From the Archives: Lotte Reineger's Adventures of Prince Achmed

Any Disney book will tell you that Snow White was the first full length animated film, but Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is "considered by many" to be the first full-length animated film. Snow White would undoubtably be the first full-length hand-drawn animated film, but Disney is not meticulous about making this distinction. Reiniger's story is told through enchantingly intricate paper cutouts and premiered in Germany in 1926-beating Snow White by 11 years.

This story is very sexually charged, but as everything is told through silhouettes, it's more subtle. Prince Achmed is the hero, but I hardly think he's more noble than any of the horny villains.


But the film is spellbinding to watch and the music wonderful, if the historical importance weren't reason enough to watch it. And how interesting that fairy tales are so closely linked with the beginnings of animation?


The story is based off of the story of "Prince Achmed and the Fairy" with a little Aladdin thrown in.

Lotte Reiniger has done versions of several fairy tales, including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Thumbelina, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Portions, if not full versions, of all of these can be found on youtube.


Fun fact: According to wikipedia, the character Prince Achmed in Disney's Aladdin is a tribute to this film (Prince Ali and Ja'far are also other characters from Arabian Nights)

"You were born a street rat, you'll die a street rat, and only your fleas will mourn you!"

From the Archives: History of Arabian Nights

It can be a lot harder to fine information on the Arabian Nights than on the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. The following information is taken from the chapter "The Splendor of the Arabian Nights" from Jack Zipes' When Dreams Come True: Classic Fairy Tales and their Tradition.

The Arabian Nights is more unique than just another culture's collection of folktales because of its framework story: that of Scheherezade heroically saving her own life and that of countless other women by telling stories to Shahryar, the king who was so incensed by the adultery of his first wife that he took to marrying and killing a different woman each night. This framework story was modeled after a Persian book called Hazar Afsaneh, or "A Thousand Tales", translated into Arabic in the ninth century.

The individual tales themselves differ from collection to collection. The tales as we know them today are mainly taken from Persian tenth century tales with some Indian elements, tenth century tales recorded in Baghdad, and Egyptian stories written down between the tenth and twelfth centuries. But, similar to other collections of fairy tales around the world, these were probably circulated orally for hundreds of years before being written down, and afterwards have become an important influence in Western stories. The Arabian Nights were translated into French by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 1717, whose literary talents made the tales popular and eventually were translated into multiple languages, with the most famous English translation by Richard Burton (who plagarized a lot from an earlier English translation by John Payne).

Due to the Scheherezade story, the tales have clear purposes-firstly, for Scheherezade to educate and recivilize Shahryar and show him that he can regain his trust in women. Secondly, Scheherezade's sister Dunazade is also an audience member, so the tales are Scheherezade's passing down advice to her younger sister and enabling her to navigate through society. The readers themselves are the third audience, who become educated alongside Shahryar and Dunazade into values of the time and culture-justice, the importance of creativity and wit, and most of all, empowering the oppressed.

The power of story itself cannot be ignored either-through the ultimate happy ending that Scheherezade's determination brings about, as well as four other major tales that employ the same motif of people telling stories to save innocent lives.

I found this passage fascinating, as it's something I had wondered about myself: "Given the patriarchal nature of Arabic culture, it would seem strange that Scheherezade assumed the key role in the Nights. Yet, a woman exercised more power in Moslem culture during the Middle Ages in Baghdad and Cairo than is commonly known," including ultimate power over children and slaves, including children's educations, marriage, profession, and sexual initiation.

Interestingly, the title was originally One Thousand Nights, and no one knows how it became The Thousand and One Nights. Zipes speculates that it had something to do with the fact that odd numbers were considered lucky in Arabic culture. I personally find the perfectly even "one thousand" to be a little too practical, while "the thousand and one" adds a touch of whimsy and a hint of the eternal, as if no matter what the number, there's always one more to be heard the next night...(there are not literally one thousand tales in the collection. There are 42 "core" tales in Galland's translation, but apparently the complete collection of Payne's collection included nine volumes).

Illustrations by Virginia Frances Sterret

Fairy Tale Journals made by Slow Design

My good friend just found the coolest journal in the world for me-the pink "Beauty and the Beast" one below. The series, Libri Muti, features two other fairy tale titles:

Libri Muti fairy tale notebooks-One Thousand and One Nights and Beauty and the Beast

Once Upon a Time

Product description:
"Libri Muti (Italian for Mute Books) are inspired by the “forbidden books” of the revolution period in many cultures.

The Mute Books collection reinterprets classical titles, mixing traditional printing and binding techniques together with a fresh spirit, added by hand-coloured edges.

These classical titled empty notebooks allow anyone to now freely fill with its own feeling."

The journal is beautiful in person. It's great for someone with a lot to write about, it's very thick and really feels more like a book than a normal journal. The exposed binding is really the only thing that gives you a clue it's not a regular book from the outside. 

Lane's English Translation of Arabian Nights

Around 1700, "Oriental Fever" began sweeping Western Europe. In France and England, anything from the East was vogue-from the decor to their drinks to fairy tales. In fact I really like this quote from Marina Warner*, partly because I love coffee: "The diaspora of the Arabian Nights does in fact resemble the triumphant progress of coffee, as it multiplies and metamorphoses from brass thimbles of thick dark syrup, in Damascus and Istanbul and Cairo, to today's US and UK hybrids (skinny latte, macchiato, et al.). So it is rather neat that Galland [first translator of the Arabian Nights] also published, in 1699, a treatise in praise of coffee, one of the first if not the first of its kind."


So while facets of culture were making their way West, they became changed and diluted. This was the complaint of Edward William Lane, who didn't approve of Antoine Galland's translation of the Nights-(it was Galland's French one that served as the basis for the first English translation). Lane was considered to be an expert on Egyptian culture, after he taught himself some about Egyptian culture and the Arabic language after a bout of typhoid, and then took a couple of trips to Egypt.

So this "expert" set out to correct Galland's mistake; that of not being familiar enough with the culture to make a good translation. Lane stated, "I am somewhat reluctant to make this remark, because several persons, and among them some of high and deserved reputation as Arabic scholars, have pronounced an opinion that his version is an improvement upon the original. That "The Thousand and One Nights" may be greatly improved I most readily admit; but as confidently do I assert, that Galland has excessively perverted the work. His acquaintance with Arab manners and customs was insufficient to preserve him always from errors of the grossest description, and by the style of his version he has given the whole to a false character."

Galland had indeed altered the stories to fit his audience, the same thing that the brothers Grimm would do years later in Germany-take out any questionable parts, and Galland even added whole stories that became the most famous, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba. Yet Lane considered his translation to be both an "improvement" and a "perversion".

So his solution was to make a new translation, filled with detailed footnotes that often had nothing to do with the stories themselves, but to go into depth about Egyptian culture-at least, his experiences there. But rather than sticking to the original text, Lane continued to "improve" the stories and then write judgmental footnotes about the original. He left out passages and whole sections, yet all in the name of being true to the culture, such as leaving out a sexual passage "which is of a nature to disgust every person of good taste." He eliminated any scenes with drinking or sex, and states that many passages of the tales "seem as if they were introduced for the gratification of the lowest class."

The fascination that many Europeans had with Eastern culture did not, at this time, seem to lead to a greater understanding of the Eastern peoples, with increased respect and appreciation for them. In fact, rather than emphasizing the similarities between the people groups and their favorite folklore, the collections tended to emphasize the differences-which served to widen the gap between East and West. Even the illustrations by William Harvey that accompanied Lane's text (and this post) are examples of this. Jennifer Schacker points out that in the illustrations, the attention is often not on the people in the story or the unfolding drama, but the exotic locations, dress, and architecture.

In this case, "ethnicentrism often shapes the underlying conception of the Real." The attitude at the time was that the Nights was a "potentially valuable source of information regarding Arab lifeways and attitudes," but many used the stories "to support preconceived notions of Arab character." By emphasizing the contrast between the perceived violent and sexual nature of the Arabian Nights, "The Orient was central to the discursive construction of the West as dominant, civilized, and rational" (the public was blissfully ignorant, apparently, to the fact that Western European tales were just as sexual and violent in their natural state).

*Marina Warner: Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
All other information taken from Jennifer Schacker's National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nineteenth-Century England.

Scheherezade on Faithful Wives

Rene Bull

One of the most attractive aspects of the Arabian Nights is the frame narrative, that tells of the courage of the young woman Scheherezade. She courageously risked death in becoming the next wife of the Sultan in an effort to save the lives of future victims of the Sultan's rage, and the Sultan himself.

This story, surprisingly feminist especially when considering the time and culture, is impressive; yet many of the tales of the Nights seem to contradict the concepts of women who are creative, courageous, and faithful. In "The Prince of the Black Islands", the villain is a woman who betrayed her husband and took a lover. To further add insult to injury, she imprisoned her husband in stone from the waist down, and came every night to beat him. She also cursed all of his subjects (her husband is a Prince) to become fish. Such cruelty is unusual even among fairy tale witches and villains. She is eventually defeated by a King who passes through, learns of the curse, and tricks the woman into undoing the spells by pretending to be her lover giving her instructions.

H. J. Ford

Why such a bleak picture of women in general, especially wives? The King is already acting out in his hurt and anger over the fact that his own wife was caught having an affair. Despite the character of Scheherezade, do the Nights indicate that no woman is capable of being a faithful wife? Are we to assume that Scheherezade herself, once married to Shahriyar, will in a matter of time commit adultery herself?

No, according to Marina Warner in Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. The truth actually reveals the further cunning of Scheherezade, as well as her compassion. In the first section, many of the tales do include such stories of evil women and unfaithful wives. Scheherezade shows sympathy towards the betrayed Sultan, gaining his trust and showing she can see things through his perspective. Yet as the Nights progress, the characters change. The stories feature wives who are faithful to their husbands, resourceful and smart and able to help bring about the happy endings rather than be an obstacle to them. Warner names examples such as Badoura, Zumurrud, Mariam, and Tawaddud that prove to be positive female role models in later stories (although I must admit I'm not that familiar with the Nights as a whole and don't know the stories of these ladies-yet!).

H. J. Ford 

Scheherezade not only takes her listeners on journeys of adventure, magic, and excitements, but also guides Shahriyar through an emotional journey. She wisely knows he needs to go through a period of feeling anger and hurt, and doing this through experiencing stories is obviously much safer than by killing innocent women. Yet in time she guides him to consider the possibility that not every woman is bound to be cruel, and shows him a different worldview, enabling him to slowly let go of his hatred for women. Scheherezade is a counselor and therapist as well as an expert storyteller. The more I learn about the Nights the more I admire her!

Rene Bull

The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale

I thought this would be a good follow up from my recent post on feminism. So often when we look back at history and see it as a world of women being silenced and kept subservient, it can get really depressing. But women can be intelligent and creative even in spite of circumstances...

Karen E. Rowe has an essay entitled "To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale" that can be found in The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar (who was just featured in Faerie Magazine). She begins by telling the story of Philomela from Ovid's Metamorphosis.

Virgil Solis, 1562

Philomela was raped. When she threatened to expose her attacker, Tereus, he cut out her tongue and kept her imprisoned in the woods. Silenced and confined to the home (sounds like the plight of many women throughout history), she did not give up, but wove an intricate tapestry that told the story of what had happened to her. Through the seemingly harmless, domestic art of weaving, she exposed the truth-her art became her voice. She gave her tapestry to an old woman, who delivered it to the queen, who understood and punished Tereus. Philomela was transformed into a bird, who sings eternally her tale of woe.

Rowe uses this story as a way to demonstrate that women throughout history have used their abilities-specifically for our purposes, storytelling-to be their voices. The story was passed from Philomela to the old woman to the queen-a chain of women who have an intimate connection and common knowledge that is unknown to Tereus. 

Reader's Digest

Throughout history, storytelling has been seen as a feminine task. Telling stories is not just the ability to recite back a plot, but also to shape each story in a way that applies to the listener and their situation. Rowe reminds us of Scheherezade*, whose storytelling was literally salvation for herself and untold future women in the kingdom of Shahryar. And although most of the world's most famous fairy tale collections were gathered by men-Straparola, Basile, Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen-all of these men claimed to have gotten their tales from women. Although the authors shaped the tales according to their preference, they most likely heard some of the stories in their childhood from their nurses, mothers, etc. Citing young girls or comforting, grandmotherly old women as the tellers of their stories "validated the authenticity of the folk stories."

Jacopo Pontormo

Storytelling would often accompany some of the more mindless tasks that women gathered to do in the evenings, like spinning. With that, and the image of the three (female) fates who spun birth, life, and death of the human race, controlling the threads, we have the phrase "spinning a tale." Sometimes this would have been mere entertainment, but it may also have been, in many cases, a way to "transmit the secret truths of culture itself," to "a sisterhood...who will understand the hidden language."

I wish that, from here, Rowe had gone on to cite specific examples of tales and plot elements that showed this secret communication, but she doesn't. I have some ideas-the horrific plight of Bluebeard's wife may have been a way that women warned each other of the dangers that exist within marriage, just as Animal Bridegroom tales in which daughters are thoughtlessly given to horrible monsters in marriage would have been a way to show the horrors of arranged marriages that betrothed very young girls to older and/or otherwise undesirable men. People wonder about all the cruelty and violence in fairy tales, and it was often just a way of reflecting life. Any other ideas?

*Also-apparently Scheherezade may have a historical predecessor, Princess Homai, daughter of Artaxerxes I. There are also parallels between Scheherezade and the biblical Esther that I hadn't considered before. According to this encyclopedia, many of the stories of the Nights had a historical basis. Interesting to ponder...

1001 Nights 101

Kay Nielsen

Wisconsin Public Radio had a special on 1001 Nights today! The program To the Best of Our Knowledge discusses its history and the significance of the stories. You even get to hear from Marina Warner, who talks about her book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. You can listen online (after the Superbowl is over ;) ).

History of Aladdin

Out of all the tales of the Arabian Nights, only a few are familiar with modern audiences, and out of those the most well-known would undoubtably be "Aladdin". The story was very popular among adults and children of the Victorian age as well as today. Somewhat sadly, though, the reason for this popularity can be boiled down to the fact that those tales are the least authentic.

Image from here

 

Arabian Nights (or 1001 Nights)  is a collection of anonymous tales, most of which were orally circulated folktales in the Middle East before being published in the collection. Certain stories, however, were most likely written by one of the French collectors and editors of the tales, Antoine Galland. Other stories that were most likely his creations are "Ali Baba" and "Sinbad," some of the few tales in the Nights average people today could actually name off the top of their heads.

These tales have no known precedents before Galland, and also bear characteristics that are closer to Western fairy tales than the other tales in the Nights. Westerners love their stories to feature protagonists of low birth and status, who find themselves part of an undeserved high destiny which includes marrying outside of their status, and ultimately overcoming their poverty. The multiple scenes and locations of Aladdin also make the story entertaining as the plot keeps changing, and therefore also well suited to the stage, where it was a popular story in Victorian times, as the public loved the spectacles of Oriental scenery and the showmanship of the magical stage tricks.

Image from here

 

Galland's original Aladdin story was 118 pages long, and Marina Warner calls it "one of the key works in the history of exchange between literature of the East and West." However, Robert Irwin criticizes Galland's version for being too long-winded, "hypocritical French moral didacticism," and anti-Semitic. Irwin approves of the Disney version's changes to the story, (which is an unusual academic perspective when dealing with fairy tale history, to like the Disney movie better than the original)-he said it was "less vulgar than Galland's, less obsessed with opulence, less sexist, and not at all anti-Semitic."

Warner points out one very interesting feature of the story and possibly its popularity: the issue of slavery. Aladdin finds himself in posession of a magical ring and a magical lamp, both of which have several genie slaves which then must serve Aladdin. When she first pointed this out, I was reminded of "Beauty and the Beast", and the role reversals found in each: in "Aladdin", the poor boy suddenly becomes the master of powerful slaves; in "Beauty and the Beast", the poor woman is told by a powerful male Beast that she is the mistress of his castle, upsetting gender and social status. It's not surprising to find this similar theme, which was a popular one of Galland, Villeneuve, and their French salon contemporaries.

Edmund Dulac

However, Warner also points to a connection with abolitionism. For a while, versions of the story ended with the genie slaves being freed and the villain who imprisoned them punished (as is also how the very American Disney film ends). In Warner's words, "The concept of an utterly subjugated, volitionless but powerful spirit communicates the soulless, dehumanised condition of enslavement decried by abolitionists."

*Information taken from Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

Solomon, Jinn, and Arabian Nights

It may surprise some readers, as it surprised me, how often Solomon is referenced in the Arabian Nights. I was only familiar with the Solomon of the Old Testament, but as it turns out, Solomon is also mentioned in the Koran, although the Muslim Solomon is slightly different. Other writings have told stories of Solomon that would have been considered common knowledge to the earlier audiences of the Nights.

Arthur Rackham

More specifically to the tales of the Nights, Solomon is given power over the jinn (or genie, the more commonly known term, also interchangeably djinn or jinni). Jinn are similar to the Christian idea of angels and demons, but also have more similarities to the Western ideas of fairies. They are not either good or evil, but often provide the element of unpredictability to the stories. Just like fairies, they may reward the protagonist, or unfairly punish them. Such as the jinn in the story "The Fisherman and the Genie", who is grateful for being released from his copper bottle, but after years of longing to be released and intentions of rewarding his rescuer, the jinn became so weary of waiting he resolved to kill whoever released him.

The fisherman uses trickery to get the jinn to return to his bottle ("I'll only believe it [the jinn's ability to fit into the bottle] when I see it with my own eyes"-ah, the power of reverse psychology), and throws the jinn in his bottle back out to sea.

Errol Le Cain

According to tradition, the jinn's confinement in said bottle was because of Solomon. As some of the jinn remained true to Solomon and Allah, others became evil and rebellious. To punish the evil ones, Solomon used his power to trap them in various flasks/bottles. Thus when a person discovers a jinn, they are not automatically guaranteed a servant who will grant all their wishes-they may have to cleverly fight for their lives.

                                                                 Image from here

Interestingly, though folklore all around the world dapples with the idea of marriage between natural and supernatural beings, the conclusion of virtually all Western stories of such unions are that they are doomed to failure. Yet marriages between female jinn who can take the forms of swans or creatures of the sea have a higher likelihood of success. In fact, a Syrian legal treatise from the fourteenth century condemns such marriages, but the fact that it is a law reveals that they were thought possible by the people at the time.

The Islamic Solomon also has power over animals and nature, and like the Biblical Solomon, is the possessor of great wisdom. Marina Warner even calls him the "chief model in fantasy for the white wizard," comparing him to Gandalf and Dumbledore.

*Information taken from Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, chapter 1

The above illustrations of jinn are a huge contrast to the bubbly, comic relief genie of Disney's Aladdin, once again following the trend of...just about everything in history (fairies, vampires, and pirates get a lot of discussion on this blog)...the dangerous and mysterious has become controlled, cute, and funny.

Cory-Ellen Nadel's "Scheherezade's Saving Grace"

The poem "Scheherezade's Saving Grace" by Cory-Ellen Nadel is told from Scheherezade's perspective, but really applies to fairy tales in general (and also references specific non-Arabian Nights tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood) and a lot of the issues of appropriateness for children, and the nature of tales and their audience.

She starts with,
"Some of my stories are pleasant
tales you can tell to children
publish in hardcovers with bright pictures in primary colors,
my photo smiling on the jacket"

Which is the most common idea of fairy tale collections people have today. But she also mentions "pleasant tales you should save for adults", "not pleasant tales," and ends with,

"Some of them are downright nasty tales
and hearing them you retch, but you know
(you always knew)
that they are the truest of all my stories
and that is why they leave you
lying awake and tearful,
staring into darksome night and remembering
my face, terrible as god
as I told them
to save myself."

 

It's a pretty short poem, click through to read the whole thing!

Scheherezade's role as Storyteller

In the frame story of the Arabian Nights, Scheherezade must attempt to save her life by storytelling to end the cycle of Shahriyar's killing a new wife every night. Though Shahriyar's character is similar to Bluebeard, the serial killing husband, Bluebeard has no given reason for his killing spree. Yet Shahriyar has a history which makes him a little more sympathetic. He had found his Sultana and her maids cavorting with slaves and decided to take out his vengeance on the female race. Not only that, but his brother Shahzenan had also caught his wife cheating with a slave.

Shahriyar does have reason, then, to be doubtful of the fidelity of women, just as anyone who has been betrayed will find it hard to trust again (although his actions are obviously not justified). Therefore, when Sheherezade is telling her stories, she is not only adding one more day to her own life, but attempting to "clear this anger and remove the rationale for the men's hatred."

The stories contain all sorts of female characters, as a well-rounded collection of tales should (i.e., not all passive women who sit and wait to be rescued as is the traditional stereotype; but not also only sword-weilding athletic warriors as is becoming the only way to portray females in our very gender sensitive society). Some of the characters even appear to enforce negative female stereotypes.

Yet throughout the Nights there is a message of vindication for the female sex. First of all is Scheherezade herself. Not only was she bold enough to request that she be made the Sultan's new bride, but despite her father the Vizier's warning her against it, she holds her own and insists. Unheard of for the culture from which these stories came! A woman defies her father's will and goes on to redeem a Sultan, save her own life and countless others who would have come after her.

Scheherezade tells tales from the female side of view as well-those featuring "maltreated wives, subjugated daughters, faithful female lovers, clever and courageous slave girls, courageous loving mothers, intelligent teachers, loyal sisters and devotes peris or fairies in an increasingly shining procession of women: refracting the virtues of the storyteller herself and her audience-but not so undilutedly or obviously that her purpose shows too much." I think that last part is key, because so many fairy tales have become most famous in versions that are overly preachy and can get tiresome.

In the end Scheherezade's goal is to heal Shahriyar and show him a world of possibilities outside of those in his negative experiences. Earlier tales in the collection are more cynical, but they progress "towards a politics of love and justice that opens the cruel Sultan's eyes to another vision of humanity and to his responsibilities as a ruler."

I believe that the stories and entertainment with which we feed ourselves can and do shape who we are; we can be inspired or jaded, our eyes opened to new ways of thinking and experiences beyond our own. Marina Warner reminds us that the Nights are essentially stories about the power of stories-the suspense they create are literally Scheherezade's only hope for survival. The same stories that served to entertain a murderous Sultan have fascinated the world for hundreds of years and have influenced culture in ways we don't even realize.

All information and quotes were taken from the introduction to Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. 400+ pages on the Arabian Nights, a realm of the fairy tale world it's very difficult to find much information on! Expect more posts from this book throughout the year as I find snatches of time to read...

Illustrations of Bluebeard and Arabian Nights by Kay Nielsen (cover art for the book is by Errol Le Cain)

Fairy tale ornaments

Haven't had too much time to devote to blogging lately, but I can at least share this cute Beauty and the Beast-inspired ornament on etsy while I'm reading up for future posts...the seller from Life is the Bubbles has lots of other Disney/Disneyland inspired products worth checking out too, if Madame Leota's Incantations or Club 33 means anything to you it would be right up your alley.

Other fairy tale related products from this shop: