Eastern Dreams (34 page)

Certainly, Calcutta II isn't perfect. It includes the Sindbad voyages, which were not part of original versions of the collection, and incorporates material from sources whose background is unknown, unproven or under suspicion, or that just doesn't belong. A measure of historical doubt is always required when reading Calcutta II or any of its translations.

Yet, in however cursory a manner, Calcutta II is formed from actual Arabic compilations of the
Nights
, the main source of which did undergo a form of examination by a committee composed of interested members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Insofar as it was possible under the circumstances, Calcutta II's text was checked and collated with other sources to produce a printed Arabic work of 1001 Nights bracketed by a complete rendition of Scheherazade's story. Through beloved desire, the fanciful had become literal at last.

Together, the Muhsin Mahdi and William Hay Macnaghten texts of
Alf Laila wa Laila
may be seen as the historical alpha and omega of
The Thousand and One Nights
—the tangible first and last literary developments in the progression of this enchanting and, in our dreams, enchanted book.

Notes

Introduction: Stories from the Past

p. 7
, “
a revelation in romance”: Richard F. Burton,
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
, hereafter
Nights
, 10 vols. (London: Printed for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, 1885–86), X, 99.

p. 7
, “
something so new, so unconventional”: ibid.

Chapter 1: A Spectral Work

p. 17
, “
a Paris of the ninth century”:
Nights
, X, 173.

p. 20
, “
Such the gay Splendor, the luxurious State”: James Thomson, “Castle of Indolence,” 1748, in
Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 187.

p. 20
, “
to solace himself in the city”:
Nights
, I, 95.

p. 21
, “
the silken sail of infancy”: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Recollections of the Arabian Nights,” in
Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1905), 17.

p. 21
, “
Thereon his deep eye stirr'd”: ibid., 21.

p. 22
, “
marks his reign with a stain of infamy”:
Nights
, X, 136–37.

p. 22
, “
For it was in the golden prime”: Tennyson, “Recollections of the Arabian Nights,” passim.

p. 24
, “
It is not merely a simple narrative”: Alexander Russell,
A Natural History of Aleppo
(London: Printed for G.G. and J. Robinson, 1794), 148–49.

p. 24
, “
in the midst of some interesting adventure”: ibid.

p. 28
, “
examples of the excellencies”: Nabia Abbot, “A Ninth-Century Fragment of the ‘Thousand Nights': New Light on the Early History of the Arabian Nights,”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
VIII, no. 3 (July 1949), 133.

p. 28
, “
and Scheherazade related to her a tale of elegant beauty”: ibid.

p. 31
, “
truly a coarse book, without warmth in the telling”: Ibn al-Nadim,
The Fihrist of al-Nadim
, trans. Bayard Dodge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), Vol. 2, 713–14.

p. 41
, “
die as ransom for others”:
Nights
, I, 15.

Chapter 2: A Frenchman Abroad

p. 54
, “
Made for letters”:
Nights
, X, 96.

p. 56
, “
orner nostre France
”: Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Antoine Galland, n.d. Quoted in Charles Schefer (ed.),
Journal d'Antoine Galland pendant son séjour à Constantinople
, 1672–73, 2 vols. (Paris: Charles Schefer, 1881), II, 275.

p. 63
, “
marvels of the East”: Galland,
Bibliothèque orientale
(Paris: Compagnie des libraries,1697), preface, n.p.

p. 64
, “
my native place”:
Nights
, VI, 4.

p. 65
, “
One day my mind will become possessed”; “
seized with longing for travel and diversion
”: ibid., 14, 23.

p. 66
, “
Know … that my story is a wonderful one”: ibid., 4.

p. 68
, “
Three or four days ago, a friend from Aleppo”: Galland to Pierre-Daniel Huet, October 13, 1701. Quoted in Muhammad Abd al-Halim,
Antoine Galland: Sa vie et son oeuvre
(Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1964), 414.

p. 68
, “
collection of stories people recite in that country”: ibid.

p. 68
, “
I have only four or five hundred”: Galland to Gisbert Cuper, n.d., 1702. Quoted in Abd al-Halim, 191.

Chapter 3: The Coming of the
Nights

p. 70
, “
I have finished a clean copy”: Galland to Pierre-Daniel Huet, August 1702. Quoted in Abd al-Halim, 267.

p. 70
, “
surprising quantity and diversity of narratives”: Antoine Galland,
Les mille et une nuits
, hereafter
Nuits
, 9 vols. (Paris: Chez le normant, 1806), I, xxix.

p. 70
–
71
, “
I say ample collection because the Arabic original”: ibid., xxix–xxx.

p. 71
, “
All the Orientals, Persians, Tartars and Indians”: ibid., xxxi.

p. 71
, “
profit from the examples of virtues and vices”: ibid., xxxii.

p. 72
, “
Verily the works and words of those gone before us”:
Nights
, I, 1.

p. 74
, “
tales just as good as the fairy stories”: Galland to Huet, February 25, 1701. Quoted in Abd al-Halim, 261.

p. 78
, “
Provençal and French tolerably well”: Galland journal entry for March 17, 1709. Quoted in Muhsin Mahdi,
The Thousand and One Nights
, hereafter
Thousand
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 31–32.

p. 78
, “
some wonderful Arabic stories”: Galland journal entry for March 25, 1709. Quoted in ibid., 32.

p. 79
, “
written for me almost a year ago”: Galland journal entry for November 3, 1710. Quoted in ibid., 32.

p. 79
, “
I have finished the translation”: Galland journal entry for January 10, 1711. Quoted in ibid.

p. 83
, “
more remarkable for decision, action and manliness than the male”:
Nights
, X, 192.

p. 87
, “
not part of the
Nights
”: Galland,
Nuits
, V, i.

p. 87
, “
the infidelity done to him”: Galland,
Nuits
, V, ii.

p. 88
, “
a high degree that art of telling a tale”:
Nights
, X, 95.

p. 90
, “
It is sufficient that readers be informed of the intention of the Arab author”: Galland,
Nuits
, IV, i.

p. 92
, “
that nonsense work brings me more honour”: Galland to Gispert Cuper, July 10, 1705. Quoted in Mahdi,
Thousand
, 205–6, n86.

p. 94
, “
simple in life and manners”:
Nights
, X, 103.

p. 95
, “
this excellent man and admirable Orientalist, numismatologist and litterateur”: ibid., 96.

p. 96
, “
the glamour of imagination, the marvel of the miracles”: ibid., 99.

Chapter 4: “These Idle Deserts”

p. 98
, “
pitchforked into Gallic English”: Duncan Black MacDonald, “On Translating the Arabian Nights,” Part One,
The Nation
71 (August 30, 1900), 167.

p. 99
, “
Arabian Nights Entertainments
: consisting of one thousand and one stories”: Antoine Galland,
Arabian Nights' Entertainments
(London: 1706). Title page.

p. 99
, “
Read Sindbad and you will be sick of Aeneas”:
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry
, June 30, 1789. Quoted in Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Mary and Agnes Berry, ed. W.S. Lewis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), XI, 20.

p. 100
, “
store house of ingenious fiction”: Henry Weber,
Tales of the East
, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne & Co., 1812), I, i.

p. 103
, “
senseless stories that mean nothing”: Voltaire,
Zadig, and Other Tales
, trans. Robert Bruce Boswell (London: G. Bell, 1910), 50.

p. 103
, “
Monsters and monsterland were never more in request”: Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Advice to an Author,” section iii,
Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
, 2 vols., ed. John M. Robertson (Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith, 1963), I, 221–25.

p. 104
, “
the product of some Woman's imagination”: Bishop Francis Atterbury to Alexander Pope, September 28, 1720. Quoted in
Correspondence of Alexander Pope
, 4 vols., ed. George Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), II, 53–56.

p. 104
, “
whether the tales be really Arabick”: James Beattie,
On Fables and Romance
(London: 1783). Quoted in Robert Irwin,
The Arabian Nights: A Companion
, hereafter
Companion
(London: Tauris Parke, 2004), 17.

p. 106
, “
the Arabian and Turkish Tales were owing to your Tale of a Tub”: Dedication of Charles Gildon's
Golden Spy: or a Political Journey of British Nights' Entertainments
(1709) to Jonathan Swift.

p. 106
, “
the
Arabian Tales
was the fairy godmother”: Martha Pike Conant,
The Oriental Tale in England
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), 243.

p. 114
, “
Visions of palaces underground”: Austen Henry Layard,
Nineveh and Its Remains
, 2 vols. (New York: George P. Putnam, 1849), I, 25.

p. 115
, “
will always please by the moving picture of human manners”: Edward Gibbon,
Memoirs of My Life
, ed. Georges A. Bonnard (London: Nelson, 1966), 36.

p. 115
, “
most freely … and the work of his manhood”: G.M. Young,
Gibbon
(London: P. Davies, 1932), 13–14.

Chapter 5: The
Nights
and the Romantic Spirit

p. 119
, “
a little yellow canvas-covered book”: William Wordsworth,
The Prelude
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), Book V, 194.

p. 120
, “
made so deep an impression on me”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, ed. E.L. Griggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), I: 1785–1800, 347–48.

p. 120
, “
of Faery Tales, and Genii etc.”: ibid., 354.

p. 122
, “
Lady M.W. Montague …
History of the Turks
”: Quoted in Leslie A. Marchand,
Byron
(London: John Murray, 1971), 14.

p. 122
, “
had much influence on my subsequent wishes”: ibid.

p. 122
, “
For correctness of costume”: Byron's note to Line 1328 of the original edition of “The Giaour” (London: John Murray, 1813).

p. 123
, “
stories from the Persian”: Byron,
Don Juan
, 1821 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1996), Canto III, XXXV; 165.

p. 124
, “
Oh! That the Desert”: Byron, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,” 1812–18, in
The Works of Lord Byron
(Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1994), Canto IV, CLXXVII; 243.

p. 127
, “
so positively marvellous”: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” 1838, in
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966), 612.

p. 128
, “
so vast it is not necessary to have read it”: Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights,” 1936, in
Seven Nights
(New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1984), 57.

p. 129
, “
The Desert is pre-eminently the Land of Fancy”: Richard F. Burton,
The Gold Mines of Midian
(London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1878), 357.

Chapter 6: Searching for the
Nights

p. 131
–
32
, “
Oh, now all common things”: Charles Dickens, “The Christmas Tree,” 1850, in
Christmas Stories
(London: Dent, 1965), 9–10.

p. 133
, “
vapid, frigid, and insipid”:
Nights
, X, 110–11.

p. 135
(n.), “
vainly troubled friends and correspondents”: ibid., 93n.

p. 137
, “
We are … as much acquainted”: Richard Hole,
Remarks on the Arabian Nights' Entertainments
(London: T. Cadell Jr., and W. Davies, 1797), 10.