Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights

672 Pages·2011·9.53 MB·English

by  Marina Warner

Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Marina Warner
List of Illustrations
Dedication
Title Page
A Note on the Text
Introduction
Part I Solomon the Wise King
Story 1. The Fisherman and the Genie
Chapter 1. Master of Jinn
Story 2. The City of Brass
Chapter 2. Riding the Wind: The Flying Carpet I
Story 3. Prince Ahmed and Fairy Peri Banou
Chapter 3. A Tapestry of Great Price: The Flying Carpet II
Part II Dark Arts; Strange Gods
Story 4. The Prince of the Black Islands
Chapter 4. The Worst Witch
Chapter 5. Egyptian Attitudes
Story 5. Hasan of Basra
Chapter 6. Magians and Dervishes
Story 6. A Fortune Regained
Chapter 7. Dream Knowledge
Part III Active Goods
Chapter 8. ‘Everything You Desire to Know about the East . . .’
Story 7. The Greek King and Doctor Douban
Chapter 9. The Thing-World of the Arabian Nights
Story 8. Abu Mohammed the Lazy
Chapter 10. The Word of the Talisman
Story 9. Marouf the Cobbler
Chapter 11. The Voice of the Toy
Chapter 12. Money Talks
Part IV Oriental Masquerades
Chapter 13. Magnificent Moustaches: Hamilton’s Fooling, Voltaire’s
Impersonations
Story 10. Rosebud and Uns al-Wujud the Darling Boy
Story 11. The Jinniya and the Egyptian Prince
Chapter 14. ‘Symbols of Wonder’: William Beckford’s Arabesque
Chapter 15. Oriental Masquerade: Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan
Part V Flights of Reason
Story 12. Camar al-Zaman and Princess Badoura
Chapter 16. Thought Experiments: Flight before Flight
Chapter 17. Why Aladdin?
Chapter 18. Machine Dreams
Story 13. The Ebony Horse
Chapter 19. The Shadows of Lotte Reiniger
Story 14. Aladdin of the Beautiful Moles
Chapter 20. The Couch: A Case History
Story 15. Prince Ardashir and Hayat al-Nufus
Conclusion: ‘All the story of the night told over . . .’
Glossary
Abbreviations
The Stories
Picture Section
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Copyright
About the Book
Magic is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of
dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to
new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. It used to be
associated with wisdom, understanding the powers of nature, and with technical
ingenuity that could let men do things they had never dreamed of before.
The supreme fiction of this magical thinking is The Arabian Nights, with its
flying carpets, hidden treasure and sudden revelations. Translated into French
and English in the early days of the Enlightenment, this became a best-seller
among intellectuals, when it was still thought of in the Arab world as a mere
collection of folk tales. For thinkers of the West the book’s strangeness opened
visions of transformation: dreams of flight, speaking objects, virtual money, and
the power of the word to bring about change. Its tales create a poetic image of
the impossible, a parable of secret knowledge and power. Above all they have
the fascination of the strange – the belief that true knowledge lies elsewhere, in a
mysterious realm of wonder.
As part of her exploration into the prophetic enchantments of the Nights Marina
Warner retells some of the most wonderful and lesser known stories. She
explores the figure of the dark magician or magus, from Solomon to the wicked
uncle in Aladdin; the complex vitality of the jinn, or genies; animal
metamorphoses and flying carpets. Her narrative reveals that magical thinking,
as conveyed by these stories, governs many aspects of experience, even now. In
this respect, the east and west have been in fruitful dialogue. Writers and artists
in every medium have found themselves by adopting Oriental disguise. With
startling originality and impeccable research, this ground-breaking book shows
how magic, in the deepest sense, helped to create the modern world, and how
profoundly it is still inscribed in the way we think today.
About the Author
Marina Warner spent her early years in Cairo, and was educated in Brussels
and London, before studying Modern Languages at Oxford. She is an
internationally acclaimed cultural historian, critic, novelist and short story-
writer. From her early books on the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, to her best-
selling studies of fairy-tales and folk-stories, From the Beast to the Blonde and
No Go the Bogeyman, her work has explored different figures in myth and fairy
tale and the art and literature they have inspired. She lectures widely in Europe,
the United States and the Middle East, and is currently Professor in the
Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex. She
was appointed CBE in 2008. www.marinawarner.com
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Fiction
In a Dark Wood
The Skating Party
The Lost Father
Wonder Tales (Editor)
The Mermaids in the Basement (Stories)
Indigo
The Leto Bundle
Murderers I Have Known (Stories)
Non-Fiction
The Dragon Empress
Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary
Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism
Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and Their Tellers
Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time (The Reith Lectures 1994) The
Inner Eye: Art Beyond the Visible
No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock
Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds (The Clarendon Lectures 2001)
Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture
Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media
List of Illustrations
Colour plates
1 The Beasts Gathering before Solomon and Bilqis, from a Falnamah (Book of
Omens), Deccan, c. 1610–1630. Nasser D. Khalili Collection MSS 979, folio
21b, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
2 The Ascension of Solomon, Deccan, Golconda, 1675–1700. Navin Kumar
Gallery, New York, by kind permission.
3 From the ‘Ripley Scroll’ (called after George Ripley, d. ?1490). Manly Palmer
Hall Collection, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
4 Kay Nielsen, ‘The Tale of the Waz r of King Y n n and Rayy n the Doctor’,
ī ū ā ā
1918–22. Collection of the Grunwald Centre for the Graphic Arts, UCLA,
California.
5 ‘The Talisman of the Nightmare’, from workshop of Ustad ’Osman, 1582,
from Muhammad ibn Amir Hasan al-Su’udi, The Book of Felicity, Suppl. Turc
242, f.86r. Bibliothèque nationale de France.
6 Edmund Dulac (1882–1953), ‘Dahnash and Miymuna’, from Lawrence
Housman, Princess Badoura: A Tale from the Arabian Nights (London:
Hodder & Stoughton, n.d.). The Arcadian Library, London.
7 Edmund Dulac, ‘The Princess burns the Efrite to death’, in ‘The Story of the
Three Calenders’, from Sindbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the
Arabian Nights (London: Hodder & Stoughton, n.d.) The Arcadian Library,
London.
8 Juan Bautista Maíno (1569–1649), Adoration of the Magi, Prado,
Madrid/Bridgeman Art Library.
9 Niche rug, Central Iran (Qazvin, Qum, Isfahan or Kashan), 1570–80. Nasser
D. Khalili Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
10 Carpet fragment (‘Lotto’ design), Turkey (probably Usak), 1450–1500,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
11 Alessandro Bonvicino (called Il Moretto), c. 1498–1554, Daughters of the
House of Martinengo, Frescoes from the Palazzo Martinengo-Salvadego,
Brescia, c. 1543.
12 Errol Le Cain (1949–81), ‘The genie appeared, and at the magician’s
command carried him, together with the palace and the princess, to Africa’.
From Aladdin, retold by Andrew Lang (London: Faber & Faber, 1981). The
Arcadian Library, London.
13 Melchior Lorck, Tortoise over the Venetian lagoon. Danish-German, mid-16c.
Prints & Drawings, British Museum, London.
14 Melchior Lorck, Prospect of Constantinople (detail, with self-portrait), 1559.
The University Library, Leiden .
15 Robert Swain Gifford, The Roc’s Egg, 1874. Farnsworth Art Museum, Maine.
16 In Venetia Porter, Arabic and Persian Seals and Amulets in the British
Museum (London: British Museum, 2011): a) Carnelian, cat. no. A136
b) Chalcedony, cat. no. A14
c) Garnet, cat. no. 51
d) Lapis lazuli, cat. no. A149
e) Carnelian, cat. no. 481
f) Rock crystal, cat. no. A160
17 Detail and front view of Talismanic Shirt of Sultan Murad IV, Turkey, 17c.
Museum of the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Inv. 13/1165.
18 Jean-Etienne Liotard, Woman Reading, c. 1750. Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence/Bridgeman Art Library.
19 ‘Prince Ahmed and Fairy Peri Banou’, Liebig’s Meat Extract card, 1901.
20 A Lady Receiving Visitors (The Reception) by John Frederick Lewis, 1873.
Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/ Bridgeman Art Library.
21 Women weaving, still from Gabbeh, directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran,
1993. The British Film Institute, London.
22 Freud’s Couch. Freud Museum, London. By kind permission.
23 ‘Still more red and blue magic pictures’, from Tom Seidmann-Freud, Das
Zauberboot (Berlin: Ophir, 1929), Freud Museum, London. By kind
permission.