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Collaborative Translation
Bloomsbury Advances in Translation Series
Edited by
Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work.
Research for this publication has been funded by the French Laboratories of Excellence
Arts-H2H (Investissements d’avenir program ANR-10-LABX-80-01) and TransferS
(Investissements d’avenir program ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02PSL* et ANR-10-LABX-0099),
as well as the Institut Universitaire de France.
Contents
Index 247
Notes on Contributors
Olga Anokhina, a linguist and a researcher at the Institute for Modern Texts
and Manuscripts (CNRS-ENS), works on the genesis of literary works by
multilingual writers. She edited the collective volumes Multilinguisme et
créativité littéraire (2012) and Écrire en langues: littératures et plurilinguisme
(2015). Her interests include the cognitive aspects of the written production,
multilingualism and creation. Within ITEM, Olga Anokhina is head of the
research team Multilingualism, translation, creation.
Ika Kaminka studied art history at the University of Bergen and presently
works as translator of Japanese literature into Norwegian. She has translated
a number of books by Haruki Murakami in addition to Natsume Sōseki and
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. In 2012 she was awarded the Bastian Prize for her rendering
of Murakami’s 1Q84. Kaminka is presently chair of the Norwegian Association
of Literary Translators.
Céline Letawe has a PhD in philosophy and literature and a specialized degree in
translation studies. She has published her PhD dissertation in German literature
(Max Frisch. Uwe Johnson. Eine literarische Wechselbeziehung, 2009), and has
begun research on literary translation in the framework of a postdoctoral stay at
the archives of the Berliner Akademie der Künste in 2011. She teaches translation
studies and translation at the University of Liège.
If I sit down to translate, alone, finish the task and dispatch my text, does the
translating end here? Or does it end once the text has been checked by the
reviser, editor, the author, other colleagues or by me again? Are the others who
work on my text, publish it, sell it, read it, debate it also translating? Are they part
of the translation? What if I sit down to translate, with others? What if they are
not in the same room, now, in the past, or the future? What if we share the task
between us? What if we have to? Are we performing the same activity? What if
we have separate roles? Can I do any of this alone? What if I do not know the
others? What if I do not agree with them? What if they are a machine? What is
collaborating, collaboration? What is translating, translation?
The popular image of the lonely translator is strikingly at odds with the reality
of his or her work within the profession. In both literary and ‘pragmatic’ contexts,
many ‘collaborators’ with different roles will typically shape a translated text before
it is published. Even if one defines translation narrowly, limiting it to decoding a
source text and writing it in another language, throughout history the practice has
not always been assumed to be a solitary affair. From Antiquity to the Renaissance,
translation was frequently practised by groups comprised of specialists of different
languages and with varied skills. At the centre of translation teams, experts from
various cultures came together to find solutions to translation problems, and
the acts of reading and rewriting were often separated and multiplied between
participants. Yet, during the Renaissance, prefaces and tracts which discussed
translation tended to elide these collaborative practices to promote a singular act.
Tracing this history in the West, Belen Bistué (2013) has argued that the desire
to represent translation as a conflation of different roles derived from a will to
accord the translated text poetic unity and singular authority. This aligned it with
wider political processes in Europe that were consolidating power around the
unification of church, state, family and patriarch. Devolving upon the individual
2 Collaborative Translation
the task that was sometimes performed by the many allowed those writing
about translation to promote an image of the translator as the text’s surrogate
author. It presented the translator with the daunting challenge of equalling the
comprehension of the author in the author’s tongue while matching that author’s
skill and style in another. The many hands that had frequently contributed to the
production of a translation were not replaced by a more expert, singular genius;
rather, the discourses around translation sought to suppress them so as to posit
the translator as surrogate author.
The trope of the solitary translator is thus not simply a post-Romantic
construct which mirrors that of the solitary genius. Translators continue to
be defined in relation to literary authors in ways that often little resemble the
reality of their work. The vast majority of translators, especially those working
in pragmatic or audiovisual contexts, must accept their role in the creation of
a negotiated, dynamic text over which they have only provisional authority,
knowing that their work may be modified significantly by revisers, editors,
dubbing adapters and publishers of some form. In recent years, authors have
been dethroned by certain literary historians (those, that is, who had not
already declared the author dead) and placed among their fellows at court: their
collaborators. This chapter will chart this process with reference to the English
literary tradition in particular, not to perpetuate a vision of translators filtered
through the prism of the literary authorship of a dominant culture, but rather to
interrogate the effects of that very equation. Furthermore, the following chapters
reclaim the plurality of translating through heterogeneous times and spaces,
between individuals and institutions of varying degrees of power, control and
respect for translation; they offer a panorama of collaborative translation, from
dyadic interactions to networks of actors, modalities and technologies. Indeed,
given the overwhelming diversity of skills, knowledge and practices that emerge
here, populating a vast landscape of translation, one may legitimately ask: what
does ‘collaborative translation’ mean? To address this question, we will retrace
the evolution of the most powerful myths of collaboration and explore how
current translation practices are influenced by the contemporary rhetoric of the
‘collaborative’ that is pervading social, political, economic and digital life.
(e.g. Bennett 2005). Yet Masten’s contention, and the validity of Foucault’s view of
history, have been vigorously rebuked, notably by Brian Vickers in Shakespeare,
Co-Author (2002: 506–41) and Jeffrey Knapp in Shakespeare Only (2009). Such
scholars do not deny that the Elizabethan theatre functioned through networks
of collaboration; rather, they accuse historians who oppose collaboration and
singular authorship of ‘distort[ing] the historical picture’ for ideological reasons;
they hold that this ‘has prevented theatre scholars from recognizing that
paradigms of single authorship not only significantly predated Shakespeare but
also dominated his contemporaries’ sense of how plays were written’ (Knapp
2009: 18–19). For Knapp the risk of this interpretation of Foucault is that
everything prior to the seventeenth century may be deemed ‘collaborative’, which
‘is to miss the real innovativeness of large-scale coauthorship in the Renaissance
theatre’ (2009: 120). In a less polemical fashion, Hirschfeld (2004) demonstrates
that collaborative authorship could have models and purposes which surpass
Masten’s assumption of a possessive versus non-proprietary authorship.
The distinction that such Renaissance scholars draw between ‘collaboration’
and ‘co-authorship’ hinges upon the degree to which one affirms the presence
of any individual author in a text. When Vickers writes that ‘anyone who had
studied the Renaissance in even a perfunctory manner would have to be suffering
from amnesia to imagine that “the author” had not then “emerged” ’ (2004: 528),
he believes, in spite of a multitude of printing and editorial vagaries, not only
that certain words of Shakespeare’s texts are the Bard’s alone, but also that the
living writer felt ownership over them, perceived himself as their author and
was known by his peers and audiences as such. This contrasts with the tradition
that emphasizes the role of the institution: ‘The company commissioned the
play, usually stipulated the subject, often provided the plot, often parceled it out,
scene by scene, to several playwrights. The text thus produced was a working
model, which the company then revised as seemed appropriate’ (Orgel 1981: 3).
This view of decentred authority is dispersed even further by Stallybrass (1992:
601): ‘Instead of a single author, we have a network of collaborative relations,
normally between two or more writers, between writers and acting companies,
between acting companies and printers, between compositors and proofreaders,
between printers and censors.’
The quarrel surrounding collaboration in Renaissance drama reflects the
common divides of literary theory. Post-structuralists point to the fact that a
reader has no access to an individual author’s subjectivity and that any such
attempts only encounter social structures that are themselves subject to
8 Collaborative Translation
translator and printer exercise separate functions, even if they may inhabit ‘the
same body, since many early English printers, beginning with Caxton, were
themselves also translators’. Coldiron likens each to early-twentieth-century
film producers, ‘not faceless middlemen or technicians, but entrepreneurs,
experimenters’ (3). Their combined effort to ‘creat[e] not only linguistic read-
ability but also cultural comprehensibility’ during the first two centuries of the
printing press in England involved printers ‘ “translating” continental technol-
ogy and technique as much as the translators were rendering words, styles, gen-
res’ – a symbiosis that helped realize the potentiality of each (3–4). Coldiron’s
stereoscopic view of book and translation history contrasts with Dobranski’s
(1999) use of bibliographical and literary research when considering a figure
whose eminence in the English tradition approaches that of Shakespeare’s. In
Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade he argues that Milton’s self-fashioning
as a solitary writer contrasts with the culture of amanuenses, acquaintances,
printers, distributors and retailers who could shape the poet’s content and were
accountable for it. Dobranski suggests that each collaborator might ‘qualify as
the book’s “author”’ in a wide definition of the term, or if not, at least ‘shar[e]
responsibility for the finished product’ (37). Paradise Lost is thus born from
a ‘collaborative genesis’ and ‘Milton was creating his poem as part of a com-
munity’ (37). Dobranski accuses critics of applying a modern notion of unitary
authorship that is inappropriate to seventeenth-century publishing when, he
argues, they fail to understand that instances of textual incoherence in Milton’s
work arise precisely because many hands shaped the work: ‘The construction
of the poet John Milton has effaced the book’s various collaborators’ (102). He
believes that such instances reveal the missed opportunity for critics to see past
their imposition of ‘Milton’ as critical construction to the poet himself. Despite
his indebtedness to Foucauldian analysis of the author as function, Dobranski
ultimately affirms a measure of singular authority that reinforces the mythical
stature of the author founded on the great poet’s infallibility (Bennett 2005:
99–100). This contrasts with Coldiron’s bibliographically informed translation
scholarship, which does not revert to such an authorial model to affirm the
particularity of the translator in the Renaissance.
When it comes to the Enlightenment and beyond, there is far more consensus
among literary scholars that the valorizing of unity in style and intention,
which emerged throughout the Renaissance, became thoroughly entrenched
in the ideology of the individual subject. The writer as artist was idealized as
the singular figure inspired with an immaterial, even spiritual genius; and the
10 Collaborative Translation
recollected in tranquility’ (756). Stillinger points out that the preface is itself
the work of close collaboration: Coleridge wrote to Robert Southey on 29 July
1802 that ‘Wordsworth’s Preface is half a child of my own Brain. … [It] arose
out of Conversations, so frequent, that with few exceptions we could scarcely
either of us perhaps positively say, which first started any particular Thought’
(qtd in Stillinger 1991: 71). If the aesthetics of the two were so closely interwoven
and symbiotic at the time, it is problematic to sequester the individual from his
myth, as much as his poetry, and idealize his singular genius.
The concentration upon singular genius during the nineteenth century
galvanized into a critical method, fuelling a tradition of biographical literary
criticism and philology deemed reductive and positivist by 1960s structuralists
and later post-structuralists. In seeking to overturn this tradition, they excluded
the diachronic history of a text’s composition from their analyses, a move which
was in turn countered by French genetic critics (de Biasi 2011; Ferrer 2002,
2011; Grésillon 1994; Hay 1993, 1989) interested in the compositional process,
from which the figure of the author and his or her collaborators is inextricable
(see Van Hulle 2014). The methods of textual genetics have been applied to
translation, leading to the emergence of ‘genetic translation studies’ (Cordingley
and Montini 2015), which generally accounts for collaboration when it becomes
manifest (material) in the genesis of a translation. Stillinger also adds a genetic,
diachronic layering to his synchronic dispersal of authority, arguing for a ‘theory
of versions’ that embraces a multiplicity of authorial intentions: ‘Thus in a
collaboratively authored version, each contributor to the collaboration has …
an intrinsic rather than extrinsic place in the text. Removing one or more of the
authors … simply produces a different version’ (200).
Nonetheless, Stillinger comes up against the same issue that divides literary
historians of the Renaissance, finding that any notion of singular authorship
becomes untenable because of the implication of authorship in ‘collaboration’.
His study begins by detecting instances of what certain Renaissance scholars
would term the presence of ‘co-authors’ (contributors to Keats’s poems, Harriet
Mill’s substantial revisions of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, Wordsworth’s
reliance on the work of his sister Dorothy). Yet the dynamics of attribution lead
Stillinger to apprehend more and more the social web of collaboration. Given
the fact that all writing is bound to socio-economic structures that support
publishing and reading, generate meaning and construct a notion of authorship,
he asks if ‘pure authorship’ is ever possible, before finally rejecting the idea: ‘To
separate “pure” authorship from the circumstances of time and place, one would
12 Collaborative Translation
have to lock up not only the manuscripts but the authors themselves (and, in
the process, thereby deprive them of, among other necessities, language itself)’
(185). He holds, furthermore, that intertexts as much as readers are collaborators,
which implies that translators must also be collaborators with authors, logically
having their share in the authorship of what was supposed to be the “original”.
It is debatable whether such a definition of ‘collaboration’ is useful, but, before
returning to this central issue, let us consider if the sociology of translation will
shed any light upon these questions.
In 1999, when Stillinger reflected upon his earlier challenge to the myth of
solitary authorship with the evidence of collaboration, he found that ‘the point …
seems obvious now that it has been out and reviewed for several years’ (8).
His pioneering work did not, however, attempt a full sociological description
of the social structures and actors that shape the production of literary texts.
His contribution to textual criticism and editorial theory sought to build upon
the work of Jerome McGann (1983). McGann had challenged the dominant
Greg-Bowers method in the Anglo-American tradition, which advocates the
construction of definitive editions of a work through the reconciliation of
its multiple variants and versions into an ideal form. Editors of these works
promoted them as the most perfect representation of the author’s intentions.
Like Don McKenzie (1986) in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, McGann
countered such editorial constructivism with a notion of ‘social text’, where
authority is shared not only between the author and all those who have a hand
in the book’s production (publishers, editors, printers, agents, lawyers) but also
its communities of reception (booksellers, readers, students, teachers, critics, the
media). McGann is attentive to the materiality of the work, yet materiality is
itself social: a book, not a text, is ‘fashioned and refashioned repeatedly under
different circumstances. … And because all its uses are always invested in real
circumstances, the many meanings of any book are socially and physically coded
in and by the books themselves. They bear the evidence of the meanings they have
helped to make’ (2006). In The Textual Condition (1991), McGann conceives of
literary texts as ‘collaborative events’ (60); rather than ‘an autonomous and self-
reflexive activity’ textual production is ‘a social and institutional event’ (100).
When he insists that a work’s ‘textual authority’ resides in ‘the actual structure
What Is Collaborative Translation? 13
of agreements’ – he cites the ‘cooperating authorities’ (54) of the writer and the
publishing institution – his theory implies that agreements extend to all parties
in the social network.
The move in literary studies towards a social definition of authorship has
expanded significantly since McGann’s writing in the 1980s, as studies continue
to be influenced by developments in social theory. They build upon Pierre
Bourdieu’s analysis of the literary field as a network of power relations which
internally situated agents struggle to maintain or influence through recourse to
their different reserves of capital, be they economic (financial) or cultural (one’s
education, professional standing), social (networks of contacts) or symbolic
(prestige, reputation, honour, fame). Interacting with each other, individuals
enact their embodied habitus – ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions,
structured structures, predisposed to function as structuring structures’
(1990: 53) – which emerges from an evolving dialogue with self, family and
society, psychology, class, gender and ideology. Habitus is ‘the active presence
of the whole past of which it is the product’, incorporated as dispositions it is
‘embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history’
(1990: 56); it is thus a set of competences and capacities that allow the individual
to improvise and adapt, especially when coming into contact with new situations
or fields. Moreover, habitus as practice constitutes the individual; there is no
substantial, pre-existing self, and individual subjectivity is formed in practices
situated within networks.
This fundamental premise of a non-essentialist ontology is common to
‘relational’ thinking in sociology. It is found in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems
theory, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and has become the focus of the
field of relational sociology (see Powell and Dépelteau 2013). In The Relational
Subject (2015), Donati and Archer critique accounts of relational sociology
that reduce social relations to ‘transactions’, circumscribing the capacity of
individuals to differentiate themselves from, or emerge out of, a homogenizing
‘flat ontology’. ‘North American Relational Sociology’ they claim ‘has effectively
eliminated the subject’ (12); by treating relations as dyadic those sociologists
‘cannot explain the context in which relationships occur despite there being no
such thing as context-less action’ (i). Donati and Archer’s ‘relational realism’
advocates a ‘stratified social ontology … with different emergent properties and
powers pertaining to different levels of reality, and, in this case, cultural reality’
(164). Indeed, the danger of limiting an understanding of translation to the basic
premise of relational sociology – namely that social roles are determined by
14 Collaborative Translation
systems – is the implication that the ‘translator’ cannot exist independently of his
or her system, and exists only if there is a network of authors, publishers, readers
and markets that create the role of the translator. Yet, it is untenable to hold that
the translator is only a function of a relational system, for if that were the case
anyone so positioned could be a translator. Each translator has, however, a unique
personality, different aptitudes, styles of writing and ways of reading, each of
which motivates and individuates him or her, making him or her more ready or
competent for the task. Given equivalent circumstances, some individuals will
translate, some will choose not to (see Bush 1997). Similarly, relatively abrupt
shifts in the macro environment can determine whether someone may become a
translator or not – the proliferation of access to computers and the internet being
perhaps the best example today of a significant environmental change resulting
in ‘social morphogenesis’ (Archer 2013) that has influenced how, and how
many, individuals can assume roles of translatorship. Furthermore, the immense
translating activity that accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings that began in
Tunisia in 2010 – of literary as much as political texts (poems, songs, chants,
narratives) – is a salient example of how individuals will be compelled to assume
roles as translators in reaction to a rupture in the political environment (see
Baker 2016) and integrate social change into pedagogical translation projects
(e.g. Mehrez 2012).3
From the perspective of relational sociology all translation is collaboration
in the sense that it does not have collaboration, but rather is collaboration. One
quickly perceives that Stillinger’s realization with respect to the embeddedness
of authorship in social structures applies equally to the figure of the translator.
The broad questioning of the central figure of literary studies – the author –
and the deconstruction of its myths and ideological underpinnings has
been paralleled in translation studies, especially since its ‘sociological turn’.4
Translation scholars have moved away from linguistic paradigms of translation
and interminable questions of ‘equivalence’ (Nida 1964), building upon
functional (Vermeer 1986) and descriptive (Toury 1995) translation studies to
enquire into the conditions of textual production that shape a translation ‘event’,
the nexus at which the power and influence of different networks and agents
intersect, as well as ‘the social discursive practices which mould the translation
process and which decisively affect the strategies of a text to be translated’ (Wolf
2011: 2). The particularity of translation is that its event occurs where the fields
of the source culture and the target culture overlap, traversing each translator
as agent, whose agency in turn shapes the event. The interaction at this juncture
What Is Collaborative Translation? 15
even rarer. It was certainly highlighted when the translation benefited from the
assumed auctoritas of the author – English versions of Borges’ texts appeared as
‘Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author’
and certain English texts by Nabokov as ‘Translated by Dmitri Nabokov in
collaboration with the author’, while Paul Bowles’s translation of Molloy is a special
case in Beckett’s canon of self-translations, for it too is signed ‘in collaboration
with the author’. This convention has, in turn, been carried into literary and
translation studies, when scholars repeat this phrase in their bibliographies
and analyses. There is no doubt, however, that ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘community
translation’ refer to specific translation practices, which are considered forms
of ‘collaborative translation’ when the latter is used as an umbrella term. Pym
insists on the voluntary aspect which is lacking in the former two categories,
yet today both crowdsourcing and community translation (which can mean
translation by online communities or translating for specific communities, as
in the sense of community interpreting) are frequently remunerated and not
necessarily collaborative. This raises the issue of how ‘voluntary’ each party is
when working on a shared translation. Yet, Pym forecloses the debate because
for him ‘collaboration’, in English at least, ‘always sounds like illicit help given to
the enemy’.
Affirming that any definition of collaboration ‘always’ holds is somewhat
cavalier. The Dictionnaire historique de la langue française and the Oxford
English Dictionary list the first usage of ‘collaboration’ in the sense of ‘traitorous
cooperation with the enemy’ at 1940 and as a ‘spec’. (specific) form, while the
primary definition of the term in English as ‘united labour, co-operation; esp.
in literary, artistic, or scientific work’ is dated at 1860, some thirty years after
the French began using the term in this way. It derived from the Medieval
Latin collaboratio, applied to a marital union, which referred, in a context of
alliance relationships, to the profits and goods acquired by common work. In the
nineteenth century it retained its legal, economic meaning, but the term’s scope
extended outside of marriage to include all participants in the development of
a shared project. Today, the adjective remains influenced by the more sinister
nominal form, yet even the ‘most delicate of all the problems raised by the fall
and divisions of France: collaboration with the German occupant’ (Hoffmann
1968: 375) is itself subject to the different ideological perspectives of historians.
The term stood for a political – and legal – programme carried out by Marshal
Pétain in the framework of the new French State established after the defeat and
the signing of the armistice in 1940. Yet to ‘define’ collaboration requires one
to distinguish more accurately between servile and ideological collaboration, as
What Is Collaborative Translation? 17
well as its voluntary (the attempt to exploit necessity) and involuntary (a reluctant
recognition of necessity) modes (Hoffmann 1968: 378). Furthermore, recent
historical scholarship has emphasized that ‘it is hard to come up with a serious
theoretical reason for excluding from the concept practices of collaboration with
non-Axis forces, e.g. of German or Japanese elites with the Allied occupation
forces following the Axis defeat in 1945’ (Kalyvas 2008: 109). Indeed, the term
is now used by historians for forms of political collaboration that pre-date
the Nazi occupation and in non-European contexts. Timothy Brook’s (2005)
Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China does this while
also challenging a vertically oriented paradigm of collaboration as imposed on
populations by a country’s rulers: ‘Collaboration would not begin at the top as
it had in France,’ rather ‘at the local level of a new regime that would gradually
be brought into being, minor elites came forward to enter into agreements with
agents of the occupying Japanese army’ (2).
The slide in Pym’s definition from adjective to noun is significant, for in
twenty-first-century English ‘collaborative’ forms part of a set of positive values
founded on transparency, the circulation of data, the flattening of hierarchies
and participation in democracy. The resonances of the ‘collaboration’ as treason
are competing with a powerful repositioning of the concept in public discourse,
legitimized through official usage, such as in US president Barack Obama’s
2009 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
on ‘Transparency and Open Government’: ‘My Administration is committed
to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work
together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public
participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and
promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.’ Obama’s ‘system of …
collaboration’ inhabits a semantic field that overlaps with those of openness,
transparency, public participation, democracy, efficacy and effectiveness (see
Lathrop and Ruma 2010). This suite of concepts neatly surmises the utopian
trajectory in the contemporary rhetoric of collaboration. Technology is key to
the hopes of delivering this braver new world.
Title: In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia
Being experiences of life in Persia from 1866 to 1881
Author: C. J. Wills
Language: English
IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN,
OR
MODERN PERSIA.
BY
C. J. WILLS, M.D.,
LATE ONE OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HER MAJESTY’S TELEGRAPH
DEPARTMENT IN PERSIA.
NEW EDITION.
TO
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. J. GOLDSMID,
C.B., K.C.S.I.,
PERSIAN FRONTIER,
KINDNESSES,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
My reason for calling my book ‘The Land of the Lion and Sun’ is
that the Lion and Sun are the national emblems of Persia, while the
second title alone, ‘Modern Persia,’ would have suggested an
exhaustive and elaborate array of matter which is beyond the scope
of this work.
In a personal narrative, it is necessary to use a good many I’s; and
to avoid being obscure, I fear I have been at times over minute, but I
have preferred this to the risk of giving a false impression.
I have striven to describe life in Persia as I saw it, not
exaggerating or softening anything, but speaking of Persia as it is.
The whole narrative may be considered as a record of life in an out-
of-the-way corner of the world; and the reader being left to make his
own reflections, is not troubled with mine.
Usually no names are given, save of those of the dead, or public
men.
The important subject of our fast-dying commerce with Persia, and
the means of really opening the country, I have relegated to an
Appendix.[1]
As to the spelling and transliteration of Persian words used, it is
not classical, it does not pretend to be; but it will convey to the
ordinary reader the local pronunciation of the colloquial; and the
reader not knowing anything of Oriental languages is troubled very
seldom with accents and (apparently) unpronounceable words. Thus
Mūnshi is spelt Moonshee, as that gives the exact sound: ū is often
used to avoid the barbarous appearance of oo. Of course there is no
C in Persian; still as, from habit, we write Calcutta and not Kalkutta,
so some words, like Cah, that use has rendered common, are
inserted under C and K. I think that all that is required is, that the
ordinary English reader shall pronounce the words not too
incorrectly; and it is only when a work is philological that accuracy in
transliteration is of any real importance. With this end in view, I have
tried so to spell Persian words that by following ordinary rules, the
general reader may not be very wide of the mark. To avoid continual
explanation I have added a Glossary, with a correct transliteration. I
have to gratefully acknowledge the valuable help of Mr. Guy le
Strange in correcting this Glossary, and kindly favouring me with the
transliteration according to the system adopted by Johnson, in
several cases in which that author has not noted words, &c.
Oriental Club,
Hanover Square.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
I GO TO PERSIA.
Wanted a doctor—The Director-in-chief—Doubt and distrust
—Simple advice—Am referred to ‘Hadji Baba’—My kit—
Saddle for riding post—Vienna—Rustchuk—Quarantine
—Galatz—Kustendji—Constantinople—Turkish ladies—
Stamboul—I have my hair cut—“Karagews”—Turkish
coffee—A philo-Turk—Shooting party—The theatres—
The Opera—Armenian theatre—Gambling house—A
Bashi-bazouk—We leave, viâ the Black Sea—The
Russian captain—Unarmed vessels—White Crimean
wine—Foreign wines in Russia—Deck passengers—
Sinope—Batoum—Poti—The post-house—Difficulty in
getting food—Travelling en tröika—Kutais—A tarantass
—Apply for horses—An itching palm—We start—Tiflis—
Lecoq’s beer—A happy reprieve—The joys of travel—
Chief of the Telegraph in Tiflis—Uniforms—Persian
Consulate—Coffee and pipes—Smoking, an art—Effects
on the tyro—Tea—The Consul—His age—Dyeing the
hair—The Opera, varied costumes at—The Tiflis ballet—
Leave Tiflis—Erivan—The Pass—We lighten our load—
Hotel—Washing—Nakchewan—Julfa, the frontier of
Persia 1
CHAPTER II.
POST JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL.
Preparations for the start—Costume—Chaff bed—First fall— 20
Extra luggage—The whip—Stages and their length—
Appearance of the country, and climate—First stage—
Turk guides—Welcome rest—Weighing firewood—
Meana bug—Turcomanchai—Distances—New friends—
Palace of Kerrij
CHAPTER III.
TEHERAN.
Teheran—The Director’s house—Persian visits—Etiquette—
Pipes, details of—Tumbakū—Ceremony—Anecdote—
The voice of the sluggard—Persian medicine explained
—My prospects as a medico—Zoological Gardens 28
CHAPTER IV.
TEHERAN.
The Gulhaek Road—Visit to a virtuoso—His story—Persian
New Year—Persian ladies—Titles—The harem—Its
inhabitants—A eunuch—Lovely visions—The Dervish—
The great festival—Miscellaneous uniform—At the Court
of Persia—The Shah—The ceremony—Baksheesh—
Rejoicings 36
CHAPTER V.
HAMADAN.
Start for Hamadan—Bedding—Luggage makes the man—
Stages—Meet Pierson—Istikhbals—Badraghah—
Pierson’s house—Hamadan wine—Mode of storing it—
My horses—Abu Saif Mirza—His stratagem—
Disinterested services—Persian logic—Pierson’s horse’s
death—Horses put through their paces—I buy Salts and
Senna—The prince’s opinion—Money table—Edict 54
CHAPTER VI.
HAMADAN.
Morning rides—Engage servants—Dispensary—A bear- 64
garden—Odd complaints—My servants get rich—
Modakel—The distinction between picking and stealing
—Servants—Their pay—Vails—Hakim Bashi—Delleh—
Quinine—Discipline—I commence the cornet—The
result of rivalry—Syud Houssein—Armenians—Cavalry
officer—Claim to sanctity of the Armenians—Their
position in the country—Jews
CHAPTER VII.
HAMADAN.
Tomb of Esther and Mordecai—Spurious coins—Treasure-
finding—Interest—A gunge—Oppression—A cautious
finder—Yari Khan—We become treasure-seekers—We
find—Our cook—Toffee—Pole-buying—Modakel—I am
nearly caught—A mad dog—Rioters punished—Murder
of the innocents 75
CHAPTER VIII.
HAMADAN.
Antelope—Hunting and hawking—Shooting from the saddle
—Thief-catching—The prince offers his services as
head-servant—Our hunting party—The prince takes the
honours—Kabobs—A provincial grandee—His stud—
Quail-shooting—A relative of the king—Persian dinner—
Musicians and singers—Parlour magic—The anderūn—
Cucumber-jam—Persian home-life—Grateful Armenians
—Lizards—Talking lark—Pigeon-flying—Fantails—
Pigeons’ ornaments—Immorality of pigeon-flying—Card-
playing—Chess—Games—Wrestling—Pehliwans—
Gymnastics 84
CHAPTER IX.
KERMANSHAH.
Leave for Kermanshah, marching—Detail of arrangements— 100
Horse-feeding—Peculiar way of bedding horses—Barley
—Grape-feeding—On grass—Nawalla—Colt, anecdote
of—Horses, various breeds of—Turkomans—Karabagh
—Ispahan cobs—Gulf Arabs—Arabs—Rise in price of
horses—Road cooking—Kangawar temple—Double
snipe—Tents—Kara-Su River—Susmanis—Sana—
Besitūn—Sir H. Rawlinson—Agha Hassan—Istikhbal—
Kermanshah—As we turn in another turns out—
Armenians—Their reason for apostatising—Presents of
sweetmeats
CHAPTER X.
KERMANSHAH.
Kermanshah—Imād-u-dowlet—We visit him—Signs of his
wealth—Man nailed to a post—Injuring the wire—
Serrum-u-dowlet—Visits—We dine with the son of the
Governor—His decorations and nightingales—Dancing
girls—Various dances—The belly dance—Heavy dinner
—Turf—Wild geese—The swamp—A ducking through
obstinacy—Imādieh—Wealth of the Imād-u-dowlet—The
Shah loots him—Squeezing—Rock sculptures—
Astrologers—Astrolabes—Fortune-telling—Rammals—
Detection of thieves—Honesty of servants—Thefts
through pique—My lost pipe-head—Tragedy of two
women 112
CHAPTER XI.
I GO TO ISPAHAN.
Deficiency of furniture—Novel screws—Pseudo-masonry—
Fate of the Imād-u-dowlet’s son—House-building—
Kerind—New horse—Mule-buying—Start for Ispahan—
Kanaats—Curious accident—Fish in kanaats—Loss of a
dog—Pigeons—Pigeon-towers—Alarm of robbers—Put
up in a mosque—Armenian village—Armenian villagers
—Travellers’ law—Tax-man at Dehbeed—Ispahan—The
bridge—Julfa 123
CHAPTER XII.
JULFA.
Illness and death of horse—Groom takes sanctuary— 136
Sharpness of Armenians—Julfa houses—Kūrsis—
Priests—Arachnoort—Monastery—Nunnery—Call to
prayer—Girls’ school—Ancient language of the
Scriptures—Ignorance of priests—Liquor traffic—Sunday
market—Loafers—Turkeys—Church Missionary school
—Armenian schools
CHAPTER XIII.
ISPAHAN.
Prince’s physician—Visit the Prince-Governor—Justice—The
bastinado—Its effects—The doctor’s difficulties—Carpets
—Aniline dyes—How to choose—Varieties—Nammad—
Felt coats—Bad water—Baabis—A tragedy—The
prince’s view 145
CHAPTER XIV.
JULFA AND ISPAHAN.
Julfa cathedral—The campanile—The monk—Gez—
Kishmish wine—The bishop—The church—Its
decorations—The day of judgment—The cemetery—
Establishment of the Armenian captives in Julfa—Lost
arts—Armenian artificers—Graves—Story of Rodolphe—
Coffee-house—Tombstone bridges—Nunnery—Schools
—Medical missionary—Church Missionary establishment
—The Lazarist Fathers 157
CHAPTER XV.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Tame gazelle—Croquet-lawn under difficulties—Wild 167
asparagus—First-fruits—Common fruits—Mode of
preparing dried fruits—Ordinary vegetables of Persia—
Wild rhubarb—Potatoes a comparative novelty—Ispahan
quinces: their fragrance—Bamiah—Grapes, Numerous
varieties of—At times used as horse-feed—Grape-sugar
—Pickles—Fruits an ordinary food—Curdled milk—Mode
of obtaining cream—Buttermilk—Economy of the middle
or trading classes—Tale of the phantom cheese—
Common flowers—Painting the lily—Lilium candidum—
Wild flowers—The crops—Poppies—Collecting opium—
Manuring—Barley—Wheat—Minor crops—Mode of
extracting grain—Cut straw: its uses—Irrigation
CHAPTER XVI.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Pig-sticking expedition—Ducks not tame, but wild—Ruined
mosque with tile inscription—Ancient watch-towers—The
hunting-ground—Beaters—We sight the pig—Our first
victims—The bold Gholam—Our success—Pig’s flesh—
A present of pork—How Persians can be managed—
Opium—Adulteration—Collection and preparation—
Packing—Manœuvres of the native maker—Opium-
eating—Moderate use by aged Persians—My dispensary
over the prison—I shift my quarters—Practice in the
bazaar—An ungrateful baker—Sealing in lieu of signing
—Seals—Wisdom of a village judge 176
CHAPTER XVII.
ISPAHAN.
Cost of living—Servants—Our expenses—Price of provisions
—Bargains—Crying off—Trade credits—Merchants—
Civil suits—Bribery—Shopkeepers—Handicrafts—
Damascening—Shoemakers—Other trades—Bankers—
An Ispahani’s estimate of the honesty of his fellow-
townsmen 186
CHAPTER XVIII.
ISPAHAN.
Daily round—The river—Calico-rinsers—Worn-out mules and 193
horses—Mode of treating the printed calico—Imitations
of marks on T-cloths—Rise of the waters of the Zend-a-
Rūd—Pul-i-Kojū—Char Bagh—Plane-trees—The college
—Silver doors—Tiled halls and mosque—Pulpit—Boorio
—Hassir—Sleepers in the mosque—Cells of the
students—Ispahan priests—Telegraph-office—Tanks—
Causeways—Gate of royal garden—Governor’s garden
—Courtiers and hangers-on—Prisoners—Priests—The
Imām-i-Juma—My dispensary—Ruined bazaar—A day
in the town—Bazaar breakfasts—Calico-printing—
Painters—The maker of antiquities—Jade teapot—Visit
to the Baabis—Hakim-bashi—Horse-market—The
“Dar”—Executions—Ordinary—Blowing from guns—A
girl trampled to death—Dying twice—Blowing from a
mortar—Wholesale walling up alive—A narrow escape
from, and horrible miscarriage in carrying it out—Burning
alive—Crucifixions—Severity: its results
CHAPTER XIX.
MY JOURNEY HOME AND MARCH TO SHIRAZ.
Julfa quarters—Buy a freehold house—I ornament, and make
it comfortable—Become ill—Apply for sick leave—Start
marching—Telegram—Begin to post—Reach Teheran—
Obtain leave—Difficulty at Kasvin—Punishment of the
postmaster—Catch and pass the courier—Horses knock
up—Wild beasts—Light a fire—Grateful rest—Arrive at
Resht—Swamp to Peri-Bazaar—Boat—Steamer—
Moscow—Opera—Ballet—Arrive in England—Start
again for Persia—Journey viâ Constantinople—
Trebizonde—Courier—Snow—Swollen eyes—Detail of
journey from Erzeroum to Teheran—The races—Ispahan
—Leave for Shiraz—Persian companions—Road-beetles
—Mole crickets—Lizards—Animals and birds—The road
to Shiraz—Ussher’s description—Meana bug legend
again 206
CHAPTER XX.
SHIRAZ.
Entry into Shiraz—Gaiety of Shirazis of both sexes—Public 218
promenade—Different from the rest of Persians—Shiraz
wine—Early lamb—Weights: their variety—Steelyards—
Local custom of weighing—Wetting grass—Game—Wild
animals—Buildings—Ornamental brickwork—Orange-
trees—Fruits in bazaar—Type of ancient Persian—
Ladies’ dress—Fondness for music—Picnics—Warmth
of climate—Diseases—The traveller Stanley—His
magazine rifle and my landlord’s chimney—Cholera—
Great mortality—We march out and camp—Mysterious
occurrence—Life in a garden—The “Shitoor-gooloo”—
Bear and dog fight—The bear is killed
CHAPTER XXI.
SHIRAZ WINE-MAKING.
Buy grapes for wine-making—Difficulty in getting them to the
house—Wine-jars—Their preparation—Grapes rescued
and brought in—Treading the grapes—Fermentation—
Plunger-sticks—Varieties of Shiraz wine and their
production—Stirring the liquor—Clearing the wine—My
share, and its cost—Improvement by bottling—Wasps—
Carboys—Covering them—Native manner of packing—
Difficulties at custom-house—The Governor’s
photographic apparatus—Too many for me—A lūti-pūti 229
CHAPTER XXII.
SHIRAZ AND FUSSA.
Cheapness of ice—Variety of ices—Their size—Mode of
procuring ice—Water of Shiraz: its impurity—Camel-fight
—Mode of obtaining the combatants—Mode of securing
camels—Visit to Fussa—Mean-looking nag—His powers
—See the patient—State of the sick-room—Dinner sent
away—A second one arrives—A would-be room-fellow—
I provide him with a bedroom—Progress of the case—
Fertility of Fussa—Salt lake—End of the patient—Boat-
building—Dog-cart—Want of roads—Tarantulas—
Suicide of scorpions—Varieties—Experiment—Stings of
scorpions—The Nishan 240
CHAPTER XXIII.
SHIRAZ—THE FAMINE.
Approach of famine—Closing of shops—Rise in mule-hire— 251
Laying in of stores—Seizures of grain—Sale of goods by
poor—Immigrations of villagers to the towns—Desertions