Antoine Galland
Encyclopedia
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights in English). His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717 and exerted a huge influence on subsequent European literature and attitudes to the Islamic world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
.
Life
Galland was born at RollotRollot
Rollot is a commune in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.-Geography:Rollot is situated southeast of Amiens, on the D935 road...
in Picardy
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...
(now in the department of Somme
Somme
Somme is a department of France, located in the north of the country and named after the Somme river. It is part of the Picardy region of France....
). After completing school at Noyon
Noyon
Noyon is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.It lies on the Oise Canal, 100 km north of Paris.-History:...
he studied Greek and Latin in Paris, where he also acquired some Arabic. In 1670, he was attached to the French embassy at Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
because of his excellent knowledge of Greek, and in 1673 he travelled in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, and sketched and -in some cases- removed historical monuments.
After a brief visit to France, where his collection of ancient coins attracted some attention, Galland returned to the Levant in 1677 and in 1679 he undertook a third voyage, being commissioned by the French East India Company
French East India Company
The French East India Company was a commercial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the British and Dutch East India companies in colonial India....
to collect for the cabinet of Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing...
. On the expiration of this commission he was instructed by the government to continue his researches, and had the title of antiquary to the king (Louis XIV) conferred upon him. During his prolonged residences abroad he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
languages and literatures, which, on his final return to France, enabled him to render valuable assistance to Jean de Thévenot
Jean de Thévenot
Jean de Thévenot was a French traveller in the East, who wrote extensively about his journeys. He was also a linguist, natural scientist and botanist....
, the keeper of the royal library, and to Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville
Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville
Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville , French Orientalist, was born at Paris.He was educated at the University of Paris, and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going to Italy to perfect himself in them by converse with the orientals who frequented its seaports...
. When d'Herbelot died in 1695, Galland continued his Bibliothèque orientale ("Oriental Library"), a huge compendium of information about Islamic culture. It was finally published in 1697 and was a major contribution to European knowledge about the Middle East, influencing writers such as William Beckford
William Beckford
William Beckford may refer to:* William Beckford , English businessman, often called "Alderman Beckford", father of William Thomas* William Beckford of Somerley , Jamaican slave-owner and writer...
(in his oriental tale Vathek
Vathek
Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford...
).
After the deaths of Thévenot and d'Herbelot, Galland lived for some time at Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....
under the roof of Nicolas Foucault, the intendant of Caen, himself no mean archaeologist; and there he began in 1704 the publication of Les mille et Une Nuits, which excited immense interest during the time of its appearance, and is still the standard French translation. In 1709 he was appointed to the chair of Arabic in the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
. He continued to discharge the duties of this post until his death in 1715.
Besides a number of archaeological works, especially in the department of numismatics
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
, he published in 1694 a compilation from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish, entitled Paroles remarquables, bons mots et maximes des orientaux, and in 1699 a translation from an Arabic manuscript, De l'origine et du progrès du café. The former of these works appeared in an English translation in 1795. His Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokrnan was published posthumously in 1724. Among his numerous manuscripts are a translation of the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
and a Histoire générale des empereurs Turcs. His Journal was published by Charles Schefer in 1881.
Translation of the The Thousand and One Nights
Galland had come across a manuscript of The Tale of Sindbad the Sailor in the 1690s and in 1701 he published his translation of it into French. Its success encouraged him to embark on a translation of a 14th-century Syrian manuscript of tales from The Thousand and One Nights. The first two volumes of this work, under the title Les mille et une nuits, appeared in 1704. The twelfth and final volume was published posthumously in 1717. Galland translated the first part of his work solely from the Syrian manuscript, but in 1709 he was introduced to a Christian Maronite monk from AleppoAleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, Hanna Diab, who recounted fourteen more stories to Galland from memory. Galland chose to include seven of these tales in his version of the Nights.
Mystery still surrounds the origins of some of the most famous tales. For instance, there are no Arabic manuscripts of Aladdin
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
and Ali Baba
Ali Baba
Ali Baba is a fictional character from medieval Arabic literature. He is described in the adventure tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves...
which pre-date Galland's translation, leading some scholars to conclude that Galland invented them himself and the Arabic versions are merely later renderings of his original French.
Galland also adapted his translation to the taste of the time. The immediate success the tales enjoyed was partly due to the vogue for fairy stories which had been started in France in the 1690s by Galland's friend Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...
. Galland was also eager to conform to the literary canons of the era. He cut many of the erotic passages as well as all of the poetry. This caused Sir Richard Burton to refer to "Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation" which "in no wise represent(s) the eastern original." His translation was greeted with immense enthusiasm and had soon been translated into many other European languages: English (a "Grub Street
Grub Street
Until the early 19th century, Grub Street was a street close to London's impoverished Moorfields district that ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate north to Chiswell Street...
" version appeared in 1706); German (1712); Italian (1722); Dutch (1732); and Russian (1763). They produced a wave of imitations and the widespread 18th century fashion for oriental tales. As Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
wrote:
Another fact is undeniable. The most famous and eloquent encomiums of The Thousand and One Nights - by ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, Thomas de QuinceyThomas de QuinceyThomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
, StendhalStendhalMarie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
, Tennyson, Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Newman - are from readers of Galland's translation. Two hundred years and ten better translations have passed, but the man in Europe or the Americas who thinks of the Thousand and One Nights thinks, invariably, of this first translation. The Spanish adjective milyunanochesco [thousand-and-one-nights-esque] ... has nothing to do with the erudite obscenities of Burton or MardrusJ. C. MardrusJoseph Charles Mardrus, otherwise known as "Jean-Charles Mardrus" , born in Cairo, was a French physician and a noted translator. Jean-Charles's surname was originally Mardirossian, but the family shortened it to Mardrus. His family had some Armenian origins, and his relatives were so wealthy that...
, and everything to do with Antoine Galland's bijoux and sorceries.
Works
- Les paroles remarquables, les bons mots et les maximes des Orientaux, S. Benard, 1694
- Contes et fables indiennes, de Bidpaï et de Lokman; traduites d'Ali-Tchelebi ben Saleh, auteur turc.
- Histoire de l'esclavage d'un marchand de la ville de Cassis, à Tunis, La Bibliothèque, « L'écrivain voyageur ».
- De l’origine et du progrès du café, La Bibliothèque, coll. « L'écrivain voyageur ».
- Le Voyage à Smyrne, Chandeigne, coll. « Magellane », 2000.
- Histoire de Noureddin et de la belle persane, André Versaille Éditeur, 2009
- Histoire d'Aladin ou la lampe merveilleuse
Sources
- Les mille et une nuits as translated by Galland (Garnier Flammarrion edition, 1965)
- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights" in The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986, ed. Eliot Weinberger (Penguin, 1999)
- Sir Richard Burton - The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 by Richard Francis Burton, printed by the Burton Club for private subscribers only, printed in the USA
- Robert IrwinRobert Graham IrwinRobert Graham Irwin is a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.He read modern history at the University of Oxford, and did graduate research at SOAS. From 1972 he was a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews. He gave up academic life in 1977 in order...
The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Penguin, 1995)
External links
- Antoine Galland by Maxime de Sars (in French)