The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by thirteen historiettes all apparently historical: compare “Hind, daughter of Al-Nu’man” (vol. viii. 7-145) and “Isaac of Mosul and the Devil” (vol. vii. 136-139) with Al Mas’udi v. 365 and vi.

340. They end in two long detective-tales like those which M.

Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Dalilah and the Adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, “One thief wots another.” The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii.

329), seems to have been a noted character: Al-Mas’udi says (viii. 175) “in a word this Shaykh (Al-‘Uk�b) outrivalled in his rogueries and the ingenuities of his wiles D�llah (Dalilah?) the Crafty and other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and modern.”

The Tale of Ardashir (vol. vii. 209-264) lacks originality: we are now entering upon a series of pictures which are replicas of those preceding. This is not the case with that charming Undine, Juln�r the Seaborn (vol. vii. 264-308) which, like Abdullah of the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix. Night cmxl.), describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat resembling Swift’s inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind. Sayf al-Mul�k (vol. viii. Night dcclviii.), the romantic tale of two lovers, shows by its introduction that it was originally an independent work and it is known to have existed in Persia during the eleventh century: this novella has found its way into every Moslem language of the East even into Sindi, which calls the hero “Sayfal.” Here we again meet the Old Man of the Sea or rather the Shaykh of the Seaboard and make acquaintance with a Jinn whose soul is outside his body: thus he resembles Hermotimos of Klazamunae in Apollonius, whose spirit left his mortal frame � discretion. The author, philanthropically remarking (vol. viii. 4) “Knowest thou not that a single mortal is better, in Allah’s sight than a thousand Jinn?” brings the wooing to a happy end which leaves a pleasant savour upon the mental palate.

Hasan of Bassorah (vol. viii. 7-145) is a Master Shoetie on a large scale like Sindbad, but his voyages and travels extend into the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world.

Though long the tale is by no means wearisome and the characters are drawn with a fine firm hand. The hero with his hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting and versifying is interesting enough and proves that “Love can find out the way.”

The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness; the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman, and the manners and customs of Amazon land are outlined with a lifelike vivacity.

Khal�fah the next tale (vol. viii. 147-184) is valuable as a study of Eastern life, showing how the fisherman emerges from the squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Caliph’s favourite cup-companions. Ali Nur al-Din (vol. viii. 264) and King Jali’ad (vol. ix., Night dcccxciv) have been noticed elsewhere and there is little to say of the concluding stories which bear the evident impress of a more modern date.

Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest. “Whatever might have been the intention of their author, these tales are made instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our passions and reason are equally interested.”

We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales. Viewed as a tout ensemble in full and complete form, they are a drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is vanquished and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are a panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and goblins, men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth; where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic: where King and Prince meet fisherman and pauper, lamia and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the bawd and the pimp; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchee-poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor and where the sweep is bedded with the noble lady. And the characters are “finished and quickened by a few touches swift and sure as the glance of sunbeams.” The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground caves and deadlywolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid; seas dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys of the Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean; the duello, the battle and the siege; the wooing of maidens and the marriage-rite. All the splendour and squalor, the beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and the mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are here: its pictures of the three great Arab passions, love, war and fancy, entitle it to be called “Blood, Musk and Hashish.”[FN#293] And still more, the genius of the story-teller quickens the dry bones of history, and by adding Fiction to Pact revives the dead past: the Caliphs and the Caliphate return to Baghdad and Cairo, whilst Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of every tenement and allows our curious glances to take in the whole interior. This is perhaps the best proof of their power. Finally, the picture-gallery opens with a series of weird and striking adventures and shows as a tail-piece, an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in halls before reeking with lust and blood.

I have noticed in my Foreword that the two main characteristics of The Nights are Pathos and Humour, alternating with highly artistic contrast, and carefully calculated to provoke tears and smiles in the coffee-house audience which paid for them. The sentimental portion mostly breathes a tender passion and a simple sadness: such are the Badawi’s dying farewell (vol i. 75); the lady’s broken heart on account of her lover’s hand being cut off (vol. i. 277); the Wazir’s death, the mourner’s song and the “tongue of the case” (vol. ii. 10); the murder of Princess Abr�zah with the babe sucking its dead mother’s breast (vol. ii.

128); and, generally, the last moments of good Moslems (e. g.

vol. 167), which are described with inimitable terseness and na�vet�. The sad and the gay mingle in the character of the good Hammam-stoker who becomes Roi Crotte and the melancholy deepens in the Tale of the Mad Lover (vol. v. 138); the Blacksmith who could handle fire without hurt (vol. v. 271); the Devotee Prince (vol. v. iii) and the whole Tale of Az�zah (vol. ii. 298), whose angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv.

125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol.

v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN#294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the past and the vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of melancholy, of majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached in Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Brass (vol.

vi. 83): the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe; it is one long wail of despair which echoes long and loud in the hearer’s heart.

In my Foreword I have compared the humorous vein of the comic tales with our northern “wut,” chiefly for the dryness and slyness which pervade it. But it differs in degree as much as the pathos varies. The staple article is Cairene “chaff,” a peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers: instances of this are found in the Cock and Dog (vol. i. 22), the Eunuch’s address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir’s exclamation, “Too little pepper!” (vol. i. 246), the self-communing of Judar (vol. vi. 219), the Hashish-eater in Ali Sh�r (vol. iv. 213), the scene between the brother-Wazirs (vol. i.

197), the treatment of the Gobbo (vol. i. 221, 228), the Water of Zemzem (vol. i. 284), and the Eunuchs Bukhayt and Kafur[FN#295]

(vol. ii. 49, 51). At times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of rollicking Rabelaisian humour underlaid by the caustic mother-wit of Sancho Panza, as in the orgie of the Ladies of Baghdad (vol.

i. 92, 93); the Holy Ointment applied to the beard of Luka the Knight— “unxerunt regem Salomonem” (vol. ii. 222); and Ja’afar and the Old Badawi (vol. v. 98), with its reminiscence of “chaffy” King Amasis. This reaches its acme in the description of ugly old age (vol. v. 3); in The Three Wishes, the wickedest of satires on the alter sexus (vi. 180); in Ali the Persian (vol.

iv. 139); in the Lady and her Five Suitors (vol. vi. 172), which corresponds and contrasts with the dully told Story of Upakosa and her Four Lovers of the Kath� (p. 17); and in The Man of Al-Yaman (vol. iv. 245) where we find the true Falstaffian touch.

But there is sterling wit, sweet and bright, expressed without any artifice of words, in the immortal Barber’s tales of his brothers, especially the second, the fifth and the sixth (vol. i.

324, 325 and 343). Finally, wherever the honest and independent old debauchee Abu Nowas makes his appearance the fun becomes fescennine and milesian.

B.—The Manner of the Nights.

And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the language and style of The Nights. The first point to remark is the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot but suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of successors.[FN#296] The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise-en-sc�ne, gives the amplest raison d’�tre of the work, which thus has all the unity required for a great romantic recueil. We perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Kath�

Sarit S�gara,[FN#297] which is at once so like and so unlike The Nights: here the preamble is insufficient; the whole is clumsy for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should be strung[FN#298]; and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon the reader, who cannot remember the sequence without taking notes.

As was said in my Foreword “without The Nights no Arabian Nights!” and now, so far from holding the pauses “an intolerable interruption to the narrative,” I attach additional importance to these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into long and intricate stories. Indeed beginning again I should adopt the plan of the Cal. Edit. opening and