Richard Francis BurtonRezensionen

Eu sei que há todo aquele papo de se inserir na época em que o livro foi escrito, e eu tentei, de verdade, mas o fato de ser impossível entrar totalmente em branco dentro de qualquer coisa só acrescenta aos pontos negativos que esse livro tem para mim. Eu aguentei algumas dezenas de — repetitivas — noites, antes de largar mão do livro e pular para as histórias mais bem faladas, ''Sinbad, ''Aladinn'' e ''Ali Baba'', histórias realmente interessantes, mas pelo que descobri, foram adições posteriores à obra original, ou seja, as melhores narrativas do livro nem faziam parte dele de fato. Você entra esperando gênios concedendo desejos, e recebe gênios estuprando mulheres.

Eu entendo que foi um livro importante, e para mim, no entanto, vai ser apenas isso, um livro que sei ser importante e nada mais; gostei mais da Epopéia de Gilgamesh do que as Mil e uma Noites.

Muitos dos meus autores favoritos sempre recomendam esse livro, mas, sei lá, muito impalpável para mim. Fico me perguntando até se li a versão certa, dada a chuva de cinco estrelas que esse livro recebe por aqui. Um dia eu tento de novo. Talvez o caminho seja ler os contos espaçados e não em sequência, dada a grande repetição de temas. Talvez o caminho seja outra edição. Sinceramente não sei.

Last year I decided to take on The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales and was really disappointed. But, I decided not to let this keep me from giving Arabian Nights a try. And it turns out, it was a good decision.What struck me most was just how much family was the focus of these tales. Time and time again a family member was separated from their family and time and time again all family members did all they could to achieve a reunion. On the negative side. Just about every tale dealt with greed, which is what often caused these separations. But all in all, a very interesting look into a foreign culture, we need to work harder at understanding.

De los grandes descubrimientos geográficos de la humanidad -cabría decir, para hablar con propiedad, de los pueblos europeos-, el conocimiento de la ubicación exacta de las fuentes de donde mana el misterioso Nilo, uno de los ríos mas largos y caudalosos de la Tierra, ha excitado desde muy antiguo la curiosidad e imaginación de hombres de ciencia, viajeros y geógrafos. Pero fue necesario esperar al siglo XIX para tener un conocimiento fiel y preciso del origen del Nilo. En 1857, dos temerarios aventureros, militares geógrafos británicos, el capitán Richard Francis Burton y su asistente, el capitán Speke, obtuvieron licencia y recursos económicos de la omnipotente Real Sociedad Geográfica de Londres para emprender su acariciada aventura. La presente obra es un extracto de los numerosos diarios del capitán Burton sobre aquel viaje, y en ella nos describe, desde el punto de vista siempre sorprendido y curioso del viajero, las peripecias, las dificultades (fiebres, ataques indígenas, desiertos inagotables…), los delirantes paisajes de las selvas vírgenes, así como los ritos y costumbres de los pueblos africanos que iban encontrando en el largo y tortuoso itinerario de aquel viaje fabuloso en busca de las fuentes del Nilo.

Despite being an abridgment of Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights this is still a chunky doorstop. The translator’s flowery style and archaic language is likely off putting for someone reading for pleasure but suitable if you are looking at it from a scholarly perspective. Caveats include misogyny and racism which is hard to determine whether it arises from the original text or Burton’s imperialist Victorian perspective. All wives were considered unfaithful and likely to be frolicking with ‘blackamoors’ when the husband is away therefore they all deserve to be murdered. Some of the stories are pretty hard to take. This reviewer would recommend a more modern translation with lots of annotations.

SINOPSIS
La expedición de Richard Francis Burton a Harar, ciudad de Etiopía a la que ningún europeo había tenido acceso, marca un hito fundamental en el conocimiento del interior de África, al abrir una vía de penetración que en pocos años había de llevar al descubrimiento de los Grandes Lagos, las fuentes del Nilo, y las complejas y fascinantes culturas de los pueblos que habitaban en el corazón del continente africano. Burton, explorador audaz e imaginativo, orientalista de vastos conocimientos y escritor de primer orden, logra que su libro pueda leerse al mismo tiempo como el apasionante relato de una peligrosa aventura, rica en peripecias, y como obra de riquísimo contenido en observaciones, tan amenas como científicamente pertinentes, sobre las distintas culturas con las que entra en contacto.
después de largo tiempo d haber sido subestimado, Burton ha sido redescubierto como uno de los grandes pioneros del modo de observar y reflexionar que constituye la actual antropología social. la introducción y las notas del profesor Alberto Cardín lo ponen de relieve y facilitan la obtención del libro. El índice alfabético al final del volumen permite un fácil manejo de la abundante información que contiene.

The Arabian Nights, also familiar in the West as One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales whose origins reach back more than a thousand years. The tales begin with a king, Shahryar, who discovers his wife's infidelity, and he vows to marry a new woman each night but have her killed the next morning to eliminate the possibility of being betrayed again. This goes on for some time (the carnage is certainly piling up) when Shahrazad, daughter of his right-hand man and who has a few tricks up her sleeve, offers herself as his next bride. Her cunning strategy is to tell a folktale each night with the suggestion of more to come, leaving Shahryar so curious about what happens next in the narrative that he will allow her to live another night in order to find out. What follows make up what has been a rich Middle Eastern oral and literary tradition that includes, among many others, such well-known tales as Sindbad the Seaman, Alaeddin, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The translation I read was Burton's 1889 edition, which was written in archaic language such as "thee," "thou," "quoth" and "doest," and abounded with unfamiliar vocabulary like "wot," "haply," "gugglet," "rede" and "weet." Including notes, it is 872 very dense pages (virtually no paragraph breaks) and to digest more than 10-15 pages in a sitting was a challenge in focus. For that reason I used it to fulfill the Read Harder 2021 category 'a book you've been intimidated to read.' Modern readers may find the sheer amount of racism, misogyny, incest, slavery, murder and other disturbingly cruel violence, theft and backstabbing in these stories uncomfortable. There is also much tearing of clothes and heaving of dust onto one's head, which I surmise is how grief is depicted, as well as truly endless numbers of shipwrecks (Sindbad was a glutton for punishment in a most baffling way). It should be noted that a remarkable number of times it is women and their cooler heads who save the day! I feel something of an accomplishment to have finally, successfully made my way through this book, so I'm feeling pretty triumphant about that, as well as pleased to know a little more about this legendary icon of world literature.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. The Victorian explorer Richard Burton was a man of multitudes, and To the Holy Shrines, an abridged account of his dangerous undercover expedition to Mecca (which was forbidden, on pain of death, to infidels), was a feat I'd always been interested in. Burton can write, even if it is in that verbose Victorian style which is difficult to parse for a modern reader, but the problem is that this selection – part of Penguin's 'Great Journeys' series – doesn't give us the whole story. It contains routine (though exotic) travelogue information and ends just as an undercover Burton first sights the holy city. We're denied the best part, and ultimately To the Holy Shrines is too short and the selection too scattergun for Burton's personality and writing approach to settle favourably in the reader's mind.

A selection of stories from the 1,001 nights. The selection features some amazing mythical tales and spectacular adventures, and for the most part is brilliant. Some strange continuity with the tale of Scheherazade and the king, which is normal for a selected series of stories. But otherwise, this book (a beautiful object too) is a terrific introduction to the Middle Eastern storytelling epic.

The anti-blackness undid it for me.

These are great stories however you shake it. Way more adult than we are led to be and downright spooky in some cases. Lots of adventure, bad guys and characters who come to life. NO walt disney here.

6 vols. reprinted in 3 (boxed) volumes.

Limited edition, no. 369 of 1000 issued. 9 vols. only, of 17 (?). Ex-lib. UM Library Ex libris Arthur Lyon Cross (UM Prof of English History, 1940)

In 1853 English traveller and adventurer , Sir Richard Burton, adopted the alias 'Abdullah Darwaysh' and, having spent a fortnight "getting into the train of Oriental manners" sets off to penetrate the mysteries of Mecca and Medina - firmly closed to the 'infidel'.
This is a highly entertaining account of his time spent in Egypt...Ramadan, life in a caravanserai...and then sailing on a pilgrim ship (a surprisingly violent place, the poorer pilgrims trying to make a buck by thieving from their fellow believers), before arriving at Medina.
Entertaining work- the reader feels the author would be amazing company...and he sure can write!

Vikram and the Vampire is a number of stories within a story. It is an old Hindu folk tale that was translated by Sir Richard R. Burton from the original Sanskrit. He’s possibly more well known for his translations of The Arabian Nights and The Kama Sutra.

The story is about King Vikram who has promised a sorcerer that he will capture a baital, or vampire. The baital must be transported from his tree back to the sorcerer. They make a pact that the King must never answer a question posed by the baital. If he does, the vampire is returned to the tree from which he came and the journey must start over.

To fill in the time during their travels, the baital tells 11 different stories. These are similar in style to the fables written by Aesop. During the telling of the tales, he often outwits the king by forcing him to answer a question about the story. Vikram finally succeeds in delivering the baital to the sorcerer when the final tale ends in a question that can’t be answered. There's a final twist in that the vampire reveals the sorcerer’s intent to kill the king who then beheads the sorcerer first. He releases the vampire as a reward for his service.

The fables covered morality topics such as greed, lust and envy. Often a wrong or immoral decision leads to the downfall of the main character. What I found most interesting was the frequent inclusion of suicide in these stories. Women kill themselves when they can’t be with a man they’ve seen only once and a family of four beheads themselves for the honor of a god. I don’t know much about the Hindu culture but, from a Western viewpoint, this doesn’t speak well to their value of human life.

The writing also includes very detailed descriptions of female appearances. Every aspect of their body is related to some pleasing natural quality. For example, their teeth are often like strings of opals. The litany of similes goes on for paragraphs and they are very similar between the 11 individual tales. The first few instances were entertaining but they became tiresome half way through the book.

The book provided an interesting reading experience but I was ready for the end after the first few parables. They were all very similar and became repetitive. The original collection of folk tales in Vikram and the Vampire is actually composed of 25 stories but Burton only translated 11. Thank goodness.

The unabridged version is huge, but it comes with a glossary of sorts in the back. No flying carpet anywhere in the entire tome--blast Disney. These stories were handed down long before Islam became a religion backed by the Koran, so this book offers keen insights into the culture it came from. Just as bloody and frightening as the original Grimm's Fairy Tales.

I had a hard time getting into this book at first but as I got more use to it I really started to enjoy it. Arabian Nights is short stories while a longer story is happening that is kinda forgotten after the beginning until brought back up again at the end. Some of the stories felt repetitive, dealing with the same things, events, and places but it got better and more unique as I continued. The only story I truly disliked was the last short story, just didn't have a good flow and I had no idea what was going on. Would of liked some more build up on the main story going on between the King who was killing women until the one telling the stories came, that would of been interesting to do a chapter on them here and there between the different stories just to keep readers reminded rather than spill it all in the end.

One Thousand and One Nights: The Complete Collection is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales complied during the Islamic Golden Age. The first English language edition was published in 1706, and many of these stories have gone on to become well-loved additions to books of fairy tales. From tales of magic to stories of adventure, every human emotion and action are contained among these stories. There are tales of lust, betrayal, greed and every sin imaginable as well as tales that illustrate forgiveness, morality and, at times, revenge.

I opened the book and read the first story well over a year ago, and have been dipping in and out of the book ever since. Taking my time with the reading kept me from being overloaded and the tales remained fresh. I was surprised at the variety of stories as well as how many stories within stories there were. A word of caution however, these stories, as printed, are not children’s stories, they have adult content and a high level of violence.

The Thousand and One Nights has been translated into many different volumes and has evolved into the classic it is considered to be today. Personally, I found that this was an excellent way to absorb middle eastern culture as well as giving me a panoramic view of human behavior both good and bad.

This is the selection of tales of The Arabian Nights as translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and published by The Modern Library. The story of Scheherazade's ingenuity is of Persian origin and its origin has been traced back to 944 AD. However the tales are more Arabian than Persian in flavor. Over the centuries the tales multiplied and eventually comprised an convoluted form that has been a source of admiration as a miracle of narrative architecture. While Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are similar to them in construction, in that they are collections of stories within stories, the Arabian tales is infinitely more complicated.

The frame of the work consists of a whimsical plot arrangement that depends upon the jealousy of Shahriyar, King of India, for his wife and her wanton ways; after executing her he vows to take his revenge on wall woman-ways. Night after night he marries some beautiful girl, only to order her beheaded the next morning. That is until he meets Scheherazade whose wile and intelligence is more than a match for the King. She manages to spin a bewildering number of yarns and, by suspending the ending of each, eludes the executioner. The tales she tells include such stories as "Aladdin's Lamp" and "Sinbad the Sailor" and many more that, while less famous, are equally entertaining.
"the most marvelous article in this Enchanted Treasure was a wonderful Lamp with its might of magical means." (p 712, "Alaeddin; or, The Wonderful Lamp")

The resulting compendium of stories has been popular ever since inspiring many translations and different forms. This translation by Richard F. Burton may be the most entertaining of all.½

There earliest selections are really great reads, written with a great sense of adventure. Burton's discourses on geography, religion, language, and culture show a keen intelligence and staggering eye for detail.

Sadly the later selections, written after Burton's greatest exploits were behind him, seem bitter and stereotypically Victorian.

The "first night" was a bit of a slog to get through, but it provided all the story set-up, so that's forgivable. The first volume has a good mixture of comedy, adventure, and drama. Much of the comedy is farcical and would lend itself well to a visual performance. The adventure is more or less middling at this point, but the book hasn't yet gotten to its most famous tales of adventure (Ali Baba, Sinbad, etc). The drama is, of course, dramatic, and usual winds up with a humorous or astounding ending. I could do without all the poetry, but what are you gonna do about it? Not like I can complain to the author!½

A wide range of fantastics stories many of which I enjoyed and that very effectively took me to the setting.

Right, first off, if you’re going to read this, you should do it unabridged. Let’s face it, if you don’t, you’ve not read the 1001 nights but 648, or 385, or whatever the editor decided to trim off this masterpiece. If Sheherezade can tell 1001 stories to keep herself alive, give the woman’s effort some respect and read all the tales she tells. It’s only by doing so that you can really fully appreciate this vast collection and its influence on, not only the literature of Persia and Arabia, but huge aspects of its culture too.

There’s no better way to accomplish this task than by picking up the 6 volume boxed set of the 1962 Heritage Press edition of Richard Burton’s translation with his vast collection of footnotes and 1001 beautifully simple illustrations by Valenti Angelo. This made reading it a delight for me. There’s nothing better than picking up a book that people have taken such care to create.

I was privileged to be able to borrow this edition from a friend who hadn’t read it himself and who, I think, fully expected me never to actually complete the task. It took me over a year, but complete it I did.

This is not a book you read cover to cover. Instead, you bite off small, masticable pieces and chew them over slowly. While many of the stories do involve males smitten by females they have only momentarily caught a glimpse of, I was very impressed by the sheer range of storytelling. We have everything from the comic, to adventure, romance, religion, war, political intrigue, history, mysticism, fantasy, tragedy … there really was no predictability to it at all, and I enjoyed that very much.

And while the stories themselves are enough, for the most part, to keep you occupied, if you are at all interested in the culture and / or history of this area of the world, like me you will find this edition a rich treasure-trove of knowledge. Having lived in the Middle East for over a decade of my life and for the last five years, finding out that virtually every cultural point that Burton makes in his footnotes is still part of life here was very revealing. It seems that not much has changed since he plodded around the Arabian peninsula 200 years ago nor, in fact, since the original stories were first told. Remarkable.

Now, while it is a masterpiece, this fell a tad short of entering Arukiyomi’s very sparsely populated Hall of Fame. Why so? Well, as the radar review below reveals, while the legacy and achievement of the collection cannot be questioned, it fails somewhat when it comes to characterisation and readability.

Apart from a very few characters (the historical Harun Al Rashid, for example) who either appear repeatedly or have very long tales focussed on them, most characters are simple caricatures. This is because the tales they feature in need little more than a single characteristic to make them work. That’s fine for this genre, but you are not going to come away moved to any extent by a character as you do at the end of, say, the equivalently epic Les Miserables or even the diminutive Silk.

While my readability score is high, this is heavily skewed by the fact that I read it in a beautiful edition that was simply a joy to hold in my hands (yes, I do take that into account). Had I been reading any old paperback edition, I think this would have come in somewhere around the 55% mark simply because the frame story device and the repetitive nature of some of the tales can get a tad tedious. In fact, Burton comments himself when tales contain repetitions of others. Hey, if I had to keep you amused with tales every night for three years, I’d probably repeat myself too. Some of them were pretty long winded as well. There are a couple that are over 200 pages long each and could stand as novels in themselves. I have to say I rejoiced at the end of those.

Another factor that impacted readability is the often monotonous overtones of Allahu akbar. This is an Islamic compilation, of that there is no doubt. And while the Qur’an is actually fairly lenient to the “people of the book”, i.e. Christians and Jews, this seems to have passed the storyteller by. Anyone who isn’t muslim is depicted as base until they are either killed or embrace Islam. If the latter, then they finally become worthy human beings. At least the infidels fare better than the Africans who, one and all, are lower than the low, perpetrators of hideous acts and best off dead. While you can forgive this for being a product of its time, as I said above, I was struck by how little has changed in this region since these tales were first told. Nuffsed.½

During my childhood I had already read parts of the 1001-nights stories. I never came across the official version, untill I got this book.

So... I have finished reading it today. Read it in parts, everybtime I picked up the book I read as much as I wanted. It isn't a book (at least for me it wasn't) to read without pauses.

I liked it and I loved to finally learn what fate had in store for Scheherazade and her sister.

good but very long. a lot of foot notes to help you understand the culture...

This abridged edition of the Arabian Nights by Burton has a number of entertaining but simple stories. The use of language is very enjoyable and I have to wonder how much of the original is lost in translation. It is worth noting that many of the stories in this edition are very non-PC to modern sensibilities. For example, a common theme seems to be woman cheating on their husbands with black men who are depicted in a less than flattering light (arriving / departing via climbing trees, etc). I found it interesting that in one of the stories, Sindbad shows no compunction in murdering those who fall into the tomb he is trapped in in order to obtain supplies to survive a few more days. A more modern story would probably feel obligated to show some remorse or to justify the protagonist's actions.