1001 Nights in Bosnian translation (review)

[Wayles Browne]

Sent to me by Andras Riedlmayer <riedlmay at fas.harvard.edu>
--Wayles Browne, Cornell
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- Review -
THE WONDROUS WORLD OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

_Hiljadu i jedna noc._  Transl. and ed. by Esad Durakovic.
[First complete translation of The Thousand and One Nights
(Alf Layla wa Layla) into Bosnian.] (Sarajevo: Ljiljan, 1999).
4 vols. : ill. ; 24 cm.
vol. 1 (Nights 1-170) 605 pp
vol. 2 (Nights 171-482) 570 pp.
vol. 3 (Nights 483-778) 568 pp.
vol. 4 (Nights 779-1001) 551 pp.
ISBN 9958-22-054-7 (set)
Publisher: Izdavacka kuca Ljiljan
           Mehmeda Spahe 18
           BA-71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
           Fax. + 387 71 442-994; 664-549
Price: 100 US dollars

Review by Marina Katnic-Bakarsic
Faculty of Philosophy, Univ. of Sarajevo

When the appearance of one book in contemporary Bosnian reality becomes
the cultural event of the year, that means that it is a remarkable edition
that needs to be properly evaluated. When the edition in question is
_The Thousand and One Nights_ (Arabian Nights) translated into Bosnian
from the original Arabic with an introduction and commentaries by
Prof. Esad Durakovic, (graphic design Dzevad Hozo), it surely expresses
the need for fairy tales, dreams or miracles felt by the contemporary
Bosnian reader.

_The Thousand and One Nights_ is, without any doubt, centuries after its
first appearance, still a fresh, inspiring and unique masterpiece. It is
no coincidence that even today it fascinates literary critics and
writers of the post-modernist school. _The Thousand and One Nights" is
in fact an emanation of the notion of the Story and storytelling that,
according to Peter Brooks, stipulates that narrative desire is the motor
of every narrative (_Reading for the Plot_, 1984, Cambridge: HUP). At the
same  time, this work tells us what is the power of  Narratives: thanks to
storytelling life was granted to Shahrazad, and faith in humans and love
to Sultan Shahriyar. Is this solution in fact a developed metaphor of
the power of narrative and literature in general?  Following this path,
the translator Esad Durakovic entitles his inspirational and informative
introduction "The Story as a Supreme Principle of the Universe."

Another metaphor from the _Thousand and One Nights_ is frequently used
in post-modern literature -- it is a metaphor of reader (or listener)
writer relation. Relation of tense,  desire as the wish to the end
and as the wish to delay of the end at the same time, the storyteller's
need for the audience and listener's need for the storyteller, the
endless search for the Ideal Reader and Ideal Author, all these
relations
are originally rooted in the _Thousand and One Nights_ and transposed
in various modes and variants even today -- from Italo Calvino's _If on
a Winter's Night a Traveler_ up to Patricia Dunbar's novel
_Hallucinating
Foucault_. Sometimes it seems that all existing stories, literary or
non-literary narratives, if such a distinction is at all possible, are
precontained in this work, rising from it or having been miraculously
swallowed and returned to it.

The translation by Professor Durakovic is extraordinary in many aspects.
The Bosnian reader can, for the first time, experience the integral text
of Shahrazad's world. This fact alone is an achievement not accomplished
by many of the national cultures which we usually count among the great
world cultures. For the first time the reader can notice and experience
the stylistic varieties of the original, varieties of forms and the
dance of forms. Sometimes the flow between comical discourse to the
lyrical passages is almost unbelievable and unpredictable, so is the flow
from the adventurous discourse to the erotic. But constantly these changes
are without sharp edges or distinctive borders in both language and
aesthetic coherence and harmony. Only a true master of Arabic and a
true stylist -- such as Professor Durakovic -- could make such an effect
in the translation. This can be clearly seen in over 8,500 lines of
verse incorporated in text that make a natural and coherent part of
the prose itself. Shahrazad's story would not be the same without verses
as in many prose-only translations of the Arabian Nights. The translator's
task was especially complicated by the fact that it was an instance
of classical Arabic poetry which is totally form-dependent so that
the decoding of the meaning in the translation is very hard task, and
the rendering of verses even harder. To illustrate this let me just
mention the "Tale of Harun al-Rashid and the Arabian Girl," in which
one of the most intelligent and sensitive heroines of the _Thousand
and One Nights_ -- at the demand of Harun al-Rashid -- has to transform
the rhymes of verses four times while preserving the meaning of the
verse itself. Every of these four rhyme variants leaves the reader
speechless by the power of its inner poetics and formal structure,
and this was only possible in the happy encounter of the original text
and inspired translator. It is not pure accident that Jorge Luis Borges
should dedicate his famous essay on the _Thousand and One Nights_
to the translators, considering the translators in some way become
a part of that miraculous world.

In conclusion we can emphasise one more fact:  Professor Durakovic's
translation of the _Thousand and One Nights_ revives the well-known
paraphrase of Guiraoud, that  "regardless what Buffon thinks about it,
the Style -- is the Man".  The mere fact that this translation was done
in besieged Sarajevo during the recent war (1992-1995) in impossible,
almost incomprehensible working conditions, at the same time when the
Oriental Institute with all its manuscript collections and library
(May 18, 1992) and the National and University Library (August 26, 1992)
were completely burned down, could show us that miracles do happen.
To those who know how to listen to the Tale ... To those "noble souls"
whom Professor Durakovic in his introduction defines as "dreamers
in the world in which the idea of dreaming is even more important than
the Dream itself."

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