which is rapidly becoming extinct. Homme vrai dans les moindres
choses (as his Éloge stated); simple in life and manners and
single-hearted in his devotion to letters, he was almost childish
in worldly matters, while notable for penetration and acumen in
his studies. He would have been as happy, one of his biographers
remarks, in teaching children the elements of education as he was
in acquiring his immense erudition. Briefly, truth and honesty,
exactitude and indefatigable industry characterised his most
honourable career.
Galland informs us (Epist. Ded.) that his MS. consisted of four
volumes, only three of which are extant,[FN#214] bringing the
work down to Night cclxxxii., or about the beginning of
“Camaralzaman.” The missing portion, if it contained like the
other volumes 140 pages, would end that tale together with the
Stories of Ghánim and the Enchanted (Ebony) Horse; and such is
the disposition in the Bresl. Edit. which mostly favours in its
ordinance the text used by the first translator. But this would
hardly have filled more than two-thirds of his volumes; for the
other third he interpolated, or is supposed to have interpolated,
the ten[FN#215] following tales.
1. Histoire du prince Zeyn Al-asnam et du Roi des
Génies.[FN#216]
2. Histoire de Codadad et de ses frères.
3. Histoire de la Lampe merveilleuse (Aladdin).
4. Histoire de l’aveugle Baba Abdalla.
5. Histoire de Sidi Nouman.
6. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal.
7. Histoire d’Ali Baba, et de Quarante Voleurs exterminés par
une Esclave.
8. Histoire d’Ali Cogia, marchand de Bagdad.
9. Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fée Peri-Banou.
10. Histoire de deux Surs jalouses de leur Cadette.[FN#217]
Concerning these interpolations which contain two of the best and
most widely known stories in the work, Aladdin and the Forty
Thieves, conjectures have been manifold but they mostly run upon
three lines. De Sacy held that they were found by Galland in the
public libraries of Paris. Mr. Chenery, whose acquaintance with
Arabic grammar was ample, suggested that the Professor had
borrowed them from the recitations of the Rawis, rhapsodists or
professional story-tellers in the bazars of Smyrna and other
ports of the Levant. The late Mr. Henry Charles Coote (in the
“Folk-Lore Record,” vol. iii. Part ii. p. 178 et seq.), “On the
source of some of M. Galland’s Tales,” quotes from popular
Italian, Sicilian and Romaic stories incidents identical with
those in Prince Ahmad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Envious Sisters,
suggesting that the Frenchman had heard these paramythia in
Levantine coffee-houses and had inserted them into his unequalled
corpus fabularum. Mr. Payne (ix. 268) conjectures the
probability “of their having been composed at a comparatively
recent period by an inhabitant of Baghdad, in imitation of the
legends of Haroun er Rashid and other well-known tales of the
original work;” and adds, “It is possible that an exhaustive
examination of the various MS. copies of the Thousand and One
Nights known to exist in the public libraries of Europe might yet
cast some light upon the question of the origin of the
interpolated Tales.” I quite agree with him, taking “The Sleeper
and the Waker” and “Zeyn Al-asnam” as cases in point; but I
should expect, for reasons before given, to find the stories in a
Persic rather than an Arabic MS. And I feel convinced that all
will be recovered: Galland was not the man to commit a literary
forgery.
As regards Aladdin, the most popular tale of the whole work, I am
convinced that it is genuine, although my unfortunate friend, the
late Professor Palmer, doubted its being an Eastern story. It is
laid down upon all the lines of Oriental fiction. The
mise-en-scène is China, “where they drink a certain warm liquor”
(tea); the hero’s father is a poor tailor; and, as in “Judar and
his Brethren,” the Maghribi Magician presently makes his
appearance, introducing the Wonderful Lamp and the Magical Ring.
Even the Sorcerer’s cry, “New lamps for old lamps!”—a prime
point—is paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman’s Son,[FN#218]
where the Jew asks in exchange only old rings and the Princess,
recollecting that her husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in
his writing-stand, and he being asleep, took it out and sent it
to the man. In either tale the palace is transported to a
distance and both end with the death of the wicked magician and
the hero and heroine living happily together ever after.
All Arabists have remarked the sins of omission and commission,
of abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the audacious
distortion of fact and phrase in which Galland freely indulged,
whilst his knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he knew
better. But literary license was the order of his day and at
that time French, always the most bégueule of European languages,
was bound by a rigorisme of the narrowest and the straightest of
lines from which the least écart condemned a man as a barbarian
and a _tudesque_. If we consider Galland fairly we shall find that
he errs mostly for a purpose, that of popularising his work; and
his success indeed justified his means. He has been derided (by
scholars) for “Hé Monsieur!” and “Ah Madame!”; but he could not
write “O mon sieur” and “O ma dame;” although we can borrow from
biblical and Shakespearean English, “O my lord!” and “O my lady!”
“Bon Dieu! ma sur” (which our translators English by “O
heavens,” Night xx.) is good French for Wa’lláhi—by Allah; and
“cinquante cavaliers bien faits” (“fifty handsome gentlemen on
horseback”) is a more familiar picture than fifty knights.
“L’officieuse Dinarzade” (Night lxi.), and “Cette plaisante
querelle des deux frères” (Night lxxii.) become ridiculous only
in translation—“the officious Dinarzade” and “this pleasant
quarrel;” while “ce qu’il y de remarquable” (Night lxxiii.) would
relieve the Gallic mind from the mortification of “Destiny
decreed.” “Plusieurs sortes de fruits et de bouteilles de vin”
(Night ccxxxi. etc.) Europeanises flasks and flaggons; and the
violent convulsions in which the girl dies (Night cliv., her head
having been cut off by her sister) is mere Gallic squeamishness:
France laughs at “le shoking” in England but she has only to look
at home especially during the reign of Galland’s contemporary—
Roi Soleil. The terrible “Old man” (Shaykh) “of the Sea” (-board
) is badly described by “l’incommode vieillard” (“the ill-natured
old fellow”): “Brave Maimune” and “Agréable Maimune” are
hardly what a Jinni would say to a Jinniyah (ccxiii.); but they
are good Gallic. The same may be noted of “Plier les voiles pour
marque qu’il se rendait” (Night ccxxxv.), a European practice;
and of the false note struck in two passages. “Je m’estimais
heureuse d’avoir fait une si belle conquête” (Night lxvii.) gives
a Parisian turn; and, “Je ne puis voir sans horreur cet
abominable barbier que voilà: quoiqu’il soit né dans un pays où
tout le monde est blanc, il ne laisse pas à resembler a un
Éthiopien; mais il a l’âme encore plus noire et horrible que le
visage” (Night clvii.), is a mere affectation of Orientalism.
Lastly, “Une vieille dame de leur connaissance” (Night clviii.)
puts French polish upon the matter of fact Arab’s “an old woman.”
The list of absolute mistakes, not including violent liberties,
can hardly be held excessive. Professor Weil and Mr. Payne (ix.
271) justly charge Galland with making the Trader (Night i.)
throw away the shells (écorces) of the date which has only a
pellicle, as Galland certainly knew; but dates were not seen
every day in France, while almonds and walnuts were of the quatre
mendiants. He preserves the écorces, which later issues have
changed to noyaux, probably in allusion to the jerking practice
called Inwá. Again in the “First Shaykh’s Story” (vol. i. 27)
the “maillet” is mentioned as the means of slaughtering cattle,
because familiar to European readers: at the end of the tale it
becomes “le couteaufuneste.” In Badral Din a “tarte à la crême,”
so well known to the West, displaces, naturally enough, the
outlandish “mess of pomegranate-seeds.” Though the text
especially tells us the hero removed his bag-trousers (not only
“son habit”) and placed them under the pillow, a crucial fact in
the history, our Professor sends him to bed fully dressed,
apparently for the purpose of informing his readers in a foot-note
that Easterns “se couchent en caleçon” (Night lxxx.). It
was mere ignorance to confound the arbalète or cross-bow with the
stone-bow (Night xxxviii.), but this has universally been done,
even by Lane who ought to have known better; and it was an
unpardonable carelessness or something worse to turn Nár (fire)
and Dún (in lieu of) into “le faux dieu Nardoun” (Night lxv.): as
this has been untouched by De Sacy, I cannot but conclude that he
never read the text with the translation. Nearly as bad also to
make the Jewish physician remark, when the youth gave him the
left wrist (Night cl.), “voilà une grande ignorance de ne savoir
pas que l’on presente la main droite à un médecin et non pas la
gauche”—whose exclusive use all travellers in the East must
know. I have noticed the incuriousness which translates “along
the Nile-shore” by “up towards Ethiopia” (Night cli.), and the
“Islands of the Children of Khaledan” (Night ccxi.) instead of
the Khálidatáni or Khálidát, the Fortunate Islands. It was by no
means “des petite soufflets” (“some taps from time to time with
her fingers”) which the sprightly dame administered to the
Barber’s second brother (Night clxxi.), but sound and heavy
“cuffs” on the nape; and the sixth brother (Night clxxx.) was not
“aux lèvres fendues” (“he of the hair-lips”), for they had been
cut off by the Badawi jealous of his fair wife. Abu al-Hasan
would not greet his beloved by saluting “le tapis à ses pieds:”
he would kiss her hands and feet. Haïatalnefous (Hayat al-Nufús,
Night ccxxvi.) would not “throw cold water in the Princess’s
face:” she would sprinkle it with eau-de-rose. “Camaralzaman” I.
addresses his two abominable wives in language purely European
(ccxxx.), “et de la vie il ne s’approcha d’elles,” missing one of
the fine touches of the tale which shows its hero a weak and
violent man, hasty and lacking the pundonor. “La belle
Persienne,” in the Tale of Nur al-Din, was no Persian; nor would
her master address her, “Venez çà, impertinente!” (“come hither,
impertinence”). In the story of Badr, one of the Comoro Islands
becomes “L’île de la Lune.” “Dog” and “dog-son” are not “injures
atroces et indignes d’un grand roi:” the greatest Eastern kings
allow themselves far more energetic and significant language.
Fitnah[FN#219] is by no means “Force de curs.” Lastly the
dénoûement of The Nights is widely different in French and in
Arabic; but that is probably not Galland’s fault, as he never saw
the original, and indeed he deserves high praise for having
invented so pleasant and sympathetic a close, inferior only to
the Oriental device.[FN#220]
Galland’s fragment has a strange effect upon the Orientalist and
those who take the scholastic view, be it wide or narrow. De
Sacy does not hesitate to say that the work owes much to his
fellow-countryman’s hand; but I judge otherwise: it is necessary
to dissociate the two works and to regard Galland’s paraphrase,
which contains only a quarter of The Thousand Nights and a Night,
as a wholly different book. Its attempts to amplify beauties and
to correct or conceal the defects and the grotesqueness of the
original, absolutely suppress much of the local colour, clothing
the bare body in the best of Parisian suits. It ignores the
rhymed prose and excludes the verse, rarely and very rarely
rendering a few lines in a balanced style. It generally rejects
the proverbs, epigrams and moral reflections which form the pith
and marrow of the book; and, worse still, it disdains those finer
touches of character which are often Shakespearean in their depth
and delicacy, and which, applied to a race of familiar ways and
thoughts, manners and customs, would have been the wonder and
delight of Europe. It shows only a single side of the gem that
has so many facets. By deference to public taste it was
compelled to expunge the often repulsive simplicity, the childish
indecencies and the wild orgies of the original, contrasting with
the gorgeous tints, the elevated morality and the religious tone
of passages which crowd upon them. We miss the odeur du sang
which taints the parfums du harem; also the humouristic tale and
the Rabelaisian outbreak which relieve and throw out into strong
relief the splendour of Empire and the havoc of Time. Considered
in this light it is a caput mortuum, a magnificent texture seen
on the wrong side; and it speaks volumes for the genius of the
man who could recommend it in such blurred and caricatured
condition to readers throughout the civilised world. But those
who look only at Galland’s picture, his effort to “transplant
into European gardens the magic flowers of Eastern fancy,” still
compare his tales with the sudden prospect of magnificent
mountains seen after a long desert-march: they arouse strange
longings and indescribable desires; their marvellous
imaginativeness produces an insensible brightening of mind and an
increase of fancy-power, making one dream that behind them lies
the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected—in fact, all the
glamour of the unknown.
The Nights has been translated into every far-extending Eastern
tongue, Persian, Turkish and Hindostani. The latter entitles
them Hikáyát al-Jalílah or Noble Tales, and the translation was
made by Munshi Shams al-Din Ahmad for the use of the College of
Fort George in A.H. 1252 = 1836.[FN#221] All these versions are
direct from the Arabic: my search for a translation of Galland
into any Eastern tongue has hitherto been fruitless.
I was assured by the late Bertholdy Seemann that the “language of
Hoffmann and Heine” contained a literal and complete translation
of The Nights; but personal enquiries at Leipzig and elsewhere
convinced me that the work still remains to be done. The first
attempt to improve upon Galland and to show the world what the
work really is was made by Dr. Max Habicht and was printed at
Breslau (1824–25), in fifteen small square volumes.[FN#222] Thus
it appeared before the “Tunis Manuscript”[FN#223] of which it
purports to be a translation. The German version is, if
possible, more condemnable than the Arabic original. It lacks
every charm of style; it conscientiously shirks every difficulty;
it abounds in the most extraordinary blunders and it is utterly
useless as a picture of manners or a book of reference. We can
explain its lâches only by the theory that the eminent Professor
left the labour to his collaborateurs and did not take the
trouble to revise their careless work.
The next German translation was by Aulic Councillor J. von
Hammer-Purgstallt who, during his short stay at Cairo and
Constantinople, turned into French the tales neglected by
Galland. After some difference with M. Caussin (de Perceval) in
1810, the Styrian Orientalist entrusted his MS. to Herr Cotta the
publisher of Tubingen. Thus a German version appeared, the
translation of a translation, at the hand of Professor
Zinserling,[FN#224] while the French version was unaccountably
lost en route to London. Finally the “Contes inédits,” etc.,
appeared in a French translation by G. S. Trébutien (Paris,
mdcccxxviii.). Von Hammer took liberties with the text which can
compare only with those of Lane: he abridged and retrenched till
the likeness in places entirely disappeared; he shirked some
difficult passages and he misexplained others. In fact the work
did no honour to the amiable and laborious historian of the
Turks.
The only good German translation of The Nights is due to Dr.
Gustav Weil who, born on April 24, 1808, is still (1886)
professing at Heidelburg.[FN#225] His originals (he tells us)
were the Breslau Edition, the Bulak text of Abd al-Rahman al-Safati
and a MS. in the library of Saxe Gotha. The venerable
savant, who has rendered such service to Arabism, informs me that
Aug. Lewald’s “Vorhalle” (pp. i.-xv.)[FN#226] was written without
his knowledge. Dr. Weil neglects the division of days which
enables him to introduce any number of tales: for instance,
Galland’s eleven occupy a large part of vol. iii. The Vorwort
wants development, the notes, confined to a few words, are
inadequate and verse is everywhere rendered by prose, the Saj’a
or assonance being wholly ignored. On the other hand the scholar
shows himself by a correct translation, contrasting strongly with
those which preceded him, and by a strictly literal version, save
where the treatment required to be modified in a book intended
for the public. Under such circumstances it cannot well be other
than longsome and monotonous reading.
Although Spain and Italy have produced many and remarkable
Orientalists, I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to
translate The Nights for themselves: cheap and gaudy versions of
Galland seem to have satisfied the public.[FN#227] Notes on the
Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?) and other versions, will be found
in a future page.
Professor Galland has never been forgotten in France where,
amongst a host of editions, four have claims to
distinction;[FN#228] and his success did not fail to create a
host of imitators and to attract what De Sacy justly terms “une
prodigieuse importation de marchandise de contrabande.” As early
as 1823 Von Hammer numbered seven in France (Trébutien, Préface
xviii.) and during later years they have grown prodigiously. Mr.
William F. Kirby, who has made a special study of the subject,
has favoured me with detailed bibliographical notes on Galland’s
imitators which are printed in Appendix No. II.
§ III.
THE MATTER AND THE MANNER OF THE NIGHTS.
A.—The Matter.
Returning to my threefold distribution of this Prose Poem
(Section § I) into Fable, Fairy Tale and historical
Anecdote[FN#229], let me proceed to consider these sections more
carefully.
The Apologue or Beast-fable, which apparently antedates all other
subjects in The Nights, has been called “One of the earliest
creations of the awakening consciousness of mankind.” I should
regard it, despite a monumental antiquity, as the offspring of a
comparatively civilised age, when a jealous despotism or a
powerful oligarchy threw difficulties and dangers in the way of
speaking “plain truths.” A hint can be given and a friend or foe
can be lauded or abused as Belins the sheep or Isengrim the wolf
when the Author is debarred the higher enjoyment of praising them
or dispraising them by name. And, as the purposes of fables are
twofold—
Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum movet,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet—
The speaking of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a
pleasantry to moral design as well as to social and political
satire.
The literary origin of the fable is not Buddhistic: we must
especially shun that “Indo-Germanic” school which goes to India
for its origins, when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato,
Aristotle and possibly Homer sat for instruction at the feet of
the Hir-seshtha, the learned grammarians of the pharaohnic court.
Nor was it Æsopic, evidently Æsop inherited the hoarded wealth of
ages. As Professor Lepsius taught us, “In the olden times within
the memory of man, we know only of one advanced culture; of only
one mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz.
those of Egypt.” The invention of an alphabet, as opposed to a
syllabary, unknown to Babylonia, to Assyria and to that extreme
bourne of their civilising influence, China, would for ever fix
their literature—poetry, history and criticism,[FN#230] the
apologue and the anecdote. To mention no others The Lion and the
Mouse appears in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C. 1200–1166 the
days of Rameses III. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and
early attempt, but in a finished form, postulating an ancient
origin and illustrious ancestry. The dialogue also is brought to
perfection in the discourse between the Jackal Koufi and the
Ethiopian Cat (Revue Égyptologique ivme. année Part i.). Africa
therefore was the home of the Beast-fable not as Professor
Mahaffy thinks, because it was the chosen land of animal worship,
where
Oppida tote canem venerantur nemo Dianam;[FN#231]
but simply because the Nile-land originated every form of
literature between Fabliau and Epos.
From Kemi the Black-land it was but a step to Phoenicia,
Judæa,[FN#232] Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to
Greece. Here the Apologue found its populariser in Αἴσωδπος,
Æsop, whose name, involved in myth, possibly connects with
Αιθίοψ:— “Æsopus et Aithiops idem sonant” says the sage. This
would show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of the land
whence the Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist’s
æra as contemporary with Crœsus and Solon (B.C. 570,) about a
century after Psammeticus (Psamethik 1st) threw Egypt open to the
restless Greek.[FN#233] From Africa too the Fable would in early
ages migrate eastwards and make for itself a new home in the
second great focus of civilisation formed by the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley. The late Mr. George Smith found amongst the cuneiforms
fragmentary Beast-fables, such as dialogues between the Ox and
the Horse, the Eagle and the Sun. In after centuries, when the
conquests of Macedonian Alexander completed what Sesostris and
Semiramis had begun, and mingled the manifold families of mankind
by joining the eastern to the western world, the Orient became
formally hellenised. Under the Seleucidæ and during the life of
the independent Bactrian Kingdom (B.C. 255–125), Grecian art and
science, literature and even language overran the old Iranic
reign and extended eastwards throughout northern India. Porus
sent two embassies to Augustus in B.C. 19 and in one of them the
herald Zarmanochagas (Shramanáchárya) of Bargosa, the modern
Baroch in Guzerat, bore an epistle upon vellum written in Greek
(Strabo xv. I section 78). “Videtis gentes populosque mutasse
sedes” says Seneca (De Cons. ad Helv. c. vi.). “Quid sibi volunt
in mediis barbarorum regionibus Græcæ artes? Quid inter Indos
Persasque Macedonicus sermo? Atheniensis in Asia turba est.”
Upper India, in the Macedonian days would have been mainly
Buddhistic, possessing a rude alphabet borrowed from Egypt
through Arabia and Phoenicia, but still in a low and barbarous
condition: her buildings were wooden and she lacked, as far as we
know, stone-architecture—the main test of social development.
But the Bactrian Kingdom gave an impulse to her civilisation and
the result was classical opposed to vedic Sanskrit. From Persia
Greek letters, extending southwards to Arabia, would find
indigenous imitators and there Æsop would be represented by the
sundry sages who share the name Lokman.[FN#234] One of these was
of servile condition, tailor, carpenter or shepherd; and a
“Habashi” (Æthiopian) meaning a negro slave with blubber lips and
splay feet, so far showing a superficial likeness to the Æsop of
history.