Eastern Dreams (10 page)

Beneath the mildness, however, there is the sense that Galland carried within a steely determination to do well as a means of securing his advancement. The early decision to abandon his apprenticeship finds its counterpart in his constant, almost relentless activities in Ottoman Turkey. Whether there remained in the adult professional scholar something of the boyhood hatred of manual labour is unclear, but he seems hell-bent on ensuring he built and maintained a solid reputation for work in multiple fields. Combining a personable character with ambition, Antoine Galland looks to have been that rarest of creatures: an ambitious man lacking the driving egomania of most aspiring careerists.

During his first stay in the empire of the Turks, Galland developed an interest in numismatics (the study of coins, medals and medallions), collecting various specimens and over the years writing many papers on their provenance. Describing himself as a philosopher, classicist, numismatist and orientalist—quite a full plate for an arriviste peasant's son from the provinces—Galland's workaholic nature suggests more than a simple passion for his chosen fields. Finding that he had multiple interests, he may have had a half-conscious desire to cultivate these enthusiasms as a way of mov-ing between areas of expertise, maintaining not only his productivity but also his usefulness, and therefore a sustainable career.

If so, it proved a boon to literature, for in time Galland's many fascinations would lead him to the
Nights
and spur its translation. In the Enlightenment atmosphere where talent muted class, Antoine
Galland typifies Baudelaire's famous definition of the superior man. Emphatically “not a specialist,” his multifarious interests and phenomenal output would one day contribute to the worldwide dissemination of an astoundingly enduring classic.

Curiously, there has never been the slightest indication during any of his years in the Levant that Galland either read or even heard of
Alf Laila wa Laila
, or that if he did hear the title, that he ever gave it any passing thought. Some of his journals for these years mention books in Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Hebrew (for which Galland sometimes provides titles and summaries), but there is no mention of
Alf Laila wa Laila
, though his interest in storytelling, frequent rambles in Constantinople and journeys through the Ottoman domains would have provided him with ample opportunity to cross paths with the
Nights
, either in oral or written form. But such appears to be the case.

Three years after arriving in Constantinople, Galland accompanied Ambassador de Nointel on a long tour of the Levant, passing through Greece and the Aegean islands before travelling to what was then Ottoman Syria, visiting famous sites of the Holy Land. Along the way, Galland copied epigraphs and sketched monuments as he continued collecting manuscripts and antiques as part of his royal commission. When de Nointel returned to Constantinople in 1675, Galland went back to France for a short time, having spent the better part of five years working in the Turkish empire. His published memoir of his Levant tour, as well as an exhibition of his ancient coins, drew attention from antiquarians, further establishing his name as an authority on the eastern world.

By now nearly thirty, Galland was in the prime of life. Beyond his having a limitless capacity for work, Galland continued to be
blessed with that element of luck, or right-timing, mentioned earlier. Coming of age at a time when increased contact with the East created a vogue for oriental collectibles (particularly manuscripts), Galland was able to reap benefits from an emerging new field. There was no better time for a young orientalist to be working than the latter part of the seventeenth century and, consciously or not, Galland made the most of it, so much so that within a year he was sent back to the Levant on a second journey, this time charged with the sole purpose of gathering further collectibles for Louis XIV and Colbert's collections. This, the briefest of Galland's three eastern excursions, was spent mainly in Syria, searching for artifacts, and lasted only some months; certainly less than a year. Yet as he wrote to a relative at the time, this was a new journey in more ways than one, since he was now on his own as a responsible agent of the crown, answerable directly to the king and his chief minister for his actions and purchases.

As usual, Galland did not disappoint. In the short time he was in the Levant, he accumulated sufficient collectibles that on his return he was able to deliver a sizeable stock of items to the
Cabinet du roi
—the king's personal collection—kept at the royal residence of Versailles, where they were met with much favour and appreciation. Enough, in fact, that Galland was soon dispatched on his last and longest journey, lasting almost a full decade (1679 to 1688). Employed for part of that time by the French East India Company, he returned to Constantinople in the company of another outward-bound ambassador, Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne, Vicomte de Guilleragues, an associate of many French literary figures and someone whose kindness Galland recalled years later when he dedicated the first volume of his
Nights
to his patroness, the Marquise d'O (de Lavergne's daughter). This time, Galland was awarded the official title “Antiquary to the King of France” to facilitate his researches.

Galland spent more than half of this last trip in Constantinople, where, under de Guilleragues's supervision, he continued his buying while performing sundry other tasks such as teaching the ambassador's young daughter (the future marquise) Romaic. If Galland's first stay in Constantinople had been something of an apprenticeship, this last sojourn proved his master class. The capital was a clearing house for literature and manuscripts from all over the Muslim world and Galland haunted Turkish shops as never before, learning to deal with booksellers while negotiating for prices and materials, seeking out the choicest items and employing knowledgeable agents as intermediaries, all activities that would later prove useful when hunting for Arabic copies of the
Nights
. Although he spent most of his time in Constantinople, Galland did not restrict himself to the capital, also visiting Egypt and Syria in his search for materials. Once, just as he was about to leave Smyrna, his luck nearly ran out when an earthquake that killed fifteen thousand of the town's inhabitants collapsed Galland's house on top of him, trapping him beneath the rubble. He spent twenty-four hours imprisoned in the ruins, but luckily his stove had not been lit at the time so he didn't burn or suffocate and was finally pulled to safety.

Even as he continued buying for the French elite, Galland was able to assemble his own collection of manuscripts and prepare various works for publication during these years. His ambition sometimes got the better of him, causing him to assume such large undertakings that friends were compelled to warn him he was taking on too much (such as a massive dictionary of oriental history Galland was forced to abandon because his various commissions would never allow him the time). It was only after his final return to France at age forty-two that Galland began translating in earnest, producing among other tomes a French version of a book of eastern maxims and proverbs, an unpublished translation of the
Koran
and
the translation of an Arabic treatise on an eastern beverage just beginning to reach Europe—coffee. Since Ambassador de Nointel had taken him on in 1670, Galland had spent no more than three years of the last eighteen in his homeland.

For all his ceaseless efforts, though, Galland was hardly wealthy. Not until he was fifty did he receive anything by way of a state pension for his services, and that more as a recognition of his abilities than an adequate private income. The royalty system was not yet in place, so Galland would have made little or nothing from his publications, including the
Nights
. Possessing little money of his own (and spending most of that, it seems, on books and manuscripts), he relied on employment from those who did, and at times found funds tight. In at least one letter he asks that an ordered manuscript be held for him until he came to Paris to collect it, since the cost of packaging and shipping was too dear. Even in his later years, when he held a chair of Arabic at the Collège Royal, Galland sometimes had no money for days at a stretch, and one assumes little to eat, either.

Still, if he did not possess the means or the inclination for the sort of noxious overindulgence for which
ancien régime
aristocrats are famous, a lifetime of dedicated work placed Galland in the secure position of being able to reap other rewards from his industry. His studiously acquired reputation as a translator and numismatist, besides his services to a number of high government officials, did not go unnoticed in elite circles, where Galland's talent and geniality won him the acquaintanceship of many scholars, travellers and literary figures. In the world of Enlightenment networking, these contacts recommended Galland to those who had need for his services, so that after his final return in 1688, he never lacked for work.

Within months of reaching France, Galland found himself employed as a translator and assistant to Melchissedech Thevenot, Keeper of the King's Library in Paris. From there he went on to
work for the orientalist Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville as an assistant and collaborator on d'Herbelot's monumental
Bibliothèque orientale
, or “Encyclopedia of the Orient,” from earliest times to the present. D'Herbelot envisioned creating two works—a
bibliothèque
, or dictionary-cum-encyclopedia, and a companion
florilège
or anthology of relevant works, to follow, but only once the
bibliothèque
was completed. When d'Herbelot died in 1695, Galland assumed responsibility for finishing the
Bibliothèque orientale
, bringing it to press in 1697.

In an extended preface, Galland is careful to differentiate between the real and the imagined in oriental matters, writing that here in the
Bibliothèque orientale
is actual, presented knowledge of the eastern world, not the sundry myths and legends that had grown up around the popular “
marvels of the East.” With Johann Hottinger's earlier
Historia Orientalis
(1651), the
Bibliothèque orientale
remained one of the two standard reference works on Islam for well over a century, consulted by scholars and writers searching for background material on the Orient. Once it was completed, Galland worked for a time as a librarian for Thierry Bignon, President of France's Grand Council, before entering the employ of the
intendant
(“governor”) of Lower Normandy, the renowned statesman, archaeologist and man of letters, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault.

As librarian in the latter's home, Galland was based in Caen for most of the next decade, although he made frequent visits to Paris on business or to continue his own researches, remaining a familiar figure in Parisian intellectual circles. Already admitted to the learned academies of Caen and Padua, by 1701 Galland's services and many learned papers earned him the distinction of admittance to France's ultra-prestigious Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, although he was still living in Lower Normandy at the time and unable to participate fully in the academy's activities until he moved back to Paris five years later. Still, it's not a bad career path
for a poor peasant's boy who hated working with his hands. And better was to come Antoine Galland's way very shortly.

It is due at least partly to Galland's continued presence in elite circles that he came across
The Thousand and One Nights
. Among his many Parisian friends and acquaintances were a number of mostly anonymous Syrians who, knowing of Galland's passion for eastern stories, alerted him from time to time of a title he might be interested in, or even passed on actual manuscripts for his enjoyment and as possible material for translation. Sometime in 1698, during one of these visits, Galland received an Arabic manuscript concerning the voyages of an intrepid Baghdadi merchant named Sindbad, who undergoes numerous adventures during his travels, but always manages to return home alive, intact and usually enriched.