THE RELIGION OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.* THERE. i
is nothing in this fresh reprint of The Arabian Nights that in itself calls for especial notice. The edition is, as Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole describes it, an "exact reproduction" of the edition of 1859, Mr. E. W. Lane's, long since accepted by English readers as the most perfect rendering of the wonderful collection of stories which alone of the secular books of Asia, or alone save for the songs of Omar Khayyam, has succeeded in attracting the ear of Europe. The English world has long since made up its opinion on that book, and will not read. it the more because Mr. Lane-Poole condescends to date a very common-place preface to this particular reprint, on " the day of Telel-Kebir." The Arabian. Nights are very Egyptian, and Tel-el-Kebir may have settled the fate of Egypt; but the con- nection of the two with a printing speculation, however liberal, does but vulgarise all three. We should simply have recorded the issue of this reprint, with a word of pleasure at its continued circulation, and a word of praise for the paper upon which it is impressed, but that in glancing over it we were struck more than we have ever been struck before with the presence of something in the tales to which we think justice has never been quite done, the existence in some of them of an element of poetic religious feeling. There is a wind of wisdom—wisdom, not of Islam, but of all creeds—which intermittently blows through all that jungle of growths, fair and foul, grand trees and poisonous creepers. Everybody who reads knows The Arabian Nights, and what they are,—Arab romances, based sometimes, but by no means always, upon the legends of an earlier world, romances in which there is nothing but incident, the human beings, for the most part lay-figures, being hurried through endless scenes in which quasi-supernatural figures work the machinery, and the patent attractions are excite- ment, variety, a release from the limitations of the possible, and. the gratification, sometimes in a superb, sometimes in a base, and occasionally in a grotesque way, of the instinctive desire for surprise. In all these tales there is no man and no woman who is characterised, or who differs from any other man or woman, except, perhaps, in some physical peculiarity, so dwelt on that it destroys the portrait, or some mental quality so dominant that it effaces the character. There is no story that is probable or that attracts—excepting always that of Aladdin —by virtue of inherent dramatic power ; yet there is none which wholly lacks charm. In The Arabian Nights, and in them alone of published books, can grown men enjoy the pleasure which children enjoy in story-telling, the pleasure of hearing exciting narratives without being called on'for thought, or reflection, or criticism ; narratives by means of which they are let loose, unreproved, in a world of wonders and brilliancies, of grand kings and golden palaces and beautiful ladies, and friendly or hostile genii ; where all is unaccountable, but all happens as it should happen ; and though everything is simple, and one is reminded of dinner and bed and whippings, the pressure of the real is absolutely taken off. The power of The Nights is the power of Romance in its elementary form ; and the tales hold grown men—or, at least, those who can be so held—as fairy-stories hold children, or, at least, those who can be so held, by ministering endlessly to their insatiable luxury in wonder. That is an old story, not worth repeating or explaining further ; but there is something else in The Nights to which attention is too seldom drawn. Running through all the stories, turning up in the strangest places, amid scenes which the narrator in- tended to be virtuous, and scenes which in the original he Purposely made foul, runs a stream of philosophic or, rather, religious thought, always in essence the same, the burden of which is older than Mahommedanism, older than Christianity, older than Hellenism, the refrain of the Wise King,—" Vanity of vanities, all is vanity a, This strain, visible at all times and everywhere, is often no better than the moralising of the old nurse, who tells European children how little anything profits if they are not "good," and sometimes even sinks into a bathos which, to us at least, suggests conscious hypocrisy ; but occasionally it breaks forth overpoweringly, till the wild legend becomes a high moral apologue ; and once at least it conquers, drowns narrative, effaces cleicription, and transmutes a mere "tale," a bit of The Arabian Nights, into a lesson which would not be wholly unworthy in meaning of the Wise King himself. We cannot speak of what may lie within the compass * The Thousand and One Nights, earnmenly called in England.
"The Arabian Mglite'Enter'alements." A New Translation from the Arabic, by E. W. Lane. 3 vols. London: Chatto and Windus.
of literature, but certainly within the compass of that small section of it we have seen, we know of no story which, to any one who can read it word by word, is more strangely im- pressive in its wild. dreaminess than the " Story of the City of Brass," the story of some thirty pages (Vol. III., pp. 110 to 140), which Mr. Lane, accurately as we should deem, thought had been suggested to the raconteur by an early visit to the ruined cities of Upper Egypt, which had impressed his imagination as an embodied lesson on the vanity of earthly greatness. Telling always his wild story, with its Afreets and its Magicians, and its gorgeous palaces, and all the usual paraphernalia of The Nights, he recurs perpetually to this lesson, which is found carved over the gate of the palace of Koosh, son of Sheddad, and on the tablet of iron above his tomb, in these words :—
" In the name of God, the Eternal, the Everlasting throughout all ages : in the name of God, who begetteth not, and who is not be- gotten, and unto whom there is none like : in the name of God, the Mighty and Powerful : in the name of the Living who dieth not.— To proceed 1-0 thou who arrivest et this place, be admonished by the misfortunes and calamities that thou beholdest, and be not deceived by the world and its beauty, and its falsity and calumny, and its fallacy and finery ; for it is a flatterer, a cheat, a traitor. Its things are borrowed, and it will take the loan from the borrower ; and it is like the confused visions of the sleeper, and the dream of the dreamer,. as though it were the sarib of the plain, which the thirsty imegineth to be water : the Devil adorneth it for man until death. These are the characteristics of the world : confide not therefore in it, nor incline to it ; for it will betray him who dependeth upon it, and who in his affairs relieth upon it. Fall not in its snares, nor cling to its skirts. For I possessed four thousand bay horses in a stable ; and I married. a thousand damsels, of the daughters of Kings, high-bosomed virgins, like moons ; and I was blessed with a thousand children, like stern lions ; and I lived a thousand years, happy in mind and heart ; and I amassed riches such as the Kings of the regions of the earth were unable to procure, and I imagined that my enjoyments would continue without failure. But I was not aware when there alighted among us the terminator of delights, and the separator of companions, the desolator of abodes and the ravager of inhabited mansions, the destroyer of the great and the small, and the infants, and the children, and the mothers. We had resided in this palace in security' until the event decreed by the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of the heavens, and the Lord of the earths, befell us, and the thunder of the Manifest Truth assailed us, and there died of us every day two, till a great company of us had perished. So when I saw that destruc- tion had entered our dwellings, and bad alighted among us, and drowned us in the sea of deaths, I summoned a writer, and ordered him to write these verses and admonitions and lessons, and caused them to be engraved upon these doors and tablets and tombs. I had an army comprising a thousand thousand bridles, composed of hardy men, with spears, and coats of mail and sharp swords, and strong arms ; and I ordered them to clothe themselves with tile long coats of mail, and to hang on the keen swords, and to place in rest the terrible lances, and mount the high.blooded horses. Then, when the event appointed by the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of the earth and the heavens, befell us, I said, 0 companies of troops and soldiers, can ye prevent that which hath befallen me from the Mighty King ? But the soldiers and troops were unable to do so, and they said, How shall we contend against him from whom none hath secluded, the Lord of the door that bath no door-keeper P So I said, Bring to me the wealth. (And it was contained in a thousand pits, in each of whirl; were a thousand hundredweights of red gold, and in them were varieties of pearls and jewels, and there was the like quantity of white silver, with treasures such as the Kings of the earth were unable to procure.) And they did so ; and when they had brought the wealth before me, I said to them, Can ye deliver me by means of all these riches, and purchase for me therewith one day during which I may remain alive ? But they could not do so. They resigned them- selves to fate and destiny, and I submitted to God with patient en- durance of fate and affliction until he took my soul, and made me to dwell in my grave. And if thou ask concerning my name, I am Koosh the son of SheddLid the son of 'Ad the Greater."
The same lesson is repeated by the imprisoned Jinn, who repeats always the praise of the Most High, though he lives in torture for having contended with Solomon, when the King set out to war, accompanied by the powers of the air and the hosts of mankind, all sailing on the magic carpet, above which flew all fighting birds, while below, in the shade of the carpet, marched all the wild beasts of earth to give him aid. "And the men charged upon the men, and the Jinn upon the Jinn ; defeat befell our King, and we became unto Suleym ha a spoil. His troops charged ,upon our forces, with the wild beasts on their right and left, and the birds were over our heads, tearing out the eyes of the people, sometimes with their talons and sometimes with their beaks, and sometimes they beat with their wings upon the faces of the combatants, while the wild beasts bit the horses and tore in pieces the men, until the greater por- tion of the party lay upon the face of the earth like the trunks of palm-trees." And the lesson is repeated again, when the Emir Moose, who is searching for the bottles of brass in which Solomon imprisoned disobedient Jinn, after long marches approaches the City of Brass, with its impenetrable
gates, and lofty towers, and stately palaces and running waters, and gardens still bearing fruit, but with no living man therein : —" It was a city with impenetrable gates, empty, still, without a voice or a cheering inhabitant, but the owl hooting in its quarters, and birds skimming in circles in its areas, and the raven croaking in its districts and its great thoroughfare-streets, and bewailing those who had been in it." A tablet approaches the Emir, on which is written:-
" Where are the Kings and the peoplers of the earth P They have quitted that which they have built and peopled ;
And in the grave they are pledged for their past actions : there, after destruction, they have become putrid corpses. Where are the troops ? They repelled not, nor profited. And where is that which they collected and hoarded P The decree of the Lord of the Throne surprised them. Neither riches nor refuge saved them from it."
And finally, the lesson is repeated on the tablet watched by two slaves, who in the wondrous citadel of the City of Brass watch for ever—statues, yet alive—to see that none touch or rob the corpse of the mighty Queen, who thus in the writing tells to her visitor her tale :-
" 0 thou, if thou know me not, I will acquaint thee with my name and my descent. I am Tedmur, the daughter of the King of the Amalokites, of those who ruled the country with equity. I possessed what none of the Kings possessed, and ruled with justice, and acted impartially towards my subjects : I gave and bestowed, and I lived a long time in the enjoyment of happiness and an easy life, and possessing eman- cipated female and male slaves. Thus I did until the summoner of Death came to my abode, and disasters occurred before me. And the case was this :—Seven years in succession came upon us during which no water descended on us from heaven, nor did any grass grow for us on the face of the earth. So we ate what food we had in our dwellings, and after that we fell upon the beasts and ate them, and there remained nothing. Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it by trusty men, who went about with it through all the districts, not leaving un- visited a single large city, to seek for some food. But they found it sot; and they returned to us with the wealth, after a long absence. So thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the decree of our Lord, committing our case to our Master, and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and left what we had built and what we had treasured."
We venture to say that of a thousand who have read The Arabian Nights, not ten have recognised fully that there was such teaching in them, and to recommend to them this for- gotten story. We have not found one within them all which leaves so distinct an impression of an author—it is character- istic of 'The Nights that, for the most part, the tales excite no curiosity about authorship, but seem, somehow, self-generated —an author whom we can see to be a poet of the meditative kind, with a lofty though sad imagination, and a deep tinge of the mysticism of the Desert, the mysticism which teaches that all is evanescent, goodness included, save God, the Ordainer, alone.
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