#README - Arabian nights
The first time I read this fragment, I was fascinated. Partly because it was the first time I had read something so explicit and sensual, partly because I was still very young. But I found it beautiful, full of sweetness and abandonment, and at the same time full of a strong sense of belonging, modesty, and honor.
All of these things deeply impressed a young mind like mine, so much so that several years later I sought out that passage, and possibly read the entire text from which it is taken: The Thousand and One Nights.
When we talk about this book, a series of children’s stories that we all know come to mind, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or Aladdin’s Lamp. A great injustice has been done to a text of great content and formal richness, intended without a doubt for an adult audience, at least in the intentions of its author, who spared no detail in the description of sexual relationships, orgies and perversions of every kind, adulteries, mutilations, incests, betrayals, murders and seductions, tortures and erotic games. It is understandable that the translators who determined and promoted its diffusion in Europe found themselves having to make really difficult decisions, considering the strict morality of the time. And so entire sections disappeared, those considered too risqué or violent, and especially the erotic scenes.
Only in 1888 did the splendid translation by Sir Richard Francis Burton arrive, a celebration of years of Arabic studies and an extensive knowledge of the Orient: a knowledge that is not limited only to the culture, customs and language of Muslims, but above all reveals a great familiarity with the vulgar jargon and approach to intimate questions of private and sexual life. Such vast and in-depth knowledge that it led the widow, Isabel Arundel Gordon, to burn the forty-year collection of diaries and notes immediately after his death.
The story of The Thousand and One Nights is quickly told: the Persian king Shāhrīyār, betrayed by one of his wives and convinced that no woman can ever be faithful, decides to guarantee the fidelity of his spouses by systematically killing them after the first night of marriage. A massacre of young girls, which in a short time reduces every family in the small kingdom to tears and brings the people to the brink of rebellion.
To put an end to the killings, the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, decides to sacrifice herself and become the king’s bride, but during the night she begins to tell a story that concludes only the next night, and so it goes on for numerous nights. She demonstrates in fact a narrative skill so excellent and a such a spirit that the king decides every morning to postpone her execution, until he decides to grant her clemency and welcome her as his legitimate wife.
Within this literary framework, the tales of the Thousand and One Nights follow one another, each one more fantastic (in the true sense of the word) than the other: beyond the magical element, the book manages to paint a faithful picture of what Arab society was like, customs, culinary art, court life, even fashion, courtship, love, and sex. A structure that some compare to that of the Decameron, although here the order and rigor of Boccaccio’s work is lacking, both in structure and content. There is in fact no clear division of topics and narrators, but a single narrator who manages to string stories together in a Chinese box scheme, always more indented and deepened as the nights go by.
As for the content, saying that Boccaccio is chaste compared to One Thousand and One Nights is an understatement, and does not fully convey the astonishment of those who, accustomed to the sanitized and censored Arabic text, read a complete passage for the first time, such as the one at the beginning of this post. I feverishly searched for a complete version to read it in all the splendor of the Italian translation, eventually ending up with the complete edition by Newton and Compton. I was greatly surprised to discover that this entire passage was missing, rendering a scene that should have been full of passion, life, and love bland and empty. This disappointment was further heightened by the fact that the omission is not indicated, making it impossible for those who are not intimately familiar with this ancient text to understand where cuts have been made. In short, it is a journey, a kidnapping to another world: leaving aside the magical aspect once again, one finds oneself immersed in a rich and fascinating culture, which is worth exploring in its complex entirety, with characters of great depth and psychological complexity, much richer than certain vacuous simulacra of contemporary literary “heroes.” Provided that your copy is indeed a complete version.