Richard Francis Burton

“ My work claims to be a faithful copy of the great Eastern Saga-book, by preserving intact, not only the spirit, but even the mécanique, the manner and the matter. Hence, however prosy and long-drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme of the Nights because they are a prime feature in the original. The Ráwí or reciter, to whose wits the task of supplying details is left, well knows their value: the openings carefully repeat the names of the dramatis personæ and thus fix them in the hearer's memory. Without the Nights no Arabian Nights! ”

“ The general tone of The Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour often rises to the boiling-point of fanaticism. The pathos is sweet, deep and genuine; tender, simple and true, utterly unlike much of our modern tinsel. ”

“ I can hardly imagine The Nights being read to any profit by men of the West without commentary. My annotations avoid only one subject, parallels of European folk-lore and fabliaux which, however interesting, would over-swell the bulk of a book whose speciality is anthropology. ”

“ In accordance with my purpose of reproducing the Nights, not virginibus puerisque, but in as perfect a picture as my powers permit, I have carefully sought out the English equivalent of every Arabic word, however low it may be or "shocking" to ears polite; preserving, on the other hand, all possible delicacy where the indecency is not intentional; and, as a friend advises me to state, not exaggerating the vulgarities and the indecencies which, indeed, can hardly be exaggerated. [1] For the coarseness and crassness are but the shades of a picture which would otherwise be all lights. ”

“ And they are prying as children. For instance, the European novelist marries off his hero and heroine and leaves them to consummate marriage in privacy; even Tom Jones has the decency to bolt the door. But the Eastern story-teller, especially this unknown "prose Shakespeare," must usher you, with a flourish, into the bridal chamber and narrate to you, with infinite gusto, everything he sees and hears. Again we must remember that grossness and indecency, in fact les turpitudes, are matters of time and place; what is offensive in England is not so in Egypt ”

“ One is the simple, naïve, and child-like indecency which, from Tangier to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions "plainly descriptive of natural situation"; and it treats in an unconventionally free and naked manner of subjects and matters which are usually, by common consent, left undescribed. As Sir William Jones observed long ago, "that anything natural can be offensively obscene never seems to have occurred to the Indians or to their legislators ”

“ It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained and forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, the scholar will observe that, despite the immense copiousness of assonants and consonants in Arabic, the strain is often put upon it intentionally, like the Rims cars of Dante and the Troubadours. ”

“ He will not think lightly of my work when I repeat to him that with the aid of my annotations supplementing Lane's, the student will readily and pleasantly learn more of the Moslem's manners and customs, laws and religion, than is known to the average Orientalist; and if my labours induce him to attack the text of The Nights, he will become master of much more Arabic than the ordinary Arab owns. ”

“ The women and children stand motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouth as well as with the ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them utterly natural, mere matters of everyday occurence. ”

“ As the giant grey shadow rises slowly in the East and the vagueness of evening waxes wan in the West and night comes on without a shade of gloaming, and, as it were, with a single stride, and Earth looks old, and pallid, and cold, alt, kalt, and ungestalt, the spectre of her former self, the camp forgathers. ”

“ With respect to proper names and untranslated Arabic words I have rejected all system in favour of common sense. When a term is incorporated in our tongue, I refuse to follow the purist and mortify the reader by startling innovation. For instance, Aleppo, Cairo and Bassorah are preferred to Halab, Kahirah and Al-Basrah; when a word is half-naturalised, like Alcoran or Koran, Bashaw or Pasha, which the French write Pacha ”

“ Professional ambition suggested that literary labours, of a kind unpopular with the vulgar and the half-educated, are not likely to help a man up the ladder of promotion. But common sense presently suggested to me that, professionally speaking, I was not a success ”

“ Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more "real vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camélias, and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and "improper" allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the thought ”

“ I have therefore followed the simple system adopted in my "Pilgrimage," and have accented Arabic words only when first used, thinking it unnecessary to preserve throughout what is an eyesore to the reader and a distress to the printer. In the main I follow "Johnson on Richardson," a work known to every Anglo-Orientalist as the old and trusty companion of his studies early and late; but even here I have made sundry deviations for reasons which will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words are the embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is the spoken word ”

“ Moreover, holding that the translator's glory is to add something to his native tongue, while avoiding the hideous hag-like nakedness of Torrens and the bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for instance, when the dustcloud raised by a tramping host is described as "walling the horizon." ”

“ But in all tongues vowel-sounds, the flesh which clothes the bones (consonants) of language, are affected by the consonants which precede and more especially by those which follow them, hardening and softening the articulation; and deeper sounds accompany certain letters as the sád (ص‎) compared with the sín (س‎) . None save a defective ear would hold, as Lane does, "Maulid" (= birth-festival) , "more properly pronounced Molid.'" Yet I prefer Khokh (peach) and Jokh (broad-cloth) to Khukh and Jukh ”

“ In our day, when we live under a despotism of the lower "middleclass" Philister who can pardon anything but superiority, the prizes of competitive services are monopolised by certain "pets" of the Médiocratie, and prime favourities of that jealous and potent majority—the Mediocrities, who know "no nonsense about merit." ”

“ Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kází with exemplary impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. ”

“ All now known barbarous tribes in Inner Africa, America and Australia, whose instincts have not been overlaid by reason, have a ceremony which they call "making men." As soon as the boy shows proofs of puberty, he and his coevals are taken in hand by the mediciner and the Fetisheer ”

“ THE REEVE'S TALE. . . 256
(Lane - Story told by the Sultan's Steward: p. 348)
c. TALE OF THE JEWISH DOCTOR. . . 265
(Lane - Story told by the Jewish Physician: p. 359)
d. TALE OF THE TAILOR. . . 276
(Lane - Story told by the Tailor: p. 368)
e. THE BARBER'S TALE OF HIMSELF. . . 292
(Lane - The Barber's Story of Himself: p. 383)
ea. THE BARBER'S TALE OF HIS FIRST BROTHER. . . 294
(Lane - The Barber's Story of His First Brother: p. 385)
eb. THE BARBER'S TALE OF HIS SECOND BROTHER. . . 299
(Lane - The Barber's Story of His Second Brother: p. 389)
ec. ”