till near the
Mu’ezzin’s call to dawn-prayer, when Hayat al-Nufus arose and took
a pigeon-poult,[58] and cut its throat over her smock and besmeared
herself with its blood. Then she pulled off her petticoat-trousers and
cried aloud, whereupon her people hastened to her and raised the usual
lullilooing and outcries of joy and gladness....
[58] “The belief that young pigeons’ blood resembles the virginal
discharge is universal,” says Sir Richard Burton, in a footnote; “but
the blood most resembling man’s is that of the pig, which in other
points is so very human. In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit
to inspection the nuptial sheet, as practised by the Israelites and
Persians. The bride takes to bed a white kerchief with which she
staunches the blood and next morning the stains are displayed in
the Harem. In Darfour this is done by the bridegroom. “_Prima Venus
debet esse cruenta_” (Love’s first battle should be bloody), say the
Easterns with much truth, and they have no faith in our complaisant
creed which allows the hymen-membrane to disappear by any but one
accident.” The creed, of course, is not peculiar to the East, and
realistic descriptions of this “sanguinary combat” will be found in
Nicolas Chorier’s _Dialogues_, _Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure_, (_op.
cit._), and other erotic works. _C.f._ also the modern custom of
including a clean sheet among the bride’s trousseau. Further remarks
on this subject will be found in our preliminary essay to this volume,
“Human Nature, Tradition, and Virginity.”
_We can omit a description of the manner in which Kamar al-Zaman is
at length brought to the Ebony Islands, where honour and dignity are
heaped upon him, in particular by Queen Budur, whom he believes to be a
man and the king of the dominion. Growing suspicious of these favours,
Kamar asks permission to depart. The text continues_:--
... Answered Kamar al-Zaman:
“O King, verily this favour, if there be no reason for it, is indeed
a wonder of wonders, more by token that thou hast advanced me to
dignities such as befit men of age and experience, albeit I am as it
were a young child.”
And Queen Budur rejoined:
“The reason is that I love thee for thine exceeding loveliness and thy
surpassing beauty; and if thou wilt but grant me my desire of thy body,
I will advance thee yet farther in honour and favour and largesse; and
I will make thee Wazir, for all thy tender age, even as the folk made
me Sultan over them and I no older than thou....”
When Kamar al-Zaman heard these words, he was abashed and his cheeks
flushed till they seemed aflame; and he said:
“I need not these favours which lead to the commission of sin; I will
live poor in wealth but wealthy in virtue and honour.”
Quoth she:
“I am not to be duped by thy scruples, arising from prudery and
coquettish ways; and Allah bless him who saith:--
_To him I spake of coupling, but he said to me, ‘How long this noyous
long persistency?’_
_But when gold piece I showëd him, he cried, ‘Who from the Almighty
Sovereign e’er shall flee?’_”
Now when Kamar al-Zaman heard these words and understood her verses and
their import, he said:
“O King, I have not the habit of these doings, nor have I strength
to bear these heavy burthens for which elder age than I have proved
unable; then how will it be with my tender age?”
But she smiled at his speech and retorted:
“Indeed, it is a matter right marvellous how error springeth from the
disorder of man’s intendiment! Since thou art a boy, why standest thou
in fear of sin or the doing of things forbidden, seeing that thou art
not yet come to the years of canonical responsibility; and the offences
of a child incur neither punishment nor reproof? Verily, thou hast
committed thyself to a quibble for the sake of contention, and it is
thy duty to bow before a proposal of fruition, so henceforward cease
from denial and coyness, for the commandment of Allah is a decree
foreordained: indeed, I have more reason than thou to fear falling and
by sin to be misled; and well-inspired was he who said:--
_My prickle is big and the little one said, ‘Thrust boldly in vitals
with lion-like stroke!’_
_Then I, ‘’Tis a sin!’; and he, ‘No sin to me!’ So I had him at once
with a counterfeit poke.”_[59]
[59] “_i.e._, Not the real thing (with a woman),” says Sir R. Burton,
in a note. “It may also mean ‘by his incitement of me.’ All this scene
is written in the worst form of Persian-Egyptian blackguardism, and
forms a curious anthropological study.”
When Kamar al-Zaman heard these words, the light became darkness in his
sight and he said:
“O King, thou hast in thy household fair women and female slaves, who
have not their like in this age: shall not these suffice thee without
me? Do thy will with them and let me go!”
She replied:
“Thou sayest sooth, but it is not with them that one who loveth thee
can heal himself of torment and can abate his fever; for, when tastes
and inclinations are corrupted by vice, they hear and obey other than
good advice. So leave arguing and listen to what the poet saith:--
_Seest not the bazaar with its fruit in rows? These men are for figs
and for sycamore those!_[60]
[60] _i.e._, Some men prefer sodomy (figs = _anus_); others natural
intercourse (sycamore = _cunnus_).
“And what another saith:--
_O beauty’s Union! love for thee’s my creed; free choice of Faith and
eke my best desire_:
_Women I have forsworn for thee; so may deem me all men this day a
shaveling friar._
“And yet another:--
_A boy of twice ten is fit for a King!_
“And yet another:--
_The penis smooth and round was made with anus best to match it: Had it
been made for cunnus’ sake it had been formed like hatchet!_
“And yet another said:--
_My soul thy sacrifice! I chose thee out who art not menstruous or
oviparous_:
_Did I with women mell, I should beget brats till the wide wide world
grew strait for us._
“And yet another:--
_She saith_ (_sore hurt in sense the most acute, for she had proffered
what did not besuit_):--
‘_Unless thou stroke as man should swive his wife, blame not when horns
thy brow shall incornute!_
‘_Thy wand seems waxen, to a limpo grown: and more I palm it, softer
grows the brute!_’
“And yet another:--
_Quoth she (for I to lie with her forbore), ‘O folly-following fool, O
fool to core_:
‘_If thou my coynte for Kiblah[61] to thy coigne reject, we’ll show
thee what shall please thee more._’[62]
[61] Note by Sir Richard Burton: Kiblah = the fronting place of
prayer; Mecca for Moslems, Jerusalem for Jews and early Christians.
[62] Note by Sir Richard Burton: The Koran says (chap. 2): “Your
wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what
manner soever you will.” Usually this is understood as meaning in
any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet
there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg.
_St. George_; in France, _le postillion_): “Cursed be he who maketh
woman Heaven and himself earth!” Some hold the Koranic passage to have
been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man
lay with his wife backwards, he would beget a cleverer child. Others
again understood it of preposterous venery; which is absurd: every
ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the
people--population--and severely punished all processes, like onanism,
which impeded it. The Persians utilise the hatred of women for such
misuse when they would force a wife to demand a divorce and thus
forfeit her claim to dowry; they convert them into catamites till,
after a month or so, they lose all patience and leave the house. We do
not propose to add to Sir Richard’s note, reserving our remarks on the
subject for their proper place in a subsequent volume.
“And yet another:--
_She proffered me a tender coynte: Quoth I, ‘I will not roger thee!’_
_She drew back, saying, ‘From the Faith he turns, who’s turned by
Heaven’s decree!_[63]
[63] Note by Sir Richard: Koran 51, 9, alluding, in the text, to the
preposterous venery her lover demands.
_’And front-wise futtering, in one day, is obsolete persistency!’_
_Then swung she round and shining rump like silvern lump she showëd me!_
_I cried: ‘Well done, O mistress mine! No more am I in pain for thee;_
_’O thou of all that Allah oped[64] showest me fairest victory!’_
[64] Note by Sir Richard: Arab “Futùh,” meaning openings, and also
victories, benefits. The lover congratulates her on her mortifying
self in order to please him.
“And yet another:--
_Men craving pardon will uphold their hands; women pray pardon with
their legs on high:_[65]
[65] _Vide_ note to _Excursus_ to this story, p. 100.
_Out on it for a pious, prayerful work! The Lord shall raise it in the
depths to lie._”[66]
[66] Note by Sir Richard: “And the righteous work will be exalt.”
(Koran 35, 11). Applied ironically.
When Kamar al-Zaman heard her quote this poetry, and was certified that
there was no escaping compliance with what willed she, he said:
“O King of the age, if thou must needs have it so, make covenant with
me that thou wilt do this thing with me but once, though it avail
not to correct thy depraved appetite; and that thou wilt never again
require this thing of me to the end of time; so perchance shall Allah
purge me of the sin.”
She replied:
“I promise thee this same, hoping that Allah of His favour will relent
toward us and blot out our mortal offence; for the girdle of Heaven’s
forgiveness is not indeed so strait, but it may compass us around and
absolve us of the excess of our heinous sins and bring us to the light
of salvation out of the darkness of error; and indeed excellently well
saith the poet:--
_Of evil thing the folk suspect us twain; and to this thought their
hearts and souls are bent:_
_Come, dear! let’s justify and free their souls that wrong us; one good
bout and then--repent!”_
Thereupon she made with him an agreement and a covenant and swore a
solemn oath by Him who is Self-existent, that this thing should befall
betwixt them but once and never again for all time, and that the desire
of him was driving her to death and perdition. So he rose up with her,
on this condition, and went with her to her own boudoir, that she
might quench the lowe of her lust, saying:
“There is no Majesty, and there is no Might save in Allah, the
Glorious, the Great! This is the fated decree of the All-powerful, the
All-wise!”
And he doffed his bag-trousers, shameful and abashed, with the tears
running from his eyes from stress of affright. Thereat she smiled and
making him mount upon a couch with her, said to him:
“After this night, thou shalt see naught that will offend thee.”
Then she turned to him bussing and bosoming him and bending calf over
calf, and said to him:
“Put thy hand between my thighs to the accustomed place; so haply it
may stand up to prayer after prostration.”
He wept and cried:
“I am not good at aught of this.”
But she said:
“By my life, an thou do as I bid thee, it shall profit thee!”
So he put out his hand, with vitals afire for confusion, and found her
thighs cooler than cream and softer than silk. The touching of them
pleasured him and he moved his hand hither and thither, till it came to
a dome abounding in good gifts and movements and shifts, and said in
himself:
“Perhaps this King is an hermaphrodite,[67] neither man nor woman quite.”
[67] Note by Sir Richard: Easterns still believe in what Westerns know
to be an impossibility, human beings with the parts and proportions
of both sexes equally developed and capable of reproduction; and
Al-Islam even provides special rules for them. ... The old Greeks
dreamed, after their fashion, a beautiful poetic dream of a human
animal uniting the contradictory beauties of man and woman. The
duality of the generative organs seems an old Egyptian tradition; at
least we find it in _Genesis_ (1.27), where the image of the Deity
is created male and female, before man was formed out of the dust of
the ground (2.7). The old tradition found its way to India (if the
Hindus did not borrow the idea from the Greeks); and one of the forms
of Mahadeva, the third person of their triad, is entitled “Ardhanári”
= the Half-Woman, which has suggested to them some charming pictures.
Europeans, seeing the left breast conspicuously feminine, have
indulged in silly surmises about the “Amazons.”
So he said to her:
“O King, I cannot find that thou hast a tool like the tools of men;
what then moved thee to do this deed?”
Then loudly laughed Queen Budur till she fell on her back,[68] and said:
[68] Note by Sir Richard: This is a mere phrase for our “dying of
laughter”: the queen was on her back. And as Easterns sit on carpets,
their falling back is very different from the same movement off a
chair.
“O my dearling, how quickly thou hast forgotten the nights we have lain
together!”
Then she made herself known to him, and he knew her for his wife, the
Lady Budur, daughter of King al-Ghayur, Lord of the Isles and the Seas.
So he embraced her and she embraced him, and he kissed her and she
kissed him; then they lay down on the bed of pleasure voluptuous....
* * * * *
_Here we end our extract from the Tale of Kamar al-Zaman, although
the story runs on for another forty odd pages in Sir Richard Burton’s
translation. A situation similar to that just described occurs in
another story in ‘The Nights,’ and we shall have occasion to quote from
that in a subsequent volume._
_EXCURSUS_ to _THE TALE OF KAMAR AL-ZAMAN_.
“We are told that in the East there was once a woman named Moarbeda who
was a philosopher and considered to be the wisest woman of her time.
When Moarbeda was once asked: ‘In what part of a woman’s body does her
mind reside?’ she replied: ‘Between her thighs.’”--Havelock Ellis:
_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. 3: _The Sexual Impulse in
Women_.[69]
[69] Havelock Ellis is quoting from _The Perfumed Garden of The Cheikh
Nefzaoui_: Cosmopoli, 1886, printed for the Kama Shastra Society of
London and Benares.
* * * * *
The amativeness of woman, as compared with that of man, is a question,
of course, entirely beyond the scope of this note. We must be content
with examining some of the most interesting and pertinent extracts from
the works of those qualified to speak on the subject.
At the outset we are confronted with the striking fact that, while
the ancients were prone to regard woman as generally amative, even
lustful, modern thought has exactly reversed this opinion. “It seems to
have been reserved for the nineteenth century,” says Havelock Ellis,
(_op. cit. supra_), “to state that women are apt to be congenitally
incapable of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and peculiarly
liable to sexual anaesthesia. This idea appears to have been almost
unknown to the eighteenth century....”
Thus we have two schools of thought, one attributing to woman an
intense sexual impulse, even greater than in man, the other holding her
sexually frigid by nature and erotic only by pretence or accident. We
may helpfully quote again from our Havelock Ellis, who has summarised
in masterly fashion the various authorities on both sides:--
“In the treatise _On Generation_, (chap. 5), which until recent times
was commonly ascribed to Hippocrates,” he says, “it is stated that men
have greater pleasure in coïtus than women, though the pleasure of
women lasts longer, and this opinion, though not usually accepted, was
treated with great respect by medical authors down to the end of the
17th century.... Gall had stated decisively that the sexual desires of
men are stronger and more imperious than those of women. (_Fonctions
du Cerveau_, 1825).... Raciborski declared that three-fourths of women
merely endure the approaches of men. (_De la Puberté chez la Femme_).
“‘When the question is carefully inquired into and without prejudice,’
said Lawson Tait, ‘it is found that women have their sexual appetites
far less developed than men.’ (Lawson Tait, _Provincial Medical
Journal_, 1891). ‘The sexual instinct is very powerful in man and
comparatively weak in women,’ he stated elsewhere. (_Diseases of
Women_, 1889). Hammond stated that ... ‘it is doubtful if in one-tenth
of the instances of intercourse they [women] experience the slightest
pleasurable sensation from first to last.’ (Hammond, _Sexual
Impotence_).
“Lombroso and Ferrero consider that sexual sensibility ... is less
pronounced in women.... ‘Woman is naturally and organically frigid....’
(Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna Deliquente, la Prostituta, e la Donna
Normale_, 1893). Krafft-Ebing was of opinion that women require less
sexual satisfaction than men, being less sensual.... ‘The sensuality
of men,’ Moll states, ‘is in my opinion very much greater than that of
women.’
“Adler, who discusses the direction at some length, decides that the
sexual needs of women are less than those of men, though in some cases
the orgasm in quantity and quality greatly exceeds that of men. He
believes, not only that the sexual impulse in women is absolutely less
than in men, and requires stronger stimulation to arouse it, but that
also it suffers from a latency due to inhibition, which acts like a
foreign body in the brain ... and demands great skill in the man who is
to awaken the woman to love.”
Here we have one side of the question--a side strangely at variance
with ancient thought, romance and history. The supposed frigidity of
women is characterised by Havelock Ellis as ‘an opinion of very recent
growth ... confined, on the whole, to a few countries.’ (_Studies_,
vol. 3, page 196). He goes on to quote Brierre de Boismont, who wrote:
‘Turn to history, and on every page you will be able to recognise the
predominance of erotic ideas in women.’ It is the same to-day, he adds,
and he attributes it to the fact that men are more easily able to
gratify their sexual impulses. (_Des Hallucinations_, 1862).
“The laws of Manu,” continues Havelock Ellis, “attribute to women
concupiscence and anger, the love of bed and of adornment. The
Jews attribute to women greater sexual desire than to men. This is
illustrated, according to Knobel (as quoted by Dillman), by _Genesis_,
chapter 3, verse 16.[70]
[70] “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy
desire _shall be to thy husband_, and he shall rule over thee.”
“In Greek antiquity, ... in love between men and women the latter
were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. In all
Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man,
and never the reverse. Æschylus makes even a father assume that his
daughters will misbehave if left to themselves. Euripides emphasised
the importance of women. ‘The Euripidean woman who falls in love thinks
first of all: “How can I seduce the man I love?”’ (E.F.M. Benecke:
_Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry_,
1896).
“The most famous passage in Latin literature as to the question of
whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from sexual intercourse
is that in which Ovid relates the legend of Tiresias (_Metamorphoses_,
3, 317-333). Tiresias, having been both a man and a woman, decided in
favour of women.... In a passage quoted from a lost work of Galen by
the Arabian biographer, Abu-l-Faraj, that great physician says of the
Christians ‘that they practice celibacy, that even many of their women
do so.’ So that in Galen’s opinion it was more difficult for a woman
than for a man to be continent. The same view is widely prevalent among
Arabic authors, and there is an Arabic saying that ‘The longing of the
woman for the penis is greater than that of the man for the vulva.’[71]
[71] _The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui_: Cosmopoli, 1886.
“The early Christian Fathers clearly show that they regard women as
more inclined to sexual enjoyment than men. That was ... the opinion
of Tertullian (_De Virginibus Velandis_), and it is clearly implied in
some of St. Jerome’s epistles.
“Notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, among the vigorous
barbarian races of mediæval Europe the existence of sexual appetite
in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a matter to
be concealed or denied. Thus in 1068 the ecclesiastical historian,
Ordericus Vitalis (himself half Norman and half English), narrates
that the wives of the Norman knights who had accompanied William the
Conqueror to England two years earlier sent over to their husbands to
say that they were consumed by the fierce flames of desire, and that
if their husbands failed to return very shortly they proposed to take
other husbands. It is added that this threat brought a few husbands
back to their wanton ladies.
“During the mediæval period in Europe, largely in consequence, no
doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who
naturally regarded women as the symbol of sex, the doctrine of the
incontinence of woman became firmly fixed.... Humanism and the spread
of the Renaissance movement brought in a spirit more sympathetic to
women.... We begin to find attempts at analysing the sexual emotions.
In the seventeenth century a book of this kind was written by Venette.
In matters of love, Venette declared, ‘men are but children compared
to women. In these matters women have a more lively imagination, and
they usually have more leisure to think of love. Women are much more
lascivious and amorous than men.’ In a subsequent chapter, dealing with
the question whether men or women receive more pleasure from the sexual
embrace, Venette concludes, after admitting the great difficulty of
the question, that man’s pleasure is greater, but that woman’s lasts
longer. (N. Venette, _De la Génération de l’Homme ou Tableau de l’Amour
Conjugal_, 1688).”
These and similar quotations, all acknowledging or laying stress on the
erotic appetite of women, might be continued indefinitely. Among the
other supporters of the opinion quoted by Havelock Ellis are Montaigne
(_Essais_), Schurig (_Parthenologia_), Plazzonus (_De Partibus
Generationi Inservientibus_), Ferrand (_De la Maladie d’Amour_),
Zacchia (_Quæstiones Medico-Legales_), Sinibaldus (_Geneanthropeia_),
Senancour (_De l’Amour_), Busch, Guttceit,[72] Mantegazza (_Fisiologia
del Piacere_), Forel (_The Sexual Question_), who believed that women
are more erotic than men, and Bloch (_The Sexual Life of Our Time_),
who says, “The sexual sensibility of women is certainly different from
that of men, but in strength it is at least as great.”
[72] “In Russia at all events, a girl, as very many have acknowledged
to me, cannot resist the ever-stronger impulses of sex beyond
the twenty-second or twenty-third year. And if she cannot do so
in natural ways she adopts artificial ways. The belief that the
feminine sex feels the stimulus of sex less than the male is quite
false.”--Guttceit, _Dreissig Jahre Praxis_, 1873.
For our part, we find it hard to ignore that overwhelming consensus
of opinion among early writers as to the erotic nature of the average
woman. Was not this feminine amativeness the theme upon which were
built the undying _contes_ and _fabliaux_ of Boccaccio, Bandello,
Masuccio, Straparola, La Fontaine, Poggio, Ser Giovanni, Chaucer,
Brantôme and a host of others? Are we to label Casanova’s _Memoirs_ as
worthless because his women seem, in our modern eyes, erotic beyond all
belief? Turning to the literature of the East, where woman’s ‘thirst
for coïtion is written between her eyes,’[73] are we to hold the
feminine attributes therein described as peculiar to those peoples and
times? Must we believe that all these writers fashioned women out of
their own lascivious fancy, or that the sexual impulse in the women of
those races has totally changed?
[73] _The Perfumed Garden._ As illustrating our subject, the Cheikh
Nefzaoui tells a quaint story of a man who, owing to physical
disability, was unable to satisfy the sexual needs of his wife. A wise
man gives him a remedy whereby his member grows “long and thick.”
The Cheikh continues: “When his wife saw it in that state she was
surprised, but it came still better when he made her feel in the
matter of enjoyment quite another thing than she had been accustomed
to experience; he began in fact to work her with his tool in quite a
remarkable manner, to such a point that she rattled and sighed and
sobbed during the operation. As soon as the wife found in her husband
such eminently good qualities, she gave him her fortune, and placed
her person and all she had at his disposal.”
Without a doubt, time and custom are responsible for much that seems
obscure and irreconcilable. Many of our authorities are writing of an
age in which men and women spoke and acted in a manner which to-day
seems coarse and inexcusably free. Because in the past woman more
readily gave outward expression to her inward feeling, it does not
follow now that, by reason of her greater reserve, she lacks these
emotions.
History has shown us psychologists and investigators in plenty, but
they were not the psychologists of to-day, recording the results of
their investigations with meticulous care and detail. The sexually
frigid woman, we can confidently assume, was by no means unknown to the
ancients. She was, however, unusual, abnormal; and if a sexually frigid
woman be accounted abnormal, it is not hard to see why a normal is
deemed erotic.
In these times, when it is the fashion to dissect everyone and
everything, we are prone to argue from the ordinary to the
extraordinary, from the peculiar to the general; sexual frigidity
in woman, at first an anomaly, ends in being a trait; the exception
becomes, does not prove, the rule.
Needless to say, a great psychologist like Havelock Ellis has a wealth
of information to offer on the subject, and we commend our readers to
his masterly handling of it. He has something to say on every aspect
of the question, from the case of the woman who is cold almost to the
point of sexlessness to that of the erotic wife who ‘becomes frenzied
with excitement during intercourse and insensible to everything but the
pleasure of it.’ In conclusion, he adjusts the scales with exquisite
and scientific precision, holding that ‘the distribution of the sexual
impulse between the two sexes is fairly balanced.’
Earlier on, however, he makes a point which we shall do well to bear
in mind. ‘ ... Sexual impulse is by no means so weak in women as many
would lead us to think. It would appear that, whereas in earlier
ages there was generally a tendency to credit women with an unduly
large share of the sexual impulse, there is now a tendency unduly to
minimise the sexual impulse in women.’
We shall have frequent occasion in subsequent volumes of _Anthologica
Rarissima_ to return to this subject, for, as the student of folk-lore,
psychology and human life will readily agree, sexual impulse is perhaps
the most powerful basic motive of our many daily acts and tasks.[74]
[74] Queen Budur’s remark that “Women pray pardon with their legs on
high,” (p. 88 _ante_), finds an echo in Aristophanes’ _Lysistrata_
and _The Ecclesiazusæ_. In the former play, Athenian women promise
Lysistrata that, if forced to intercourse by their husbands, _they
will not lift their legs in the air_; in the latter, we have a woman
saying: “How are we going to lift up our arms in the Assembly (_i.e._,
vote), we, who only know how to lift our legs in the act of love?”
Two of the authorities quoted by Havelock Ellis on p. 97 of the
foregoing _Excursus_ merit further brief mention. Martin Schurig,
author of _Parthenologia_ and numerous other medical works, flourished
as a physician in Dresden between 1688 and 1733. Although many of his
theories have long since been exploded, his great erudition is much to
be admired. His books deal with the most amazing questions; among the
many curious passages in _Parthenologia_ will be found the following:
“Chastity put to the proof by a hot iron and boiling water.”;
“Conception without insertion of the _penis_.”; “Andramytes, King of
the Lydori, was the inventor of castration of women, and Semiramis of
that of men.” Dr. Sinibaldus’ _Geneanthropeia_, published in 1642,
is a very remarkable work on physical love and its aberrations,
treating, for example, of “The shape of the Phallu.”; “Eunuchis.”;
“Aphrodisiac.”; “Influence of the Stars on Copulatio.”; “Effects and
manner of Copulatio.”; “Pleasure of Copulation as enjoyed by man
and woman.” Little is known of Sinibaldus’ life beyond that he was
a doctor at Rome. His _Geneanthropeia_, according to Pisanus Fraxi,
(_Index Librorum Prohibitorum_: London, 1877), has been rendered,
in a very emasculated form, into English, under the title of _Rare
Verities. The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked_: London, 1658. The volume is
rare, but a copy is to be found in the British Museum.