The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1 | Page 8

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 condamnable ce qui est naturel. And they are
prying as children. For instance the European novelist marries off his
hero and heroine and leaves them to consummate marriage in privacy;
even Tom Jones has the decency to bolt the door. But the Eastern story
teller, especially this unknown "prose Shakespeare," must usher you,
with a flourish, into the bridal chamber and narrate to you, with infinite
gusto, everything he sees and hears. Again we must remember that
grossness and indecency, in fact les turpitudes, are matters of time and
place; what is offensive in England is not so in Egypt; what scandalises
us now would have been a tame joke tempore Elisœ. Withal The Nights
will not be found in this matter coarser than many passages of
Shakespeare, Sterne, and Swift, and their uncleanness rarely attains the
perfection of Alcofribas Naiser, "divin maitre et atroce cochon." The
other element is absolute obscenity, sometimes, but not always,
tempered by wit, humour and drollery; here we have an exaggeration of
Petronius Arbiter, the handiwork of writers whose ancestry, the most
religious and the most debauched of mankind, practised every
abomination before the shrine of the Canopic Gods.
In accordance with my purpose of reproducing the Nights, not
virginibus puerisque, but in as perfect a picture as my powers permit, I
have carefully sought out the English equivalent of every Arabic word,

however low it may be or "shocking" to ears polite; preserving, on the
other hand, all possible delicacy where the indecency is not intentional;
and, as a friend advises me to state, not exaggerating the vulgarities and
the indecencies which, indeed, can hardly be exaggerated. For the
coarseness and crassness are but the shades of a picture which would
otherwise be all lights. The general tone of The Nights is exceptionally
high and pure. The devotional fervour often rises to the boiling point of
fanaticism. The pathos is sweet, deep and genuine; tender, simple and
true, utterly unlike much of our modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid
and multitudinous, is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected
pessimism and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root
under the brightest skies and which sigh in the face of heaven: --
Vita quid est hominis? Viridis floriscula mortis; Sole Oriente oriens,
sole cadente cadens.
Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kází with exemplary
impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds
admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we
descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a
transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle
corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more
real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camélias,
and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of
pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest
modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is
implied, and "improper" allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do
we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the
word not of the thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the
sincere homage paid to virtue in guise of perfect hypocrisy. It is, indeed,
this unique contrast of a quaint element, childish crudities and nursery
indecencies and "vain and amatorious" phrase jostling the finest and
highest views of life and character, shown in the kaleidoscopic
shiftings of the marvellous picture with many a "rich truth in a tale's
presence", pointed by a rough dry humour which compares well with
"wut; "the alternations of strength and weakness, of pathos and bathos,
of the boldest poetry (the diction of Job) and the baldest prose (the

Egyptian of today); the contact of religion and morality with the orgies
of African Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter--at times taking away the
reader's breath--and, finally, the whole dominated everywhere by that
marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein the spiritual and the supernatural
are as common as the material and the natural; it is this contrast, I say,
which forms the chiefest charm of The Nights, which gives it the most
striking originality and which makes it a perfect expositor of the
medieval Moslem mind.
Explanatory notes did not enter into Mr. Payne's plan. They do with
mine: I can hardly imagine The Nights being read to any profit by men
of the West without commentary. My annotations