I have the Kindle e-book Arabian Nights, Richard Burton translation. At the beginning, the vizir’s daughter, against his wishes, goes to the Sultan, and before the first dawn, she begins telling the Tale of the Bull and the Ass. But this tale turns out to be a story that the vizir is telling his daughter to dissuade her from going to the Sultan. She refuses to change her mind, and goes to the Sultan. Before the first dawn, she begins telling the Tale of the Trader and the Jinni.
It reads like a copy that was changed without removing the original draft wording. Is this just a screwup with the electronic publishing, or did Burton’s original translation look like this?
It has her telling the Vizer she’s going to the Sultan, and him warning her by telling her of the story of the Bull and the Ass. But she doesn’t listen and makes him take her anyway. So I think you just have a formatting problem with your text.
Ah yes, the story of the bull and the ass. Not only is it horribly sexist, but (at least in my version) the translator chose all the worst words to use. Ass, cock, etc.
I read a hefty chunk of the Nights, but there’s only so much nefarious behavior, portrayed as heroicism, that one can read pleasurably.
But yes, as Captain Amazing said, the story is told to Scheherazade not by her.
Burton’s high Victorian sensibilities would be saddened by the mere notion that anything he wrote could be considered sexist, or give the least amount of pain to the sensitive; but he would plead he was a simple transcriber, and any complaints regarding cultural values should go to a bunch of old guys East of Suez one to two millennia back.
Thanks for the responses, and thanks for the link, Captain Amazing. In the version I bought from Kindle, everything prior to the ‘Tale of the Bull and the Ass’ appears to have been copied from a different translation. Even the character names are all spelled differently, e.g., Scheherazade instead of Shahrazad. Reading the Elizabethan English (if that’s how it’s best characterized) is enough of a challenge without an inconsistent context confusing the story.
It’s not Elizabethan - Burton was a Victorian.
But it’s stranger than that Burton chose to translate using his own peculiar-to-his-translation-of-the-Arabian-Nights English. Some people find it really annoying (like the translator of the Penguin edition), but I love it.
A question – part of the attraction of Burton’s translation are his extensive and copious footnotes, which frequently take up more space on the page that the “clear” text. (and it’s in smaller type, too). You can get lost in simply reading his footnotes. How do they handle this in the electronic version?
I’ve got the complete edition in hardcopy. I’m a BIG fan of Burton’s works.