The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, vol 1 | Page 7

sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medic temperatum
genus translationis." My work claims to be a faithful copy of the great
Eastern Saga book, by preserving intact, not only the spirit, but even
the mécanique, the manner and the matter. Hence, however prosy and
long drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme of The Nights
because they are a prime feature in the original. The Ráwí or reciter, to
whose wits the task of supplying details is left, well knows their value:
the openings carefully repeat the names of the dramatic personae and
thus fix them in the hearer's memory. Without the Nights no Arabian
Nights! Moreover it is necessary to retain the whole apparatus: nothing
more ill advised than Dr. Jonathan Scott's strange device of garnishing
The Nights with fancy head pieces and tail pieces or the splitting up of
Galland's narrative by merely prefixing "Nuit," etc., ending moreover,
with the ccxxxivth Night: yet this has been done, apparently with the
consent of the great Arabist Sylvestre de Sacy (Paris, Ernest Bourdin).
Moreover, holding that the translator's glory is to add something to his
native tongue, while avoiding the hideous hag like nakedness of
Torrens and the bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the
picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all their
outlandishness; for instance, when the dust cloud raised by a tramping
host is described as "walling the horizon." Hence peculiar attention has
been paid to the tropes and figures which the Arabic language often
packs into a single term; and I have never hesitated to coin a word
when wanted, such as "she snorted and sparked," fully to represent the
original. These, like many in Rabelais, are mere barbarisms unless
generally adopted; in which case they become civilised and common
currency.
Despite objections manifold and manifest, I have preserved the balance
of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon
as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in
Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to

proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful
alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it
defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles
which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained and
forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, the scholar will observe that,
despite the immense copiousness of assonants and consonants in
Arabic, the strain is often put upon it intentionally, like the Rims cars
of Dante and the Troubadours. This rhymed prose may be "un English"
and unpleasant, even irritating to the British ear; still I look upon it as a
sine quâ non for a complete reproduction of the original. In the
Terminal Essay I shall revert to the subject.
On the other hand when treating the versical portion, which may
represent a total of ten thousand lines, I have not always bound myself
by the metrical bonds of the Arabic, which are artificial in the extreme,
and which in English can be made bearable only by a tour de force. I
allude especially to the monorhyme, Rim continuat or tirade monorime,
whose monotonous simplicity was preferred by the Troubadours for
threnodies. It may serve well for three or four couplets but, when it
extends, as in the Ghazal-cannon, to eighteen, and in the Kasidah, elegy
or ode, to more, it must either satisfy itself with banal rhyme words,
when the assonants should as a rule be expressive and emphatic; or, it
must display an ingenuity, a smell of the oil, which assuredly does not
add to the reader's pleasure. It can perhaps be done and it should be
done; but for me the task has no attractions: I can fence better in shoes
than in sabots. Finally I print the couplets in Arab form separating the
hemistichs by asterisks.
And now to consider one matter of special importance in the book- -its
turpiloquium. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely distinct.
One is the simple, naïve and child like indecency which, from Tangiers
to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the
present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions
"plainly descriptive of natural situations;" and it treats in an
unconventionally free and naked manner of subjects and matters which
are usually, by common consent, left undescribed. As Sir William
Jones observed long ago, "that anything natural can be offensively
obscene never seems to have occurred to the Indians or to their
legislators; a singularity (?) pervading their writings and conversation,

but no proof of moral depravity." Another justly observes, Les peuples
primitifs n'y entendent pas malice: ils appellent les choses par leurs
noms et ne trouvent pas