Eastern Dreams (21 page)

It is left to an unhappy boy named Charles Dickens, however, to best describe the lasting effect of the
Arabian Nights
on English readers. For Dickens, the
Nights
did more than provide solace from a miserable childhood; he and many other writers found it acted as a powerful teacher in the art of storytelling. Dickens would later pay homage to the book in several of his works, but most particularly in his 1850 essay “The Christmas Tree,” in which he wonderfully evokes a child's imagination on reading the
Arabian Nights:

Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure … trees
are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to be thrown into the Valley of Diamonds…. When I wake in bed … on the cold, dark winter mornings … I hear Dinarzade, “Sister, sister, if you are not yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of the Black Islands.” Scheherazade replies, “If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet.” Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.

In Europe, the
Nights
went some way toward inspiring indigenous folklore collections. Both the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen recall childhood readings of the
Nights
as among their earliest memories of literature, just as all three later noted or used sources from the
Nights
in their own work. The Grimms believed a number of their collected “Household Stories” from the German states had their origins in
The Thousand and One Nights
—residue, perhaps, of eastern tales that had penetrated the West centuries before. Andersen almost certainly had stories from the
Nights
or similar collections in mind when composing some of his original fairy tales, including “The Little Mermaid” (parts of “Julnar the Sea-Born”), “The Tinder Box” (shades of “Aladdin”) and that classic of toadyism run amok, “The Emperor's New Clothes”—versions of which appear in several folklore traditions, including “The Lady's Twelfth Tale” in the fifteenth-century Turkish book
The History of the Forty Viziers
.

Surprisingly, for all the esteem with which the West held the
Nights
, for almost a hundred years, the Antoine Galland edition remained the only translation in existence, the source of every adaption since
the beginning of the eighteenth century. Claims in some versions that its tales were “taken from the Arabic” were true only in the most roundabout way, since Galland adapted his volumes from Arabic manuscripts with supplementary material taken from other sources, making all other western editions of the
Nights
“Arabic” only by one degree of separation.

There were and are problems associated with translating the
Nights
into European languages, problems that sometimes add to the difficulty of determining the actual text of specific stories, let alone the work's contents. Modern written Arabic contains a number of punctuation and diacritical marks designed to convey proper meaning and intent. With pre-modern Arabic manuscripts of the
Nights
lacking most of these marks (through quick or careless transcription or the difficulties of reading the original manuscript), European translators were forced to rely on their intuition to interpret words and context as best they could. Trusting to their own judgment and having few if any supplementary texts for comparison, it was a near-certainty that in places translators would misconstrue meaning. Sometimes they excised obscure or unfathomable words or passages altogether, altering the text by leaving out necessary details or important information.

Inevitably, however, translations independent of Galland began appearing early in the nineteenth century, including the first actual English edition, created by the orientalist Jonathan Scott in 1811. Scott used Galland's text as well as an Arabic manuscript housed in Oxford's Bodleian Library, but edited his work on the side of wholesomeness to avoid offending readers. Considered “
vapid, frigid, and insipid” by some, it nevertheless proved highly popular and stands as the first true literary edition of the
Arabian Nights
in English, as well as the end of the monopoly of
Les mille et une nuits
.

Like a persistent itch, though, the feeling among some that the West was being exposed to only part of a great Arabic original
would not go away. There was a haze of mystery to the
Nights
that intrigued the curious, but which also proved frustrating since so little was known about the work. In time, the expanding European presence in Asia and the development of oriental studies prompted a number of individuals to delve into the
Nights
' history to uncover what Antoine Galland had left unanswered or had been unable to unmask. The Frenchman's Syrian manuscript, while old, was believed incomplete, partly because of the difference between its title and the number of Nights contained in the text, but also because of Galland's own statement that he used at least one more manuscript in his adaption, as well as the puzzle surrounding the orphan stories.

Now, many decades after its publication, the
Arabian Nights
was becoming more than an influential storybook. Its fame saw it pulled inexorably into the growing body of eastern literature deemed worthy of investigation. This situation prompted two linked activities, beginning about fifty years after the first appearance of
Les mille et une nuits:
the search for additional Arabic manuscripts of the
Nights
and its scholarly study in hopes of learning about its background. In the first half of the nineteenth century, these trends would intersect with the creation of exhaustive, printed Arabic editions of the work containing an actual 1001 Nights, although most of these compendiums were created by westerners anxious to see a beloved book reach literary fruition.

The first mystery to be addressed was the question of
Alf Laila wa Laila
. Part of the adventure of the
Nights
' progress in the West is bound up with the desire to uncover a full Arabic manuscript of the work or, failing that, at least one including everything within Galland's text, including his orphan stories. The growth of Asian trade in the last quarter of the eighteenth century facilitated this search as increasing numbers of Europeans travelled and worked in the Muslim East, giving some the opportunity to hunt for Arabic
sources of the
Nights
. As eastern studies established itself as an actual scholarly field, western interest in manuscript copies of
Alf Laila wa Laila
also increased, in hopes of adding to the small store of knowledge about the work.

Caught up in the romance of the quest for lost treasure, travellers went to Indiana Jones–like extremes to seek out manuscripts. They consulted scholars, interpreters, diplomats, traders or anyone else who could help locate native book dealers or scribes who might have Arabic copies of the
Nights
for sale, or possess relevant information.

Antoine Galland was the first of these arcane treasure-hunters. Although he never left Europe after beginning
Les mille et une nuits
, Galland searched actively through agents and acquaintances for the remainder of
Alf Laila wa Laila
to add to his sources, never knowing that by a brilliant quirk of fate, he already owned the earliest and most extensive Arabic manuscript of the
Nights
in existence. Succeeding hunters included many sometimes-nameless western travellers or employees in the East who either sought out, or happened to come across, texts they were able to bring back from the Middle East.

A number of
Alf Laila wa Laila
texts
were
found by travellers, with more than twenty such manuscripts surviving to the present day.
*
But neither extensive nor partial manuscripts were easy to obtain. While there does not appear to have been a great number of texts to begin with, many were owned by the
rawi
, who were understandably reluctant to give up part of their professional life's blood. There is also the suspicion that eastern copyists catering to foreign tastes fashioned compendiums of
Alf Laila wa Laila
stories in simple response to a market need. And a number of manuscripts
were fragmentary or in disrepair from years of handling, making their contents hard to understand, even for western Arabic readers.

Those hoping to prove the legitimacy of Galland's orphan stories were also doomed to disappointment, since none of his intruded material appears in manuscripts predating
Les mille et une nuits
. Moreover, readable texts often proved different in their number of Nights as well as in many of the details in those stories they actually had in common, making it nearly impossible to determine what constitutes the body of the Arabic
Nights
. With few if any manuscripts bearing the same contents, over time it became clear that ordinary concepts of bibliography do not apply to
The Thousand and One Nights
, leaving its composition variable to the point of inconstancy.

Yet, searching for the
Nights
was never a lost cause, since additional manuscripts meant added information, even if much of it was contradictory or incomplete. And tantalizing hints of unsolved mysteries
did
appear. One large manuscript brought to England from Egypt by the notorious rake Edward Wortley Montague—in a lifetime of misdeeds, he was only incidentally an Arabist—contains a number of stories not appearing in other sources, including one (“The Tale of the Fisherman's Son”) bearing strong similarities to “Aladdin.” Overall, though, Europe's growing collection of
Alf Laila wa Laila
manuscripts only added to the West's fascination with the
Nights
without solving definitively the many riddles surrounding it, keeping the work shimmering indistinctly like a desert mirage.

Shimmering, that is, until western scholars began deciphering the mysteries behind the book's origins. At the same time as travellers searched for Arabic texts of the
Nights
in the East, another development ran parallel with the hunt. By now the study of
the Asian world had become sufficiently formalized that learned societies along the lines of France's Société asiatique and Britain's Royal Asiatic Society were established to further the study of eastern life, providing focused organizations for the growing number of orientalists to publish their findings and debate relevant issues.

Not coincidentally, this period also saw the earliest attempts at identifying the history of the
Nights
as Europeans began investigating the tale lying behind these great eastern tales. Antoine Galland had begun the process by speculating that some stories may have come from outside sources; in his third volume he notes the similarities between Sindbad and
The Odyssey
, but for the most part, the fairy-tale charm of his work overwhelmed any real curiosity about its origins.

At the end of the eighteenth century, however, the English literary critic Richard Hole sounded the gun for educated inquiry into the
Nights
' background by publishing the first book devoted entirely to a study of the work. Hole's 1797
Remarks on the Arabian Nights' Entertainments
focuses mostly on the Sindbad voyages, but it also theorizes about the origins of the larger book. Hole is among the first to promote the idea that there is more to the
Nights
than simple “Arabic” stories brought to the West. Recognizing that “
we are … as much acquainted with the merits of the original [
Nights
] as we should be in respect to the former beauty of a human body from contemplating its skeleton,” Hole postulates that the tales come from a variety of regions and may be infused with parts of stories already known in the West.

Like Galland, Hole was struck by the similarities between Sindbad and Odysseus, believing the former story cycle might as well be called
The Arabian Odyssey
since it bears “
the same resemblance … as an oriental mosch [mosque] does to a Grecian temple.” Presciently, he bemoans the fact that the
Nights
was fast becoming a work thought fit for children only, rather than one seen
in its proper light as a collection of folk tales intended for adults. Largely for this reason, Hole believed the
Nights
urgently needed retranslation to provide versions independent of Galland, restoring the book to its rightful place as cultural folklore.