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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10

R >> Richard F. Burton >> The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10




We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its
adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in
the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v.
942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the
Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada
Indians he tells us that "at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the
Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there
were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times
of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall
men abused them to that detestable filthinesse;" i.e. performed
their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the
Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice;
for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men
or more which were attired like women, even from the time of
their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in
everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion,
principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the
arrival of the Giants[FN#414] at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says
(chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using
their women they killed them, and their men also in another way.
All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment
proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were
engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and
terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of
the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering
sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire
consumed them.[FN#415] There remained a few bones and skulls
which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial
of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society's bowdlerisation we
read of the Tumbez Islanders being "very vicious, many of them
committing the abominable offence" (p. 24); also, "If by the
advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is
thought little of and they call him a woman." In chapters lii.
and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba,
"although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do
not commit the abominable sin;" and the Serranos, or island
mountaineers, as sorcerers and magiclans inferior to the coast
peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.

The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a
comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian
history the people considered the crime "unspeakable:" if a Cuzco
Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term
pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of
the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that
there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here
and one there, "nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but
only of certain persons who practised it privately," the ruler
ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and
their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his
abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be
treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13).
Elsewhere we learn, "There were sodomites in some provinces,
though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in
secret. In some parts they had them in their temples, because the
Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such
people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil
of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom
them to commit it in public and in common."

During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had
become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de
Guzman in 1530 "The last which was taken, and which fought most
couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed
that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse,
for which I caused him to be burned." V. F. Lopez[FN#416] draws a
frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns
which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country
was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea:
they practiced pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the
conquered tribes were compelled to fly(p. 271). Under the
pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into
savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. "Toutes
ces hontes et toutes ces miseres provenaient de deux vices
infames, la bestialite et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout etaient
offensees de voir la nature frustree de tous ses droits. Wiles
pleuraient ensemble en leurs reunions sur le miserable etat dans
loquel elles etaient tombees, sur le mepris avec lequel elles
etaient traitees. * * * * Le monde etait renverse, les hommes
s'aimaient et etaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles
cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remedier au mal; elles
employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur
ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arreter les
progres incessants du vice. Cet etat de choses constitua un
veritable moyen age, qui aura jusqu'a l'etablissement du
gouvernement des Incas" (p. 277).


When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of
Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. "Ni la
prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois severes qu'il avait promulguees
n'avaient pu extirper entierement le peche contre nature. I1
reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si
jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuerent leurs maris. Les
devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journees a fabriquer, avec
certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous
ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit
dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, a ceux dont elles etaient
jalouses'' (p. 291).

I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous
for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial
as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood
followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa
Aguiar[FN#417] is outspoken upon this point. "A crime which in
England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of
abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the
participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou
de muitos) Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of
punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this
Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the
Sodoms and Gomorrains" (p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the
Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants
following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as
Columbus said, "clothed in innocence." One of Her Majesty's
Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a
"fashionable" assembly by the open declaration of a young
gentleman that his mulatto "patient" had suddenly turned upon
him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the
influences of improved education and respect for the public
opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians
has been reduced to the normal limits.

Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not
endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where
puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has
been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and
pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice;
yet San'a the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population
have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells
us of Zu Shanatir, tyrant of "Arabia Felix," in A.D. 478, who
used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use
to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last
poniarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as
"Zu Nowas." The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and
tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos[FN#418] found in Cacongo of West
Africa certain "Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and
behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also
married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor."
Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as
girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes
kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.

North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances.
Master Christopher Burrough[FN#419] describes on the western side
of the Volga "a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak,
and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, *
* * which was swallowed into the earth by the justice of God, for
the wickednesse of the people." Again: although as a rule
Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing
and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the
most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the
middle ages: "Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris
medicine" (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under "Vayer") the infamous
book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, "De
laudibus Sodomiae,"[FN#420] vulgarly known as "Capitolo del
Forno." The same writer refers (under "Sixte iv.") to the report
that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice,
had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that
sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to
August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition "Be
it done as they demand." Hence the Faeda Venus of Battista
Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery
being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb
"Aux mods qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embrasser et bien boire." But
in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are
inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-git un Jesuite,
etc.

In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance,
the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years,
also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to
Naples, whence originated the term "Il vizio Inglese." It would
be invicious to detail the scandals which of late years have
startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious
will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong
devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion,
manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr.
Gaspar,[FN#421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces
many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six
accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him
that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and
Platen(?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it
flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and
St. Petersburg to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is
said to have addressed these words to his nephew, "Je puis vous
assurer, par mon experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu
agreable a cultiver." This suggests the popular anecdote of
Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an "experience" and
found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter
informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and
provoked the exclamation, "Once a philosopher: twice a sodomite!"
The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort
and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in
opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.

Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but,
whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence
we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For
France of the xviith century consult the "Histoire de la
Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde," and "La Prance
devenue Italienne," a treatise which generally follows"L'Histoire
Amoureuse des Gaules" by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[FN#422] The
headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory,
i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low
courtesans. In the xviiith century, "quand le Francais a tete
folle," as Voltaire sings, invented the term "Peche
philosophique," there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after
the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his "Apologie
de la Secte Anandryne" was published in L'Espion Anglais. In
those days the Allee des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a "fief
reserve des Ebugors"[FN#423]--"veuve" in the language of Sodom
being the maitresse en titre, the favourite youth.

At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition
Mirabeau[FN#424] declares that pederasty was reglementee and
adds, Le gout des pederastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps
de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel
les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN#425] sous les
portiques du Louvre, fait des progres considerables. On salt que
cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d'oeuvre de police; en
consequence, il y a des lieux publics autorises a cet effet. Les
jeunes yens qui se destinent a la professign, vent soigneusement
enclasses; car les systemes reglementaires s'etendent jusques-la.
On les examine; ceux qui peuvent etre agents et patients, qui
vent beaux, vermeils, bien faits, poteles, sont reserves pour les
grands seigneurs, ou se font payer tres-cher par les eveques et
les financiers. Ceux qui vent prives de leurs testicules, ou en
termes de l'art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos moeurs),
qui n'ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et
recoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils vent encore chers,
parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes.
Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d'erection tant ils sont uses,
quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes necessaires au plaisir,
s'inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisieme
classe: mais celle qui preside a ces plaisirs, verifie leur
impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas
ouvert par la moitie inferieure; deux filles les caressent de
leur mieux, pendant qu'une troisieme frappe doucement avec
desorties naissantes le siege des desire veneriens. Apres un
quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l'anus un
poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considerable; on pose
sur les echauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde
fine de Caudebec, et l'on passe le gland au camphre. Ceux qui
resistent a ces epreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'erection,
servent comme patiens a un tiers de paie seulement.[FN#426]

The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in
matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had
its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas
de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century. Two
street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left for
the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A
decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big
haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued
till 1826 when the police put down the house.

Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results,
according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages
of moeurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result
of the African wars was an effrayable debordement pederastique,
even as the verole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that
age of passion, the xvith century. From the military the fleau
spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and
intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities
and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des
Agissements des Pederastes. A general gathering of "La Sainte
Congregation des glorieux Padarastes" was held in the old Petite
Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under
pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls
of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards
and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most
attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the Allee des
Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or
ronde de nun' dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree
to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they
say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed
by the municipal administration.

The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were held
at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some one
hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even
the landlord did not recognise them. There was also a club for
sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de
l'Imperatrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept
it in the general wardrobe: hence "faire l'Imperatrice" meant to
be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the Allee des
Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-General, who registered
all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and
dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was
broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Petite Revue,
edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an
article, "Les echappes de Sodome": it discusses the letter of M.
Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the Vice had
been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest
developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the
reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known
Etudes.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-class is most
infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of
fifteen and twenty five.

The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three
categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly
practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and
the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv.
226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the
perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN#429] debauches the
three youths (vol. v. 64 69); whilst in the third form it is
wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the
Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol v. 154).

To conclude this part of my subject, the eclaircissement des
obscanites. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights
of that modesty which distinguishes "Amadis de Gaul," whose
author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, "And nothing
shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are
conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in
reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as
they deserve." Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England
who after a risque scene declares, "Herein is no offence offered
to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by
lascivious matter." But these are not oriental ideas, and we must
e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds "Naturalla
non sunt turpia," together with "Mundis omnia munda"; and, as
Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie cloth add to pleasure, so
the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme
virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.

Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me
that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio
to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with cant and
hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the
"Pornography" of The Nights, dwell upon the "Ethics of Dirt" and
the "Garbage of the Brothel"; and will lament the "wanton
dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction." This self-
constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and
Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because "veiled in
the decent obscurity of a learned language"; he allows men Latine
loqui; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much less
important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by
bowdlerising not only the classics, with which boys' and youths'
minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and
colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and
Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift, and a long list of works which
are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest.
Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old
Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to
carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and
fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality? But this he will
not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the
Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest
thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods:--lies are one-
legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.[FN#430] It appears
to me that when I show to such men, so "respectable" and so
impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are
adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their
unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a
field-corner.





Section V
ON THE PROSE-RHYME AND THE POETRY OF THE NIGHTS



A.--The Saj'a.



According to promise in my Foreword (p. xiii.), I here proceed to
offer a few observations concerning the Saj'a or rhymed prose and
the Shi'r, or measured sentence, that is, the verse of The
Nights. The former has in composition, metrical or unmetrical
three distinct forms. Saj'a mutawazi (parallel), the most common
is when the ending words of sentences agree in measure, assonance
and final letter, in fact our full rhyme; next is Saj'a mutarraf
(the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets end in
words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing in
measure and number; and thirdly, Saj'a muwazanah (equilibrium) is
applied to the balance which affects words corresponding in
measure but differing in final letters.[FN#431]

Al-Saj'a, the fine style or style fleuri, also termed Al-Badi'a,
or euphuism, is the basis of all Arabic euphony. The whole of the
Koran is written in it; and the same is the case with the Makamat
of Al-Hariri and the prime masterpieces of rhetorical
composition: without it no translation of the Holy Book can be
satisfactory or final, and where it is not the Assemblies become
the prose of prose. Thus universally used the assonance has
necessarily been abused, and its excess has given rise to the
saying "Al-Saj's faj'a"--prose rhyme's a pest. English
translators have, unwisely I think, agreed in rejecting it, while
Germans have not. Mr Preston assures us that "rhyming prose is
extremely ungraceful in English and introduces an air of
flippancy": this was certainly not the case with Friedrich
Rueckert's version of the great original and I see no reason why
it should be so or become so in our tongue. Torrens (Pref. p.
vii.) declares that "the effect of the irregular sentence with
the iteration of a jingling rhyme is not pleasant in our
language:" he therefore systematically neglects it and gives his
style the semblance of being "scamped" with the object of saving
study and trouble. Mr. Payne (ix. 379) deems it an "excrescence
born of the excessive facilities for rhyme afforded by the
language," and of Eastern delight in antithesis of all kinds
whether of sound or of thought; and, aiming elaborately at grace
of style, he omits it wholly, even in the proverbs.

The weight of authority was against me but my plan compelled me
to disregard it. The dilemma was simply either to use the Saj'a
or to follow Mr. Payne's method and "arrange the disjecta membra
of the original in their natural order"; that is, to remodel the
text. Intending to produce a faithful copy of the Arabic, I was
compelled to adopt the former, and still hold it to be the better
alternative. Moreover I question Mr. Payne's dictum (ix. 383)
that "the Seja-form is utterly foreign to the genius of English
prose and that its preservation would be fatal to all vigour and
harmony of style." The English translator of Palmerin of England,
Anthony Munday, attempted it in places with great success as I
have before noted (vol. viii. 60); and my late friend Edward
Eastwick made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I rejected
the "Cadence of the cooing dove" because un-English, I should
have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican marriage
service[FN#432] or the essentially English system of
alliteration, requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from
the vulgar recitative style the elevated and classical tirades in
The Nights. My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than
I expected; and a kindly critic writes of it, "These melodious
fray meets, these little eddies of song set like gems in the
prose, have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet
surprises and mostly recur in highly-wrought situations, or they
are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in nature
or art. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but
really it arises from a profound study of the situation, as if
the Tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the
rhythmic strain."

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