In one of the texts ofstory of eternitywhich he devotes to the translators of Thousand and one NightJorge Luis Borges underlines “the scandalous decency” of the versions of Antoine Galland (12 volumes published between 1704 and 1717) and Edward Lane (1839-1841) of the famous oriental tales, “disinfected” of their sexual content.
Quite the opposite of that of sir Richard Francis Burton, “an English captain, writes Borges again, who had a passion for geography and all the ways of being a man known to men”. The Argentinian writer added that reading the Thousand and one Night in this translation was about as incredible as reading them “literally translated from the Arabic and commented on by Sindbad the Sailor”.
Born in 1821 in Torquay, in the south-west of England, when he joined Oxford University at the age of 19, Burton spoke French without an accent, had a perfect command of ancient Greek and Latin, expressed himself fluently in Greek modern, in Italian and in the Neapolitan dialect — in addition to knowing Spanish, Occitan and Bearnese.
A true phenomenon, a licensed adventurer, he would later have the reputation of having committed all the sins proscribed by the Decalogue. Author of 43 travelogues, Burton will be one of the five great explorers of Africa with Livingstone, Stanley, Baker and Speke. Orientalist, translator of Arabic, Sanskrit, French, Italian, Portuguese, he will be the best Arabist of the end of the 19th century.e century, as well as a pioneer of cultural anthropology.
His biography makes you dizzy. And Richard Francis Burton himself seems to have come out of an oriental tale. We will also have a good overview of his disheveled existence by reading All the ways of being a man that men knowthe biographical essay that the French novelist and translator Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès (Where the tigers are at homePrix Médicis 2008) devoted to the character and which precedes The Black Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Notes on the manners and customs of the Orient.
Readers in less of a hurry can always delve into Fawn Brodie’s colossal biography of Burton: A devil of a man. Sir Richard Burton or the adventure demon (Phebus, 1992).
Self-published in 16 volumes between 1885 and 1888, in the midst of the Victorian repression of morals, the translation of Thousand and one Night de Burton restored to these stories all their authenticity and vitality. Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès immersed himself in the original edition, meticulously choosing and translating some of the many notes with high anthropological content, which he brought together in what he entitled The Black Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
In particular, you will find “The Final Essay”, translated here for the first time into French, in which Burton tackles the themes of homosexuality without taboos (“what our French neighbors call ‘vice against nature’ — as if some something could be contrary to nature, which includes all behaviors,” he writes), of eunuchs and the status of women. But also the art of war or zoophilia – present in particular in the tale “The king’s daughter and the monkey”, 355e night of Thousand and one Night.
His curiosity is limitless and his erudition embraces absolutely everything: authors from Antiquity, sexual practices from the Near and Middle East, methods of torture and killing, personal anecdotes. A fascinating book.