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Arabian Nights week 27: The Hunchback's Tale
One story that's notably missing from this volume is "The Hunchback's Tale", a fun little farce that's worth reading.
I propose that we read the Richard Burton translation of this story ( https://www.telelib.com/words/authors/B/BurtonRichard/prose/arabiannight01/arabiannight01022.html ). That means we read the story, and also get a taste of Burton's translation, to compare to Seale's language.
Any thoughts?
Comments
I did have to look up Gobbo, though, which is British slang for ‘hunchback’ (and perhaps has nothing to do with goblins).
I compared this Annotated version to the 2 other versions I have, just to see the differences (and because I was curious if the Hunchback was in them):
The Husein Haddawy version, which is the result of research to establish to the earliest stories known, and then translate them, has most of the same stories from the 'original' section of the Seale book, and I assume that's the reason Seale picked most of these.
Frame story
Donkey & Ox
Merchant & Wife
Merchant & Jinni (but missing the Third Old Man, having only the first two). Haddawi translates Jinn as 'Demon', so it's really The Merchant and the Demon.
The Fisherman and the Demon entire
The Porter & the Three Women entire
The Story of the 3 Apples.
Missing are Dalilah the Crafty and the Seven Voyages of Sindbad.
Added are The Hunchback, which is a story cycle with nine or so parts, of which The hunchback is the introductory tale, and after Harun records this tale in gold, he invites others to tell a more wondrous tale, and several people oblige.
Also added are 3 other stories: Nur-al-Din & The Slave Girl, The Slave Girl and Nur-al-Din (which despite the similar name, seems to be an entirely different story featuring a different slave girl and a different Nur-al-Din), and Jullanar of the Sea.
The Penguin Classics version, translated by N.J. Dawood, contains:
Frame Story
Donkey and Ox
The Fisherman and Jinni
The Porter and the 3 Women
(the above are the only stories common to all three translations)
Seven Voyages of Sindbad
Aladdin
The Dawood translation has many other stories, not found in Seale:
The Tale of the Hunchback (though with 2 or 3 fewer sub-stories than the Haddawy version)
And the stories below are not in either of the other two books:
The Donkey
The Young Woman and her Five Lovers
The Historic Fart
Kafur & the Black Eunuch
Khalifah the Fisherman
The Dream
Jedan and his Brothers
Ma'ruf the Cobbler
I'm British, and I'd never heard the term "Gobbo" outside Warhammer.
It was my first time reading the Burton translation, and it's definitely set up to make the region exotic to British readers. I'm not sure I could cope with reading much more of it: it's hard going. Seale's translation is much easier to read and just as evocative, I found.
The story itself is a fun little farce, and fits nicely into the standard tropes of the Arabian Nights: an urban tale, involving the middle class. It also brings out the cosmopolitan nature of classical Middle Eastern cities. (And of course, in the end the hunchback is found to be still alive, so the story series ends in merriment all round.)
I'd never come across it either, so looked it up and found that it is an Italian term, with the only British use as a rough fantasy slang for a goblin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobbo... but it does, apparently, mean hunchback
You've gotta love a story that opens with there dwelt during times of yore
A fun little tale told - as has been noted - in a very different style that Searle. But it made me wonder whether Asimov was familiar with The Arabian Nights - "a Hunchback, whose semblance would draw a laugh from care and dispel the horrors of despair" sounds just like something the Mule would say of himself.