burton--1001-nights--sample

I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication
of “The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night.” His version
is most readable: his English, with a sub-flavour of the Mabinogionic
archaicism, is admirable; and his style gives life and light to the nine
volumes whose matter is frequently heavy enough. He succeeds admirably
in the most difficult passages and he often hits upon choice and
special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word,
so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce
use the same expression under pain of falling far short. But the learned
and versatile author bound himself to issue only five hundred copies,
and “not to reproduce the work in its complete and uncastrated form.”
Consequently his excellent version is caviaire to the general — practically
unprocurable.
And here I hasten to confess that ample use has been made of
the three versions above noted, the whole being blended by a callida
junctura into a homogeneous mass. But in the presence of so many
predecessors a writer is bound to show some raison d’etre for making
a fresh attempt and this I proceed to do with due reserve.
Briefly, the object of this version is to show what “The Thousand
Nights and a Night” really is. Not, however, for reasons to be more fully
stated in the terminal Essay, by straining verbum reddere verbo, but by
writing as the Arab would have written in English. On this point I am
all with Saint Jerome (Pref. in Jobum) “Vel verbum e verbo, vel sensum
e sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medic temperatum genus translationis.”
My work claims to be a faithful copy of the great Eastern
Saga-book, by preserving intact, not only the spirit, but even the
mécanique, the manner and the matter. Hence, however prosy and longdrawn
out be the formula, it retains the scheme of The Nights because
they are a prime feature in the original. The Ráwí or reciter, to whose
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