The Annotated Arabian Nights

Yasmine Seale, trans.: The Annotated Arabian Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta (2021)

A new translation of the Thousand and One Nights can be quite a hard sell. You'll note that I've listed some 27 of them at the foot of this post - and that's just a selection ...

They range from the first - and still most influential - Antoine Galland's 12-volume French translation (1704-17), to a more recent 4-volume Spanish translation by Salvador Peña Martín (2016).

Among them there are a dozen or so English versions, at least three of them - Payne, Burton, and Lyons - claiming to be 'complete' (whatever, precisely, that can be taken to mean):

1. Anonymous (from Antoine Galland) [1706-21] (French / English)
2. George Lamb (from Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall) [1826] (French / English)
3. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
4. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
5. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
6. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
7. Andrew Lang (mostly retold from Galland) [1898] (English)
8. Laurence Housman (mostly retold from Galland) [1907-14] (English)
9. E. Powys Mathers (from Dr. J. C. Mardrus) [1923] (French / English)
10. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
11. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
12. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
13. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)

I'm pleased to record that there's now another to add to that tally:

Yasmine Seale: Aladdin: A New Translation (2019)

The Annotated Arabian Nights, together with her earlier single-volume Aladdin, constitute all that we've seen so far of French-Syrian poet and translator Yasmine Seale's 1001 Nights. It's possible that there may be more to come, however. According to her Wikipedia entry Seale "is the first woman to translate the entirety of The Arabian Nights from French and Arabic into English."

Yasmine Seale

The "entirety of The Arabian Nights" cannot be referring solely to Seale's and her collaborator Paulo Lemos Horta's Annotated Arabian Nights. While that book certainly presents a very extensive selection from the immense body of materials which constitute the Nights, it can certainly not be called "complete."

Gabriel Roth Horta: Paulo Lemos Horta

Richard F. Burton (1885-88) filled 16 closely-printed volumes with his own attempt to provide a complete Arabian Nights. A good deal of that consisted of annotation and commentary, but the same cannot be said of John Payne (1882-89), whose translation eventually occupied 13 volumes of text, covering much the same territory.

The most recent "complete" English version of the Egyptian recension of the Nights (by far the most extensive of the various textual traditions), by Malcolm C. & Ursula Lyons (2008), occupies three volumes and 2,700-odd pages. But even that has been (lightly) edited for repetitions and redundancies.

Perhaps the most complete (and most universally praised) modern translation, Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel's 3-volume French version for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (2005-07) clocks in at 3,504 pages.

Hannā Diyāb: The Book of Travels (2022)

So what precisely is Seale's contribution to the Arabian Nights tradition? Here's Wikipedia again, in their page dedicated to the One Thousand and One Nights:

A new English language translation was published in December 2021, the first solely by a female author, Yasmine Seale, which removes earlier sexist and racist references. The new translation includes all the tales from Hanna Diyab and additionally includes stories previously omitted featuring female protagonists, such as tales about Parizade, Pari Banu, and the horror story Sidi Numan.

The reference to Hannā Diyāb is to a young Syrian traveller who visited Europe in the early eighteenth century, and - among all the other adventures detailed in his recently translated travel book - seems to have been the informant "Hanna from Aleppo" who told (or wrote out for?) Antoine Galland the so-called "orphan tales" which occupy the bulk of the last four volumes - roughly a third - of his translation.

Paulo Lemos Horta: Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (2017)

To call Hannā Diyāb the co-author of the collection, as Paulo Lemos Horta does in his 2017 book Marvellous Thieves, is therefore no real exaggeration. Galland's diary for the period 1708-15 record details of 14 stories told him by the sbove-mentioned "Hanna from Aleppo". Roughly ten of these, albeit in greatly expanded form, made it into the final text of his Mille et une nuits (1704-17):

1. Histoire d'Aladdin ou la Lampe merveilleuse [The Story of Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp] (told in 1709: May 5) [included in Galland, Vol. 9]
2. Les aventures de Calife Haroun Alraschid [The Night Adventures of Caliph Haroun-Al-Raschid] (May 10) [Vol. 10]
   1. Histoire de l'Aveugle Baba-Alidalla [The Story of the Blind Baba-Alidalla]
   2. Histoire de Sidi Nouman [History of Sidi Nouman]
3. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhababbal [The Story of Cogia Hassan Alhababbal] (May 29) [Vol. 10]
4. Histoire d'Ali-Baba et de quarante voleurs exterminés par une esclave [Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves] (May 27) [Vol. 11]
5. Histoire d'Ali Cogia, Marchand de Bagdad [The Story of Ali Cogia, Merchant of Baghdad] (May 29) [Vol. 11]
6. Histoire du Cheval enchanté [The Ebony Horse] (May 13) [Vol. 11]
7. Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fee Pari-Banou [History of Prince Ahmed and the Pari-Banou] (May 22) [Vol. 12]
8. Histoire des deux Soeurs jalouses de leur cadette [The Story of the two sisters jealous of their younger sister] (May 25) [Vol. 12]

As you can see, they include such classic tales as "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba". Galland made no reference to this indebtedness in any of his published writings. However, since he died while his translation was still in progress (the final two volumes appeared posthumously), this may have been more inadvertent than deliberate.

Publishers Weekly: Yasmine Seale has retranslated Aladdin (19/10/18)

But going back to Yasmine Seale's original translation of Aladdin. In his Guardian review of the book (2/11/18), Richard Lea quotes her as admitting that these recent discoveries of the full extent of Galland's indebtedness to Hannā Diyāb have had little effect on her version, since “the only text we have is Galland’s, and that is what I have to work with”:

But knowing the story of the tale’s construction makes Aladdin “a document of exchange, of translation on several levels, a product of both the Arabic and French literary traditions.”

Seale continues, “I’m less interested in what ‘a Frenchman’ or ‘a Syrian’ might have invented than in the particular voices of these two men”:

Both came from learned, cosmopolitan cities. They were complex products of their knowledge and experience – who isn’t? Each was familiar with and fascinated by the other’s culture and language.

As for the Nights themselves, she sees them as "part of the bloodstream of world literature. They’re furniture, like the great myths. Because of their endless, slippery nature (a sea of stories without an author) they have flowed freely across borders of language and genre.”

Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nightmare (1983)

In an earlier interview with Wendy Smith for Publisher's Weekly (10/10/18), Seale revealed something of her own background, and the reason why she sees herself as such an ideal translator for such "slippery", cross-cultural works:

My mother is Syrian, but my father was a mix: his parents were Russian and Tunisian, he had grown up in Britain, and both my parents wrote in English. I grew up speaking and hearing three languages: French, English, and Arabic. For a long time I felt that I was just going to be French; my studies focused on French literature, and that was going to be my identity. Then I thought, ‘No, I must learn Arabic and understand it properly — that’s part of my heritage.’ That’s why this work has been so pleasurable; I feel I can bring all that to the table and I don’t have to choose. Galland’s description of Topkapi Palace — which I can see from my window — finds its way into the descriptions of the mythical palaces in Aladdin, but so do Diyab’s experiences at the palace of Versailles. Aladdin is neither just an Orientalist fantasy, nor is it just the vision of a Syrian person in France; it’s both at the same time, and I find it moving that it can be both.

Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)

This sense of the Nights as a work so contaminated by diverse cultural influences that the very notion of "fidelity to the original", normally so crucial in translation, becomes literally meaningless, underlies Seale's work on both Aladdin and the Annotated Arabian Nights. As she herself puts it:

Fidelity to what? When you have a story that exists in 80 different versions, you have to make choices. To translate the Nights means continuing to shape the stories and acknowledging that you are bringing your own sensibility to them rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.

Finally, it seems, the Nights may have found a translator who not only understands but actually embodies their paradoxical nature:

I was trying to bring out the freshness, vivacity, and wit I saw in the original French; Galland was an incredibly witty and playful person. I didn’t want to do what a lot of other translators of the Nights have done, which is to translate it into deliberately archaic language. The 19th-century translators all did this, Richard Burton most famously; his translations, even by Victorian standards, are incredibly florid and elaborate. It was a way of creating this sense of distance from the world these texts came from — a sense that the East was unfathomable, strange, and alien. I wanted to bring out the modernity that is already in the text.

Lord Leighton: Sir Richard Burton (1876)

I have to acknowledge the truth in this. Much though I adore Burton's Nights, it is almost necessary to learn a new language, Burtonian, to understand them. Perhaps that's why they've had such an influence on writers who were not native speakers of English: Jorge Luis Borges, most famously, but also Hugo von Hoffmansthal in Austria and Junichiro Tanizaki in Japan.

Her comments on the actual process of translation are fascinating, too:

Translating the 14th-century Arabic texts is “a completely different experience,” Seale comments. “Galland’s style is fairly close to what we would recognize as English prose, but in the Arabic there is no punctuation; clauses are separated by the word wa, which means and, or the word fa, which can mean so, or then, or however, or because. As a translator, you have to intervene to shape the narrative and create a readable English paragraph. To want ‘authenticity’ in The Arabian Nights is a bit of a misnomer: these are stories that have continually shifted, that are constantly changing, that are made of their accretions and layers.”

Ferdinand Keller: Scheherazade and the Sultan (1880)

It's perhaps a bit cheeky - not to mention somewhat predictable - to suggest an analogy here with the legendary Scheherazade herself, subject - as well as putative author - of the Arabian Nights in much the same sense as we postulate the authors of other "inspired" writings. But then, Seale does almost invite the comparison:

"In the framing story that begins the Nights, this king kills his unfaithful wife and decides to take a new woman every night and kill her in the morning,” she explains. “Scheherazade intervenes and says, ‘I will save my sisters from this fate.’ What we know about her from the story is that she has collected books, she has a library, she has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages. She is in this sense a translator and reinterpreter of these stories. Thinking about Scheherazade helped me think about the whole text as a series of conduits — stories being channeled through a series of vessels, Scheherazade being one. Every single person who has written them down, every translator, everyone who’s added to this ocean of stories, is a kind of boatman ferrying the stories along. It makes sense to me, rather than thinking about this binary of original and translation, to break down that boundary.

As for her own relationship to the text:

Translating Aladdin, Yasmine Seale says, “made me feel like there was a plan in my life all along and everything had been leading to this moment.” Speaking from a sun-drenched room in her home in Istanbul, she explains, “It was written down in the 18th century by a Frenchman, Antoine Galland, based on the story he was told by a young Syrian traveler named Hanna Diyab, so it is both a product of France and also of the Arab world. I grew up in France and studied French literature, with a particular interest in the 18th century, and then went to university and studied Arab literature. So it’s a text that combines my two great interests."

In other words, she too has "collected books", she too "has a library", and "has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages."

So if we are being invited here to imagine Yasmine Seale as a Scheherazade for our own times, what better USP [= Unique Selling Point] could there be for a new translation of this most evergreen, baffling, and slippery of works, the Arabian Nights?

Seriously, how can you hesitate to add this beautifully illustrated and annotated new translation to your own bookshelf? I, for one, am thoroughly sold.

Michael Holtmann: Yasmine Seale's Annotated Arabian Nights (17/11/21)

•


Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The 1001 Nights:

Texts & Translations:



1. Texts [c.800-1986] [Arabic]
2. Antoine Galland [1704-1717] (French)
3. Dom Dennis Chavis & M. Cazotte [1788-89] (French)
4. Maximilian Habicht [1824-25] (German)
5. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall et al. [1826] (French / German / English)
6. Gustav Weil [1837-41] (German)
7. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
8. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
9. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
10. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
11. Max Henning [1895-97] (German)
12. Andrew Lang [1898] (English)
13. Dr. J. C. Mardrus [1899-1904] (French)
14. Cary von Karwath [1906-14] (German)
15. Laurence Housman [1907-14] (English)
16. Enno Littmann [1921-28] (German)
17. M. A. Salye [1929-36] (Russian)
18. Francesco Gabrieli [1948] (Italian)
19. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
20. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns [1954-55] (Spanish)
21. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
22. René R. Khawam [1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)
23. Felix Tauer [1928-34] (Czech & German)
24. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
25. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel [1991-2001 & 2005-7] (French)
26. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)
27. Salvador Peña Martín [2016] (Spanish)
28. Yasmine Seale [2019-2021] (English)
29. Miscellaneous



---




Galland manuscript (14th Century CE)

Texts:

Arabic


1. Alph Laylé Wa Laylé. 4 vols. Beirut: Al-Maktaba Al-Thakafiyat, A.H. 1401 [= 1981].


2. Arabic Key Readers. A Thousand and One Nights: Graduated Readings for English Speaking Students – Book 1: Story of the Book, Nights 1 through 9. Retold by Michel Nicola. Troy, Michigan: International Book Centre, 1986.


3. Zotenberg, Hermann. Histoire d’Alâ al-Din ou La Lampe Merveilleuse: Texte Arabe publié avec une notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une nuits. Paris; Imprimerie Nationale, 1888.



Antoine Galland: Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704-17)

Translations:

Antoine Galland (1646-1715) – [12 vols: 1704-1717] (French)


4. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes traduits par Galland. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Gaston Picard. 2 vols. 1960. Paris: Garnier, 1975.


5. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Jean Gaulmier. 3 vols. 1965. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, 1985, 1991.


6. Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a bloody Vow he had made to marry a Lady every day, and have her cut off next Morning, to avenge himself for the Disloyalty of his first Sultaness, &c. Containing a better Account of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz. Tartars, Persians, and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published. Translated into French from the Arabian Mss. by M. Galland of the Royal Academy, and now done into English from the last Paris Edition. London: Andrew Bell, 1706-17. 16th ed. 4 vols. London & Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1781.


7. The Arabian Nights. Illustrated with Engravings from Designs by R. Westall, R. A. 4 vols. London: Printed for C and J. Rivington et al., 1825.


8. Forster, the Rev. Edward, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 1812. Rev. G. Moir Bussey. Illustrated by 24 Engravings from Designs by R. Smirke, Esq. R. A. London: Joseph Thomas / T. Tegg; and Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1840.


9. Galland, A. Las Mil y Una Noches: Cuentos orientales. Trans. Pedro Pedraza y Páez. Biblioteca Hispania. Barcelona: Editorial Ramón Sopena, 1934.


10. Mack, Robert L., ed. Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.


Denis Chavis & Jacques Cazotte (fl. 1780s / 1719-1792) – [4 vols: 1788-89] (French)


11. Chavis, Dom, and M. Cazotte, trans. La Suite des Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes. Cabinet des Fées 38-41. 4 vols. Geneva: Barde & Manget, 1788-89.


Maximilian Habicht et al. (1775-1839) – [15 vols: 1824-25] (German)


12. Habicht, Max., Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall, trans. Tausend und Eine Nacht, Arabische Erzählungen. 1824-25. Ed. Karl Martin Schiller. 12 vols. Leipzig: F. W. Hendel, 1926.


Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall / Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien / George Lamb (1774-1856 / 1800-1870 / 1784-1834) – [3 vols: 1826] (German / French / English)


13. Lamb, George, trans. New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Selected from the Original Oriental Ms. by J. Von Hammer, and Now First Translated into English. 1826. 3 vols in 1. Milton Keynes, UK: Palala Press, 2015.


Gustav Weil (1808-1889) – [4 vols: 1837-41] (German)


14. Weil, Gustav, trans. Tausendundeine Nacht. 1837-41. Ed. Inge Dreecken. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, n.d. [c. 1960s]


Henry Whitelock Torrens (1806-1852) – [1 vol: 1838] (English)


15. Torrens, Henry, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Translated from the Arabic of the Ægyptian M.S. as edited by Wm. Hay Macnaghten, Esqr. 1838. India: Pranava Books, n.d.


Edward William Lane (1801-1876) – [3 vols: 1839-40] (English)


16. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. A New Translation from the Arabic, with Copious Notes. 3 vols. London: Charles Knight, 1839-41.


17. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights; Commonly Called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Edward Stanley Poole. 3 vols. 1859. London: Chatto, 1912.


18. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Stanley Lane-Poole. 4 vols. 1906. Bohn’s Popular Library. London: G. Bell, 1925.


19. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or The Thousand and One Nights: The Complete, Original Translation of Edward William Lane, with the Translator’s Complete, Original Notes and Commentaries on the Text. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1927.


20. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Wood Engravings from Original Designs by William Harvey. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930.


John Payne (1842-1916) – [13 vols: 1882-89] (English)


21. Payne, John, trans. Oriental Tales: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night [and other tales]. 1882-97. 15 vols. Herat edition (limited to 500 copies): No. 141. London: Printed for Subscribers Only, 1901.
    1. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Now First Completely Done into English Prose and Verse, from the Original Arabic. 9 vols (London: Villon Society, 1882-84)
    2. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 2)
    3. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 3)
    4. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 4)
    5. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 5)
    6. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 6)
    7. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 7)
    8. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 8)
    9. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 9)
    10. Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-’18) Editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Not Occurring in the Other Printed Texts of the Work; Now First Done into English. 3 vols. (London: Villon Society, 1884)
    11. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 2)
    12. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 3)
    13. Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp; Zein ul Asnam and the King of the Jinn: Two Stories Done into English from the Recently Discovered Arabic Text (London: Villon Society, 1889)
    14. The Persian letters, with introduction and notes, done into English from the original by Montesquieu (London, 1897)
    15. A Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour and Tartarian Tales, by Thomas Simon Gueulette (London, 1897)


22. Payne, John, trans. The Portable Arabian Nights. 1882-1884. Ed. Joseph Campbell. 1952. New York: The Viking Press, 1963.


23. Payne, John, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. 1882-1884. Publisher's Note by Steven Moore. 3 vols. Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Classics, 2007.


Richard F. Burton (1821-1890) – [16 vols: 1885-88] (English)


24. Burton, Richard F, trans. A Plain and Literal Translation of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction, Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. 10 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1885. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


25. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 6 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1886-88. 7 vols. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


26. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. 10 vols. U.S.A.: The Burton Club, n.d. [c.1940s].


27. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 1886-88. 6 vols. U.S.A..: The Burton Club, n.d. [c. 1940s].


28. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. New York: The Heritage Press, 1934.


29. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. 1934. The Heritage Press. New York: The George Macy Companies, Inc., 1962.


30. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, or The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Selection of the Most Famous and Representative of these Tales. Ed. Bennett A Cerf. 1932. Introductory Essay by Ben Ray Redman. New York: Modern Library, 1959.


31. Burton, Sir Richard, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Notes by Henry Torrens, Edward Lane, John Payne. Illustrations by Arthur Szyk. 1955. The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1983.


32. Burton, Richard F. Love, War and Fancy: The Customs and Manners of the East from Writings on The Arabian Nights. Ed. Kenneth Walker. 1884. London: Kimber Paperback Library, 1964.


33. Chagall, Marc, illus. Arabian Nights: Four Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. Introduction by Norbert Nobis. Trans. Richard F. Burton. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1988.


34. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: Penguin, 1991.


35. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights, Volume II: More Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Sir Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: New American Library, 1999.


Max Henning (1861-1927) – [24 vols: 1895-97] (German)


36. Henning, Max, trans. Tausend und eine Nacht. 1895-97. Ed. Hans W. Fischer. Berlin & Darmstadt: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1957.


Andrew Lang (1844-1912) – [1 vol: 1898] (English)


37. Lang, Andrew, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by H. J. Ford. 1898. London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.


38. Lang, Andrew, trans. Tales from The Arabian Nights. 1898. Illustrated by Edmond Dulac. Afterword by Pete Hamill. The World’s Best Reading. Sydney & Auckland: Reader’s Digest, 1991.


Dr. J. C. Mardrus (1868–1949) – [16 vols: 1899-1904] (French)


39. Mardrus, Dr. J. C., trans. Le Livre des Mille et une Nuits. 16 vols. Paris: Édition de la Revue blanche, 1899-1904. Ed. Marc Fumaroli. 2 vols. Paris: Laffont, 1989.


40. Mathers, Edward Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered from the Literal and Complete Version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus; and Collated with Other Sources. 1923. 8 vols. London: The Casanova Society, 1929.


41. Mardrus, Dr J. C. The Queen of Sheba: Translated into French from his own Arabic Text. Trans. E. Powys Mathers. London: The Casanova Society, n.d. [1924].


42. Mathers, E. Powys. Sung to Shahryar: Poems from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. London: The Casanova Society, 1925.


43. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. Arabian Love Tales: Being Romances Drawn from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. Illustrated by Lettice Sandford. London: The Folio Society, 1949.


44. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. 4 vols. 1949. 2nd ed. 1964. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.


45. The Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus by Powys Mathers. Introduction by Marina Warner. 6 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2003.
    • Vol. 1: with 8 colour illustrations by Kay Nielsen, 375 pp.
    • Vol. 2: with 8 colour illustrations by Grahame Baker, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 3: with 8 colour illustrations by Debra McFarlane, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 4: with 8 colour illustrations by Roman Pisarev, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 5: with 8 colour illustrations by Jane Ray, 431 pp.
    • Vol. 6: with 8 colour illustrations by Neil Packer, 448 pp.


Cary von Karwath (?) – [19 vols: 1906-14] (German)


46. Karwath, Cary Von, trans. 1001 Nacht: Vollständige Ausgabe in 18 Taschenbüchern mit einem Zusatzband: Nach dem arabischen Urtext angeordnet und übertragen von Cary von Karwath. 1906-14. 19 vols. München: Goldmann Verlag, 1987.


Laurence Housman (1865-1959) – [4 vols: 1907-14] (English)


47. Housman, Laurence. Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. New York: Doran, n.d.


48. Housman, Laurence. Sindbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. Weathervane Books. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978.


Enno Littmann (1875-1958) – [6 vols: 1921-28] (German)


49. Littmann, Enno, trans. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in zwölf Teilbänden zum ersten mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. 1921-28. 2nd ed. 1953. 6 vols in 12. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1976.


50. Littmann, Enno, trans. Geschichten der Liebe aus den 1001 Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext übertragen von Enno Littmann. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1973.


Mikhail Alexandrovich Salye (1899-1961) – [8 vols: 1929-36] (Russian)


51. Salye, M. A., trans. Тысяча и Одна Ночь. 1929-36. 6 vols. Санкт-Петербург: «Кристалл», 2000.


Francesco Gabrieli (1904-1996) – [4 vols: 1948] (Italian)


52. Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Le mille e una notte: Prima versione integrale dall’arabo. Trans. Francesco Gabrieli, Antonio Cesaro, Constantino Pansera, Umberto Rizzitano and Virginia Vacca. 1948. Gli struzzi 35. 4 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1972.


53. Faccioli, Emilio, ed. Le mille e una notte: Scelta di racconti. Dall’edizione integrale diretta da Francesco Gabrieli. Letture per la Scuola Media 56. Torino: Einaudi, 1980.


Arthur John Arberry (1905-1969) – [1 vol: 1953] (English)


54. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953.


55. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Illustrations by Asgeir Scott. 1953. A Mentor Book. New York: New American Library, 1955.


Rafael Cansinos-Asséns (1882-1964) – [3 vols: 1954-55] (Spanish)


56. Cansinos Asséns, Rafael, trans. Libro de las mil y una noches, por primera vez puestas en castellano del árabe original. Prologadas, anotadas y cotejadas con las principales versiones en otras lenguas y en la vernácula por Rafael Cansinos Asséns. 3 vols. 1954-55. Mexico: Aguilar, 1990.


Nessim Joseph Dawood (1927-2014) – [2 vols: 1954-57] (English)


57. Dawood, N. J., trans. The Thousand and One Nights: The Hunchback, Sindbad, and Other Tales. Penguin 1001. 1954. Penguin Classics L64. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.


58. Dawood, N. J., trans. Aladdin and Other Tales from The Thousand and One Nights. Penguin Classics L71. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957.


59. Dawood, N. J., trans. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. 1954-57. 2nd ed. 1973. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.


René R. Khawam (1917-2004) – [7 vols: 1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)


60. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. Traduction Nouvelle et Complète faite sur les Manuscrits par René R. Khawam. 4 Vols. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1965-67.


61. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. 4 vols. 1965-67. 2nd ed. 1986. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1989.


62. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Marin. Paris: Phébus, 1985.


63. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Terrien. Paris: Phébus, 1986.


64. Khawam, René R., trans. Le Roman d’Aladin. Paris: Phébus, 1988.


Felix Tauer (1893-1981) – [8 vols: 1928-34] (Czech & German)


65. Tauer, Felix, trans. Tisíc a Jedna Noc. 1928-34. 5 vols. 1973. Praha: Ikar, 2001.


66. Tauer, Felix, trans. Erotische Geschichten aus den tausendundein Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext der Wortley Montague-Handschrift übertragen und herausgegeben von Felix Tauer. 1966. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983.


67. Tauer, Felix, trans. Neue Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Die in anderen Versionen von »1001 Nacht« nicht enthaltenen Geschichten der Wortley-Montague-Handschrift der Oxforder Bodleian Library; Aus dem arabischen Urtext vollständig übertragen und erläutert von Felix Tauer. 2 vols. 1982. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1989.


Husain Haddawy (?) – [2 vols: 1990-95] (English)


68. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights: Based on the Text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.


69. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995.


70. Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ed. The Arabian Nights. The Husain Haddaway Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi: Contexts, Criticism. 1990 & 1995. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.


Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel (1930-2005 / 1929- ) – [10 vols: 1977-2001 & 2005-7] (French)


71. Miquel, André. Un Conte des Mille et Une Nuits: Ajîb et Gharîb (Traduction et perspectives d’analyse). Paris: Flammarion, 1977.


72. Miquel, André. Sept contes des Mille et Une Nuits, ou Il n’y a pas de contes innocents, suivi d’entretiens autour de Jamaleddine Bencheikh et Claude Brémond. Paris: Sindbad, 1981.


73. Bremond, Claude, ed. Les Dames de Bagdad: Conte des Mille et une nuits. Trans. André Miquel / Claude Bremond, A Chraïbi, A. Larue, and M. Sironval. La Nébuleuse du conte: Essai sur les premiers contes de Galland. Paris: Desjonquères, 1991.


74. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis. Trans. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, André Miquel & Touhami Bencheikh. 4 vols. Folio. Paris: Gallimard, 1991-2001.


75. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005-7.


76. Album Mille et Une Nuits: Iconographie. Choisie et commentée par Margaret Sironval. Albums de la Pléiade, 44. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.


Prof. Malcolm C. & Dr. Ursula Lyons (1929-2019 / ?-2016) – [3 vols: 2008] (English)


77. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. Penguin Classics Hardback. London: Penguin, 2008.


78. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 1: Nights 1 to 294. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


79. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 2: Nights 295 to 719. Introduced & Annotated by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


80. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 3: Nights 719 to 1001. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


81. Lyons, Malcom C., trans. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange. Introduction by Robert Irwin. Penguin Classics. 2014. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2015.


Salvador Peña Martín (1958- ) – [4 vols: 2016] (Spanish)


82. Peña Martín, Salvador, trans. Mil y una noches. 4 vols. 2016. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2018.


Yasmine Seale (1989- ) – [2 vols: 2019-2021] (English)


83. Seale, Yasmine, trans. Aladdin: A New Translation. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.


84. Seale, Yasmine, trans. The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Foreword by Omar El Akkad. Afterword by Robert Irwin. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.


Miscellaneous


85. Blyton, Enid. Tales from the Arabian Nights: Retold by Enid Blyton. Illustrated by Anne & Janet Johnstone. 1951. London: Latimer House, 1956.


86. Bull, René, illus. The Arabian Nights. Children’s Classics. Bath: Robert Frederick, 1994.


87. Ouyang, Wen-Ching, & Paulo Lemos Horta, ed. The Arabian Nights: An Anthology. Everyman’s Library 361. A Borzoi Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.


88. Pinson, R. W., ed. Märchen aus 1001 Nacht: Die berühmten Geschichten aus dem Morgenland. Selected by G. Blau, A. Horn & R. W. Pinson. 1979. Bindlach: Gondrom Verlaf GmbH, 2001.


89. Samsó, Julio, trans. Antología de Las Mil y Una Noches. Libro de Bolsillo: Clásicos 599. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1975.


90. Scott, Anne, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Retold by Vladimir Hulpach. Trans. Vera Gissing. Illustrated by Mária Zelibská. London: Cathay Books, 1981.


91. Weber, Henry, ed. Tales of the East: Comprising the Most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin, and the Best Imitations by European Authors: with New Translations, and Additional Tales, Never Before Published: to which is prefixed an introductory dissertation, containing the account of each work, and of its author, or translator. 3 vols. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1812.
    Vol. I:
    • The Arabian Nights [Galland (1704-17)]
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments [Chavis & Cazotte (1788-89)]
    Vol. II:
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments (cont.)
    • Persian Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Persian Tales of Inatulla [Alexander Dow (1768)]
    • Oriental Tales [A. C. P., Comte de Caylus (1749)]
    • Nourjahad [Frances Sheridan (1767)]
    • "Four Additional Tales from the Arabian Nights" [Caussin de Perceval (1806)]
    Vol. III:
    • The Mogul Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Turkish Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Tartarian Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Chinese Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Tales of the Genii [James Ridley (1764)]
    • History of Abdalla the Son of Hanif [Jean Paul Bignon (1713)]


92. Wiggin, Kate Douglas & Nora A. Smith, eds. The Arabian Nights: Their Best-Known Tales. Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1996.


93. Williams-Ellis, Amabel. The Arabian Nights Stories Retold. 1957. London: Blackie, 1972.

Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Secondary Literature:

1. Abou-Hussein, Hiam & Charles Pellat. Cheherazade: Personage Littéraire. Algiers: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 1976.


2. Ali, Muhsin Jassim. Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981.


3. Baroud, Mahmoud. The Shipwrecked Sailor in Arabic and Western Literature: Ibn Tufail and His Influence on European Writers. London & New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2012.


4. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine. Les Mille et une Nuits ou la parole prisonnière. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.


5. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, Claude Bremond and André Miquel. Mille et un Contes de la Nuit. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.


6. Campbell, Kay Hardy, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Andras Hamori, Muhsin Mahdi, Christopher M. Murphy, & Sandra Naddaff. The 1001 Nights: Critical Essays and Annotated Bibliography. Mundus Arabicus 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Dar Mahjar, 1983.


7. Caracciolo, Peter L., ed. The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.


8. Chauvin, Victor. Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885. 12 vols. Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1892-1922.
   • Vol. 1: Préface (pp. v-xxxix). 1892.
   • Vol. 2: Kalîlah. 1897.
   • Vol. 3: Louqmâne et les Fabulistes. Barlaam. Antar et les Romans de chevalerie. 1898.
   • Vol. 4: Les 1001 Nuits (1ere partie). 1900.
   • Vol. 5: Les 1001 Nuits (2ème partie). 1901.
   • Vol. 6: Les 1001 Nuits (3ème partie). 1902.
   • Vol. 7: Les 1001 Nuits (4ème partie). 1903.
   • Vol. 8: Syntipas. 1904.
   • Vol. 9: Recueils Orientaux. (pp. 57-95). 1905.
   • Vol. 10: Table des Matières. (pp. 145-46). 1907.


9. Chauvin, Victor. La Récension Égyptienne des Mille et Une Nuits. Bruxelles: Office de Publicité / Société Belge de Librairie, 1899.


10. Chebel, Malek. Psychanalyse des Mille et Une Nuits. 1996. Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 2002.


11. Diyāb, Hannā. The Book of Travels. Trans. Elias Muhanna. Foreword by Yasmine Seale. Introduction by Johannes Stephan. Afterword by Paulo Lemos Horta. Library of Arabic Literature, 87. 2021. New York: New York University Press, 2022.


12. Eliséef, Nikita. Thèmes et motifs des Mille et Une Nuits: Essai de Classification. Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1949.


13. Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.


14. Ghazoul, Ferial Jabouri. The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis. Cairo: Cairo Associated Institution for the Study and Presentation of Arab Cultural Values, 1980.


15. Ghazoul, Ferial J. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context. Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.


16. Hamori, Andras. On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature. 1974. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.


17. Horta, Paulo Lemos. Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.


18. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nightmare. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.


19. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Allen Lane, 1994.


20. Kilito, Abdelfattah. L’oeil et l’aiguille: Essai sur “les mille et une nuits.” Textes à l’appui: série islam et société. Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1992.


21. Lahy-Hollebecque, Marie. Schéhérazade ou L’éducation d’un Roi. 1927. Collection Destins de Femmes. Paris: Pardès, 1987.


22. Lane, E. W. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 1836. Ed. E. Stanley Poole. Everyman’s Library 315. London: Dent, New York: Dutton, 1963.


23. Larzul, Sylvette. Les Traductions Françaises des Mille et Une Nuits: Études des versions Galland, Trébutien et Mardrus. Précédée de “Traditions, traductions, trahisons,” par Claude Bremond. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.


24. Lewis, Bernard. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. 1982. London: Phoenix, 1994.


25. Lynch, Enrique. La Lección de Sheherazade. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1987.


26. Mahdi, Muhsin. The Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.


27. Marzolph, Ulrich, & Richard van Leeuwen, with the assistance of Hassan Wassouf, ed. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2004.


28. Marzolph, Ulrich, ed. The Arabian Nights Reader. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2006.


29. May, Georges. Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland, ou le chef d’oeuvre invisible. Paris: P.U.F., 1986.


30. Naddaff, Sandra. Arabesque: Narrative Structure and the Aesthetics of Repetition in the 1001 Nights. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991.


31. Nicholson, Reynold A. A Literary History of the Arabs. 1907. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.


32. Pinault, David. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. Studies in Arabic Literature 15. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992.


33. Ranelagh, E. J. The Past We Share: The Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature. London: Quartet, 1979.


34. Sallis, Eva K. Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. Curzon Studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.


35. Von Grunebaum, Gustave E. Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation. 1946. Phoenix Books 69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.


36. Weber, Edgard. Imaginaire Arabe et Contes Erotiques. Collection Comprendre le Moyen-Orient. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1990.

Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994)

•

Fast Thinkers and Ghost Writers

Britannica: Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

A bit of wisdom here from Pierre Bourdieu:

Fast-thinkers ... think in clichés, in the "received ideas" that Flaubert talks about - banal, conventional, common ideas that are received generally. By the time they reach you, these ideas have already been received by everybody else, so reception is never a problem. But whether you're talking about a speech, a book, or a message on television, the major question of communication is whether the conditions for reception have been fulfilled: Does the person who's listening have the tools to decode what I'm saying?

Like most people (I suppose), I used to worry about my inability to shine in contests of quick-flowing wit. I remember once meeting a friend who'd been at Graduate School in America, and had returned to New Zealand to show off some of what he'd become. The talk came thick and fast, with nary a space to insert a word of one's own, or query exactly what it was we were talking about.

When you transmit a "received idea," it's as if everything is set, and the problem solves itself. Communication is instantaneous because, in a sense, it has not occurred; or it only seems to have taken place. The exchange of commonplaces is communication with no content other than the fact of communication itself. The "commonplaces" that play such an enormous role in daily conversation work because everyone can ingest them immediately. Their very banality makes them something the speaker and the listener have in common.

- Pierre Bourdieu, 'On Television' (1996/98)
[reference courtesy of Australian novelist Christine Howe, who quoted it at the 'Critical Futures' symposium I attended a couple of years ago at the University of Wollongong]

Now, however (thanks largely to Christine Howe), I worry about it less.

•


Dorothy L. Sayers: Whose Body? (1923)

At one point the conversation with my friend-recently-returned-from-the-US shifted (for some reason I've now forgotten) to the detective novels of Dorothy Sayers. Now I'd read all of these, in sequence, on more than one occasion, and could easily have answered any random question on campanology or heraldry drawn from her books.

My friend dismissed her quickly with a wry reference to the naming of the evil surgeon Sir Julian Freke ("Freak" - get it?) in her very first novel, Whose Body?, as well as a claim that the book was anti-semitic, given that the murderer's victim was a wealthy financier called Sir Reuben Levy.

Sir Frederick Treves: The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923)

Now this seemed (and seems) - to me - rather a complex matter. The name of Sir Julian Freke had, to my mind, been carefully chosen to recall to the reader that most famous of British surgeons Sir Frederick Treves, discoverer (and promoter) of Joseph Merrick, the (so-called) "Elephant Man."

Treves certainly seems a far more sympathetic figure, so perhaps 'Freke' is supposed to hint at the Mr. Hyde-like double nature lurking in any God-like surgeon. Or perhaps Sayers knew more gossip about Treves than we do now.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)

As for the claims of anti-semitism, they don't seem to me to have that much behind them, gruesome though the details of this particular murder undoubtedly are. Certainly Freke is presented as being intensely anti-semitic.

The subject is canvassed interestingly in the Wikipedia article on Dorothy Sayers. Later, in 1936, when "a translator wanted 'to soften the thrusts against the Jews' in Whose Body?, Sayers, surprised, replied that the only characters 'treated in a favourable light were the Jews!'"

In other words: "How can I be a racist? Some of my best friends are [fill in as required ...]."

I guess the overall point I'm trying to make is that my friend, a fast thinker if ever there was one, was onto the next point before any real consideration could be given to this one, wrecked reputations left smoking in his wake. Dorothy Sayers - anti-semite; T. S. Eliot - anti-semite; Pound - Fascist ... and so on and so forth. A label for everyone and the mouth constantly moving on to new aperçus and subtleties: quick subtleties, mind you, so that no-one (such as myself) stoutly bringing up the rear, could be permitted any time to break down or examine the ideas presented.

Talking people down in this matter - battering down their resistance with a shower of facts and figures, flimsy literary and cultural parallels, and random contemporary events, is, of course, one of the more effective ways of ensuring victory in debate. On paper it can seem to work equally well just as long as no-one really reads what you write.

As long as they skate over it in the same way, and at the same speed, that you composed it, the knockdown argument is almost guaranteed.

•


Marina Warner

I'm sorry to say that British cultural critic and historian Marina Warner does seem to me to exemplify some of these traits. Don't get me wrong: I've read a great many of her books, and have received much profit from them. They certainly cover many areas - European folklore and fairy-tales, Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Arabian Nights - which are of profound interest to me. And yet they continue to frustrate me, perhaps because of the speed at which her mind moves from subject to subject.

Here's a list of the books by her I own:

1. The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of T’zu-hsi (1835-1908), Empress Dowager of China. 1972. London: Cardinal: 1974.
2. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. 1975. London: Quartet Books, 1978.
3. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
4. Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. 1985. London: Vintage, 1996.
5. The Mermaids in the Basement. 1993. London: Vintage, 1994.
6. [Edited] Wonder Tales: Six Stories of Enchantment. Illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer. 1994. London: Vintage, 1996.
7. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. 1994. London: Vintage, 1995.
8. No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. 1998. London: Vintage, 2000.
9. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self. 2002. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
10. Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture. 2003. London: Vintage, 2004.
11. Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights. 2011. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2012.

As you can see, they're a eclectic bunch: history, fiction, literature, folklore ... She certainly covers a lot of ground.

Marina Warner

Her ideas on transformation, cultural fluidity, gender roles, are all very persuasive, and tend to get quoted approvingly by other like-minded writers. But is she reliable? Can you trust her when it comes to tedious matters such as facts and dates?

Not always, I'm sorry to say. Let's take one small example:

Marina Warner: 'Introduction,' to The Arabian Nights (2003)

In her introduction to the Folio Society's sumptuous six-volume edition of the Mardrus/Mathers translation of the Arabian Nights, she mentions that:

In the Victorian era, adventure-explorers such as Hugh Lane and Richard Burton, both ardent lovers of Araby, produced translations based on these Arabic compilations. Their editions reflect their own attachments: Hugh Lane's is stuffed full of ethnographical details of Old Cairo (some of it densely researched and nostalgic, other parts rather fanciful): Burton's version is an almost Chattertonian exercise in auncient tongues, prolix and rococo, and is also truffled with lore (much of it salacious, earning Burton his nickname, 'Dirty Dick.'). [p.xiv]

But who is this "Hugh Lane" she is speaking of? There was a Hugh Lane (1875-1915), drowned by the sinking of the Lusitania, who is famous for having attempted to leave his priceless collection of impressionist paintings to his native country, Ireland, only to be rebuffed by the local Dublin authorities.

But the Lane Warner means is clearly Edward William Lane (1801-1876), who was indeed the first major translator of the Nights from Arabic into English. I don't think anyone has ever accused him of writing especially "nostalgically" about "Old Cairo", though - let alone "fancifully". On the contrary, his classic work on the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), remains a most informative and detailed guide to the city, compiled - as it was - in consultation with a number of local Sheikhs. His main claim to fame, however, is the comprehensive Arabic-English Lexicon, which occupied him from 1842 until his death.

Warner is on safer ground with Richard F. Burton. Her description of his work as a "Chattertonian exercise in auncient tongues" is certainly accurate enough. Fans of his version - such as myself - may feel a little affronted by her casual dismissal of this massive labour of love, but she is (of course) perfectly entitled to her opinion, which is by no means an uncommon one.

Marina Warner: Stranger Magic (2012)

A few years later, in her book Stranger Magic, she admitted having mainly relied on the most recent French translation of the Nights - by Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel, 3 vols (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2005-7) - in preference to any of the English ones. Had she actually read them? She certainly implies as much. Here, for instance, is her revised version of the paragraph quoted above:

In the Victorian era, adventure-explorers such as Edward W. Lane and Richard Burton, both ardent Arabophiles, produced translations that reflected their own attachments. Lane's, published in 1838-41, followed close on the heels of his ethnographical description of contemporary Cairo (The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1835); Lane added a huge apparatus of notes on Arab Society (some of it densely researched and nostalgic, other parts rather fanciful). The three-volume set of 1850 includes 600 engravings based on Lane's experiences in Cairo; my copy, which came originally from my great-grandmother's library, is one of the few books that I've owned and read since I was a child, and though it is pretty fustian, with Lane tranquillising so much of the book's agitated emotions and adventures, it is readable to a degree that Richard Burton's lurid and archaising version, made fifty years later, never reaches. [p.18]

It's not for me to cast any doubt on the passage referring to her childhood reading of Lane. It just seems a bit odd that someone who didn't even know (or bother to check) his first name a decade before, should treasure a copy of his translation as "one of the few books that I've owned and read since I was a child."

The snap judgements of the first version of the passage remain - "rather fanciful," "translations that reflected their own attachments" - though she has softened some of the more egregious epithets: "lovers of Araby" has become "Arabophiles", and Burton's version is now "lurid and archaising" rather than "an almost Chattertonian exercise in auncient tongues, prolix and rococo ... truffled with lore (much of it salacious ...)."

I certainly don't question Warner's choice of texts to base her discussion on. I, too, am an admirer of the wonderful new French translation: It's just difficult to continue to believe in the reliability of a scholar who was hazy about E. W. Lane's first name - and certainly seems never to have read extensively in Burton's work - as a reliable guide to the intricacies of one of the world's longest books, with a complex textual history which spans cultures and continents as well as millennia of analogues.

In other words, beguiling as so many of Warner's generalisations and juxtapositions are, none of her statements - especially those centred around dates and names - can be trusted without further research. Which is really not much use. Even historical and cultural popularisers (a very worthwhile calling, IMHO) should be careful to check their facts. What exactly are they popularising, otherwise?

•


Helen Sword: Ghostwriting Modernism (2002)

My final exhibit is the book Ghostwriting Modernism, by Auckland University Academic Helen Sword. Like Warner's, Sword's pages are plastered her pages with allusions and lists of possible parallels. Unlike Warner's, though, her notes are a carefully composed repository of bibliographical leads and further information.

In terms of readability, it's probably no accident that Warner's book flew off the shelves whereas Sword's is obtainable only in university libraries and from specialist booksellers. If it weren't for my fascination with its subject-matter - the manifestation of spiritualist tropes in such canonical authors as Joyce, Yeats, Eliot, H. D., Plath and Hughes - I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it myself.

But, having now done so, I've shelved it close to hand for further consultation. This is a book which is more than the sum of its parts. It opens perspectives on masses of further work on such fascinating exhibits as James Merrill's Ouija-board epic The Changing Light at Sandover, or the spirit messages from dead RAF pilots which H. D. collected in the latter years of the Second World War, which have proved such an embarrassment to many of her admirers.

Everyone already knew that Yeats was a convinced Occultist, but simply collecting - in convenient form - so much data on the phenomena of 'ghostliness' in such mainstream twentieth century writers makes it almost impossible to continue to sideline it as some kind of individual aberration on the part of each of them.

That's not to say that there isn't something a bit loony about Sylvia and Ted crouched over the Ouija board receiving messages from the great unknown. But it certainly isn't nearly as odd and uncommon as many critics would like to believe. Did they do it, like Yeats, to access new "metaphors for poetry"? Or was it something more serious for them? All this, and much more, is discussed judiciously, and with ample cross-referencing, by Helen Sword.

Helen Sword

Fast-thinkers or Ghostwriters? So many books now fall into the first category, I'm afraid. You start to read them, only to become gradually aware that they're little more than condensations of the idées reçues [received ideas] mocked so thoroughly by Flaubert in the "Dictionnaire des idées reçues" in his posthumous novel Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881). The research is sloppy and second-hand, the editing perfunctory, and the whole thing a mere "interruption to our studies," in A. E. Housman's devastating phrase.

Think of all those war books which keep on flopping out year after year: Martin Middlebrook's The First Day on the Somme (1971) was regarded as a seminal and revisionist work when it first appeared some fifty years ago now. Now, of course, further research has thrown in doubt many of its conclusions, but do we really need successive legions of books with more or less the same title, gloatingly recounting the same devastating events?

There's a furtive voyeurism about the worst of these books. They look like real books - their publishers try hard to make them resemble genuine historical works - but actually they're just rehashes of the same tired clichés. How many hacks have written books designed to show that Sir Douglas Haig was a great general, a genius on the level of Napoleon or Marlborough? He won, didn't he? And he was British, after all.

The trouble is that the real books concealed in this crimson tide of white noise, those based on real research and genuine new thinking, increasingly seldom emerge from the ruck. Ghostwriting Modernism is such a book. It's not perfect by any means - but it's certainly based on careful reading over many years. Stranger Magic, despite all the extravagant encomia reprinted on its cover ("a flying carpet of a book" - Jeanette Winterson), is, I'm afraid, not. It's hard, even, to say what it's actually about. Does it have a point? Or a theme? If so, I'm not really clear what it is, despite having read it assiduously from cover to cover.

And, when it comes to new books about the Arabian Nights, I can assure you that I'm not a particularly critical reader. Pretty much any and all authors of such can rely on me as a captive audience!

Ghost Writing Book

•

Henry Torrens: The Forgotten Man of the 1001 Nights

Henry Whitelock Torrens (1806-1852)

Should you ever have occasion to look up the name of Henry Torrens on Wikipedia, you may have some difficulty actually locating him. You'll find Major-General Sir Henry Torrens KCB, author of that standard textbook Field Exercise and Evolutions of the Army (1824):

Sir Henry Torrens (1779-1828)

Chances are you'll also find his grandson, the even more eminent Lieutenant General Sir Henry D'Oyley Torrens KCB KCMG, without too much trouble:

Felice Beato: Henry D'Oyley Torrens (1833-1889)

What you won't find, unless you look very hard indeed, is the entry on Henry Whitelock Torrens, son of the first, and father of the second of the military gentlemen listed above:

Henry Whitelock Torrens (20 May 1806 – 16 August 1852), son of Major-General Henry Torrens, was born on 20 May 1806. He received his B.A. at Christ Church, Oxford (where he was a president of the United Debating Society), and entered the Inner Temple. After a short service under the Foreign Office, he obtained a writership from the Court of Directors of the East India Company and arrived in India in November 1828 and held various appointments at Meerut. In 1835 he joined the Secretariat, in which he served in several departments under Sir William Hay Macnaghten. In 1839 he assisted in the editing of the Calcutta Star, a weekly paper, which became a daily paper called the Eastern Star. He was secretary (1840–1846) and a Vice-President (1843–1845) to the Asiatic Society of Bengal (now the Asiatic Society). In December 1846, he was appointed Agent to the Governor-General at Murshidabad. Here in his endeavours to improve the Nizamat administration, his relations with the Nawab Nizam and his officials became greatly strained.
He was a clever essayist as well as a journalist and scholar, and his scattered papers were deservedly collected and published at Calcutta in 1854.
Torrens died of dysentery at Calcutta while on a visit to the Governor-General on 16 August 1852 and was buried in the Lower Circular Road Cemetery.

A bit of a nobody, one might feel tempted to conclude: a lawyer and journalist, who died young, leaving behind a son and a pile of "scattered papers."

What this entry fails to mention, however, is his importance as the author of the first serious attempt at a complete English translation of the 1001 Nights from the Arabic. He is included on the page devoted to Translations of One Thousand and One Nights, however:

Henry Torrens translated the first fifty nights from Calcutta II, which were published in 1838. Having heard that Edward William Lane began his own translation, Torrens abandoned his work.

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)

There's a bit more to it than that, however. Luckily Richard Burton, in the preface to his own complete 1885 translation of the collection, is somewhat more expansive:

At length in 1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer ("of the Inner Temple") and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right direction; and began to translate, "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," (1 vol., 8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.) from the Arabic of the Ægyptian (!) MS. edited by Mr. (afterwards Sir) William H. Macnaghten. The attempt, or rather the intention, was highly creditable; the copy was carefully moulded upon the model and offered the best example of the verbatim et literatim style. But the plucky author knew little of Arabic, and least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt and Syria. His prose is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the shrine of letter; and his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner of Hibernian whoop which is comical when it should be pathetic. Lastly he printed only one volume of a series which completed would have contained nine or ten.

- Richard F. Burton, "The Translator's Foreword." A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 10 vols. Benares: Kamashastra Society, 1885. vol.1: xi.

You'll note that his wikipedia entry above made no mention of Torrens' Irish antecedents. Burton's remarks about the "Hibernian whoop" in his verses underlines it rather patronisingly ("plucky" seems a rather belitting epithet to apply to a fellow author, also). The curious thing is that Burton himself was often discriminated against as an Irishman by his intensely class and caste-conscious English contemporaries. Whilst he himself was born in Torquay, both of his parents were of Irish extraction.

Anyway, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, here are the title-pages of Torrens' two principal publications. Fortunately both are readily available online as free e-texts:

Henry W. Torrens: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1838)


1. Torrens, Henry. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: From the Arabic of the Aegyptian Ms. as edited by Wm Hay Macnaghten, Esqr., Done into English by Henry W. Torrens. Calcutta: W. Thacker & Co. / London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1838.




James Hume: A Selection from the Writings of the late Henry W. Torrens (1854)


2. Hume, James, ed. A Selection from the Writings, Prose and Poetical, of the late Henry W. Torrens, Esq., B.A., Bengal Civi Service, and of the Inner Temple; with a Biographical Memoir. 2 vols. Calcutta & London: R. C. Lepage & Co., 1854.

The editor of the second of these volumes explains that:

I have taken nearly all the poetry from the volume of the Arabian Nights ... because I found selection most difficult where all appeared good. The book is out of print, or nearly so I believe, and the severest critic will not blame me for preserving what otherwise might soon have been lost, or at any rate difficult to procure.

So who's correct? Did Torrens have any poetic talent or not? Burton (of course) had a tendency to play down the merits of any possible rivals. He himself has a reputation as a most execrable versifier (unlike his fellow Nights translator, John Payne).

William Harvey: The Ifrit and the Lady (1839)

Perhaps, then, you should judge for yourselves:

Then they both gave her rings from off their hands, and she said to them, "This Ufreet carried me off secretly on the night of my marriage, and put me into a coffer, and placed the coffer in a chest, and put on the chest seven strong locks, and laid me low in the midst of the roaring sea, the ever restless in the dashing of waves; yet he does not know that when a woman desires aught, there is nothing can prevail against her, as certain poets say.

"With confidence no women grace,
Nor trust an oath that's given by them;
Passion's the source and resting place,
Of anger and joy with them;
False love they show with lying face,
But ’neath the cloak all's guile with them;
In Yoosoof's story you may trace,
Some of the treacheries rife in them;
See ye not father Adam's case?
He was driven forth by cause of them.

Certain poets too have said,

“But alas! for you, who blame me
Fix the blamed one in his fault!
Is the sin with which you shame me,
Great and grievous as you call't?
Say, I be indeed a lover,
Have I done aught greater crime
Than in all men you discover,
Even from the olden time?
Ne'er at earthly thing I'll wonder,
Whatsoe'er the marvel be,
Till on one I chance to blunder
Scaped from woman's wile scot free."

The passage above comes from the frame-story to the Nights, where the two brothers Shahryar and Shahzaman, having executed their wives for adultery, are riding out to try and discover a virtuous woman. This one, even though she was abducted on her wedding night by a seemingly all-powerful Ifrit, has still managed to cuckold him more than 500 times.

Albert Letchford: The Ifrit and the Lady (1897)

Here's Burton's 1885 version of the same passage:

When they had drawn their two rings from their hands and given them to her, she said to them, "Of a truth this Ifrit bore me off on my bride-night, and put me into a casket and set the casket in a coffer and to the coffer he affixed seven strong padlocks of steel and deposited me on the deep bottom of the sea that raves, dashing and clashing with waves; and guarded me so that I might remain chaste and honest, quotha! that none save himself might have connexion with me. But I have lain under as many of my kind as I please, and this wretched Jinni wotteth not that Destiny may not be averted nor hindered by aught, and that whatso woman willeth the same she fulfilleth however man nilleth. Even so saith one of them:—

'Rely not on women;
Trust not to their hearts,
Whose joys and whose sorrows
Are hung to their parts!
Lying love they will swear thee
Whence guile ne'er departs:
Take Yusuf for sample
'Ware sleights and 'ware smarts!
Iblis ousted Adam
(See ye not?) thro' their arts.'

And another saith:—

'Stint thy blame, man! 'Twill drive to a passion without bound;
My fault is not so heavy as fault in it hast found.
If true lover I become, then to me there cometh not
Save what happened unto many in the by-gone stound.
For wonderful is he and right worthy of our praise
Who from wiles of female wits kept him safe and kept him sound.'"

John Tenniel: The Sleeping Genie and the Lady (1865)

And here's John Payne's (1882):

So each of them took off a ring and gave it to her. And she said to them, "Know that this genie carried me off on my wedding night and laid me in a box and shut the box up in a glass chest, on which he clapped seven strong locks and sank it to the bottom of the roaring stormy sea, knowing not that nothing can hinder a woman, when she desires aught, even as says one of the poets:

I rede thee put no Faith in womankind,
Nor trust the oaths they lavish all in vain:
For on the satisfaction of their lusts
Depend alike their love and their disdain.
They proffer lying love, but perfidy
Is all indeed their garments do contain.
Take warning, then, by Joseph's history,
And how a woman sought to do him bane;
And eke thy father Adam, by their fault
To leave the groves of Paradise was fain.

Or as another says:

Out on yon! blame confirms the blamed one in his way.
My fault is not so great indeed as you would say.
If I'm in love, forsooth, my case is but the same
As that of other men before me, many a day.
For great the wonder were if any man alive
From women and their wiles escape unharmed away!"

My 1001 Nights Project: The Ifrit and his Stolen Bride (tumblr)

So what do you think? I certainly think it would be difficult to claim that Torrens's version was any worse than either of the others. On the contrary, it's much easier to follow, and seems to mean much the same thing. As for Burton's accusation that the former's translation exemplified "the verbatim et literatim style," it's surely the case that both Payne and Burton make far greater efforts to follow the verbal and syntactical oddities of the original Arabic.

No doubt it's true that Torrens gave up on his project when he heard that Edward W. Lane was engaged in a not dissimiar work - not knowing, perhaps, how sadly bowdlerised the resulting translation would turn out to be. There's a curious echo, there, of Burton's discovery, fifty years later, that John Payne was embarked on the same project of a complete and literal translation of The Thousand Nights and One Night.

Unlike Torrens, though, Burton did not choose to step aside meekly. Instead he offered Payne priority of publication, but then went on to issue his own extensively annotated version a year later. The embarrassing similarities between large parts of the two translations has led to accusations of plagiarism on Burton's part. Whether or not this is true, even Burton admitted that when a previous scholar has hit on the perfect way to express something, it would be needless pedantry to insist on phrasing it differently. Make of that what you will.

It does seem possible that Burton was so scornful of Torrens because the latter resembled him in so many ways: the 'un-English' exuberance of manner, the gift for languages ... Unlike Torrens, though, Burton was sent down from Oxford without a degree, and managed to antagonise almost all of his well-wishers both in India and England.

Torrens, by contrast, managed to work harmoniously even with the eminent but eccentric William Hay Macnaghten, whose four-volume edition of the Arabic text of the 1001 Nights - the basis for his own translation - remains a monumental and irreplaceable work.

Wm H. Macnaghten, ed.: The Alif Laila, or Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1839-42)

Of course, to anyone familiar with the history of nineteenth-century India, and particularly the ill-judged 1839 invasion of Afghanistan, Macnaghten is better known as the blundering political officer who was captured and killed by the Afghans in December 1841, shortly before the disastrous retreat from Kabul - generally thought to be among the worst military disasters in British history.

Macnaghten has a cameo role in the section devoted to the Afghanistan debacle in George MacDonald Fraser's irreverent but highly readable pisstake version of imperial history Flashman (1969), which purports to be the memoirs of the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays.

George MacDonald Fraser: Flashman (1839-42)

Interestingly enough, the city I live in, Auckland, is named after George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, Governor-General of India between 1836 and 1842, whose other great claim to fame is principal responsibility for the Afghanistan disaster.

My father could never walk past the toga'd statue of the great fool - originally erected in Calcutta in 1848, but donated to our city in 1969 - without shaking his fist and calling down curses upon his name.

The connections are all there, once you're ready to see them.

Lord Auckland (1848)