Asian novels

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Asiatic Novels ( French. Nouvelles asiatiques ) is a collection of short stories by the French diplomat and writer Joseph Arthur Gobineau (1816-1882), called Comte de Gobineau (Count Gobineau), which was first published in 1876 and regularly reissued. In this case, “Asian” means “oriental”, especially Persian. The short stories in this collection are set in the Caucasus , Persia , Azerbaijan and Afghanistan .

Title page of the Nouvelles asiatiques by Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Paris, Les Éditions G. Crès, 1924.

Gobineau was the first secretary of the French embassy in Persia (now Iran) from 1854 to 1863, who had succeeded there very successfully in integrating himself into a society that was very different from her country of origin.

The original edition of the Asiatic Novellas comprises Volume II of the Pauvert edition (Volume I corresponds to the Souvenirs de Voyage collection ).

The two volumes of the Pauvert edition each consist of six novellas: Volume I contains: Scaramouche, La Chasse au caribou, Akrivie Phrangopoulo, Mademoiselle Irnois, Le Mouchoir rouge and Adélaïdes; Volume II contains: La danseuse de Shamakha (Caucasus), L'illustre magicien (Persia), Histoire de Gambèr-Aly (Persia), La guerre des Turcomans (Persia), Les amants de Kandahar (Afghanistan) et La vie de voyage ( Eastern Turkey).

In his introduction to the Asiatic Novellas, Gobineau gives an appreciation of the novel Hadschi Baba by the British novelist James Morier (d. 1849). The biographical article by Jean Calmard in the Encyclopedia Iranica notes on the Nouvelles asiatiques (1876) that his "Gambèr-Aly" is a replica of Hajji Baba, and that most of his heroes and landscapes are identified by his personal notes and correspondence could:

“This is particularly evident with La danseuse de Shamakha, L'illustre magicien (a dervish from Lahore), and Les amants de Kandahar. His diplomatic experience appears in Gambèr-Aly (in which Jules Richard, later Ričār Khan, appears as M. Brichard) and in La guerre des Turcomans (Henri de Coulibšuf de Blocqueville, a French officer in the shah's army, appears as “Ghoulam- Hussein "; the story depicts the lack of organization in the Persian army: see Nouvelles asiatiques, 1965, Gaulmier's preface, pp. Li-lxvii)."

The collection of novels encounters the racial ideas that Gobineau already expressed in his attempt on the inequality of human races ( Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines , published 1853–55). The German racial theorist Ludwig Schemann (1852–1938), the founder and chairman of the German Gobineau Association, provided the first German translation of the Asiatic Novellas .

Gobineau is also the author of a Histoire des Perses (history of the Persians) and of Réligions et les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale on the religions and philosophy in Central Asia . A "secondary crop" of his long stay in Persia were the Nouvelles asiatiques (1876).

In the introduction Gobineau says (German translation by Ludwig Schemann):

“I did not intend to describe the more or less conscious immorality of Asians and the tendency to lie that dominates them. I have not neglected this, but it is not enough for me. It seemed advisable to me not to leave other things in the dark: heroism here, a genuine romantic disposition there, an innate kindness of heart here, a thoroughly honest being there. In others, the love of the country, increased to excess, the perfect nobility, devotion and tenderness, but in all the incomparable unrestrainedness and the irresistible violence of the first emotion - be it good or one of the worst - should not be overlooked. Likewise, I did not want to depict a single landscape. That is why I transport the reader to the mountain villages of the Circassians, now to Turkish, Persian or Afghan cities, now in fertile valleys, then in arid and dusty plains. . . The aim of the Asiatic novels is to demonstrate a certain number of varieties of the Asiatic way of thinking and to show how this way of thinking differs from ours. "

In the German-speaking world, the short stories were included in well-known book series such as Reclam's Universal Library and the Manesse Library of World Literature .

expenditure

  • two-volume edition of the Nouvelles by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Paris 1956:
    • Adelaide - Mademoiselle Irnois - Le mouchoir rouge - Akrivie Phrangopoulo - La chasse au caribou - Scaramouche
    • La danseuse de Shamakha (Caucase), L'illustre magicien (Perse), Histoire de Gamber-Aly (Perse), La guerre des Turcomans (Perse), Les amants de Kandahar (Afghanistan), La vie de voyage (Turquie de l ' est)
  • Gobineau, Nouvelles asiatiques, édition de J. Gaulmier, Classiques Garnier, Paris, 1965 ( Review * )
  • Nouvelles asiatiques. Première parution en 1939. Édition de Pierre-Louis Rey. Collection Folio classique (n ° 5439), Gallimard
  • Asian novels. German translation by Ludwig Schemann ( Reclam's Universal Library 3103-3104)
  • Manesse Library of World Literature , Zurich 1962: Asian Novellas. Translated from the French by NO Scarpi. Afterword by Jean Mistler. Content: The dancer of Shamakha / The great magician / The story of Gamber-Ali / The Turkmen War / The lovers of Kandahar.
  • Gobineau, Count de: The Dancing Girl of Shamakha. And other Asiatic Tales. Harcourt, Brace and Company. New York., 1926

See also

References and footnotes

  1. ^ Librairie académique Didier et Cie, 1876
  2. ↑ Perrin 1922; Crès, 1924; Garnier, 1965
  3. ↑ Nouvelles asiatiques, ed. Jean-Jacques Pauvert 1956
  4. ↑ See the first edition of the Souvenirs de Voyage (1872) at Gallica .
  5. ↑ see also: Gobineau, Josef Arthur Graf de; Travel Fruits from Kephalonia, Naxos, Newfoundland Three short stories. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig (Reclams Universal - Bibliothek 4889, 4890). Foreword by Franz Hahne from 1907 (The red handkerchief; Akrivia Phrangopulo; The reindeer hunt).
  6. ↑ Geographical terms here in German spellings.
  7. ↑ digitized version (gallica.bnf.fr)
  8. ↑ Jean Calmard (1931-2017), cf. Obituary (EIr)
  9. ↑ Jean Calmard (Gobineau article in the EIr )
  10. ^ Epilogue to the German translation
  11. ↑ gutenberg.de (epilogue to the German translation, based on the obituary in Bayreuther Blätter ) - cf. the original text at fr.wikisource.org : “Je n'ai pas eu seulement pour but de présenter, après Morier, l'immoralité plus ou moins consciente des Asiatiques et l'esprit de mensonge qui est leur maître; je m'y suis attaché pourtant, mais cela ne me suffisait pas. Il m'a paru à propos de ne pas laisser en oubli la bravoure des uns, l'esprit sincèrement romanesque des autres; la bonté native de ceux-ci, la probité foncière de ceux-là; chez tels, la passion patriotique poussée au dernier excès; chez tels, la générosité complète, le dévouement, l'affection; chez tous, un laisser-aller incomparable et la tyrannie absolue du premier mouvement, soit qu'il soit bon, soit aussi qu'il soit des pires. Je n'ai pas cherché davantage à peindre un paysage unique, et c'est pourquoi j'ai transporté le lecteur tantôt dans les aouls des Tjerkesses, tantôt dans les villes turques ou persanes ou afghanes, tantôt au sein des vallées fertiles, souvent au milieu des plaines arides et poussiéreuses […] Dans les Nouvelles ici rassemblées, le but qu'on s'est proposé a donc été de montrer and certain nombre de variétés de l'esprit asiatique et en quoi cet esprit, observé en général, s 'éloigne du nôtre. "
  12. ↑ cf. the photo at ebay.de - accessed on January 12, 2018

literature

Web links

Commons : Nouvelles asiatiques  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: fr: Nouvelles asiatiques  - sources and full texts