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Entry tags:
Fabulous
Jun 2009
The Arabian Nights - tr. Husain Haddawy - Norton, 1995
* * * *
The original twelfth century Syrian manuscript of The Arabian Nights would make a good subject for the General Ignorance section of QI. For a start, there are only 271 nights, not 1001. Secondly, the stories that most people associate with it - Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp - do not appear. The reason is interesting and says a lot about western attitudes to Arab culture. Aladdin and Ali Baba were added in the eighteenth century by the first western translator of the Arabic text, Antoine Galland, based on stories he had heard from a Syrian Christian called Hanna Diab. To be fair he was simply following in the footsteps of some Ethiopian copyists who had also supplemented the original with stories from other sources (Sinbad is one of these), but even so it shows a lack of respect for the text that would not be tolerated nowadays. Worse, later scholars translated Galland's French versions of the added stories back into Arabic and passed them off as originals. Academic fraud, it seems, is nothing new.
Translations into English were not much better, veering between Payne's prudish version which excluded passages that conflicted with his own observations of Arab life, and Burton's sensational rendering that only avoided falling foul of indecency laws because it was printed in a private edition. It is good, therefore, that we finally have an unfussy scholarly translation that makes a bonfire of the accretions. What emerges phoenix-like from the flames is a set of stories that are relatively unknown but are more evocative because of the consistent view of the world that they present.
This is, of course, the world of the mediaeval Middle East, and the tales share what we would see as the flaws of that society. Women feature prominently but for the most part in very traditional roles of temptress or love interest rather than protagonist. One big exception is the famous framing narrative of Scheherazade (rendered here more accurately but prosaically as Sharazad), who tames King Shahrayar's homicidal tendencies towards women by engrossing him with chains of stories with soap opera-like cliff-hangers. To be honest, as a tactic it lacks plausibility; each "night" is only a few pages long, and even with the most extreme elaborations it is impossible to imagine it would keep the king awake until dawn. Nor are many of the cliffhangers that dramatic by modern standards. As a literary device it is probably best regarded as akin to a repeated chorus in a poem (or a convenient break point for parents reading their children a bedtime story). Nonetheless there are a couple of interesting features in the original; firstly, there is the origin of Sharayar's mysogyny, which is his cuckolding by his first wife and a black slave, as observed by his visiting brother who has himself just killed his wife for sleeping with the cook. Then there is the heroine of the Scheherazade tale that no-one mentions - her sister Dinarzad, whose repeated requests for a story and praise for the tale just told give Scheherazade her opportunity to trail the following installment (though quite what she is doing in the king's bed-chamber every night is never explained). Like the framing pilgrimage of the Canterbury Tales, Scheherazade's story breaks off after the 271st night and we do not learn the outcome of her placatory endeavours. The traditional happy ending is a later accretion.
The attitude to human imperfections expressed in several of the stories is also unattractive. Hunchbacks and other people with disabilities are figures of fun and are often treated cruelly; clearly the attitude was that they were not beloved of God and therefore fair game for trickery and deceit. Though the story of the dead hunchback and the five people who confess to killing him has a certain black humour, and nicely illustrates the multi-faith nature of Arabic culture (the confessees include a Christian broker, a Jewish money-lender, a king's steward and a tailor and his wife).
Those expecting the monsters and magic of Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba (as I was) will be disappointed. Several of the stories feature enchantments and djinnis (demons) and the final tale involves a kingdom whose denizens live under the sea, but for the most part the stories are set firmly in the real world. The protagonists are an interesting spread of characters from all walks of society, though it is interesting that only the high status characters are given names, the others being referred to by their occupations (fisherman, steward and so on). Many of the stories reflect the absolute power of the ruler, and it is telling that most of the stories that have happy endings do so because the caliph is amused and forgives the wrong-doers. Where he doesn't, as in the romance of Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Bakkar and the slave girl Shams al-Nahar, things don't turn out so well.
One aspect of the translation that didn't quite work for me was the way in which the protagonists frequently burst into poetry. One has to admire Haddawy's diligence is distinguishing between the "high" and "low" poetical forms that occur in the original with deliberately inspired or hackneyed translations, but with my cloth ear for poetry I sometimes cannot tell the difference. Take this example from the Story of the Two Viziers, spoken by a mother whose son has disappeared and who is mourning at his memorial:
O tomb, O tomb, has he his beauties lost,
Or have you lost yourself that radiant look?
O tomb, neither a garden nor a star,
The sun and moon at once how can you host?
(p 234)
It is from a serious tale and so is presumably supposed to be "high" verse, but it reads awkwardly to me. My guess is that Haddawy had to sacrifice style for accuracy.
I suspect that similar editorial decisions, combined with the alienness of mediaeval Arab society to western eyes, explain why this translation doesn't feel sufficiently entertaining to be read out loud. Given that The Arabian Nights is supposed to be the epitome of the art of story telling, that is a pity, but it is the price you pay for a reliable translation that respects the culture of the original.
The Arabian Nights - tr. Husain Haddawy - Norton, 1995
* * * *
The original twelfth century Syrian manuscript of The Arabian Nights would make a good subject for the General Ignorance section of QI. For a start, there are only 271 nights, not 1001. Secondly, the stories that most people associate with it - Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp - do not appear. The reason is interesting and says a lot about western attitudes to Arab culture. Aladdin and Ali Baba were added in the eighteenth century by the first western translator of the Arabic text, Antoine Galland, based on stories he had heard from a Syrian Christian called Hanna Diab. To be fair he was simply following in the footsteps of some Ethiopian copyists who had also supplemented the original with stories from other sources (Sinbad is one of these), but even so it shows a lack of respect for the text that would not be tolerated nowadays. Worse, later scholars translated Galland's French versions of the added stories back into Arabic and passed them off as originals. Academic fraud, it seems, is nothing new.
Translations into English were not much better, veering between Payne's prudish version which excluded passages that conflicted with his own observations of Arab life, and Burton's sensational rendering that only avoided falling foul of indecency laws because it was printed in a private edition. It is good, therefore, that we finally have an unfussy scholarly translation that makes a bonfire of the accretions. What emerges phoenix-like from the flames is a set of stories that are relatively unknown but are more evocative because of the consistent view of the world that they present.
This is, of course, the world of the mediaeval Middle East, and the tales share what we would see as the flaws of that society. Women feature prominently but for the most part in very traditional roles of temptress or love interest rather than protagonist. One big exception is the famous framing narrative of Scheherazade (rendered here more accurately but prosaically as Sharazad), who tames King Shahrayar's homicidal tendencies towards women by engrossing him with chains of stories with soap opera-like cliff-hangers. To be honest, as a tactic it lacks plausibility; each "night" is only a few pages long, and even with the most extreme elaborations it is impossible to imagine it would keep the king awake until dawn. Nor are many of the cliffhangers that dramatic by modern standards. As a literary device it is probably best regarded as akin to a repeated chorus in a poem (or a convenient break point for parents reading their children a bedtime story). Nonetheless there are a couple of interesting features in the original; firstly, there is the origin of Sharayar's mysogyny, which is his cuckolding by his first wife and a black slave, as observed by his visiting brother who has himself just killed his wife for sleeping with the cook. Then there is the heroine of the Scheherazade tale that no-one mentions - her sister Dinarzad, whose repeated requests for a story and praise for the tale just told give Scheherazade her opportunity to trail the following installment (though quite what she is doing in the king's bed-chamber every night is never explained). Like the framing pilgrimage of the Canterbury Tales, Scheherazade's story breaks off after the 271st night and we do not learn the outcome of her placatory endeavours. The traditional happy ending is a later accretion.
The attitude to human imperfections expressed in several of the stories is also unattractive. Hunchbacks and other people with disabilities are figures of fun and are often treated cruelly; clearly the attitude was that they were not beloved of God and therefore fair game for trickery and deceit. Though the story of the dead hunchback and the five people who confess to killing him has a certain black humour, and nicely illustrates the multi-faith nature of Arabic culture (the confessees include a Christian broker, a Jewish money-lender, a king's steward and a tailor and his wife).
Those expecting the monsters and magic of Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba (as I was) will be disappointed. Several of the stories feature enchantments and djinnis (demons) and the final tale involves a kingdom whose denizens live under the sea, but for the most part the stories are set firmly in the real world. The protagonists are an interesting spread of characters from all walks of society, though it is interesting that only the high status characters are given names, the others being referred to by their occupations (fisherman, steward and so on). Many of the stories reflect the absolute power of the ruler, and it is telling that most of the stories that have happy endings do so because the caliph is amused and forgives the wrong-doers. Where he doesn't, as in the romance of Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Bakkar and the slave girl Shams al-Nahar, things don't turn out so well.
One aspect of the translation that didn't quite work for me was the way in which the protagonists frequently burst into poetry. One has to admire Haddawy's diligence is distinguishing between the "high" and "low" poetical forms that occur in the original with deliberately inspired or hackneyed translations, but with my cloth ear for poetry I sometimes cannot tell the difference. Take this example from the Story of the Two Viziers, spoken by a mother whose son has disappeared and who is mourning at his memorial:
O tomb, O tomb, has he his beauties lost,
Or have you lost yourself that radiant look?
O tomb, neither a garden nor a star,
The sun and moon at once how can you host?
(p 234)
It is from a serious tale and so is presumably supposed to be "high" verse, but it reads awkwardly to me. My guess is that Haddawy had to sacrifice style for accuracy.
I suspect that similar editorial decisions, combined with the alienness of mediaeval Arab society to western eyes, explain why this translation doesn't feel sufficiently entertaining to be read out loud. Given that The Arabian Nights is supposed to be the epitome of the art of story telling, that is a pity, but it is the price you pay for a reliable translation that respects the culture of the original.