Critical edition of Antoine Galland's *Journal 1708-1715 *, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. f. fr. 15277-15280

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Antoine Galland (1646-1715) is best known for being the first person to publish in any printed form the Arabian Nights stories, his French version being even now the original from which at least one current English translation is made. He was a noted Arabist in his time, eventually obtaining the royal chair of Arabic.He was, however, much more than an Arabist and is probably best described as a classical humanist with a particular interest in numismatics, and as such was a member of the royal academy of inscriptions and medals, the present Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institut de France. After three visits to the Near East during which he collected manuscripts and coins for the royal library and a few years in Caen working as the librarian for the provincial government administrator, he eventually returned to Paris where he spent the last ten years of his life. He was an inveterate diarist and there is enough evidence to suggest that he probably had at least one diary on the go throughout his adult life. All that remains of this prodigious output is less than two years of one of his voyages in the Middle east (1672-3) and the last eight years and two months of his life. The first has been published in its entirety, but only a small percentage of the second text (which is by far the longer), with very little in the way of introduction and annotation, has seen the light of day. The present project aims to present an academic audience with a literal (or as literal as is practically feasible) printed transcription of the complete diary, together with substantive introduction and annotation. The interest of the text lies in its unique presentation of the daily activities of a man of letters during the final years of the reign of Louis XIV . It paints, on the one hand, a portrait of an individual and on the other, a detailed picture of intellectual life at the time. In the first case, what is missing from the observations is almost as interesting as what is recorded. Galland is little concerned with the political and social events surrounding him. He is aware of the treaty of Utrecht that brought an end to the war of the Spanish Succession, but appears oblivious to the public announcements and celebrations that took place almost outside his lodgings. The deaths of France's potential heirs to the throne seem to have passed him by and there is almost nothing of the news of the final battles of the war (including Blenheim) that are recorded in some detail by such as Dangeau and Saint-Simon. Popular unrest caused by the shortage of bread in the aftermath of the disastrous winter of 1709 passes unnoticed. Indeed, it is precisely the contrast between what interested Galland and the preoccupations of the aristocracy of Versailles and the populace of Paris which forms one of the areas of interest provided by the diary. On the positive side, we see Galland crossing Paris in all directions (on foot, as he could not afford transport) to vist richer acquaintances who gave him lunch and, it appears, money in return for numismatic services rendered, recording the most recent publications in the Jansenist controversy and especially, giving an account of the twice-weekly meetings of the Académie des Inscriptions et des Médailles that he attended assiduously, contributing both learned papers and numismatic proposals (never, it seems, accepted by his colleagues) for the annual designs of the silver tokens required annually by different government departmenmts and ministries. He notes the books he reads and the books he buys and there is one section which concerns directly the Arabian Nights: most of the stories in the last volume were written up from summaries consigned to the diary of tales told him by a Syrian, which allow us to see how much some of the stories are not so much translations as original compositions.