The Arabian Nights (Continued)

by Gregory Frost

III. Reassessments

In 1984, Muhsin Mahdi published a definitive translation of the fourteenth–century Syrian text that Galland had used in the eighteenth century for his work. Mahdi made repairs where necessary but didn't embellish as his predecessors had done, producing the most accurate version of the core stories to date. At the center of this edition are tales involving the historical figures of Caliph Hârûn al–Rashîd and his wise vizier, Ja-far.

Six years later, Husain Haddawy carefully translated Mahdi's work into English, thereby providing us with the most comprehensible and approachable edition yet of the Nights. It is great reading, without the overly embellished and convoluted prose that graces most of the other translations.

Haddawy supports the position of Mahdi's that the tales in the Syrian manuscript alone comprise the true Alf Laylah wa Laylah, and that the rest can either be dismissed as augmentations or, as with "The Story of Qamar al–Zaman and His Two Sons," fragments.

While this is all undoubtedly true, it seems to me that it's only a valid assessment from the perspective of a strict purist. That is, yes, we should be aware that such a proto–collection of stories exists, but that should not diminish our pleasure in reading all the other tales — the Sinbads, the 'Ala al–Din, the 'Ali Baba, and so forth. Haddawy himself bears this out in that a few years after rendering the Mahdi translation in English, he published a companion volume of four of the more familiar Arabian Nights augmentations.

At last we discover that the puzzle has no single absolute form and never did. Somehow this seems most appropriate.

The Nights have flamed the imaginations of writers and poets since the moment Antoine Galland set them down in French four hundred years ago. Contemporary writers such as Barth and Borges and Byatt continue to be charged by them. A Thousand and One Nights have lasted a thousand times that. I expect that clever Shahrazâd will still be unfolding her tales and watching for the dawn a thousand years hence.

Further Reading

Nonfiction
The Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights by Husain Haddawy
Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context by Ferial Ghazoul
The Arabian Nights: A Companion by Robert Irwin
Arabian Night's Entertainments by Robert L. Mack
The Arabian Nights Reader by Ulrich Marzolph
New Perspectives on Arabian Nights by W. Ouyang

Fiction
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt
The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey and Mahlon F. Craft
Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
The Angel With One Hundred Wings by Daniel Horch
Arabian Nights and a Day by Naguib Mahfouz

On the Web
The Thousand Nights and a Night, online translations
"Night Thoughts: Scheherazade," poem by Ari Berk
"Scheherazade's Saving Grace," poem by Cory–Ellen Nadel
"The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherade," poem by Edgar Allan Poe



About the Author:
Gregory Frost is the author of the adult fairy tale novel Fitcher's Brides, and other works. For more information, please visit his website.

About the Artist:
Danish painter Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886 – 1957) is best known for his illustrations of tales from the European fairy tale cannon (particularly East of the Sun, West of the Moon) — yet his fascination with the Orient began in early childhood with the prints and books his grandfather brought home from travels in the far East. The influence of Japanese, Chinese, and Persian art is clearly evident in Nielsen's spare watercolor style — an influence that became even more pronounced in the artist's later work.

The Arabian Nights paintings on these pages were executed during the years 1918 – 1922, when Nielsen was living in Copenhagen and was involved with set and costume designs for a stage production of Aladdin. Somewhat different in tone from his fairy tale illustrations, these gouache paintings are thoroughly adult and even more highly stylized, reflecting the influence of Persian miniatures in their imagery and their small size. (Each one is just thirteen inches square.)

Nielsen created twenty Arabian Nights paintings altogether, intended to illustrate an edition of the text translated from the Arabic by Arthur Christensen — but publication was canceled due to the high costs of printing in Denmark after the first World War, while plans for French, English, and American editions fell through due to translation problems. Sadly, the pictures remained unpublished until twenty years after the artist's death. Although one of the paintings had been lost, the other nineteen were finally collected in an American "Peacock Press" edition titled The Unknown Paintings of Kay Nielsen, edited by David Larkin, in 1977. In addition to the fine reproductions of these jewel–like, little known pictures by Nielsen, the book contains a beautifully written reminiscence of the artist and his wife by their close friend Hildegarde Flanner Monhoff.

For more information on the artist, visit From Fairy Tales to Fantasia: The Art of Kay Nielsen in the Endicott gallery.

"The Arabian Nights: The Tale of the Puzzle of the Tales" copyright © 2001 by Gregory Frost; updated 2007. This article may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.



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