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

regions. The procession is given in the four-folding woodcut “Figure des Br�siliens” in Jean de Prest’s Edition of 1551.

 

[FN#424] Erotika Biblion, chaps. Kad�sch (pp. 93 et seq.), Edition de Bruxelles, with notes by the Chevalier P. Pierrugues of Bordeaux, before noticed.

 

[FN#425] Called Chevaliers de Paille because the sign was a straw in the mouth, � la Palmerston.

 

[FN#426] I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly paid and have given the reason.

 

[FN#427] Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to, p. Ix. and 593. London. Privately printed, mdccclxxix.

 

[FN#428] A friend learned in these matters supplies me with the following list of famous pederasts. Those who marvel at the wide diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its being affected by so many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have been some of the worst: Alexander of Macedon, Julius C�sar and Napoleon Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law which obliges commonplace humanity. All three are charged with the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii., Frederick ii. Of Prussia Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit. Francois Hugo) and Moliere, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the Composer), D’Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Cond�, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis Farnese, Duc de la Valli�re, De Soleinne, Count D’Avaray, Saint M�grin, D’Epernon, Admiral de la Susse La Roche-Pouchin Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Castel, Lerminin, Fiev�e, Th�odore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier Cambac�r�s, Marquis de Custine, Sainte-Beuve and Count D’Orsay. For others refer to the three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi, Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before alluded to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885. The indices will supply the names.

 

[FN#429] 0f this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii.

43), “There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character. Ab� al-Atah�yah wrote pious poems himself being an atheist; Ab� Hukayma’s verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat, Mohammed ibn H�zim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog, and Ab� Now�s hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.”

 

[FN#430] A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet injured its object: in fact it is generally the greatest favour an author’s unfriends can bestow upon him. But to notice a popular Review books which have been printed and not published is hardly in accordance with the established courtesies of literature. At the end of my work I propose to write a paper “The Reviewer Reviewed” which will, amongst other things, explain the motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the Edinburgh.

 

[FN#431] 1 For detailed examples and specimens see p. 10 of Gladwin’s “Dissertations on Rhetoric,” etd., Calcutta, 1801.

 

[FN#432] For instance: I, M. | take thee N. | to my wedded wife, | to have and to hold, | from this day forward, | for better for worse, | for richer for poorer, | in sickness and in health, | to love and to cherish, | till death do us part, etc. Here it becomes mere blank verse which is, of course, a defect in prose style. In that delightful old French the Saj’a frequently appeared when attention was solicited for the titles of books: e.g. Lea Romant de la Rose, ou tout lart damours est enclose.

 

[FN#433] See Gladwin loc. cit. p. 8: it also is = alliteration (Ibn Khall. ii., 316).

 

[FN#434] He called himself “Nabiyun umm�” = illiterate prophet; but only his most ignorant followers believe that he was unable to read and write. His last words, accepted by all traditionists, were “Aat�n� daw�ta wa kalam” (bring me ink-case and pen); upon which the Shi’ah or Persian sectaries base, not without probability, a theory that Mohammed intended to write down the name of Ali as his Caliph or successor when Omar, suspecting the intention, exclaimed, “The Prophet is delirious; have we not the Koran?” thus impiously preventing the precaution. However that may be, the legend proves that Mohammed could read and write even when not “under inspiration.” The vulgar idea would arise from a pious intent to add miracle to the miraculous style of the Koran.

 

[FN#435] I cannot but vehemently suspect that this legend was taken from much older traditions. We have Jubal the semi-mythical who, “by the different falls of his hammer on the anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the antediluvian fathers.” Then came Pythagoras, of whom Macrobius (lib. ii ) relates how this Gr�co-Egyptian philosopher, passing by a smithy, observed that the sounds were grave or acute according to the weights of the hammers; and he ascertained by experiment that such was the case when different weights were hung by strings of the same size. The next discovery was that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval, or an eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other. Belonging to the same cycle of invention-anecdotes are Galileo’s discovery of the pendulum by the lustre of the Pisan Duomo; and the kettle-lid, the falling apple and the copper hook which inspired Watt, Newton and Galvani.

 

[FN#436] To what an absurd point this has been carried we may learn from Ibn Khallik�n (i. 114). A poet addressing a single individual does not say “My friend!” or “My friends!” but “My two friends!” (in the dual) because a Badawi required a pair of companions, one to tend the sheep and the other to pasture the camels.

 

[FN#437] For further details concerning the Sabab, Watad and Fasilah, see at the end of this Essay the learned remarks of Dr.

Steingass.

 

[FN#438] e.g., the Mu’allakats of “Amriolkais,” Tarafah and Zuhayr compared by Mr. Lyall (Introduction to Translations) with the metre of Abt Vogler, e.g.,

 

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told [FN#439] e.g., the Poem of Hareth which often echoes the hexameter

 

[FN#440] Gladwin, p. 80.

 

[FN#441] Gladwin (p. 77) gives only eight, omitting F ‘ l which he or his author probably considers the Muz�haf, imperfect or apocop�d form of F ‘ l n, as M f ‘ l of M f ‘ l n. For the infinite complications of Arabic prosody the Khaf�f (soft breathing) and Sah�h (hard breathing); the Sadr and Ar�z (first and last feet), the Ibtid� and Zarb (last foot of every line); the Hashw (cushion-stuffing) or body part of verse, the ‘Am�d al-Kas�dah or Al-Musammat (the strong) and other details I must refer readers to such specialists as Freytag and Sam. Clarke (Prosodia Arabica), and to Dr. Steingass’s notes infra.

 

[FN#442] The Hebrew grammarians of the Middle Ages wisely copied their Arab cousins by turning Fa’la into Pael and so forth.

 

[FN#443] Mr. Lyall, whose “Ancient Arabic Poetry” (Williams and Norgate, 1885) I reviewed in The Academy of Oct. 3, ‘85, did the absolute reverse of what is required: he preserved the metre and sacrificed the rhyme even when it naturally suggested itself. For instance in the last four lines of No. xii. what would be easier than to write,

 

Ah sweet and soft wi’ thee her ways: bethink thee well! The day shall be

When some one favoured as thyself shall find her fair and fain and free;

And if she swear that parting ne’er shall break her word of constancy,

When did rose-tinted finger-tip with pacts and pledges e’er agree?

 

[FN#444] See p. 439 Grammatik des Arabischen Vulg�r Dialekts von �gyptian, by Dr. Wilhelm Spitta Bey, Leipzig, 1880. In pp.

489-493 he gives specimens of eleven Maw�w�l varying in length from four to fifteen lines. The assonance mostly attempts monorhyme: in two tetrastichs it is aa + ba, and it does not disdain alternates, ab + ab + ab.

 

[FN#445] Al-Siyuti, p. 235, from Ibn Khallikan. Our knowledge of oldest Arab verse is drawn chiefly from the Kat�b al-Agh�n�

(Song-book) of Abu al-Faraj the Isfah�ni who flourished A.H.

284-356 (= 897-967): it was printed at the Bulak Press in 1868.

 

[FN#446] See Lyall loc. cit. p. 97.

 

[FN#447] His Diw�n has been published with a French translation, par R. Boucher, Paris, Labitte, 1870.

 

[FN#448] I find also minor quotations from the Im�m Abu al-Hasan al-Askari (of Sarra man raa) ob. A.D. 868; Ibn Mak�la (murdered in A.D. 862?), Ibn Durayd (ob. A.D. 933) Al-Zahr the Poet (ob. A.D. 963); Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi (ob. A.D.

989), K�b�s ibn Wushmaghir (murdered in A.D. 1012-13); Ibn Nabatah the Poet (ob. A.D. 1015), Ibn al-Sa’ati (ob. A.D. 1028); Ibn Zaydun al-Andalusi who died at Hums (Emessa, the Arab name for Seville) in A.D. 1071; Al-Mu’tasim ibn Sumadih (ob. A.D.

1091), Al-Murtaza ibn al-Shahrozuri the Sufi (ob. A.D. 1117); Ibn Sara al-Shantar�ni (of Santarem) who sang of Hind and died A.D.

1123; Ibn al-Kh�zin (ob. A.D. 1124), Ibn Kalakis (ob. A D. 1172) Ibn al-Ta’wizi (ob. A.D. 1188); Ibn Zab�dah (ob. A.D. 1198), Bah�

al-D�n Zuhayr (ob A.D. 1249); Muwaffak al-Din Muzaffar (ob. A.D.

1266) and sundry others. Notices of Al-Utayyah (vol. i. 11), of Ibn al-Sum�m (vol. i. 87) and of Ibn S�hib al-Ishb�li, of Seville (vol. i. 100), are deficient. The most notable point in Arabic verse is its savage satire, the language of excited “destructiveness” which characterises the Badawi: he is “keen for satire as a thirsty man for water:” and half his poetry seems to consist of foul innuendo, of lampoons, and of gross personal abuse.

 

[FN#449] If the letter preceding W�w or Y� is moved by Fathah, they produce the diphthongs au (aw), pronounced like ou in “bout’” and se, pronounced as i in “bite.”

 

[FN#450] For the explanation of this name and those of the following terms, see Terminal Essay, p. 225.

 

[FN#451] This F�silah is more accurately called sughr�, the smaller one, there is another F�silah kubr�, the greater, consisting of four moved letters followed by a quiescent, or of a Sabab sak�l followed by a Watad majm�’. But it occurs only as a variation of a normal foot, not as an integral element in its composition, and consequently no mention of it was needed in the text.

 

[FN#452] It is important to keep in mind that the seemingly identical feet 10 and 6, 7 and 3, are distinguished by the relative positions of the constituting elements in either pair.

For as it will be seen that Sabab and Watad are subject to different kinds of alterations it is evident that the effect of such alterations upon a foot will vary, if Sabab and Watad occupy different places with regard to each other.

 

[FN#453] i.e. vertical to the circumference.

 

[FN#454] This would be a F�silah kubr� spoken of in the note p.

239.

 

[FN#455] In pause that is at the end of a line, a short vowel counts either as long or is dropped according to the exigencies of the metre. In the Hashw the u or i of the pronominal affix for the third person sing., masc., and the final u of the enlarged pronominal plural forms, humu and kumu, may be either short or long, according to the same exigencies. The end-vowel of the pronoun of the first person an�, I, is generally read short, although it is written with Alif.

 

[FN#456] On p. 236 the word ak�m�, as read by itself, was identified with the foot Fa’�lun. Here it must be read together with the following syllable as “ak�mulwaj,” which is Maf�’�lun.

 

[FN#457] Prof. Palmer, p. 328 of his Grammar, identifies this form of the W�fir, when every Muf�’ alatum