Welcome, dear readers, as ever and Happy New Year (for those who follow the Gregorian Calendar).

Vlad the Impaler has turned up more than once in this blog.

He does so primarily because he is the wonderfully menacing villain of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

I’ve now taught this book several times and it always seems to catch student attention—not surprising, even considering the denser language of late Victorian fiction and the sometimes outdated social  attitudes, since the basic story, that the equivalent of a combination of highly-intelligent predator

and virus

has plans to invade England and to use the first-class railway system

to spread his infection, is so well handled that it still seems disturbing even now, 123 years after its initial publication–and further proof of this is that it’s never been out of print in its history.

Each time I teach it, something different always pops out.  This time, it was just how much of Dracula’s ultimate defeat is owed to the daily work of Victorian offices.

This might seem very odd, at first.  Imagine the terrifying Terminator

or the saliva-dripping Alien

destroyed by a color copier.

And it requires more than such work to put an end to the vampire and his designs—stakes

and Bowie knives

a Gurkha kukri,

and even Winchester rifles,

but major weapons in the campaign are this

and this

and this.

The novel begins, in fact, with the first of these.  The first protagonist we meet is Jonathan Harker, a clerk for an English attorney, on his way in a public coach, called a “diligence”,

to meet a client, a nobleman who lives deep in the mountains of Transylvania.

He keeps a journal—in shorthand, a page of which might look like this:

Shorthand has a very long history in the West.  The earliest mention I can find is in Plutarch’s (c46-119AD) life of Cato the Younger ( 95-46BC) , where it is said that the only one of his Senate speeches survives because the Consul, Cicero (106-43BC),

had  stationed shorthand writers in the Senate, who took down the speech as it was spoken (Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger, Section 23, Paragraph 3—if you’d like to read this for yourself, here’s a LINK to the whole text—just scroll down to the appropriate section:  https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html )

There is, as is so often the case with ancient details, a good deal of discussion, both in the classical world and among later scholars, about how this shorthand came into being.  One possibility was that it came through Cicero’s secretary (and slave), Tiro, and the practice, which included increasingly long lists of symbols, called “Tironian notes”, continued  in one form or other up through the Renaissance. 

The first modern system for English-speakers was created by John Byrom (1692-1763).

Instead of being based upon a huge collection of symbols, Byrom’s system was based upon capturing sounds—here’s a 1730s journal entry by him using his method.

His method became a common one after its posthumous publication in 1767 as The Universal English Short-Hand

with a rival in that of Samuel Taylor’s 1786 An Essay Intended to Establish a Standard for a Universal System of Stenography, or Short-hand Writing, which appears to have overtaken and replaced Byrom’s method.

And I imagine that this was the system which the young Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

taught himself so that he could get his first writing job—as a Parliamentary debate reporter.

In time, however, this method was replaced by that invented by Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897)

first published in 1837.

Not only does Jonathan keep a diary in shorthand, but his wife-to-be, Mina, tells us in a letter to her friend, Lucy Westenra, that she has been studying and practicing it as well,  so that

 “When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practising very hard.” (Dracula, Chapter V—if you want to follow along, here’s a LINK to the text I’m using—it’s the 1897 American edition, available at Gutenberg:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm )

We see here two of the elements I mentioned earlier, shorthand and the typewriter. 

Unlike shorthand, typewriters were relatively new in 1897.  Although there had been earlier tries at its invention, the first commercially practical machine was patented in 1868

and was first manufactured in 1873.

The third element appears a little later in time as well as in Chapter V, where we meet another major character, Dr Seward, who is the director of an asylum and keeps his diary on what he calls a “phonograph”.

This is what we now call a “Dictaphone” and was the offspring of two remarkable 19^th-century inventors, Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

and Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Although Edison invented sound recording, it was Bell who created the first viable medium, the wax cylinder,

which Bell then employed in the 1880s for a business function:  recording thoughts on such cyclinders—

which could then be listened to and transcribed by a secretary onto paper—with pen or typewriter.

So, knowing a little something about these office weapons, how are they used in the book?

As readers, our first knowledge of Dracula comes from Jonathan Harker’s journal, which, as we’ve seen, was written in shorthand.  We also know that Mina, who will become Harker’s wife, practices shorthand herself, and can type.  After Harker’s eventual escape from the Count’s castle, he hands his journal to Mina, and, eventually, she reads it—and does something more.  When another character, and a very important one, Professor Van Helsing, seeking information, comes to visit Mina and her now-husband, she says to him:

“If you will let me, I shall give you a paper to read. It is long, but I have typewritten it out. It will tell you my trouble and Jonathan’s. It is the copy of his journal when abroad, and all that happened. I dare not say anything of it; you will read for yourself and judge.” (Dracula, Chapter 14)

Mina adds to this a copy of her own diary, kept at the time when she and her friend, Lucy, are at Whitby, on the northeastern English coast, and Lucy is first attacked by Dracula.  In time, she will do something more:  listen to, and transcribe the wax cyclinders of Dr Seward’s diary–

“He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder. I used manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done with all the rest.” (Dracula, Chapter XVII)

Seward had treated Lucy as she fell under Dracula’s influence and, when he was baffled by what was happening to her, called in his former teacher, Professor Van Helsing and, with Mina’s professional skill, what he had seen and experienced then became part of the on-going record of Dracula and his activities.

“Manifold” is what we would call “carbon paper”, a method which allows a typist to make multiple copies simultaneously and which is sometimes still used to make copies of receipts.

This will be especially useful when Dracula enters Dr Seward’s asylum, attacks Mina (again) and tries to destroy all records of himself:

“ ‘All the manuscript had been burned, and the blue flames were flickering amongst the white ashes; the cylinders of your phonograph too were thrown on the fire, and the wax had helped the flames.” Here I interrupted. “Thank God there is the other copy in the safe!’ “ (Dracula, Chapter XXI)

What Mina has done, then, is to provide, through her office skills, as complete a record as can be constructed of Dracula’s aims and actions, not only in England, but through Jonathan’s journal, at his lair, the castle in Transylvania.

(This is Bran castle, which some believe may have been a model for Stoker.)

With it, Van Helsing has learned so much that, as he plans further action against the vampire, he will say of her:

“ “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart.’ “ (Dracula, Chapter XVIII)

Add to that a typist’s sure fingers.

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

Stay well,

And know that, as always there’s

MTCIDC

O

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Back in early November, I wrote a posting which explored the idea of how Bilbo had “learned [Sam] his letters”. 

Because Middle-earth is a place which roughly mirrors the Western Middle Ages, I imagined that Bilbo had begun with the equivalent of the Roman alphabet, Tengwar, and Sam had practiced saying and writing the letters.  In earlier times, just as literate people were many fewer in the West until the 19^th century, material for writing was often hard to come by.  Scriptoria (medieval writing centers in ecclesiastical establishments)

used prepared animal skins—parchment–for copying older works and writing new ones.

Our paper, made from wood pulp, is a 19^th-century invention, created as a replacement for its predecessor, paper made from rags.  The earlier paper had been invented by the Chinese about 100AD, only reaching the West, via the Islamic world, by the 12^th century.

As literacy grew rapidly in the West in the 19^th century and printing methods improved, the demand for the older rag paper outpaced supply.  This brought on a shortage and it seems that wood pulp paper was produced as a cheaper and more plentiful substitute.  With our medieval view of Middle-earth, then, we can expect that Bilbo, being wealthy, could afford as much parchment as he wanted, but we can also expect that, like medieval students, as they learned their letters, Sam might have used a cheaper and easily-renewable resource:   a slate and chalk,

or another tool, handed down from the Classical world,

the diptych of wax-covered board and stilus.

We might see another part of what we can imagine was Sam’s education in something he does on the long journey into Mordor:

“Sam stood up, putting his hands behind his back (as he always did when ‘speaking poetry’), and began…”—his poem being that about the “oliphaunt”.  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”)

Medieval schoolrooms, for all that they were situated in places which often had strict rules about speech and silence, must have been relatively noisy places.  First, because books were copied by hand, which took time, and the materials were somewhat expensive, there would have been few of them–perhaps, in fact, only one copy of the text and that in the hands of the master, who would have read the text to be studied aloud, while the students took notes—like Sam, on slate or tablet.

Second, because, unlike the modern idea of reading:  eyes scanning the page, mouth tightly shut,

Western people all the way back to the Greeks, whose alphabet, derived from the Phoenician, forms the basis of the Roman writing system which, in turn, forms the basis of the system I’m writing this posting in, customarily read everything aloud.  They would begin to do this from their days learning the letters

and continue throughout their lives.

In fact, monastery schools, like that of St Gall in what is now western Switzerland,

taught not only how to make sense of the letters, words and sentences, but how to deliver a text publicly.  This was important in worship services,

but it was also employed during mealtimes, when one of the monks would be given the job of reading some religious work aloud while the others ate.

 There were strict standards for public reading and so early drill was intense and texts might even carry conventional signs to indicate things like correct pronunciation, where it was appropriate to raise or lower the voice, and where and how to end a passage.

A schoolroom, then, would be filled with voices, those of the master reading and commenting and correcting, those of the students reciting and repeating what they’d been taught—just like Sam and his “speaking poetry”. 

It’s not known why people began to read silently, although there is lots of theory and scholarly argument on the subject.  Certainly it seems to be true that, somewhere perhaps in the later 17^th century, the custom had changed. 

This isn’t to say that, by the way, that everyone from the beginning had conformed to the custom.  In a famous passage in his autobiography (Book 6, Chapter 3), St Augustine (354-430AD)

 describes his bishop in Milan, St Ambrose (c340-397AD),

as a silent reader.  Scholars have seen this from two directions, depending on what they want to say about the act of reading.  Some say that this suggests that it wasn’t unusual for at least some people to read to themselves.  Others, however, say that St Augustine mentions it because it seems so odd.  For myself, I suspect that it’s the latter, but, not being so well-versed in both texts and arguments as such scholars, I would claim that this is no more than a hunch on my part.

Although there is academic argument over silent versus aloud, I’ve recently been rereading a fantasy novel in which, for some people, it’s actually dangerous for them to read aloud.  This is Inkheart (Tintenherz  in the original German),

published in 2003, and written by Cornelia Funke.        

In time, she has added two more novels to this, Inkspell (Tintenblut—why the title change, I don’t know) 2005, and Inkdeath (Tintentod) 2007.  (She now promises a fourth volume, Die Farbe der Rache—The Color of Revenge—to be published next October.)

These are books all about the love of books and the adventures you can find in them—and the peril if they become too real, a major theme being that there are certain people in the world whose ability to read a book—specifically a novel—is so magical that they can actually bring characters out of books—and send people into them (a sort of literary cosmic balance).

Needless to say, I recommend them to you, along with an earlier novel, Herr der Diebe (The Thief Lord )

published in Germany in 2000 and in an English translation in 2002.

But—at this moment, it’s almost Christmas—or, if you prefer, the Feast of Sol Invictus, or that which Bilbo and Gandalf celebrate with Beorn, Yule, and, while I continue to read, I’m in hopes that someone else has read something of mine and, following that list, is bringing a pile of treats on his epic trip Thursday night flight.  (He can’t be scanning my list—that one’s much too short!)

Because this blog has readers from around the world, perhaps the best wish that I can make is that the new year brings peace and health throughout the world for everyone.

In the meantime,

Thanks, as always for reading, stay well,

And trust that, in the last week of the old year, there will be

MTCIDC

O

PS

I would also recommend the films made from The Thief Lord (2006)

and Inkheart (2008).

Both do a very good job of providing you with a visual context for their respective books, as well as employing actors who do a convincing job of being their characters.

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

As I taught The Hobbit again this term, a student’s question from last year came back to me once more:  “Where are the women?”

The answer is, aside from a few words about Bilbo’s mother, Belladonna nee Took (about whom I would love to know so much more—why was Gandalf, not, I would say, someone easily impressed–so taken with her?) and her sisters, the answer is simple:  there really aren’t any.  An author as fruitfully inventive as Tolkien (just look at the pile of volumes of manuscript material published by Christopher Tolkien) could easily have created some, but didn’t.  And, as far as I know, he provided no explanation for this:  it’s simply as much the case as Cinderella has a step-mother with two daughters.

This lack, clearly felt by Jackson & Co in their 3-part adaptation of The Hobbit, led to the stitching-in of “Tauriel”, a warrior elf,

and a subplot which, to me, caused there to be an imbalance in the story, whose original focus was upon Bilbo and his development from a Baggins who flees even from the idea of adventure—

“We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures.  Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!  Make you late for dinner!  I can’t think what anybody sees in them…”  (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

to someone who, in later chapters, has so changed that Gandalf, seeming to appear out of nowhere, claps him on the back and says, “Well done!  Mr Baggins!…There is always more about you than anyone expects!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”)

The complications of a brief but improbable romance with a dwarf, a conflict with the king of the forest elves, and combat with sinister orcs, all take away from the author’s original intent.  In the novel, Bilbo is always center stage and is meant to be and subplots of any sort can only distort and dilute the author’s intent as embodied in the text.

Women warriors, however, appear almost at the beginnings of western literature.  As one of his labors,Herakles must obtain the zone (that’s “ZOE-nay”), a kind of belt, of the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyte (“hih-poh-LOO-tay”). 

In Book 2 of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Jason, of Golden Fleece fame,

almost encounters the Amazons on his trip eastwards to Colchis (a wind blows the Argo away from their land at the last minute).

And the Athenian hero, Theseus, not only battles the Amazons,

but, in some versions of the story (there are a number of these) marries their queen, Antiope (in Greek, “ahn-tee-AH-pay”, but in English we say “an-TIE-oh-pee”)

Even Achilles is matched against the Amazons when they come to aid the Trojans and, in a dramatic moment in one version of the story, fights their leader, Penthesilea (in Greek, “pen-theh-SEE-lay-ah”, in English, “pen-theh-sih-LAY-a”) and, even as he kills her, falls in love with her.

The idea of Amazons inspired several generations of Greek sculptors and pot-painters, including the famous frieze (a sculptured band of stone) from the 5^th-century temple of Apollo at Bassae (modern Greek VAH-seese).

The site was excavated in the early 19^th century

and the frieze was sold to the British Museum, where it’s on display to this day.

Although ancient people seemed to believe in their existence, whether there were real Amazons has been debated by scholars for years.  The pot depictions, in particular, often look like, never having seen one, Athenian artists based their depictions upon the wild tribesmen they saw every day in the city, the Skythians, a horse people from north of the Black Sea,

whom the government of Athens used both as policemen and as missile troops in war,

as you can see from this depiction of Amazons fighting Greeks.

New archaeological evidence from southern Russia, however, suggests that perhaps those artists weren’t improvising, as recent finds provide the possibility that, among the Skythians, woman warriors were part of the culture.  (See, for example, this CNN piece from January, 2020:  https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/world/scythian-amazon-burial-scn-intl-scli/index.html )

If there was no woman warrior like “Tauriel” in The Hobbit, there is certainly one in The Lord of the Rings and, in fact, there were almost two. 

Those of us who are readers of the text have always known and loved Eowyn and that amazing scene in The Return of the King (Book Five, Chapter 6)—but, pictures are (almost) better than words here—

Somewhere in the scripting of The Lord of the Rings, a combat role had been given to another woman:  Arwen and some scenes were actually filmed.  Here’s a rough image—

As in the case of “Tauriel”, I can understand the temptation:  in the book, Arwen seems a very passive figure, at best sending Aragorn a banner she has sewn for him:

“ ‘It is a gift that I bring you from the Lady of Rivendell,’ answered Halbarad.  ‘She wrought it in secret, and long was its making.’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

(This is a 1911 painting by Sir Edmund Leighton, 1852-1922, which has had various titles, including “Stitching the Banner”.  I’ve used Leighton paintings before, generally classical scenes, for which he was famous, but I was directed to this work from the Wiki entry for “Arwen”, which had this, by Anna Kulisz, which credited its origin to the Leighton.)

And making only a kind of traditional story-book last appearance, to marry him.

The script writers had already changed the text, removing Glorfindel, and putting Arwen on his horse, Asfaloth.

As well, it’s not Frodo alone who crosses the ford of the Bruinen and turns back to defy the Nazgul, it’s Arwen,

who then calls up the water to wash them away, which was done by Elrond and Gandalf in the book (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

(A powerful illustration by John Howe)

In the second film, this was to be expanded by having her bring the reforged sword, Anduril, to Aragorn at Helm’s Deep and to join in the fighting there, but for reasons I have so far seen no documentary evidence for—possibly a very loud fan revolt?—that idea was scrapped.  And I’m glad that it was, for the same reason that I believe that the introduction of “Tauriel” was not a good choice.  Everything we know up to this point in the story about Eowyn has led us logically to the moment of her confrontation with the Nazgul:  a “Shield-maiden”, frustrated at always being left behind, in despair at the thought of Aragorn’s imagined death on the Paths of the Dead, conspiring with Merry though both have been ordered to stay behind, it seems completely natural that she would face the chief of the Nazgul over her uncle’s body.  To have a parallel in Arwen would be to seriously dilute the impact of that scene, especially in that it’s clear that Eowyn has not planned to return from the relief of Minas Tirith.  As Merry sees her at the moment of facing the Nazgul:

“Eowyn it was, and Dernhelm also.  For into Merry’s mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow:  the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

I know that this relegates Arwen to the lesser position she actually holds in The Lord of the Rings, but I would prefer that to losing the full impact of this—

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Stay well,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC,

O

Hamlet is talking to himself again.

“Oh that this too too solid Flesh, would melt,

Thaw, and resolue it selfe into a Dew:

Or that the Euerlasting had not fixt

His Cannon ‘gainst Selfe-slaughter. O God, O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and vnprofitable

Seemes to me all the vses of this world?”

(from the First Folio, 1623—if you would like to read this play in this early edition:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/Ham/ )

(And welcome, as ever, dear readers.)

Hamlet often does so, his seven soliloquies being among the most famous of all of Shakespeare’s speeches, (for a really interesting essay about these, see:   https://www.shakespeareflix.net/2014/10/accurate-list-of-hamlets-soliloquies.html )

but Hamlet does have a friend from school who has come to attend his father’s funeral, Horatio, and it’s at Horatio’s urging that Hamlet first sees the ghost of his murdered father.

It’s also to Horatio that Hamlet talks about Yorick the jester

and meditates on life and death.

And, when he’s dying, it’s to Horatio that Hamlet entrusts his story, saying, basically, “clear my name”.

Although he talks a good deal to himself, we have a much fuller sense of Hamlet because of his dealings with Horatio.

The older literary term for this kind of character is confidant/confidante, the spelling of which suggests English gets the word from French, as the Latin original is confidens, ”trusting in (someone/something)”.  This was the term for a standard character in French tragedies of the 17^th century by authors like Pierre Corneille (1606-1684),

and Jean Racine (1639-1699),

where many major characters have a secondary figure who acts like Horatio—as Oenone the nurse does for Phedre in Racine’s 1677 play.

In our world, we might call Horatio Hamlet’s BFF, and the idea of a hero having one goes far back into the history of western literature.  Odysseus often seems to be the archetypical loner,

even though, by the end of The Odyssey, his son Telemachus, and several of his serving men help him in dealing with the 100+ suitors and their servants.

Other Greek literary figures, however, are often paired,

Achilles with Patroclus,

Orestes and Pylades,

even Heracles, with his nephew, Iolaus.

In Vergil’s Aeneid, Aeneas has a shadow in Achates

who is even given a repeated adjective which reflects his closeness to his friend, fidus, “faithful”.

There are more of these through the centuries, everyone from Oliver, Roland’s friend in the 11^th-century Chanson de Roland

to Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories–

and early mystery stories seem almost to require them, such as the combination of Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter in the novels and short stories of Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957)

and Albert Campion and Lugg in the novels of Margery Allingham (1904-1966).

Bunter and Lugg are servants, and obviously not of the same social class as their masters, and Lugg is a retired burglar.  His stated goal, however, is to make the seemingly-feckless but obviously upper-class Campion respectable and this provides a second form of confidant:  the comic side.  This parallel of comic with serious is as old as the 5^th-century BC dramatist, Aristophanes, whose god, Dionysos, has a slave named Xanthias, in whom he confides in the play, Frogs of 405BC.  

Classic comic confidants would include characters like Sancho Panza in Miguel Cervantes’ (1547-1616) Don Quixote

and Jeeves in PG Wodehouse’s (1881-1975) novels and short stories about the cheerful idiot, Bertie Wooster. 

People like Xanthias and Sancho could easily fit into the purely comic category, but Jeeves, in an odd way, is involved in the comedy, but also steers Bertie out of many of his worst disasters, putting him into a slightly different category and two other figures in this category have, I think, a special resonance for the inspiration of this posting, both from novels by Charles Dickens (1812-1870).  These are Sam Weller, from The Pickwick Papers (1837)

and Mark Tapley, from Martin Chuzzlewit (first published serially in 1842-44).

Both of these are lower class men by their manner of speech, but clever, resourceful, and like Achates, faithful to their masters, Sam to Mr Pickwick and Mark to Martin Chuzzlewit.  And thus it is more than the name of Mr Pickwick’s servant which brought to mind another Sam.

When teaching The Hobbit this fall, I had been struck by the fact that most of what we know about Bilbo comes from the narrator or from Bilbo’s internal monologue:  for all that he’s in the company of a gang of dwarves, he has no real friend among them.  He manages to turn from the timid Baggins of the book’s beginning to the bold Took of later chapters almost completely by himself and our knowledge of that development comes to us almost entirely through the narrator. It’s easy to remember the physical side of Sam, how he grits his teeth and goes on, no matter what, even to carrying Frodo up Mount Doom, but

there is another side to their relationship.  Frodo and Sam are always talking and that back-and-forth often reveals the thoughtful side of Frodo and how his sense of himself and the world changes over the span of the book.  Among other conversations, I think of what may be my favorite between the two, at the end of which Frodo seems to be teasing Sam, who replies:

“ ‘Now, Mr Frodo…you shouldn’t be making fun.  I was serious.’

‘So was I,’ said Frodo, ‘and so I am.  We’re going on a bit too fast.  You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point, “Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.” ‘ “

And here is where we learn more about Sam, as well:

“ ‘Maybe,’ said Sam, ‘but I wouldn’t be one to say that.  Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

which makes me want to go back to Hamlet and see what more I can learn about Horatio.

Thanks as always for reading,

Stay well,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

Today is English poet John Milton’s birthday (1608-1674). 

Here’s a LINK to one of his richest descriptive works, “L’Allegro”:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44731/lallegro

and tomorrow is Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886). 

Here’s poem #1286

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll –

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul –

Remember them today and tomorrow.

As ever, welcome, dear readers!  It’s the beginning of December here in the Northern Hemisphere and I wished for snow—and got it.  My wish didn’t come from the following, however–

“ ‘Mr. Aladdin, sir, what will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, jot it down?’
You ain’t never had friend like me!”

sings a very large, blue spirit in a song which practically bursts off the screen with energy.

(Here it is, if you don’t know it, or if you do and, like me, never get tired of seeing it again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx91ff77yzM )

This is, of course, from Disney’s Aladdin, which is probably how most younger people know the story—but, in fact, don’t know the story, at least the old story upon which this wonderful adaptation is based, as well as the story of how the story came to us.

I first met the story in the form in which it may have originated:  orally.  Before I could read, like most children, I imagine, I loved being read to and someone (mother or grandmother, I’d guess) had sat me in a lap and read me the story.  I have no recollection from where—probably a children’s storybook, but a more modern one than the one I can imagine JRRT would have heard or read it from, Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book (1889).

(We know that he had access to the second in the series, The Red Fairy Book (1890),

because “Soria Moria Castle” and “The Story of Sigurd”, two stories known to be associated with him, are in it, and therefore it seems to me likely that he would have been acquainted with the previous volume.)

Perhaps it was something like this—

Whatever it was, it was a story I loved—and was spooked by, when Aladdin’s “uncle” abandoned him in that underground labyrinth without getting what he wanted, the lamp.

Before we go on, in case you don’t know the story, or need to refresh your memory, here’s an anonymous translation which appears to be taken from Andrew Lang’s The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (1898):  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57/57-h/57-h.htm

I’ll wait in this garden till you finish…

The story itself is old, first appearing in Antoine Galland’s (1646-1715)

French translation from Arabic of a vast collection of stories, which he called, after the title of the manuscript, Les Mille et Une Nuits (“The Thousand and One Nights”) (1704-1717). 

(As you can see, this is a very early Volume 3, but from an edition published in the Netherlands, although claiming to be “following the copy printed in Paris”.)

But the story of how this came to be in Galland’s collection has its own twist:  it’s not from the Syrian manuscript from which Galland worked.  Instead, he had met Antun Yussuf Hanna Diyab, a Syrian whom Galland had met on a visit to Paris, and who told him 14 more stories, one of them being “Aladdin”.  Supposedly, Diyab recited these to Galland from memory, but, in more recent years, some scholars have wondered whether Diyab was himself the source of these stories, as “Aladdin” and another famous story, “Ali Baba”, don’t appear to survive in any other early collection.  (There are also those who believe that Galland himself created them—after all, one of his friends was Charles Perrault, who gave us Mother Goose.)

The first English translation, retitled “The Arabian Nights Entertainment” appeared surprisingly quickly, in 1706 to 1721, even as Galland was still publishing his French translation.  This was the famous “Grub Street edition”.

(This is an early, but not first, edition.  The title on the spine is that of the first translation, but the only known copies are in the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Princeton University library and I found this image on E-Bay!)

It was given its odd name because it was an anonymous translation, probably done by one of the many would-be famous authors

 who lived in an edgy area of London (now almost disappeared and what survives has a different name), called—surprise!—Grub Street,

a medieval relic which had somehow survived the Great Fire of 1666,

 but was so run-down that rent was cheap.

Through endless reprints, forms of this translation would have been the standard until Jonathan Scott’s new translation of Galland appeared in 1811

to be replaced by Edward William Lane’s translation of 1839-1841.

Lane’s, however, was not a translation from Galland’s French, as were the Grub Street and the Scott, but a new translation based upon an entirely different manuscript, published in Cairo in the 1830s.  It also has the most wonderfully elaborate illustrations, by William Harvey (and some by Lane, as well).

(I’ve recently seen a first edition copy of the 3-volume set for $1000.00, but you can have a copy for free from an 1840s US 2-volume edition by following these LINKS:    

https://archive.org/details/thousandonenight01lane (volume 1);    https://archive.org/details/thousandonenight02lane (volume 2);  )

Into the 20^th century, Lane’s was the standard translation and I can imagine that whatever was read to me was a distant descendant, although perhaps it came through The Blue Fairy Book, or perhaps from Lang’s later Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (1898), which uses the same text.  Lang says that his translation goes back to the French of Galland, in fact, bringing us back in a circle.

But, outside, the snow is already melting.  If I only had a dirty old lamp…

As always, thanks for reading,

Stay well,

And be reassured that, even without a genie or djinni, if you need more than one, there will be

MTCIDC

O

ps

When you read, or reread, the old story from the LINK above, you will interested to see that the authors of the Disney version have done some narrative slight-of-hand with the plot, removing Aladdin’s mother, combining the king’s vizier with the wicked magician who claims to be Aladdin’s “uncle”, turning two genies into one, and even introducing a flying carpet—and a monkey side kick for Aladdin.  At the same time, they have kept the basic story and, if it’s actually based on a folktale, such variants are always possible—after all, in Galland’s original version, the story was set in China.

This is from Edmund Dulac’s illustrations for Laurence Housman’s 1914 Stories from the Arabian Nights—of which your own copy awaits you here:  https://archive.org/details/storiesarabian00housmiss/page/n1/mode/2up