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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But the Edinburgh knows nothing of these things, and the âdecent gentleman,â
like the lady who doth protest overmuch, persistently fixes his eye upon a single side of the shield.â Probably no European has ever gathered such an appalling collection of degrading customs and statistics of vice as is contained in Captain Burtonâs translation of the âArabian Nightsâ (p. 185). He finds in the case of Mr. Payne, like myself, âno adequate justification for flooding the world (!) with an ocean of filthâ (ibid.) showing that he also can be (as said the past-master of catchwords, the primus verborum artifex) âan interested rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.â But audi alteram partemâmy view of the question. I have no apology to make for the details offered to the students of Moslem usages and customs, who will find in them much to learn and more to suggest the necessity of learning. On no wise ashamed am I of lecturing upon these esoteric matters, the most important to humanity, at a time when their absence from the novel of modern society veils with a double gloom the night-side of human nature. Nay, I take pride to myself for so doing in the face of silly prejudice and miserable hypocrisy, and I venture to hold myself in the light of a public benefactor. In fact, I consider my labours as a legacy bequeathed to my countrymen at a most critical time when England the puissantest of Moslem powers is called upon, without adequate knowledge of the Moslemâs inner life, to administer Egypt as well as to rule India. And while Pharisee and Philister may be or may pretend to be âshockedâ and âhorrifiedâ by my pages, the sound common sense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of the early xixth century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and ample justice.
In p. 184 the Reviewer sneers at me for writing âRoumâ in lieu of Rum or Rïżœm; but what would the latter have suggested to the home-reader save a reference to the Jamaican drink? He also corrects me (vol. v. 248) in the matter of the late Mr. Emanuel Deutsch (p. 184), who excised âour Saviourâ from the article on the Talmud reprinted amongst his literary remains. The Reviewer, or inspirer of the Review, let me own, knew more of Mr. Deutsch than I, a simple acquaintance, could know; but perhaps he does not know all, and if he did he probably would not publish his knowledge. The truth is that Mr. Deutsch was, during his younger years, a liberal, nay, a latitudinarian in religion, differing little from the so-styled âChristian Unitarian.â But when failing health drove him to Egypt and his hour drew nigh he became (and all honour to him!) the scrupulous and even fanatical Hebrew of the Hebrews; he consorted mainly with the followers and divines of his own faith, and it is said that he ordered himself when dying to be taken out of bed and placed upon the bare floor. The âSaviourâ of the article was perhaps written in his earlier phase of religious thought, and it was excised as the end drew in sight.
âCaptain Burtonâs experience in the East seems to have obliterated any (all?) sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording disparaging estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering evidence of âfeminine devilryââ (p. 184). This argumentum ad feminam is sharpish practice, much after the manner of the Christian âFathers of the Churchâ who, themselves vehemently doubting the existence of souls non-masculine, falsely and foolishly ascribed the theory and its consequences to Mohammed and the Moslems. And here the Persian proverb holds good âHarf-i-kufr kufr nïżœstââto speak of blasphemy is not blasphemous. Curious readers will consult the article âWomanâ in my Terminal Essay (x. 167), which alone refutes this silly scandal. I never pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder man fails when He who created her was by no means successful. But in The Nights we meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose âdevilryâ I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane is as free-spoken as myself. Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such as Mazanderïżœn, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual powers of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a notable development of the crude form of polyandry popularly termed whoredom. Nor have the women of the Nile valley improved under our rule. The last time I visited Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous, threatened one morning, in a fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah Gardens, to expose her person unless bought off with a piastre. And generally the condition of womenkind throughout the Nile-valley reminded me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which characterised Afghanistïżœn during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland, and Sind after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.
âCaptain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated DâHerbelot for his informationâ (p. 184). This silly skit at the two great French Orientalists, DâHerbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a clique which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a tithe of the good work found in the Bibliothïżœque Orientale. The book was issued in an unfinished state; in many points it has been superseded, during its life of a century and a half, by modern studies, but it is still a mine of facts, and a revised edition would be a boon to students. Again, I have consulted Prof.
Palmerâs work, and the publications of the Palïżœographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find the proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer[FN#454], Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sanaâïżœ some 390 Sabaean epigraphsâa mass of new-old literature.
And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by the âextravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard Versionââa term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3 vols. 8voâthe Edinburgh delivers a parting and insolent sting. âThe different versions, however, have each its proper destinationâGalland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewersâ (p. 184). I need hardly attempt to precise the ultimate and well merited office of his article: the gall in that ink may enable it hygienically to excel for certain purposes the best of âcurl-papers.â Then our critic passes to the history of the work concerning which nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Laneâs Preface (pp. ix. xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735-47) with a few unimportant and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrïżœzïżœ, and probably from the studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191-92). Here the cult of the Uncle and Master emerges most extravagantly. âIt was Lane who first brought out the importance of the âArabian Nightsâ as constituting a picture of Moslem life and mannersâ (p. 192); thus wholly ignoring the claims of Galland, to whom and whom alone the honour is due. But almost every statement concerning the French Professor involves more or less of lapse. âIt was in 1704 that Antoine Galland, sometime of the French embassy at Constantinople, but then professor at the Collïżœge de France, presented the world with the contents of an Arab Manuscript which he had brought from Syria and which bore the title of âThe Thousand Nights and One Nightââ (p. 167), thus ignoring the famous Il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie. At that time (1704) Galland was still at Caen in the employ of âLâintendant Fouquetâ; and he brought with him no MS., as he himself expressly assures us in Preface to his first volume. Here are two telling mistakes in one page, and in the next (p. 168) we find âAs a professed translation Gallandâs âMille et une Nuitsâ (N.B. the Frenchman always wrote Mille et une Nuit)[FN#455] is an audacious fraud. âIt requires something more thanâ audacity âto offer such misstatement even in the pages of the Edinburgh, and can anything be falser than to declare âthe whole of the last fourteen tales have nothing whatever to do with the âNightsââ?
These bïżœvues, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewerâs competence to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete assertions. âThe highest authority on this point (the date) is the late Mr. Lane, who states his unqualified conviction that the tales represent the social life of mediaerval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection, though some of the tales are, he believes, rather laterâ (p. 189). Mr. Laneâs studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that âthe work was commenced and completed by one man,â or at least that âone man completed what another commenced.â With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and sentiments, which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book. He speaks of âGallandâs very imperfect MS.,â but he never took the trouble to inspect the three volumes in question which are still in
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