So I've decided that I might as well load 1001 [Arabian] Nights into my DS for a good read whenever I'm bored and have a long trip, since I'm going to be traveling a good bit this summer. What I need to know is which version is best to use.
In this book "The Arabian Nights" are translated from the French version of Monsieur Galland, who dropped out the poetry and a great deal of what the Arabian authors thought funny, though it seems wearisome to us. In this book the stories are shortened here and there, and omissions are made of pieces only suitable for Arabs and old gentlemen.
Well now I can't read it without wondering what I'm missing.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 2:28
I guess the Lang version is out, then.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 2:30
Further research: * 1984 — Muhsin Mahdi publishes an Arabic translation he says is faithful to the oldest Arabic versions surviving.
* 1990s — Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.
Haddawy would presumably be ideal, and after that would be Burton and Payne.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 2:35
Further research: * 1984 — Muhsin Mahdi publishes an Arabic translation he says is faithful to the oldest Arabic versions surviving.
* 1990s — Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.
Haddawy would presumably be ideal, and after that would be Burton and Payne.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 5:31
I read them in a faithful translation, poetry, pornography and all (not English, so not very helpful to you), and I assure you that 1001 nights isn't all that awesome. Actually, it's quite a bit depressing at times, at other times harsh, always rather questionable and rarely funny indeed.
Many tales are shitty teary stories about how everyone and even their supernatural respected deus ex machini all died horribly for love, etc.. Only a handful of tales was actually decent, and even then the beauty would suddenly be described as being so beautiful that "lakes of sweat collected between the folds of fat on her stomach" in the middle of an otherwise awesome sex scene, or the hero act as a homungous whiny pussy indeed.
Yeah, ALL 1001 night characters are emo as all hell. The whole thing is, basically, about king Shahriar being so emo he went insane, as you probably know, actually. His reasons for being emo, as you must know if your version wasn't really badly cut, was that his wife fucked with negro slaves, and when he ran away from his own palace because of that (hardcore, ain't he) he met a woman who was fucking an ifrit, who (the woman) raped him and his brother by telling them that if they resist, she'd wake ifrit up and tell him to fuck their shit up, at which point Shahriar went back to the castle, killed his dickloving wife and took on the habit of marrying underage girls and raping them to death on the first very night - cue one unfortunate noble's daughter Sheherazade.
Now, I seem to have made it all look pretty funny, but it actually isn't. Now, what's good about 1001 tales that actually made them popular is a few adventure tales that really were pretty cool, but you know them all too well at this point anyway (Sinbad, Aladdin etc.), so, sadly, the whole thing is already spoiled in advance.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 12:35
>>4
presumably, but due to the timeframe that version is likely still under copyright, and is definitely much harder to obtain as an e-text
>>6
well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. if I ever feel like I should stop reading the stories midway in, then I will, but I'd at least like to give the stories a try for their historical and ethnic value.
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Anonymous2008-06-16 12:53
>>7 but I'd at least like to give the stories a try for their historical and ethnic value
By all means do. The only reason I kind of dislike 1001 Nights is that I personally rarely give a dime about ethnic value, and historical things are of interest only if they are contemporary to me and I've seen them come to pass, but that really is only me.