Les mille et une nuits

For the French publisher's imprint, see Fayard.
Illustration from Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuit, Contes Arabes, Vol. 2, by Pierre Husson, The Hague, 1714, by Dutch artist David Coster (1686-1752): Shahrazad tells her story to Shahryār, while her sister Dunyazad listens. Note other stories in the smaller panels (e.g., "The Ebony Horse" and "The Fisherman and the Jinn").

Les mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français ("The Thousand and One Nights, Arab stories translated into French"), published in 12 volumes between 1704 and 1717, was the first European version of The Thousand and One Nights tales. The French translation by Antoine Galland (1646-1715) derived from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension of the medieval work[1] as well as other sources. It included stories that are not found in the original Arabic manuscripts — the so-called "orphan tales" — such as the famous "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", which first appeared in print in Galland's form. Immensely popular at the time of initial publication, and enormously influential later, subsequent volumes were introduced using Galland's name although the stories were written by unknown persons at the behest of a publisher wanting to capitalize on their popularity.

History

Galland had come across a manuscript of "The Tale of Sindbad the Sailor" in Constantinople during the 1690s and in 1701 he published his French translation of it.[2] Its success encouraged him to embark on a translation of a 14th-century Syrian manuscript of tales from The Thousand and One Nights. The first two volumes of this work, under the title Les mille et une nuit, appeared in 1704. The twelfth and final volume was published posthumously in 1717.

Galland translated the first part of his work solely from the Syrian manuscript, but in 1709 he was introduced to another source in the form of a Syrian Christian — a Maronite scholar and monk from Aleppo whom he called Youhenna (“Hanna”) Diab. Galland's diary (March 25, 1709) records that he met Hanna through Paul Lucas, a French traveler who had brought him to Paris. Hanna recounted 14 stories to Galland from memory and Galland chose to include seven of them in his books. (For example, Galland's diary tells that his translation of "Aladdin" was made in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes IX and X, published in 1710.) This mysterious situation has led some scholars to conclude that Galland invented the "orphan tales" himself and that subsequent Arabic versions are merely later renderings of his original French.

Galland adapted his translation to the taste of the times. The immediate success the tales enjoyed was partly due to the vogue for fairy stories — in French, contes de fees[3] — which had been started in France in the 1690s by Galland's friend Charles Perrault. Galland was also eager to conform to the literary canons of the era. He cut many of the erotic passages out along with all of the poetry. This caused Sir Richard Burton to refer to "Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation" which "in no wise represent[s] the eastern original."[4]

Galland’s translation was greeted with immense enthusiasm and was soon further translated into many other European languages:

These produced a wave of imitations and the widespread 18th century fashion for oriental tales.[5]

Contents

Volume 1

Les Mille et une Nuits

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Volume 5

Volume 6

Volume 7

Volume 8

Volume 9

Volume 10

Volume 11

Volume 12

Influence

In a 1936 essay, Jorge Luis Borges wrote:

Another fact is undeniable. The most famous and eloquent encomiums of The Thousand and One Nights — by Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Stendhal, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Newman — are from readers of Galland's translation. Two hundred years and ten better translations have passed, but the man in Europe or the Americas who thinks of the Thousand and One Nights thinks, invariably, of this first translation. The Spanish adjective milyunanochesco [thousand-and-one-nights-esque] ... has nothing to do with the erudite obscenities of Burton or Mardrus, and everything to do with Antoine Galland's bijoux and sorceries.[6]

Editions

First publication

Subsequent editions

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bibliothèque nationale manuscript "Supplement Arab. No. 2523"
  2. ↑ Robert L. Mack, ed. (2009). "Introduction". Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Oxford: Oxford UP. pp. ix–xxiii.
  3. ↑ Muhawi, Ibrahim (2005). "The "Arabian Nights" and the Question of Authorship". Journal of Arabic Literature 36 (3): 323–337. doi:10.1163/157006405774909899.
  4. ↑ Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, v1, Translator's Foreword pp. x
  5. ↑ This section: Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Penguin, 1995), Chapter 1; some details from Garnier-Flammarion introduction
  6. ↑ Borges, Jorge Luis, "The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights" in The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986, ed. Eliot Weinberger (Penguin, 1999), pp. 92-93

External links

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