In week 18 of the humanities crash course, I read five stories from One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales that have influenced lots of other stories. Keeping with the theme, I also saw one of the most influential movies based on these stories.

Readings

An influential collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age. The framing device is brutally misogynistic: a sultan learns that his wife is unfaithful, so he executes her. He decides all women are the same, so he marries a new bride every day and has her executed the following day.

Sheherazade asks her father, the vizier, to offer her in marriage to the sultan. The vizier is reluctant: they both know the wives’ fate. But Sheherazade has a clever plan: she starts a new story for the sultan every night but leaves it in a cliffhanger. Curious for the outcome, the sultan stays her execution to the next day. In this way, Sheherazade spares the lives of other maidens of the land.

Of the many stories in the book, I read five recommended by Gioia:

  • The Fisherman and the Jinni: a poor fisherman unwittingly unleashes a murderous jinni from a bottle, but tricks him back into the bottle by outwitting him.
  • The Three Apples: an ancient murder mystery (again, centered on the murder of an innocent woman); the “solution” involves more unjust death (at least by our standards.)
  • Sinbad the Sailor: a series of seven fantastical voyages involving monsters, magic, and stolen treasures; one of the voyages closely parallels the Cyclops episode from the Odyssey.
  • Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves: another story of murder and ill-gotten treasure; a poor man discovers where a band of thieve stashes their loot and steals from them.
  • Aladdin: a poor boy discovers a magic lamp that makes him wealthy and powerful, allowing him to marry a princess.

These have been re-told in numerous guises. As often happens in these cases, the originals are much darker and bloodier than their spawn. These aren’t Disney versions, for sure.

Audiovisual

Music: Highlights from Tchaikovsky’s famous ballets plus Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. I’d heard the ballets, but not the Rimsky-Korsakov. This piece reminded me of Paul Smith’s music for Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954).

Arts: Gioia recommended aboriginal Australian art. I’d seen works in this style, but hadn’t paid attention. This tradtion has a particular (and gorgeous) style that expresses strong connections to the land. I was surprised to learn about recent developments in this tradition.

Cinema: Alexander Korba’s THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), one of the many films ispired by the One Thousand and One Nights. While it now looks dated, this film was a special effects breakthrough. As an early example of Technicolor, it also features an over-the-top palette, much like it’s near-contemporary, THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Reflections

One can’t do justice to One Thousand and One Nights by only reading five stories. But the ones I read dealt with poor people being unfairly granted wealth and power. Escapist fantasies tend to stand the test of time.

The “heroes” in the stories deserved as much comeuppance as the “villains.” For example, in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves), one of the heroes commits a mass killing of the “bad guys” while they were unable to react. Not only does this go unpunished; it’s celebrated. The people who told these stories had moral standards different from our own.

I also learned several stories — including some of the most famous, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin — were not part of the original collection. Instead, they were added by a French translator in the 18th Century. This was frustrating, as they weren’t present in the collection I bought; I had to seek them out separately.

So, this week, I’ve been pondering questions of authorship and derivation. We don’t know who originated these stories. Like the aboriginal Australian art, the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights emerged — and belong to — a people more than an individual author or artist.

And yet, they’ve inspired other works, such as THE THIEF OF BAGDAD — which inspired Disney’s ALADDIN. (The latter “borrows” liberally from the former.) Is it any wonder I heard Rimsky-Korsakov in the 20k score? At this point, I assume at least some cross-pollination — after all, Rimsky-Korsakov himself was inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights.

This is how art has always evolved: artists build on what’s come before. In some cases, the inspiration is obvious. In others, it’s more nebulous. Did Odysseus inspire Simbad? Or did they both retell older stories?

The process changed in the 20th Century. With strong copyright laws, stories become intellectual property. Disney may build on the One Thousand and One Nights stories, but we can’t build on Disney’s stories.

And it’s changing again with large language models. It will be interesting to see how these new tools allow us to retell old stories in new ways. At a minimum, they’re causing us to reevaluate our approach to IP.

Notes on Note-taking

A realization: my Obsidian knowledge repository is better suited to reflecting on text than other media. I can try to write down my impressions of the beautiful aboriginal art and Rimsky-Korsakov’s music. But words articulate concepts, not feelings — even when trying to articulate feelings. So I end up reflecting on abstract ideas such as authorship and derivation rather than the nature of the works.

It’s a limitation of my current note-taking system, and one I can’t do much about. Perhaps ChatGPT can help by letting me riff on pictures and sounds? But there, too, communication happens through language.

Up Next

Gioia recommends the Bhagavad Gita, the Rule of St. Benedict, and the first two books of Saint Augustine’s Confessions. This will be my first time with any of them.

Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!