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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
The first translator of the Arabian Nights (Paris, 1704-17) was Antoine Galland. Almost immediately translated into English, Galland's popular collection remained the only version of the Nights known in Europe throughout the century. Convinced that Swift had read it, twentieth-century scholars Pietro Toldo and William A. Eddy show that the tale “Hassân-al-Bassri” was a source for Brobdingnag; the passages they quote come from the modern French translation of J. C. Mardrus, and bear a great similarity to Gulliver's second voyage. Swift, however, could not have known “Hassân” for it is omitted by Galland. Because of the differences between Galland's Nights and later versions, studies in eighteenth-century source criticism must work with early texts. Curiously, of all versions of “Hassan” only Mardrus relates the episode in question, which may explain why his translation is anathematized by Arabists as distorting the erotic content of the original. Recent inquiry also discloses that the episode is missing in known Arabic sources. It is almost certain that Mardrus fabricated the passages cited by Toldo and Eddy; it may even be argued that he plagiarized Swift.
1 Le Livre des mille nuits et une nuit: Traduction littérale et complète du texte arabe, x (Paris: Editions de la Revue Blanche, 1902), 7–160.
2 Victor Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l'Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885, iv (Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, 1900), 46–81.
3 See Duncan Black Macdonald, “A Bibliographical and Literary Study of the First Appearance of the Arabian Nights in Europe,” Library Quarterly, 2 (1932), 387–420.
4 See my article, “Early English Editions of The Arabian Nights,” The Muslim World, 49 (1959), 232–38.
5 The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), II, 53.
6 “On Fable and Romance,” Dissertations, Moral and Critical (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, and Edinburgh : W. Creech, 1783), p. 510.
7 Swift: Les Années de jeunesse et le “Conte du tonneau,” Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, Fascicule 26 (Strasbourg, 1925), p. 216.
8 The Legacy of Islam, ed. Sir Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (1931 ; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), p. 201.
9 See my “The Influence of the Arabian Nights on Early Eighteenth Century English Literature,” Diss. Bryn Mawr 1959.
10 See Chauvin, iv, 12–19. For a more recent account of these Arabic texts, plus a summary of the European translations, see The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, i (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), under “Alf Layla wa-Layla.”
11 See M. H. Zotenberg, “Notices sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une nuits et la traduction de Galland,” Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale et Autres Bibliothèques, 28 (1887), 167–320.
12 During the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth, various supplements were added to Galland's Nights, based on recently discovered Arabic MSS: see Chauvin, iv, 82–120. The first wholly new translation after Galland was published in Stuttgart, 1823–24, by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. See n. 22.
13 “Les Voyages merveilleux de Cyrano de Bergerac et de Swift et leurs rapports avec l'œuvre de Rabelais,” Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, 4 (1906), 295–334; 5 (1906), 2444.
14 Toldo, pp. 306–07. Cf. Mardrus, x, 114–16.
15 Gulliver's Travels, A Critical Study (Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1923), p. 130. Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent references to Eddy come from pp. 129–31.
16 The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered from the Literal and Complete Version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus (London: Casanova Society, 1923), in, 319–20. Cf. Mardrus, x, 116–17.
17 Swift and the Twentieth Century (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1964), p. 67. Voigt's chapter, “The Sources of Gulliver's Travels,” is rpt. in Frank Brady, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Gulliver's Travels: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 13–22.
18 A la recherche du temps perdu, v (Paris : Libraire Gallimard, 1922), 63–64.
19 The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (London: privately printed, 1884), ix, 270–71.
20 A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments (Benares: Kamashastra Society, 1885), x, 95.
21 “On Translating the Arabian Nights,” The Nation, 30 Aug. 1900, p. 167.
22 Listed chronologically, the story of Hassan is found as follows: Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Der Tausend und einen Nacht, in (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1824), 1–93; George Lamb, New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Selected from the Original MS by Jos. von Hammer and Now First Translated into English (London: Henry Colburn, 1826), ii, 2–129; Gustav Weil, Tausendundeine Nacht, H (Stuttgart: Verlag der Klassiker, 1839), 463–611; Edward William Lane, The Thousand and One Nights (London: Charles Knight, 1841), iii, 384–518; Payne, vu, 121–264; Burton, vni, 7–145; Max Henning, Tausend und eine Nacht, xm (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, n.d. [1895–99]), 132–68; and Enno Littmann, Die Erzdhlungen aus Tausendundeinen Nachten (1921–28; rpt. Wiesbaden: Insel, 1953), v. 315–556. For permission to examine these volumes I am indebted to the Widener Library of Harvard Univ. and the Library of Congress.
According to Chauvin, vu (1903), 29, the earliest European translation of the story of Hassan was made in 1824 by Hammer. English readers, therefore, would have read the tale for the first time in Lamb's 1826 translation of Hammer.
23 “Without the nights, no Arabian Nights,” warned Burton, I, xiii.
24 From a letter dated 16 April 1973, Bijlefeld continues: “Richard Burton's note at the beginning of the Hasan alBasrï [sic] section (the Benares Edition, vm, 7) indicated that the Breslau edition mentions only one son, while in the edition he follows Hasan has a younger brother. Since Mardrus mentions only one son we decided to check the Breslau edition very carefully, hoping to find the giant story in this text based on a single manuscript from Tunisia. The results were negative also in this case.”
25 “On Translating the Arabian Nights,” The Nation, 6 Sept. 1900, p. 185.
26 “Les Mille et une nuits de M. Mardrus,” Revue des Bibliothèques et Archives de Belgique, 3 (1905), 290.
27 Thèmes et motifs des Mille et une nuits: Essai de classification (Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1949), p. 82.
28 The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963), pp. 96–97.
29 Gerhardt believes that Littmann's German translation, published 20 years later, is more accurate than any other. See Ch. iii. Macdonald is of the same opinion; see his “Alf Laila wa-Laila,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Supplement, No. 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934). To my knowledge, Littmann's Nights has not yet been translated into English. Mardrus's version has—in 1923, 1930, 1937, 1958, and 1964. \
30 As an example of the kind of literary activity inspired by Mardrus's Nights, see Enver F. Dehoï, L'Erotisme des “Mille et une nuits” (Paris: Bibliothèque Internationale d'Erotologie, 1961). Its basic idea is that the Nights “constituent une véritable encyclopédie des relations amoureuses” (p. 13). Then, after naming a few sundry translations of the work beginning with Galland, Dehoï declares his intention to use only Mardrus (p. 27); he acknowledges the acid criticism of Mardrus by brushing it aside. About half of the book is devoted to pictures, few of which are obscene, and taken, one is informed, from genuine Oriental prints. Because of the apparent dearth of lewd materials, the author fills in with numerous pictures of such Arabian beauties as Susan Hayward, Anita Ekberg, Myrna Loy, and their leading sultans—Victor Mature, Dick Powell, Rudolph Valentino. Of special interest is Deho'i's “Petit dictionnaire de l'erotisme,” pp. 113–220, where, in a lengthy alphabetical listing (e.g., Adultery, Bigamy, Castration, etc.) the connoisseur may find his specialty in Mardrus's tales. The sexual encounter between Hassan and the giantess is classified under “A” for “Amours extraordinaires.”
