Les Mille et Un Jours (French: [le mil e œ̃ ʒuʁ], lit. 'The Thousand and One Days'), subtitled contes persans (lit. 'Persian tales'), is a short story collection with Middle Eastern settings published between the years 1710 and 1712 by the French orientalist François Pétis de la Croix, probably with unacknowledged help from Alain-René Lesage. Though the stories were for the most part adapted very freely from a 15th-century Turkish collection called Ferec baʿde şidde ("Relief After Hardship"), in its structure it is modelled on Antoine Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuits (The Thousand and One Nights), whose immense success it was intended to share. It has had a wide influence on European culture, not least through its retelling of the story of Turandot, which indirectly inspired Puccini's opera and many other works.
Contents
Contents
Les Mille et Un Jours, like Les Mille et Une Nuits, is a frame story containing a number of tales and stories within stories. The framework tale, "Histoire de la princesse de Caschemire" (Story of the Princess of Kashmir), tells of the princess Farrukhnaz, who has a dream in which she sees a stag abandon its doe in a trap. She draws from this the moral that men are all ungrateful and faithless, and refuses to marry. Her nurse, Sutlumemé, endeavours to change her mind by telling her stories of a contrary tendency every morning at bath time over a period of 1,001 days. In the original form of Les Mille et Un Jours these stories are:
Histoire d'Aboulcassem Basri (Story of Aboulcassem Basri)
Histoire du roi Ruzvanschad et de la princesse Schéhéristani (Story of King Ruzvanschad and of Princess Schéhéristani)
Histoire du jeune roi de Tibet et de la princesse des Naïmans (Story of the Young King of Tibet and of the Princess of the Naïmans)
Histoire du vizir Caverscha (Story of the Vizier Caverscha)
Histoire de Couloufe et de la belle Dilara (Story of Couloufe and of the Beautiful Dilara)
Histoire du prince Calaf et de la princesse de la Chine (Story of Prince Calaf and of the Princess of China)
Histoire du prince Fadlallah, fils de Ben-Ortoc, roi de Moussel (Story of Prince Fadlallah, son of Ben-Ortoc, King of Moussel)
Histoire du roi Bedreddin-Lolo et de son vizir Atalmulk, surnommé le vizir triste (Story of King Bedreddin-Lolo and of His Vizier Atalmulk, Called the Sad Vizier)
Histoire d'Atalmulk, surnommé le vizir triste, et de la princesse Zélica Béghume (Story of Atalmulk, Called the Sad Vizier, and of Princess Zélica Béghume)
Histoire du prince Seyf-el-Mulouk (Story of Prince Seyf-el-Mulouk)
Histoire de Malek et de la princesse Schirine (Story of Malek and of Princess Schirine)
Histoire du roi Hormoz, surnommé le roi sans chagrin (Story of King Hormoz, Called the King Without Sorrow)
Histoire d'Avicène (Story of Avicène)
Histoire de la belle Arouya (Story of the Beautiful Arouya)
Les Aventures singulières d'Aboulfaouaris, surnommé le grand voyageur (The Singular Adventures of Aboulfaouaris, Called the Great Traveller)
Premier Voyage (First Voyage)
Second Voyage (Second Voyage)
Histoire des deux frères génies, Adis et Dahy (Story of the Two Brother Genies, Adis and Dahy)
Histoire de Nasiraddolé, roi de Moussel, d'Abderrahmane, marchand de Bagdad, et de la belle Zeïneb (Story of Nasiraddolé, King of Moussel, of Abderrahmane, Merchant of Baghdad, and of the Beautiful Zeïneb)
Histoire de Repsima (Story of Repsima)
Composition
The French orientalist François Pétis de La Croix spent many years in Syria, Persia and Turkey learning the respective languages of those countries, before in 1695 taking up the post of official Arabic interpreter to the French court at Versailles. When he composed his Mille et un jours, contes persans he took the decision to present them as an incomplete translation (omitting stories about the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed and indecent tales) of a Persian manuscript given to him during his years in the East by the prominent Isfahan dervish Moclès; this manuscript was, according to Pétis, itself a translation made in Moclès' youth of various Indian "comédies", and was entitled in Persian Hezâr va yek ruz (A thousand and one days). In fact, this whole account was a tissue of lies, not the least of which was the title of Moclès' supposed translation, which Pétis invented and adopted for his own work in an attempt to cash in on the huge success of Antoine Galland's French version of Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704–1717). It is believed that Pétis was commissioned to write Les Mille et Un Jours by Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy, granddaughter-in-law of Louis XIV, and one of the devoted readers of Les Mille et Une Nuits. It is widely agreed (though not by Paul Sebag, Les Mille et Un Jours' most recent editor) that the writer Alain-René Lesage polished up the prose of Pétis' work before publication, though he was not credited for this in the book itself.
Publication
The collection was published between 1710 and 1712 in five volumes. Two of the stories translated by Pétis and submitted to his publisher, Barbin, to be included in the first volume of his Les Mille et Un Jours were instead used by that publisher, without Pétis' permission, to complete volume 8 of Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuits. Pétis was so outraged by this behaviour that he had the remaining four volumes published by another house, Florentin Delaulne.