The three major English translations of The Arabian Nights are by Edward William Lane (three volumes, 1839–41), John Payne (nine volumes, 1882–84), and Richard Burton (ten volumes, 1885; six supplemental volumes, 1886–88). The translation by Lane contains roughly two fifths of the original material; the tales he does include are heavily bowdlerized. In the story of Sinbad, for example, the episode of the mating horses in the first voyage is omitted. The translation by John Payne is the first complete and unexpurgated version in English. Burton’s translation is likewise complete and unexpurgated; it relies so heavily on Payne, borrowing entire sentences and even paragraphs, that Burton cannot escape the charge of plagiarism. “Burton’s translation,” Gerhardt states, “really is Payne’s with a certain amount of stylistic changes.” Burton, in his Terminal Essay (vol. X), defines the difference between Payne’s translation and his own thus: “Mr. Payne’s admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and the ‘stylist,’ not to the many-headed; and mine to the anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs.” He is here calling attention to his voluminous footnotes. Burton, who never fails to praise Payne’s style, is less kind to Lane, referring to his “curious harsh and latinized English, at once turgid and emasculated.” Gerhardt finds Lane’s style “plodding but honest” he says of Payne’s translation that it is written in “a tortured and impossible prose, laboriously constructed out of archaic and rare words and turns.” Campbell finds Payne’s translation “superb” and calls it the “most readable” version in English, which “omits, moreover, not a syllable of the vigorous erotica.” Gerhardt judges Burton’s translation to be generally reliable but adds: “The English prose in which it is written, however, is doubtless still worse than Payne’s.”
So as I walked about the streets of the city I came to the gate of a great house, with a stone bench beside the door, and within the gate I saw a flower garden. Now at this sight my wit became dazed, and a trembling came over me; and I passed within the gate and through the garden. Then I entered the house and passed from room to room, wherein I saw pages and slave girls and servants and attendants, but none took notice of me, till coming to a wide door I stepped forth from the house into the inner courtyard. There I saw orange trees and date trees, and an abundance of sweet-smelling flowers, and marble fountains, and a sundial in red sand; and beneath an orange tree sat a man whose eyes were closed and whose beardsides were streaked with white. Then I was confounded, and I fell to trembling, and knew not what to do; and all was silent in that place. So after a time I cried out “Sinbad!” but he stirred not. Then I fled from that garden, and passing through many rooms I came to an orchard of date trees, which led down to the river. And finding a boat at the riverbank I seized the oars and rowed along the water, till my arms ached and my hands were sore; and as my course continued, the channel grew straiter and the air darker, and I saw banks of stone rising high on both sides. Then a voice called out to me from the bank, and I saw an opening in the stone, where an old man squatted on a rock; and he said, “Who art thou and whence farest thou? How camest thou into this river?” Then I answered him, “I am the merchant Sinbad, whose ship went down to the bottom of the sea, and there I found a stairway leading to this place. What city is that behind me, which I have seen?” Quoth he, “Unhappiest of mortals, that is a demon-city. Better it is, never to have seen that city, than to find a ship filled with pearls.” Then seeing my unhappiness, and seeing that I was weak from thirst and hunger, he offered to lead me to his city, that I might rest and refresh me, whereat I thanked him; after which he hopped from the rock into my boat beside me, which was great wonder to see, for his legs were as the legs of frogs; and squatting beside me he bade me enter the opening in the cliff.
In the warm shade of the orange tree, leaning back against the silk pillows of the divan, Sinbad half dreams of the telling of the voyages. At first the telling had made the voyages so vivid to him that it was as if the words had given them life, it was as if, without the words, the voyages had been slowly darkening or disappearing. Thus the voyages took shape about the words, or perhaps took shape within the words. But a change had been wrought, by the telling. For once the voyages had been summoned by the words, a separation had seemed to take place, as if, just to one side of the words, half-hidden by their shadows, the voyages lay dreaming in the grass. In the shade of the orange tree Sinbad tries to remember. Are there then two septads of voyages, the seven that are told and the seven that elude the telling? Before the telling, what were the voyages? Unspoken, did they exist at all? Are there perhaps three septads: the seven voyages, the memory of the seven voyages, and the telling of the seven voyages? Sinbad shifts in his seat. From a bough a blackbird shrills.
The seven voyages of Sinbad are cast as first-person narratives, told by the protagonist (Sinbad). But it is important to remember that Sinbad himself is a character in a story narrated “in time long gone before” (Burton) by Scheherazade to King Shahriyar of Persia. Scheherazade in turn is a character in The Arabian Nights. The unnamed omniscient narrator of The Arabian Nights recounts the story of Scheherazade, the well-read daughter of the King’s vizier, who over the course of one thousand and one nights tells nearly two hundred stories to the King to prevent him from killing her; during the course of the thousand and one nights, she bears him three children. In what sense therefore may we say that Sinbad narrates his voyages? Scheherazade, who reports his words, has a strong motive for her storytelling, which has nothing whatever to do with Sinbad and his storytelling. Perhaps she inserts words in his mouth that serve her own purposes. Each night of storytelling begins with the words: “She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that…”—a formula that invites speculation. We may wonder whether Sinbad’s words are his own or Scheherazade’s, we may wonder whether Scheherazade has omitted details for the sake of shaping her tale effectively, we may wonder whether there are episodes from the seven voyages, or even entire voyages, that did not reach her.
Then we passed along the stream and came to a town built on one side of the water, and on the other side was a great marsh; and I was received courteously by the folk of that town, and ate and drank till my strength returned. Now the inhabitants of that place lived there by day, but by night they swam across the water to the marsh, for they were frog folk with sinewy and slick legs like the legs of marsh frogs; and they moved by hopping from one place to another. Yet by day they lived in fine houses and drank wine from cups and listened to the music of flutes and had servants and slaves and were in all ways courteous and kind. These folk fed on fish, which they hunted in strange wise. They concealed themselves in hollow dwellings at the bottom of the river, for they were amphibious folk that could breathe under water, and they swam out through a cunning door hidden in the side of the dwelling and thrust sharp sticks at fish that swam there. And though they were exceeding kind, yet when I enquired how I might return to Baghdad, they knew naught of it, nor how I might return there. I abode with the frog folk for many days and nights, remaining alone in the town when they swam across the river to the marsh, till one night, when I could not sleep for sorrow, I rose from the floor and walked for solace into the meadow behind the town. There I sat down and bemoaned myself, saying, “Would Heaven I had been drowned in the sea! That were better than to live among frog folk to the end of my days. But what the Lord willeth must come to pass, for there is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah the Glorious.” Scarcely had I spoken when I heard a fluttering in that field and saw not far distant a flock of low-flying birds. Then I rose and went over to those birds, to see what sort they were, and behold, they were no birds, but strange creatures such as I knew not, for they had no wings, nor tails, nor feathers, nor faces, yet they flew in the air. So as I drew near I saw some settling in the grass, and I approached them warily, for fear they might attack me and put out my eyes.