Les mille et une nuits explained

Les mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français, 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 from other sources. It included stories not found in the original Arabic manuscripts[2] — 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 collection.

Immensely popular at the time of initial publication by the house of the late,[3] and enormously influential later, Galland's published tales were supplemented by subsequent volumes, introduced using Galland's name - although some stories were produced by others at the behest of a publisher wanting to capitalize on the popularity of Galland's work.[4]

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.[5] 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, with volumes three to seven published in 1705 and 1706. Galland translated two more stories, but not enough for another complete volume. Frustrated, Galland's publisher Claude Barbin published these two along with two of François Pétis de la Croix's translations of the Turkish Turkish: Ferec baʿd eş-şidde (later published as Les mille et un jours in 1710–12) as the eighth volume in 1709. This outraged Galland, who switched publishers for all subsequent volumes.[6]

Galland translated the first part of his work solely from the Syrian manuscript, but in 1709 he was introduced to a Syrian Christian—a Maronite 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 used him as an interpreter brought him to Paris. Hanna recounted 14 stories to Galland from memory and Galland chose to write them down. At the end of the day, he included seven of them in his books. These are the tales called "Orphan tales" and are actually not translations but new additions directly written by Galland after what he heard from Diab. These new stories include Aladin and Ali Baba. For example, Galland's diary tells that the version of "Aladdin" that he wrote was made in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes IX and X, published in 1710. The final two volumes were published posthumously in 1717.

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[7] —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."[8]

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.[9]

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.[10]

Editions

First publication

Subsequent editions

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Bibliothèque nationale manuscript "Supplement Arab. No. 2523"
  2. Book: Horta . Paulo Lemos . Seale . Yasmine . Yasmine Seale . 16 November 2021 . The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights . The Annotated Books . Liveright . 9781631493645 . 8 May 2024 . After meeting Diyab at Lucas's Paris apartment on March 25, 1709, Galland noted in his diary that the young traveler '[knew] some very beautiful Arabic tales.' He arranged to meet Diyab for a series of storytelling sessions from May 5 to June 6, during which the French translator took shorthand notes on fourteen fantastical stories. [...] Galland's insertion of many of these tales into Les mille et une nuits was arguably his most significant contribution to the development of the story collection [...]..
  3. Book: Razzaque . Arafat Abdur . Akel . Ibrahim . Granara . William . William Granara . 28 April 2020 . Genie in a Bookshop: Print Culture, Authorship, and 'The Affair of the Eighth Volume' at the Origins of Les Mille et une nuits . The Thousand and One Nights: Sources and Transformations in Literature, Art, and Science . Studies on Performing Arts & Literature of the Islamicate World, volume 9 . Leiden . Brill . 102 . 9789004429031 . 14 May 2024 . [...] Galland's Nuits was released from Barbin's after the death of its eponym and under the proprietorship of his widow Marie Cochart..
  4. For example:Book: Horta . Paulo Lemos . Seale . Yasmine . Yasmine Seale . 16 November 2021 . The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights . The Annotated Books . Liveright . 9781631493645 . 14 May 2024 . [...] as Galland approached volume eight of his translation, he found himself at the end of the 282 nights in his unfinished Arabic manuscript. As other Orientalist translators entered the market with their own offerings of tales translated from Arabic, Persian, or Turkish sources, Galland's publisher did what copyists and scribes of the Arab world had done many times before: She inserted tales that were not part of the original One Thousand and One Nights to complete the eighth volume (published in 1709). [...] Galland initially objected to his publisher's decision to include in this eighth volume translations from Turkish sources done by his rival François Pétis de la Croix, but the authenticity of a text mattered little for early eighteenth-century French publishers [...]..
  5. Book: Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 2009. Oxford UP. Oxford. ix-xxiii. Robert L. Mack. Introduction.
  6. Karateke . Hakan T. . The Politics of Translation: Two Stories from the Turkish Ferec baʿde Şidde in Les mille et une nuit, contes arabes . Journal of Near Eastern Studies . . 74 . 2 . 2015 . 211–224 . 10.1086/682237 . 10.1086/682237 . 156007752 .
  7. Muhawi. Ibrahim. The "Arabian Nights" and the Question of Authorship. Journal of Arabic Literature. 2005. 36. 3. 323–337. 10.1163/157006405774909899.
  8. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, v1, Translator's Foreword pp. x
  9. This section: Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Penguin, 1995), Chapter 1; some details from Garnier-Flammarion introduction
  10. 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

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Les mille et une nuits".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.