The New Arabian Nights

 

The New Arabian Nights
Robert Louis Stevenson
Fiction, 186 pages

The "Arabian Nights" first appeared during the 10th century before evolving into its final form during the 14th. It’s said that this lengthy work is the greatest expression of fiction from the Islamic Golden Age, an age which arose during the reign of Baghdad caliph, Harun al-Rashid who ruled from 786 until 809. This golden age ended when Mongols overtook Baghdad in 1258. Harun al-Rashid had been dead several centuries by the time he was fictionalized as a ruler who intervenes anonymously in the lives of his subjects.

Robert Louis Stevenson created a more modern version of Harun al-Rashid in his Prince Florizel of Bohemia. The prince appears in stories set in France and England, and told in a mystery/espionage tone. The tale of the Suicide Club begins two cycles of stories involving the prince. After those stories, Stevenson addresses other characters and themes. In one story a scholarly scoundrel eaks out his living during the Middle Ages,

“The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and- twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord;”

While the story cycles featuring Prince Florizel resemble the mystery/espionage genre, the collection overall is genre free — or perhaps hinting of genre without being confined by it. The stories also have a fairytale-like quality as do the original Arabian Nights. However, fairytales tend to generalise, but these tales come with the details filled in. Still, like fairytales, they tug at the corners of reality enough to matter. Each story finds an unexpected destination, yet one that evolves naturally from what comes before.

Best eBook version of the Nights

This post, originally written in winter 2013 is rewritten below in winter 2021.

In order to base stories on the Arabian Nights one must be somewhat familiar with them. I sought a complete translation, which ruled out a number of translations intended for children. Since it also had to be accessible, I decided to use Sir Richard Francis Burton’s translation.

Another criterion was that it had to be cheap. The Arabian Nights Entertainments is available from Project Gutenberg, however each volume of the work is a separate download. An edition available through Google Play does contain roundtrip hyperlinks. It also contains a short biography of Burton.  The MobileReference translation is a good online reference. It does not permit copying text. Most readers won’t care about this, but if they do, they can readily copy text from various internet sources.

The Kindle edition of Burton I used is no longer available on Amazon. If I were to begin again, I would go with the far costlier but far more entertaining versions by Malcolm and Ursula Lyons. Burton purposely used archaic language, thereby distancing his writing from his readers. Burton openly expressed adult sensibilities in Victorian society. It's his scandalous nature that first intrigued me.

Noted British explorer serves up literary appetiser

Vikram and the Vampire; Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance
Richard Francis Burton (Author), Isabel Burton (Editor)
Fiction 134 pages


Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton translated 10 volumes of the Arabian Nights proper, plus half as many volumes of supplemental material. However, his translation of Vikram and the Vampire only includes 11 of the original 25 stories. Not only is it a quicker read, its writing style is far less archaic than that of the Arabian Nights translation. Even so, it does not read like a contemporary bestseller, but, then again, it’s old stuff, but that adds to its charm.

This collection of folk tales, written in Sanskrit, and compiled in the 11th century, is the oldest known work to showcase stories collected around a framing device. As such, it predates other framed story collections, including the Arabian Nights, the Decameron, and the Canterbury Tales, by several centuries.

Perhaps King Vikram should not have given his promise to the yogi. Now it’s too late to withdraw it. He has agreed to retrieve a corpse, but there’s a catch — the corpse is possessed by a baital (or vetala) — an Indian demon or vampire. On the chosen night, Vikram and his son enter the cemetery where they find the vampire hanging upside down from a tree limb. After some effort, they capture the vampire, but it escapes. The vampire then strikes a deal with Vikram: He’ll allow himself to be carried while telling a story, but at its conclusion, a riddle will be asked. Once Vikram answers correctly, the vampire escapes. And so, story after story is told through the long night until finally Vikram is stumped for an answer.

The stories are witty, satirical and fantastic. In one, three suitors attempt to animate the remains of their intended bride. One carries her ashes, another carries her bones, and a third recites an incantation to bring her back to life. If they succeed in reviving the beauty, which suitor will marry her? Vikram knows and so will we.

In another story, a thief laughs during his execution. Why? Again, Vikram knows the answer. Yet, the vampire has another answer. Regardless, Vikram’s answer is close enough to allow the vampire to escape. Once again, Vikram must retrieve him from the tree limb in which he hangs in bat-like fashion.

In a story about a learned scholar and his three sons, ‘atheist’ receives four definitions. Of these, the most common is that an atheist is someone whose beliefs are different from one’s own. A bit of philosophical meandering follows, and then there’s a speech, “so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly understood it.” Such excesses of scholarship can only result in disaster. After the inevitable occurs, Vikram correctly names which of the four is the greatest fool.

The final story takes place several hundred years after Vikram’s death. Pale-skinned invaders will come from the north to conquer Vikram’s kingdom with “fire weapon(s), large and small tubes, which discharge flame and smoke, and bullets … And instead of using swords and shields, they will fix daggers to the ends of their tubes, and thrust with them like lances.” This reference to British soldiers makes one wonder if the original author, possibly Somadeva, was prophetic, or if, as N. M. Penzer claimed in 1924, Burton embellished the original with fictions of his own.

At the conclusion of the final story, the vampire allows Vikram to take him to the yogi, but not without first revealing the yogi’s evil purpose and the means of his defeat. Does Vikram defeat the yogi? You will have to read it for yourself.

He read it all and lived to tell about it

The Arabian Nights : Acompanion

Robert Irwin
Nonfiction 342 pages
Tauris Parke Paperbacks. 2004

Henry Reeve discussed the translations of the Arabian Nights available during his time, saying, “Galland is for the nursery, Lane is for the library, Payne for the study and Burton for the sewers.” Burton’s version of the Arabian Nights is full of archaic language, gratuitous vulgarity, and racism. It is also the most readily available complete translation, and the one you may have to read if you want to become thoroughly acquainted with this story collection.

During the time Burton was translating it, a Middle Eastern superstition claimed that no one could read the entire Arabian Nights without dying. Author, Robert Irwin, writes that he read the entire Burton translation without dying, but not without pondering suicide as an alternative to slogging through it. Fortunately, if you wish to be better acquainted with the Arabian Nights, you can read Irwin’s Companion instead.

Irwin explores the Arabian Nights from a variety of perspectives as evident in his chapter titles, including, “Street Entertainments”, “Low Life”, and “Sexual Fictions”. Of particular interest is Irwin’s discussion of how stories mutate, merge, migrate, and reappear elsewhere. For example, a short story about partners plotting to kill each other is the plot of “The Pardoner’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. Later it’s a movie plot in The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Other versions of a story from the Arabian Nights, “The Tale of the Woman who Wanted to Deceive her Husband” also appears in Sanskrit in the 11th century, Latin in the 12th, and in the 14th both Persian and Italian in Bocccaccio’s Decameron. In the 20th century, Thomas Mann reused the plot once again in his Dr. Faustus.     

Besides Mann, other modern authors have found inspiration in the Arabian Nights, including James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth and Salman Rushdie.

Irwin’s The Arabian Nights : A companion offers an expansive and thoroughgoing look at this great work. There is little that he doesn’t touch upon. If you don’t want to risk death by reading the entire Arabian Nights, then read Irwin instead.

The Arabian Nights – Gathered, Privately Printed, and Out of Print

While not all of us are familiar with the titles, “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment” or “One Thousand and One Nights”, most of us have heard the story, “Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp”, and several others associated with the story collection informally known as the Arabian Nights.

Some of the collected stories are quite ancient and of Indian origin. Others relate the fictitious doings of actual historical figures from 9th century Baghdad. Still other stories contain historical fragments from 13th and 14th century Cairo.

Some of the most well-known Arabian Nights stories were not actually part of those stories collected in Arabic versions of the text. These additional Middle-Eastern stories included “Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, “Prince Ahmed and his Two Sisters”, and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”. They were added by French translator, Antoine Galland, and his successors.

After Galland released his 12 volume edition of the Arabian Nights, scholars began to seek the most authentic version of the text. The lengthy Egyptian version came to be considered the standard one. One of the earliest English translations by Edward Lane was heavily censored.

Although Richard Francis Burton’s translation is the most well-known uncensored version, it was preceded by John Payne’s version. Both Payne’s and Burton’s uncensored editions were printed for private subscribers, rather than the general public. Although Burton’s edition is the best known, it has been criticized for dwelling excessively on sexual matters and for its archaic language.

Most available printed editions of the Arabian Nights are abridged, intended for children, or both. A printed set of Burton’s volumes would cost you dearly, if you could find one. Luckily it is available for Kindle and other eReaders. One reviewer of the Halcyon Classics edition sold by Amazon faults it for not having working hyperlinks between the table of contents and the stories. For a broad selection of translators, this omnibus looks like a good choice.