The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 16 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (best love story novels in english .TXT) đ
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7,, etc.). Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, âAll the Persian and the Kurd Sharperâ (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of ârespectability;â and the classical series, an Arabian âPilpay,â
entitled âKing Jaliâďż˝d of Hind and his Wazir Shimasâ (iv. 32). Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which destroyed in it half the âspirit of the East.â Mr. Lane had no gift of verse or rhyme: he must have known that the ten thousand lines of the original Nights formed a striking and necessary contrast with the narrative part, acting as aria to recitativo. Yet he rendered them only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even the balanced style of the French translations. He can be excused only for one considerationâbad prose is not so bad as bad verse.
The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is followed (p.
176) by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John Payne, who first taught the world what The Nights really is. We are told that the author (like myself) âunfortunately did not know Arabic;â and we are not told that he is a sound Persian scholar: however, âhe undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the language(!) to understand The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the earlier translations of (by?) Torrens and Lane,â the former having printed only one volume out of some fifteen. This critic thinks proper now to ignore the âold English wall-papers,â of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the translator of Villon, a âgenius for language,â a âsingular robust and masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted with archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force or brilliancyâ (p. 177). With plausible candour he also owns that the version âis a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literalâ (p. 178). Thus the author is damned with faint praise by one who utterly fails to appreciate the portentous difference between linguistic genius and linguistic mediocrity, and the Reviewer proceeds, âa careful collationâ (we have already heard what his âcarefulâ means) âof the different versions with their originals leads us to the conclusion that Mr. Payneâs version is little less faithful than Laneâs in those parts which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering as is desirableâ (p. 178). Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil! I assert and am ready to support that the âVillon versionâ is incomparably superior to Laneâs not only in its simple, pure and forcible English, but also in its literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly free from the blunders and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure Torrens, and which are rarely absent from Lane. I also repeat that wherever the style and the subject are the most difficult to treat, Mr. Payne comes forth most successfully from the contest, thus giving the best proof of his genius and capacity for painstaking. Of the metrical part, which makes the Villon version as superior to Laneâs as virgin gold to German silver, the critique offers only three inadequate specimens specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that âthe verse is nothing remarkableâ (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes âled into extreme liberties with the originalâ (ibid.). Not a word of praise for mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!
Butâand there is a remarkable power in this particleâMr. Payneâs work is ârestricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what booksellersâ catalogues describe as facetiďż˝ââ (p. 179); for âwhen an Arabic word is unknown to the literary languageâ (what utter imbecility!), âand belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutterâ (which the most âelegantâ
writers most freely employ), âMr. Payne laboriously searches out a corresponding term in English âBillingsgate,â and prides himself upon an accurate reproduction of the tone of the originalâ (p. 178). This is a remarkable twisting of the truth. Mr. Payne persisted, despite my frequent protests, in rendering the ânursery wordsâ and the âterms too plainly expressing natural situationsâ by old English such as âkazeâ and âswive,â
equally ignored by the âgutterâ and by âBillingsgateâ: he also omitted an offensive line whenever it did not occur in all the texts and could honestly be left untranslated. But the unfact is stated for a purpose: here the Reviewer mounts the high horse and poses as the Magister Morum per excellentiam. The Battle of the Books has often been fought, the crude text versus the bowdlerised and the expurgated; and our critic can contribute to the great fray only the merest platitudes. âThere is an old and trusty saying that âevil communications corrupt good manners,â end it is a well-known fact that the discussion(?) and reading of depraved literature leads (sic) infallibly to the depravation of the readerâs mindâ (p. 179). [FN#451] I should say that the childish indecencies and the unnatural vice of the original cannot deprave any mind save that which is perfectly prepared to be depraved; the former would provoke only curiosity and amusement to see bearded men such mere babes, and the latter would breed infinitely more disgust than desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion excited by either. And most inept is the conclusion, âSo long as Mr. Payneâs translation remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole paragraphs descriptive of coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it can never stand beside Laneâs, which still remains the standard version of the Arabian Nightsâ (p. 179). Altro! No one knows better than the clique that Lane, after an artificially prolonged life of some half-century, has at last been weighed in the balance and been found wanting; that he is dying that second death which awaits the unsatisfactory worker and that his Arabian Nights are consigned by the present generation to the limbo of things obsolete and forgotten.
But if Mr. Payne is damned with poor praise and mock modesty, my version is condemned without redemptionâbeyond all hope of salvation: there is not a word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers with a chorus of kindly commendation. âThe critical battery opens with a round-shot.â
âAnother complete translation is now appearing in a surreptitious wayâ (p.
179). How âsurreptitiousâ I ask of this scribe, who ekes not the lack of reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent out some 24,000â30,000
advertisements and published my project in the literary papers? âThe amiability of the two translators (Payne and Burton) was testified by their each dedicating a volume to the other. So far as the authors are concerned nothing could be more harmonious and delightful; but the public naturally ask, What do we want with two forbidden versions?â And I again inquire, What can be done by me to satisfy this atrabilious and ill-conditioned Aristarchus? Had I not mentioned Mr. Payne, my silence would have been construed into envy, hatred and malice: if I am proud to acknowledge my friendâs noble work the proceeding engenders a spiteful sneer. As regards the âwant,â public demand is easily proved. It is universally known (except to the Reviewer who will not know) that Mr. Payne, who printed only 500 copies, was compelled to refuse as many hundreds of would be subscribers; and, when my design was made public by the Press, these and others at once applied to me. âTo issue a thousand still more objectionable copies by another and not a better handâ (notice the quip cursive!) may âseem preposterousâ (p. 180), but only to a writer so âpreposterousâ as this.
âA careful (again!) examination of Captain Burtonâs translation shows that he has not, as he pretends(!), corrected it to agree with the Calcutta text, but has made a hotch-potch of various texts, choosing one or anotherâCairo, Breslau, Macnaghten or first Calcuttaâaccording as it presented most of the âcharacteristicâ detail (note the dig in the side vicious), in which Captain Burtonâs version is peculiarly strongâ (p. 180). So in return for the severe labour of collating the four printed texts and of supplying the palpable omissions, which by turns disfigure each and every of the quartette, thus producing a complete copy of the Recueil, I gain nothing but blame. My French friend writes to me: Lorsquâil sâagit dâďż˝tablir un texte dâaprďż˝s diffďż˝rents manuscrits, il est certain quâil faut prendre pour base une-seule redaction.
Mais il nâest pas de mďż˝me dâune traduction. Il est conforme aux rďż˝gles de la saine critique littďż˝raire, de suivre tous les textes. Lane, I repeat, contented himself with the imperfect Bulak text while Payne and I preferred the Macnaghten Edition which, says the Reviewer, with a futile falsehood all his own, is âreally only a revised form of the Cairo textâ [FN#452] (ibid.).
He concludes, making me his rival in ignorance, that I am unacquainted with the history of the MS. from which the four-volume Calcutta Edition was printed (ibid.). I should indeed be thankful to him if he could inform me of its ultimate fate: it has been traced by me to the Messieurs Allen and I have vainly consulted Mr. Johnston who carries on the business under the name of that now defunct house. The MS. has clean disappeared.
âOn the other hand he (Captain Burton) sometimes omits passages which he considers(!) tautological and thereby deprives his version of the merit of completeness (e.g. vol. v. p. 327). It is needless to remark that this uncertainty about the text destroys the scholarly value of the translationâ
(p. 180). The scribe characteristically forgets to add that I have invariably noted these excised passages which are always the merest repetitions, damnable iterations of a twice-, and sometimes a thrice-told tale, and that I so act upon the great principleâin translating a work of imagination and âinducingâ
an Oriental tale, the writerâs first duty to his readers is making his pages readable.
âCaptain Burtonâs version is sometimes rather looseâ (p.180), says the critic who quotes five specimens out of five volumes and who might have quoted five hundred. This is another favourite âdodgeâ with the rogue-reviewer, who delights to cite words and phrases and texts detached from their contexts. A translator is often compelled, by way of avoiding recurrences which no English public could endure, to render a word, whose literal and satisfactory meaning he has already given, by a synonym or a homonym in no way so sufficient or so satisfactory. He charges me with rendering âSiyar, which means âdoings,â by âworks and wordsââ; little knowing that the veteran Orientalist, M. Joseph Derenbourgh (p. 98, Johannes de Capua, Directorium, etc.), renders âAkhlďż˝k-ďż˝
wa Sďż˝ratďż˝â (sing. of Siyar) by caractďż˝re et conducte, the latter consisting of deeds and speech. He objects to âKabirâ (lit.=old) being turned into very old; yet this would be its true sense were the Rďż˝wďż˝ or storyteller to lay stress and emphasis upon the word, as here I suppose him to have done. But what does the Edinburgh know of the Rďż˝wďż˝? Again I render âMalâďż˝nahâ (not the mangled Malâouna) lit. = accurst, as âdamned whore,â which I
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