Wednesday, September 14, 2016

A Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and its Reception by Dwight Reynolds

The West "discovers" the Nights


"A Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and its Reception" by Dwight Reynolds (http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/dwight-reynolds/) is, in my opinion, one of the most succinct – yet right on – histories of the Nights. It was only available before via academic libraries and is part of the volumes that make up Cambridge University Press' Arabic Literature series.

Professor Reynolds has uploaded a copy on academia for you to read/download here, however - https://www.academia.edu/28322004/A_Thousand_and_One_Nights_A_history_of_the_text_and_its_reception

I like the way the chapter successfully defines the Nights in a very clear, non polemic, manner, especially in its conclusion:

The Nights was a relatively unknown collection of fabulous tales, one of many such collections that formed a part of late medieval popular Arabic literature, its unique embedding of tales and its compelling heroine notwithstanding.

By chance, this particular work was snatched from obscurity and given a new existence by Western scholars, translators, publishers and readers who acclaimed it both as a literary masterpiece and as a trustworthy guide to Middle Eastern cultures.”

And I love this too about the Nights, how random of a text from that time period it was to have been "chosen" and "discovered" by Western Orientalists like Galland and co. to become the penultimate representative of the Muslim and Arab world for the West. That's truth. And it's weird. And fascinating. 

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The enduring lure of The Arabian Nights - Muhsin Al Musawi




This is a recent interview by Gulf News of (here very defensive sounding) Colombia Professor Muhsin Al Musawi on the Nights.

What is most interesting to me is Al Musawi's critique of what he sees as Western interference into the legacy of the culture of the Nights.

Excerpts below, entire interview (unfortunately with pop up ads and the like) here: http://gulfnews.com/culture/books/the-enduring-lure-of-the-arabian-nights-1.1876775

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“The Arabian Nights” was largely ignored simply because it was not an elite piece of literature, and it wasn’t until the French (1704-12) and English (1706) translations were published that it was taken seriously. To tell the Arab intelligentsia how it was received by eminent poets, writers and essayists was not an ordinary matter, especially as this intelligentsia suffers from a Western dependency complex.

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You have a new project, almost ready: “The Arabian Nights: A Source Record”. The preliminary title suggests a lot but also seems to hide more.

I can quote from the introduction as it has not appeared yet, and I hope readers will use it with due acknowledgement to us as well as to the newspaper. This quote introduces the reader to early scholarly discussion of origins:

Aside from Edward William Lane’s (1801-76) enduring contribution to the sociological interest in the tales in its colonial dimension, his endeavour to establish a “sound” text, albeit with scriptural tone and style, still elicits scholarly interest. No less pertinent is the British periodical criticism of the years 1838-41, which, while highly informed by the British imperial quest, was mainly provoked by the latter’s significant achievement. It is only a sign of this encompassing imperial spirit that this criticism took into account German and French contributions to assimilate or debate within a broad colonial spectrum. While the evangelical spirit was bent on replacing Eastern cultures with that of the empire, the Orientalist was keen on preserving local traditions to ensure a better and solid acculturation beyond the vagaries of change.

Lane was no minor figure in this encounter, as his lexicon, studies of the “manners” of the Egyptians and translation of “The Thousand and One Nights” elicited further communications and interests. A case in point is the Athenaeum effort to elucidate the involved history of the “Nights”. Although taking into account contemporaneous views of de Sacy, von Hammer, Schlegel and Lane, the Athenaeum critic of the 1830s was fully aware of the pitfalls of basing final judgments regarding the date of composition on scattered references to historical events. No great value must be set on these allusions in a book that passed into many redactions and underwent a number of omissions, changes and interpolations. A “careful and critical examination of the tales,” he postulated, “would convince the reader that they were chiefly composed by illiterate persons, unacquainted with the history of their country; and it is unfair, therefore, to assume the accuracy of some particular date referred to, considering the numberless anachronisms contained in the work, and urge it as an argument either in favour or against opinions respecting the authorship, or age when written.”

Disapproving of Lane’s conclusion that the social and cultural setting points to an Egyptian origin, the reviewer observed that Islam regulates and models manners and customs in the whole Muslim East, establishing social conformity to which the “Nights” plainly attests. As for the very distinctive Egyptian traits, the reviewer urged that they be seen in the light of the tendency of copyists and compilers to impose their regional predilections on the text.

But what about the discussion of manuscripts, before Brill’s print of Galland’s Arabic manuscript?

Writing about manuscripts is a challenge, for no matter how authoritative and painstaking the search is, there are two sides to the question. One relates to availability of manuscripts, and the second to orality, transmission and storytelling. While Arabic scholarship was not enthusiastically drawn to popular culture, European scholarship was more interested in reading the tales as both manifestations of culture and life, as they deemed, and as indices of the spirit and language varieties of the region. Hence the interest in origin.

The Athenaeum reviewer was not alone; but his recapitulations were in response to an ongoing discussion that received further impetus after the publication of Lane’s annotated edition. Lane was keen on establishing that the work was by one single author who composed it between 1475 and 1525 (preface to “The Arabian Nights Entertainments”, London, 1839-41). Silvestre de Sacy had already dwelt on this issue (as documented by Chauvin and Littmann) in “Journal des savants”, 1817, 678; “Recherches sur l’Origine du Recueil des Contes Intitules les Mille et Une Nuits”, Paris, 1829; and in the “Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres”, x, 1833, 30.

In these interventions de Sacy debated both single authorship and connectedness with Persian and Indian collections, dismissing the early reference by Al Masudi (336/947, re-edited in 346/957) as spurious. Just opposite to these views were Joseph von Hammer’s (“Wiener Jahrbücher”, 1819, 236; JA, 1e serie, x; 3e serie, viii; preface to his “Die noch Nicht übersetzten Erzaehlungen”) where he built his argument on Al Masudi, stressing therefore the genuineness of this as evidence of a collection of non-Arab origin.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Bruce Fudge - "More Translators of The Thousand and One Nights"


 Borges (1968) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges


Bruce Fudge on the continued legacy of Borges' judgements and predictions about the variety of translations of the Nights and the latest contemporary "Western" translations of the story collection.

" Obviously, much has changed since Borges’ day, not least the status of the Encyclopaedia  Britannica. We no longer want (consciously, anyway) to find Shakespeare or Flaubert in our translations from the Arabic. But in a sense, the twenty-first-century versions are heeding Borges’ critique. They, too, are only conceivable “in the wake of a literature.” The difference is that the new translations must be conceived in the wake of an Arabic literature.

It is true that the Penguin translation has a Spartan quality akin to the German of Littmann, as other reviewers have noted. But this quality is itself a result of a deep engagement with the Arabic text. One is never far from the original with Lyons, and as I have suggested, reading him is perhaps the closest to reading Calcutta II or Būlāq. The Pléiade edition is richer. This is most evident from the notes and critical apparatus that show both the translators’ deep command of the Arabic literary tradition and their evident passion for The Thousand and One Nights as a part of that tradition. None is particularly concerned with their readers’ own backgrounds: the assumption is that the reader, too, seeks authenticity. Perhaps in the next century scholars will look back and marvel at the priority of text over reader, but for the time being, both Penguin and Pléiade fit the current Zeitgeist."

His article - "More Translators of The Thousand and One Nights" from the Journal of the American Oriental Society can be read here:

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Muhsin Al-Musawi - The Popular Memory of the Societies of the Thousand and One Nights



A new book was published on the historical context of the 1001 Nights in Abbasid Baghdad. It is in Arabic (الذاكرة الشعبية لمجتمعات ألف ليلة وليلة) and has been given the English title of The Popular Memory of the Societies of the Thousand and One Nights.

More information below:

From http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/:

"Columbia University Professor Muhsin al-Musawi's latest book, The Popular Memory of the Societies of the Thousand and One Nights, is published by Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi press.

The book expounds on and develops al-Musawi's early research on and criticism of the social and cultural aspect of medieval and Abbasid life, and discusses the nature of narrative techniques that evolved then in relation to poetry, historiography, geography, topography, and the akhbar genre. Please have a look at the front and back covers for more information."

From al-Musawi:

"The Popular Memory  of the Societies  of the Thousand and  One Nights (Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi, 2016), 600pp. ISBN  978-9953-68-808-4.

The book expands on and develops my early research on  and criticism  of the social and cultural aspect of medieval and Abbasid life,  and discusses the nature of narrative techniques that  evolved then in relation to poetry, historiography, geography, topography, and  the akhbar genre."
Here is the cover and back page:


Monday, February 8, 2016

Arabic manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights


Arabic manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights is a new book recently published by Harback, Directed by Aboubakr Chraïbi.
I've uploaded the book's information on Scribd below along with its table of contents.
The field of Nights studies concerned with Arabic manuscripts of the work has long been missing a comprehensive, updated bibliography and overview of these manuscripts. As such it will be a vital resource for Nights scholarship, particularly as that scholarship continues to take a more global and comparative view of the story collection.


Saturday, February 6, 2016

1001 SF Nights - Baghdad-by-the-Bay and Herb Caen

 

One of the funniest writers I've ever read and the reason I bought a subscription to The San Francisco Chronicle at the tender age of 17 many years go is Herb Caen (1916-1997) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Caen.

His column was an almost daily rapid fire barrage of witticisms and insight into one of my many homes SF.

And he gave The City one of its most well-known nicknames – "Baghdad-by-the-Bay" – in several of his columns. The name caught on and is commonly used as SF's alter-ego. Unfortunately "Crazytown USA" never did...

Baghdad-by-the-Bay is a decidedly 1001 Nights related nickname and from its uses below one can easily still imagine Haroun and co. wandering around Polk and Pine getting into all sorts of Nights-esque problems. 

Herb's obituary and some of his greatest quips can be read online at the (somewhat ad-heavy) SFGATE page - http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/7-Decades-of-Baghdad-By-the-Bay-Tied-Together-2855480.php


From October 1940:

"The inner excitement of Stockton tunnel, as the jampacked F-cars wiggle noisily through, autos somehow squeeze past, and school kids run excitedly along the inside walk; and North Beach, with its 1001 neon-splattered joints alive with the Italian air of garlic and juke-box wail of American folk songs. . . The dismal reaches of lower Market after midnight; the city within a city that is the deep Mission District, and the bittersweet juxtaposition of brusquely modern Aquatic Park against the fortresslike jumble of red brick where Ghirardelli makes its chocolate. 

The crowded garages and the empty old buildings above them, the half-filled night clubs and the overfilled apartment houses, the saloons in the skies and the families huddled in the basements, the Third Street panhandlers begging for handouts in front of pawnshops filled with treasured trinkets, the great bridges and the rattletrap streetcars, the traffic that keeps moving although it has no place to go, the thousands of newcomers glorying in the sights and sounds of the city they've suddenly decided to love, instead of leave.

...This is Baghdad-by-the-Bay!"



"Hello, Visitors!
By Herb Caen

Greetings and welcome to San Francisco, city of the world, worlds within a city, forty-nine square miles of ups and downs, ins and outs, and going around in circles, most of them dizzy. A small “d” democratic city run by big-buck conservatives, a place where the winds of freedom will blow your mind and your hat off, where eccentricity is the norm and sentimentality the ultimate cynicism. Cable cars and conventions, boosterism living uncomfortably with sophistication, a built-in smugness announcing simply that we are simply the best. The only city better than San Francisco today was San Francisco yesterday–maybe. Remember, visitors, that you are lucky to be here. Have fun. Spend money. Marvel at our giddy combination of Kookville and High Kultur, busyness and booziness, millionaires stepping daintily over passed-out winos, hot-pantzed ladies of the night throwing themselves at your passing car. Enjoy yourselves, but don’t stay too long. Parking is such street sorrow.

Years ago, this wide-eyed kid from Sacramento dubbed it Baghdad-by-the-Bay, a storybook city of spires and minarets, gay banners fluttering in the breeze. A viewtiful city, he called it, a Saroyanesque pastiche of lovable gamblers and boozy bohemians spouting half-aphorisms in saloons run by patrician publicans. The most beautiful bay in the world–only superlatives were accepted–was breasted by ferries that looked like Victorian mansions with sidewheels. Then came the greatest bridges in the world–“the car-strangled spanner” of the bay and Joe Strauss’s suspenseful “bridge that couldn’t be built.” We looked around at the wonderful, funderful city and we were proud to be San Franciscans, the envy of all.

San Francisco, Queen City of the Pacific (the title was once non-ironic), gleaming jewel of the West Coast, surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by Republican reality. Occasionally a Republican mayor sneaks in, but it is essentially a city that votes the straight Demo ticket. I don’t even know how they get people to run for mayor: who wants to be Chief Kook of Kookville? We have a city father who is an unmarried mother of two and a gay seat on the Board of Supes, as befits the new demographics. San Francisco has a large gay population, and it keeps increasing, although exactly how gays multiply has not been explained. Nothing is ever explained in San Francisco.
“The city that was never a town.” There’s a thought that appeals to San Franciscans. Will Rogers may or may not have said it, but the phrase does conjure up a flash of the crazed and crazy place that was born in a Gold Rush and grew up overnight to become a fabled city. Tip to visiting journalists: “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco” was one of the best lines Mark Twain never wrote, but who cares. Whoever said it was accurate enough.

Welcome visitors, to a city as confusing as the Democratic party. If you drive, don’t drink, but the driving will drive you to drink. We are casual about street signs, but you might find one if you look hard enough. Directions? Forget it, and don’t ask whatever looks like a resident. He won’t know either. If you keep going on a one-way street, you will soon come to another one-way street with traffic coming right at you. That’s what makes us colorful and our insurance rates the highest. Don’t worry about traffic lights. Green and red both mean go like hell; in fact you cross on the green at your own risk. Another tip: No Parking Any Time means park any time, usually on the sidewalk and sometimes on a pedestrian. There are a lot of tow-away zones, so check the signs. It is maddening to pay $60 to ransom your car from a towing company whose slogan is “Discover San Francisco”.


San Francisco, a city for all seasons (sometimes four in one day) and various reasons. A city that thinks nothing of spending $60 million to rebuild a cable car system that was obsolete a century ago and even less of letting drunks lie on the street as long as they aren’t in the way of the cables; “a sociological, not a police problem,” unquote. A city of soup kitchens and two thousand restaurants, some of them excellent and most of them crowded. A place where whites are a minority and “the largest Chinatown outside of the Orient” is no longer large enough. The mayor and both congressmen are Jewish women; do we need a Yenta Control Board?

So welcome, dear visitors, to Crazytown USA. You will either be crazy about it or become as crazy as the rest of us. Either way, may you all return safely to your funny country, that large land mass slightly to the right of Baghdad-by-the-Bay."