Arabian Nights (week 1)

The Arabian Nights is a collection of tales first compiled in the Islamic Golden Age. Although largely dismissed within the Arabic literary canon, it became a sensation in 1704 when it was translated and augmented for European audiences. It exerted an immense influence on Romanticism and the culture at large, becoming synonymous with the fabulous and the exotic, "the wonderful against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and reductively rational." It impressed the childhoods of many future authors and poets, including 11-year-old Herman Melville.

To this day, every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba. Yet The Arabian Nights is filled with adult themes and narratives of all kinds: fables, epics, erotica, politics, mysticism, horror, poetry, comedy, and more. It a mixture of fact and fiction covering a vast terrain of human thought and action. There are tyrannical rulers, demon lovers, enchanted palaces, shipwrecked sailors, and sensuous gardens--"a riot of sounds, colors, and perfumes"--narrated by Scheherazade, "the best-know female figure in world literature, and the tireless defender of human liberty."

In the words of Leigh Hunt, The Arabian Nights is "one of the most beautiful books in the world: not because there is nothing but pleasure in it, but because the pain has infinite chances of vicissitude, and because the pleasure is within the reach of all who have body and soul, and imagination."

The labyrinth-like texture of exotic tales in Melville's Mardi is much akin to the richly woven, fantastic array of The Arabian Nights. It is also thought that Mardi's characters of Taji and Yillah are rooted in the story of Taj al-Muluk and Dunya.

Schedule:

• Week 1: "Arabian Nights" to "Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother"
• Week 2: "Adventures of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura" to "Story of Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister"

Arabian Nights: (selected and edited by Andrew Lang, 1898)

• Kindle
• Google books
• Gutenberg
• Librivox 10h 34m

Supplemental:

• Story of Táj-al-Muluk and the Princess Dunyà
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926 trailer)
• Readings in Oriental Literature

Extracts:

• "I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights, which no one ever believes..." (Redburn, 8)
• "...we reached a low door concealed behind some old tapestry, which opening to the touch, disclosed a spectacle as beautiful and enchanting as any described in the Arabian Nights." ("Fragments From a Writing Desk, No. 2")
• "I arrived in London at the time the victorious princes were there assembled enjoying the Arabian Nights' hospitalities of a grateful and gorgeous aristocracy..." ("Rich Man's Crumbs")
• "“And pray, do you live here, Harry, in this Palace of Aladdin?” “Upon my soul,” he cried, “you have hit it:—you must have been here before! Aladdin’s Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very name.”" (Redburn, 46)
• "...the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an illumination." (Moby-Dick, 97)
• "Ere yet I felt that youth must die / How insubstantial looked the earth, / Aladdin-land!" ("C--'s Lament")
• "To these tales of the Fortunate Isles of the Free, recounted by one who had been there, the poor enslaved boy of Moorfields listened, night after night, as to the stories of Sinbad the Sailor." (Israel Potter, 26)
• "And dreamers all who dream of him— / Though Sinbad’s pleasant in the skim." (Clarel, 2.30)
• "But ere those Sinbads had begun / Their Orient Decameron, / Rolfe rose, to view the further hall." (Clarel, 3.12)
• "...hospitality being fabled to be of oriental origin, and forming, as it does, the subject of a pleasing Arabian romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in itself..." (Confidence-Man, 36)
• "Orientalism’s display / In Scripture, where the chapters treat / Of mystic themes" (Clarel, 2.29)
• "Viewed from a certain point, there was a touch of primeval orientalness in Benjamin Franklin." (Israel Potter, 8)

This meetup is part of a series on The Crescent and the Cross.