I was recently looking for some stories from the Arabian Nights, and found beautiful editions on the Internet Archive of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night translated by Richard Burton, which Wikipedia notes is the only complete English translation.
The vocabulary is a lot of fun. Wikipedia quotes historian Robert Irwin,
Burton shared [John] Payne’s enthusiasm for archaic and forgotten words. The style Burton achieved can be described as a sort of composite mock-Gothic, combining elements from Middle English, the Authorized Version of the Bible and Jacobean drama. Most modern readers will also find Burton’s Victorian vulgarisms jarring, for example ‘regular Joe Millers’, ‘Charleys’, and ‘red cent’. Burton’s translation of the Nights can certainly be recommended to anyone wishing to increase their word-power: ‘chevisance’, ‘fortalice’, ‘kemperly’, ‘cark’, ‘foison’, ‘soothfast’, ‘perlection’, ‘wittol’, ‘parergon’, ‘brewis’, ‘bles’, ‘fadaise’, ‘coelebs’, ‘vivisepulture’, and so on. ‘Whilome’ and ‘anent’ are standard in Burton’s vocabulary. The range of vocabulary is wider and stranger than Payne’s, lurching between the erudite and the plain earthy, so that Harun al-Rashid and Sinbad walk and talk in a linguistic Never Never Land.
It was circulated (though not “published” — see below) in the 1880s, and is quite readable. It feels lux to read even the scanned volumes on the Internet Archive.
It’s also intensely horny.
“Obsessive focus”
The original work clearly contains not a few stories intended primarily for the prurient interest. The stories first came from oral folk tales, of course, and the mix includes morality tales and adventure stories alongside dirty jokes.
Burton spends a great deal of time on the sexual aspect, sometimes far more than the source material. Wikipedia quotes critics claiming the translation has an “obsessive focus on sexuality”. Apparently the work was considered pornographic at the time it was printed, which prevented legal publication. To distribute it, Burton created a private club, the “Kama Shastra Society”, and printed copies only for members.
The bawdiness of both the original stories and Burton’s footnotes is really funny.
Three stories about slave girls
For example, these three stories about slave girls are printed one after another and only make sense as a throuple of dirty jokes told together. You can tell Burton’s interest is piqued by his footnotes, but it’s also clear that the smuttiness is authentic.
The way I read this first one, moving the hands as indicated in the footnote is intended to be suggestive, like making an hourglass figure with your hands, although I am not actually sure.
ABU AL-ASWAD AND HIS SLAVE-GIRL.
Abu al-Aswap bought a native-born slavegirl, who was blind of an eye, and she pleased him; but his people decried her to him; whereat he wondered and, turning the palms of his hands upwards,2 recited these two couplets,
“They find me fault with her where I default ne’er find,
Save haply that a speck in either eye may show:
But if her eyes have fault, of fault her form hath none,
Slim-built above the waist and heavily made below.”
The second also requires a footnote to explain, although only because of an inaccurate translation. It’s funny that apparently the sexual nature of the joke would have been lost to the intended western audience if the original word was translated directly, but it still needed to be euphemized.
I also like the phrasing from the second girl. “Game belongeth to him who taketh it” obviously is a reference to hunted animals but it sounds like she’s telling the first girl “don’t hate the player”.
HARUN AL-RASHID AND THE TWO SLAVEGIRLS.
The Caliph Harun al-Rashid lay. one night between two slavegirls, one from AlMedinah and the other from Cufa and the Cufite rubbed his hands, whilst the Medinite rubbed his feet and made his concern1 stand up. Quoth the Cufite, “I see thou wouldst keep the whole of the stock-in-trade to thyself; give me my share of it... And the other answered, “I have been told by Malik, on the authority of Hisham ibn Orwah,2 who had it of his (grand) father, that the Prophet said, ‘Whoso quickeneth the dead, the dead belongeth to him and is his.’” But the Cufite took her unawares and, pushing her away, seized it all in her own hand and said, “Al-A’amash telleth us, on the authority of Khaysamah, who had it of Abdallah bin Mas’td, that the Prophet declared, ‘Game belongeth to him who taketh it, not to him who raiseth it,’"
The third one seems to have iterated on the second, I suspect being invented after the telling of the first two together became rote. Not sure where the euphemism comes from in this one.
THE CALIPH HARUN AL-RASHID AND THE THREE SLAVE-GIRLS.
The Caliph Harun al-Rashid once slept with three slave-girls, a Meccan, a Medinite and an Irakite. The Medinah girl put her hand to his yard and handled it, whereupon it rose and the Meccan sprang up and drew it to herself. Quoth the other, “What is this unjust aggression? A tradition was related to me by Malik3 after Al-Zuhri, after Abdallah ibn Salim, after Said bin Zayd, that the Apostle of Allah (whom Allah bless and keep!) said: ‘Whoso enquickeneth a dead land, it is his.’” And the Meccan answered, “It is related to us by Sufyan, from Abu Zanad, from Al-A’araj, from Abu Horayrah, that the Apostle of Allah said: ‘The quarry is his who catcheth it, not his who starteth it.’” But the Irak girl pushed them both away and taking it to herself, said, “This is mine, till your contention be decided.”
The Ebony Horse
In this case, the original story might have been a bit salacious with a prince visiting a princess in her bedroom, but Burton’s footnote really takes it to the next level, focusing on how the ladies sleep: naked. You can practically hear him giggling. Everyone is just naked! In bed! At home! Right next to their husbands and wives! Can you imagine if we did that here, in England?? And by we I mean specifically me and my wife!?!?!? We definitely don’t though. But what if we did???
He went up to the couch, to see what was thereon, and found a young lady lying asleep, chemised with her hair2...
Lady Burton’s Edition
There was a “Lady Burton’s edition” with all of this sexual content removed. Apparently the name was just for advertising purposes; Burton’s wife Isabel is quoted as saying
I have never read, nor do I intend to read, at his own request, and to be true to my promise to him, my husband’s Arabian Nights.
This makes the sexual content so much funnier to me — Burton is smirking in the footnotes about naked wives sleeping next to naked husbands but makes his own wife pinky swear never to read his middle-eastern erotic fan-footnotes.
Sources
My favorite edition I found is the “Burton Club” edition, printed in the United States, with gold leaf on the binding for the first ten volumes and silver for the supplemental six. Individual volumes on the Internet Archive are linked below. I could not find all volumes from the same source. Any corrections or higher quality links would be appreciated!
The cover images in this post are taken from this scan of Volume II.
It’s too bad there are no modern reproductions of this lovely edition. I guess print on demand can’t make something this large and nice economical yet.
The entire work is also available in hypertext, which makes for much nicer copying and pasting but isn’t nearly as fun to read.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
- Volume I
- Volume II
- Volume III
- Volume IV
- Volume V
- Volume VI
- Volume VII
- Volume VIII
- Volume IX
- Volume X