"The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

1850
THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE
by Edgar Allan Poe

Truth is stranger than fiction.
OLD SAYING.

HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which
(like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in
Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any
American- if we except, perhaps, the author of the "Curiosities of
American Literature";- having had occasion, I say, to turn over some
pages of the first- mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little
astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been
strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter,
Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the "Arabian Nights"; and
that the denouement there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as
far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot" itself, but in the meantime, I
shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a
certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only
puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to
espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the
next morning to deliver her up to the executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a
religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon
him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted
one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand
vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea.
Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either
redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or
perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which
makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the
grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand
the king eagerly accepts- (he had intended to take it at all events,
and had put off the matter from day to day, only through fear of the
vizier),- but, in accepting it now, he gives all parties very
distinctly to understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he
has not the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of
his privileges. When, therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon
marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's
excellent advice not to do any thing of the kind- when she would and
did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful
black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading