Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by the
"extravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard Version"--a
term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3 vols. 8vo--the
Edinburgh delivers a parting and insolent sting. "The different versions,
however, have each its proper destination--Galland for the nursery, Lane for
the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers" (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 "curl-papers." Then our critic passes to the history of the work
concerning which nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Lane's
Preface (pp. ix. xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735-47) with a few
unimportant and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrízí, and probably from
the studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191-92). Here the cult of the Uncle
and Master emerges most extravagantly. "It was Lane who first brought out the
importance of the 'Arabian Nights' as constituting a picture of Moslem life
and manners" (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. "It was in 1704 that Antoine
Galland, sometime of the French embassy at Constantinople, but then professor
at the Collége de France, presented the world with the contents of an Arab
Manuscript which he had brought from Syria and which bore the title of 'The
Thousand Nights and One Night'" (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 "L'intendant Fouquet"; 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 "As a professed
translation Galland's 'Mille et une Nuits' (N.B. the Frenchman always wrote
Mille et une Nuit)[FN#455] is an audacious fraud. "It requires something more
than" audacity "to offer such misstatement even in the pages of the Edinburgh,
and can anything be falser than to declare "the whole of the last fourteen
tales have nothing whatever to do with the 'Nights'"?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account