You probably gathered from my earlier post that my thesis has to do with The Thousand and One Nights.

Hence, I've been reading a lot of that lately. And I have Thoughts!

A lot of these thoughts have to do with the translator. All of the English translations of the Nights have their own quirks and foibles and eccentricities, and the one I chose to work with is Edward Lane, a translator from the mid-19th century. He made the decision to cut any stories that he felt were uninteresting or were objectionable (and apparently had rather idiosyncratic opinions about what stories were uninteresting), and cut any explicit references to sex. And -- I found myself getting unaccountably fond of Lane, while reading through the stories and his extensive footnotes/endnotes.

There was this one story where a girl is in love with her foster-brother, and there was a footnote. So I read the note, and it said, "I have ventured to make a slight alteration here: but it is one which does not in the least affect the consistency of the tale. Marriage with a foster-sister is as expressly forbidden by the Mohammedan law as that with a natural sister." And I went: wait! Wait! What! YOU DIDN'T. Poor Lane couldn't countenance the thought of the story existing with a sister in love with her brother, even though the narrative condemns her affections. SO HE CHANGED IT to make himself feel better. O LANE.

Also apparently I have a tendency find it sort of adorable when old dead dudes have ridiculous beliefs that they anxiously uphold. See, for example, me and St Paul. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. And now I'm feeling the same way about Lane! I...kind of want to write fic about him as well, him and his adorable fascination with the 1001 Nights and his scholarliness and his complete prudishness. OH LANE HONEY it's okay! Sexytiems are OKAY!

But -- and this is the bit where I got REALLY fond of him all of a sudden -- he occasionally would include stories in his endnotes that he didn't think deserved to be in the body of the text, but thought should be included anyways. And there was one story that was about a commonly-recurring character in the stories, Jaafar. And in this story, Jaafar dies. And Lane put it into the end-notes instead of in the main body because, as he says, "In the following anecdote, mention is made of an event of a most melancholy nature, the knowledge of which has caused me to derive less pleasure than I should find, if ignorant of the fact, in many of the best stories in the present collection; and I therefore think that some of my readers may prefer passing it over unread." He doesn't want people to read the story in which Jaafar dies because he fears they'll get all depressed like he did! *huggles Lane* He's so invested in the stories! He cares about the characters and was terribly depressed when Jaafar dies! SO adorable!
Also, apparently I have eccentric tastes in writing? Back when I was doing my research about which translation it would be best for me to use, I concluded that Lane would be the best except for how apparently his writing style is really dry. But I decided I'd suck it up and use it anyways. Fast forward a week or two; I have by this point completely forgotten all the arguments for and against the various translations. I begin reading Lane, I enjoy it utterly, and then when going back to edit my earlier "Note on Translations"? I notice that apparently Lane is supposed to have a really dry style. And I go NUH UH. YOU LIE. Because it is awesome. Okay, yes, I really have a thing for extremely 19th century writing, so sue me. IT IS GREAT.


I have other thoughts too, of course. I mean, I read (or skimmed) nearly 2000 pages of stories in only a few days, and did a LOT of writing and thinking about them. OF COURSE I have other thoughts! Here are a few more.


There is a story with a character named Aslán, and I had to work SO HARD to not constantly read it as the Narnian Aslan. Very different character! DIFFERENT CHARACTER. Also – Thank you, Edward Lane and your educational footnotes – I now know that "Aslan" is a Turkish word meaning "Lion." Real imaginative there, CS Lewis, real imaginative.

Actually now I'm really annoyed about the name of Aslan. It's one of those names that tries to be clever by being all ~relevant~ in a language that's intended to be foreign and unfamiliar to the readers. It is like naming your cat "Neko" because you think it's all ~awesome~ but really all you're doing is naming your cat "Cat". Or like the names in JK Rowling's books, which have always bugged me too, like "Remus Lupin" – a very appropriate name for a werewolf, yes, but he WASN'T a werewolf when he was named as a baby! Gah.

Anways, I'm irrationally bitter about this. Aslan is supposed to just be Aslan's name! HIS NAME SHOULD NOT MEAN "LION." Unless I look at it as parallel with how we talk about God. In Christianity, at least, we treat "God" as being God's name, a lot of the time, when really, it is just a word for the type of being that God is. Except in that case Aslan should just be named Lion – none of this cloaking it in an ~exotic~ language! Gyahhh.


Also, let me expand further on my brief mention the other day of my 1001 Nights OT3 of Kamar/Budoor/Hayat.

Kamar and Budoor are married, but they end up separated by the vicissitudes of fate, as you do. So Budoor dresses up as a man (pretends to be Kamar, actually!) and goes off and is Awesome. Awesome enough, in fact, that a king offers his daughter in marriage to her! This daughter being Hayat. So Budoor and Hayat marry, and Budoor tells Hayat that, um, sorry, actually I'm a woman, and Hayat's all, OH NO WORRIES. ALSO, I WILL HELP YOU FIND KAMAR AGAIN. And then they KISS (ON THE MOUTH) and they "toy" together. I have no idea what was meant in the original Arabic, but I choose to believe that this is an instance of Lane attempting to ellide over the existence of sex. And THEN Kamar finds Budoor again, and thinks Hayat's pretty awesome too, so he's all, Budoor, can I marry her too? And Budoor's all, THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. And then they marry and the three of them reside together in enjoyment and happiness and fidelity and cheerfulness. I mean, that doesn't even need a threesome agenda to look OT3!

But SPEAKING OF lesbianism between co-wives, Lane went on to talk in his endnote about how usually co-wives really don't get along, but there are exceptions, and then he tells this epic anecdote about two women who are co-wives and love each other desperately, more than they love their husband, and spend all their time together and hate to be apart, and the one is totally brokenhearted when the other dies. And I'm sitting there going HELLO, but Lane doesn't seem to even NOTICE that there might be anything going on between them besides sisterly devotion.


In conclusion, I want a million 1001 Nights fanfics, about EVERYTHING. Fixing the racefail and disabilityfail and religionfail and feminismfail and all that, having fun with the excellent bits of homoeroticism (finding a young man SO BEAUTIFUL and FALLING IN LOVE WITH HIM and adopting him as a son. Right. I bet your thoughts are so fatherly.), having fun with the total crackyness, doing AUs and crossovers and basically EVERYTHING ELSE IMAGINABLE. There is so much that could be done with these stories!