soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2011-05-27 05:19 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2011-05-27 05:19 pm
Entry tags:
1001 Nights, or, Sophia is fannish over something with no fandom and it is tragic
THESIS HANDED IN ZOMG THIS FEELS KIND OF UNREAL. ALSO NOW I WANT TO COLLAPSE INTO BED.
If The Thousand and One Nights was a fandom, I would be all over that fandom. For serious, yo. Just opening my thesis to get back to work at it, I stared at the list of story names in my table of contents and began to grin. Because I love these stories, you guys! So much love! But instead of reading reams of fic about them, I had to write a thesis instead.
(you know what would have been awesome? If there WERE a fandom for The Thousand and One Nights, and I did my thesis on an analysis of the way that religion was treated in the fics compared to in the canonical stories. Wouldn't that have been fascinating? In, you know, that hypothetical world where this fandom existed. Because I would be willing to bet you that religion would be one of the elements of the stories that would generally be pushed aside for the sake of the fics -- because religion is GENERALLY ignored in fanfic, minus a few (awesome!) aberrations. But the language of religion is so pervasive in the stories that in order to get the right feel, authors of fics would have to do something with it. I'd be curious to see how far they would actually go, and what they would and wouldn't pick up on as important religious themes throughout the Nights.)
(relatedly, I have not stopped desperately wanting Budoor/Hayyat/Kamar fic. 1001 Nights OT3 of my heart, okay?)
(Also, as well as wanting a Nights fandom, I want ALL THE FIC about the translators of the Nights. Well really I just want all the Richard Burton fic. But all the other translator-soap-opera mixed in there would be an AWESOME BONUS. (seriously you guys. 19th century academia was like this collection of really wanky BNFs and their wank was epic.) There could be so many awesome aus about these dudes! A space au! Or a high school au! Or a modern-university-professor au! Or a fandom au! Or really I am not at all married to the au idea and would be equally THRILLED by hilarious stories about their actualfax selves, especially if they're about Burton being all...Burton. That dude. SERIOUSLY. THAT DUDE. I mean, back when I last talked about this stuff I totally already spent a long comment thread flailing about Burton withtei, but I could HAPPILY KEEP GOING. (If you have never read his wikipedia article? Do yourself a favour and go and read it, and marvel at the stuff he got up to (and the attitude with which he got up to it!). And wikipedia doesn't even cover everything hilarious and amazing and headdesky about him!))
(While I'm talking about Burton, may I just say, these days I find it totally hilarious that in The Sentinel it is Richard Burton who is the ultimate academic source and authority on Sentinels. UNEXPECTEDLY GOOD CALL, show! Burton is totally the sort of dude who would have written a paper like that, and also totally the sort of dude who nobody would have believed.)
(You know, a fic about Burton in the Sentinel universe would be awesome. Stuff about him as he was doing his research for his monograph on Sentinels! IT WOULD BE EPIC AND YOU KNOW IT!)
(according to Sentientcitizen, you can totally tell when I get to the parts of my thesis that I actually care about, because the quality of my prose takes a sudden and noticeable turn upwards. It is not coincidence that this happens in the bit where I begin to discuss the translation options. But it's not only that I find the translators hilarious and awesome! It is also because I care deeply about the quality of the translation, okay! And I care really deeply about the fact that there ISN'T A GOOD ENGLISH TRANSLATION. AT ALL. NONE. This is when I start to mutter to myself that I really need to get on that whole learning German thing because apparently the Germans have quite a good (if uninspired) translation, at least of the Calcutta II manuscript. Clearly what I need to do is acquire a copy of this, and begin to work through it with a german-english dictionary, as German practice. Because the vocab it would teach me would clearly be all of the useful....)
It is really too bad I cannot just bring this fandom into existence by sheer wishing. And the rather horrific problems of it existing as an english fandom (to whit: the utter lack of any actually decent English translation) means any efforts I might make would be hopeless in the end. Especially since I do not have the necessary dedication to a single fandom that that would take. I'm too easily distracted by other shiny things!
DAMN YOUUUUU 1001 NIGHTS! I JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU ANY WAY I CAN!
(speaking of which, it really is too bad that when I acquired my personal copy of the 1001 Nights lo these many years ago, I was unfamiliar with the particular quirks of the various translations and ended up with the WORST POSSIBLE of the common English translations. It is a translation to English of the French translation of Mardrus, and Mardrus was a] bad at Middle Arabic and b] in the habit of making lots of changes to the original to the point where his translation is really an ADAPTATION not a translation and c] a total liar about these things. At least when Galland was making all his changes he admitted he was doing it...)
(Except that when I try to think of what translation I WOULD like to own, I get all indecisive. Can't I own all of them? THEY ALL HAVE THEIR VICES AND VIRTUES! I want Lane AND Payne AND Burton AND Haddawy, plskthx! As well as that German translation I mentioned earlier! (except where would I PUT THEM? That is a lot of volumes. And I am already quite laughably thoroughly out of bookshelf space.)
(You have no idea how hard it was for me to give back the library's copy of Lane, now that I'm done with the thesis. I'm quite sure nobody else has touched these volumes in years, and I've spent so much time up close and personal with them, and I love them, okay? And I got them all sticky-tabbed up with all sorts of relevant and/or interesting passages, and I had to TAKE THOSE OUT before giving them back. I put so much effort into those!)
(Actually what I really want to do is learn Middle Arabic myself and do my own annotated translations of all the major manuscripts of the Nights - Bibliothèque Nationale, and Calcutta I, and Bulaq, and Breslau (well, probably not Breslau, fabricated manuscript that it is), and Calcutta II. (Oh wait, I WOULD have to translate Breslau as well, because Calcutta II incorporates some of Breslau within it, so it would be relevant after all in figuring out which are the more reliable bits of Calcutta II.))
(Except I don't really want to do all of that because that would be a FUCKING HUGE amount of work. And I don't think I want to dedicate, like, my entire life to the project....)
OKAY I CAN STOP TALKING ABOUT THE NIGHTS NOW, I SWEAR. Really. Really. Don't you believe this face? It is a trustworthy face.
If The Thousand and One Nights was a fandom, I would be all over that fandom. For serious, yo. Just opening my thesis to get back to work at it, I stared at the list of story names in my table of contents and began to grin. Because I love these stories, you guys! So much love! But instead of reading reams of fic about them, I had to write a thesis instead.
(you know what would have been awesome? If there WERE a fandom for The Thousand and One Nights, and I did my thesis on an analysis of the way that religion was treated in the fics compared to in the canonical stories. Wouldn't that have been fascinating? In, you know, that hypothetical world where this fandom existed. Because I would be willing to bet you that religion would be one of the elements of the stories that would generally be pushed aside for the sake of the fics -- because religion is GENERALLY ignored in fanfic, minus a few (awesome!) aberrations. But the language of religion is so pervasive in the stories that in order to get the right feel, authors of fics would have to do something with it. I'd be curious to see how far they would actually go, and what they would and wouldn't pick up on as important religious themes throughout the Nights.)
(relatedly, I have not stopped desperately wanting Budoor/Hayyat/Kamar fic. 1001 Nights OT3 of my heart, okay?)
(Also, as well as wanting a Nights fandom, I want ALL THE FIC about the translators of the Nights. Well really I just want all the Richard Burton fic. But all the other translator-soap-opera mixed in there would be an AWESOME BONUS. (seriously you guys. 19th century academia was like this collection of really wanky BNFs and their wank was epic.) There could be so many awesome aus about these dudes! A space au! Or a high school au! Or a modern-university-professor au! Or a fandom au! Or really I am not at all married to the au idea and would be equally THRILLED by hilarious stories about their actualfax selves, especially if they're about Burton being all...Burton. That dude. SERIOUSLY. THAT DUDE. I mean, back when I last talked about this stuff I totally already spent a long comment thread flailing about Burton with
tei, but I could HAPPILY KEEP GOING. (If you have never read his wikipedia article? Do yourself a favour and go and read it, and marvel at the stuff he got up to (and the attitude with which he got up to it!). And wikipedia doesn't even cover everything hilarious and amazing and headdesky about him!))(While I'm talking about Burton, may I just say, these days I find it totally hilarious that in The Sentinel it is Richard Burton who is the ultimate academic source and authority on Sentinels. UNEXPECTEDLY GOOD CALL, show! Burton is totally the sort of dude who would have written a paper like that, and also totally the sort of dude who nobody would have believed.)
(You know, a fic about Burton in the Sentinel universe would be awesome. Stuff about him as he was doing his research for his monograph on Sentinels! IT WOULD BE EPIC AND YOU KNOW IT!)
(according to Sentientcitizen, you can totally tell when I get to the parts of my thesis that I actually care about, because the quality of my prose takes a sudden and noticeable turn upwards. It is not coincidence that this happens in the bit where I begin to discuss the translation options. But it's not only that I find the translators hilarious and awesome! It is also because I care deeply about the quality of the translation, okay! And I care really deeply about the fact that there ISN'T A GOOD ENGLISH TRANSLATION. AT ALL. NONE. This is when I start to mutter to myself that I really need to get on that whole learning German thing because apparently the Germans have quite a good (if uninspired) translation, at least of the Calcutta II manuscript. Clearly what I need to do is acquire a copy of this, and begin to work through it with a german-english dictionary, as German practice. Because the vocab it would teach me would clearly be all of the useful....)
It is really too bad I cannot just bring this fandom into existence by sheer wishing. And the rather horrific problems of it existing as an english fandom (to whit: the utter lack of any actually decent English translation) means any efforts I might make would be hopeless in the end. Especially since I do not have the necessary dedication to a single fandom that that would take. I'm too easily distracted by other shiny things!
DAMN YOUUUUU 1001 NIGHTS! I JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU ANY WAY I CAN!
(speaking of which, it really is too bad that when I acquired my personal copy of the 1001 Nights lo these many years ago, I was unfamiliar with the particular quirks of the various translations and ended up with the WORST POSSIBLE of the common English translations. It is a translation to English of the French translation of Mardrus, and Mardrus was a] bad at Middle Arabic and b] in the habit of making lots of changes to the original to the point where his translation is really an ADAPTATION not a translation and c] a total liar about these things. At least when Galland was making all his changes he admitted he was doing it...)
(Except that when I try to think of what translation I WOULD like to own, I get all indecisive. Can't I own all of them? THEY ALL HAVE THEIR VICES AND VIRTUES! I want Lane AND Payne AND Burton AND Haddawy, plskthx! As well as that German translation I mentioned earlier! (except where would I PUT THEM? That is a lot of volumes. And I am already quite laughably thoroughly out of bookshelf space.)
(You have no idea how hard it was for me to give back the library's copy of Lane, now that I'm done with the thesis. I'm quite sure nobody else has touched these volumes in years, and I've spent so much time up close and personal with them, and I love them, okay? And I got them all sticky-tabbed up with all sorts of relevant and/or interesting passages, and I had to TAKE THOSE OUT before giving them back. I put so much effort into those!)
(Actually what I really want to do is learn Middle Arabic myself and do my own annotated translations of all the major manuscripts of the Nights - Bibliothèque Nationale, and Calcutta I, and Bulaq, and Breslau (well, probably not Breslau, fabricated manuscript that it is), and Calcutta II. (Oh wait, I WOULD have to translate Breslau as well, because Calcutta II incorporates some of Breslau within it, so it would be relevant after all in figuring out which are the more reliable bits of Calcutta II.))
(Except I don't really want to do all of that because that would be a FUCKING HUGE amount of work. And I don't think I want to dedicate, like, my entire life to the project....)
OKAY I CAN STOP TALKING ABOUT THE NIGHTS NOW, I SWEAR. Really. Really. Don't you believe this face? It is a trustworthy face.