Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 98

No book has done more to establish the Western stereotype of the East than the Arabian Nights. Yet the text has no single acknowledged source, no definite number of stories, no set length and no individual author. In its most extensive versions, such as the nineteenth‐century English translation by Richard Burton, or the slightly later French version by Joseph Charles Mardrus, the Nights is longer than Proust. Yet in its most authentic modern version, published in Arabic by Muhsin Mahdi in 1984 and translated into English by Hussain Haddawy in 1990, the book is less than a fifth of that length and contains only 35 stories, not including such staples of the Arabian Nights as Aladdin and Ali Baba. But that text is a translation of the oldest surviving manuscript of the stories, and it is this manuscript that was the source of the bulk of the tales contained in the original European translation. This was published by Antoine Galland (cf. IIA1) in Paris at the turn of the eighteenth century. The first two volumes of Les mille et une nuits appeared in 1704, with 10 more between then and 1717. Robert Irwin, the Orientalist scholar and author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion, is dismissive of the first English translations which rapidly followed. Yet these anonymous ‘Grub Street’ versions, bowdlerized as they were, were the motors of the stories’ first popularity in England, and it was they that had an impact on generations of eighteenth‐century English artists and writers, as Galland’s translation did on the French. The first of the English translations appeared as early as 1706, and the source of the present extracts, published in London in 1713, was already calling itself the Fourth Edition. In order to give a flavour of the tales, we have chosen two fragments. The first is from the scene‐setting ‘frame story’ in which the deceived Sultan Schahriar, having had his unfaithful wife executed, resolves to take a new wife each night, and to preclude future infidelity have her killed the following morning. The frame story also introduces the Vizier’s daughter Scheherazade and her plan to end the sultan’s depredations. The second extract overlaps the twentieth and twenty‐first nights, to give a sense of Scheherazade’s strategy for delaying her own death by promising to continue her story the next night. It also conveys a hint of the exotic setting of the tales, with a description of opulent interiors, exquisite decoration, precious stones and, of course, a garden. It was this combination of sex, violence and exoticism, allied with the frisson of ‘Oriental despotism’ which laid the foundation of the Arabian Nights’ success with a European readership, a promise clearly flagged in the extended title page to the book, which we have also included. The extracts are from the anonymous Arabian Nights Entertainments, 4th edn, vol. 1, London 1713, frontispiece and pp. 16–19, 92 and 94–8.

Arabian Nights Entertainments: consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, told by The Sultaness of the Indies, to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a Bloody Vow he had made to Marry a Lady every day, and have her cut off next morning, to avenge himself for the disloyalty of his first Sultaness etc., containing a better Account of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz. Tartars, Persians and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto publish’d. Translated into French from the Arabian MSS. by M. Galland of the Royal Academy; and now done into English.

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Well Brother … don’t you agree that there’s no Wickedness equal to that of Women? Yes, Brother, answers the King … For my part, I know a Method by which I think I shall keep inviolable the Faith that any Wife shall plight to me. I will say no more of it at present, but you will hear of it in a little Time. […]

The news of the Sultan’s return being spread, the Courtiers came betimes in the morning before his Pavilion to wait on him. He ordered them to enter, received them with a more pleasant Air than formerly, and gave each of them a Gratification. After which he told ’em, he would go no further, ordered them to take Horse, and returned speedily to his Palace.

As soon as ever he arriv’d he run to the Sultaness’s Apartment, commanded her to be bound before him, and delivered her to his Grand Vizier, with an Order to strangle her, which was accordingly executed by that Minister without enquiring into her Crime. The enraged Prince did not stop here, he cut off the Heads of all the Sultaness’s ladies with his own Hand. After this rigorous Punishment, being perswaded that no Woman was Chaste, he resolved, in order to prevent the Disloyalty of such as he should afterwards marry to wed one every Night, and have her strangled next Morning. Having imposed this cruel Law upon himself, he swore that he would observe it immediately….

Schahriar ordered his Grand Vizier to bring him the Daughter of one of his Generals. The Vizier obey’d; the Sultan lay with her, and putting her next Morning in his Hands again in order to be strangled, commanded him to get him another next Night. Whatever reluctancy the Vizier had to put such Orders into execution, as he owed blind Obedience to the Sultan his Master, he was forced to submit. He brought him the daughter of a Subaltern, whom he also cut off next Day. After her he brought a Citizen’s Daughter; and, in a word, there was every Day a Maid married and a Wife murdered. […]

The Grand Vizier who, as has already been said, was the Executioner of this horrid Injustice against his will, had two Daughters, the eldest called Scheherazade, and the youngest Dinarzade; the latter was a Lady of very great Merit, but the Elder had Courage, Wit and Penetration infinitely above her Sex; she had read abundance and had such a prodigious Memory that she never forgot any thing. She had successively applied her self to Philosophy, Physick, History, and the Liberal Arts; and for Verse exceeded the best Poets of her Time. Besides this she was a perfect Beauty, and all her fine Qualifications were crowned by solid Vertue.

The Vizier passionately loved a Daughter so worthy of his tender Affection; and one day as they were discoursing together, she says to him, Father, I have one Favour to beg of you, and most humbly pray you to grant it me. I will not refuse it, answers he, provided it be Just and Reasonable. For the Justice of it, says she, there can be no Question, and you may judge of it by the Motive which obliges me to demand it of you. I have a Design to stop the Course of that Barbarity which the Sultan exercises upon the Families of this City.

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