Marius Conkan

Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

mariusconkan@yahoo.com.sg

 

 

Alternative spaces in the stories of Dunyazad,

of the slave Rashazad and of king Shahzaman

 

 

Abstract: The exemplary accomplishment of the storytellers of Cluj lies in the original construction of the frame-story. If in One Thousand and One Nights, Shahrazad told stories in order to subdue Shahryar, as we shall see later, to an metamorphosed identity, in the frame-story  belonging to the authors of Cluj, Dunyazad, Shahrazad’s sister  and the slave Rashazad are the storytellers. The latter was invented by Ruxandra Cesereanu and fulfils a fundamental function: Rashazad is the one who goes to the suk (an Arabian marketplace) every day to collect the stories that Dunyazad will tell King Shahriyar, should her sister, Shahrazad, fall asleep. Shahzaman, King Shahriyar’s brother, and the spiritual leader Tumidar join with these two storytellers, both bringing their contribution to the unity of the frame-story and to the configuration of certain narratologic and cognitive significations which, I will thoroughly present in what follows, commencing with the innovating book of Richard van Leeuwen, The Thousand and One Nights. Space, travel and transformation, published in 2007.

Keywords: One thousand and one nights; Narrative techniques; Frame-story; Multiple spatiality; Metamorphosis.

 

 

1001 nights and days workshop, organized by Ruxandra Cesereanu between 2008 and 2009, at the Faculty of Letters from Cluj- Napoca, and finalized at  the Port Cultural Cetate of Mircea Dinescu, gathered degree level students and MA students of the aforementioned Faculty. Its objective was the creation of an alternative corpus of stories that should include imaginary biographies of the undeveloped characters from the volumes that form the work of One thousand and one nights. This objective was difficult to achieve, but not impossible to accomplish, for through the talent and perspicacity of the Cluj’s storytellers, at  Port Cultural Cetate, a little Arabian narrative universe, made in Romania, was born within the gastronomic space bearing Dinescu’s brand, in July 2009. This is the context in which One thousand and one nights was rewritten, but which are the narrative strategies and techniques, the means of construction of the imaginary and the characters that Cluj’s storytellers used for creating the complementary universe of Shahrazad’s narrations?

Firstly, reading the books that form the Arabian nights series was a necessary thing to do so those taking part in the creative writing workshop had to become acquainted with the specific Muslim language, style and atmosphere. Subsequently, the stories were written according to these stylistic and linguistic criteria, through a continuous effort to refine the discourse and to exclude those words that have recently entered the language, that is the neologisms. Since the work focused exclusively on the Romanian translations of One thousand and one nights, an additional effort was concentrated on the assimilation of archaic expressions and constructions existing in Romanian , with the help of which the illustration of the ancestral atmosphere, the representation of the epic situations and the portrayal of the characters was possible. The metaphor, the metonymy and the comparison abundantly used in One thousand and one nights not only bestow the narrative discourse with a certain degree of lyricism and refinement but they also seduce the reader who is integrated into the alternative worlds and subdued to a cathartic process through the characters’ confrontation  with certain extreme situations like the battle between humans and superhuman creatures (ephrits, djinns, evil witches), unfulfilled love or death.

Secondly, beyond this first level of familiarization with the style and atmosphere of  One thousand and one nights, the imaginary and formal construction of the stories are based on a series of narrative techniques which were taken from One thousand and one nights and used rather unconsciously by the storytellers of Cluj. These narrative techniques identified and theorized by David Pinault in his book Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights are divided into five types: repetitive designation: “repeated references to some character or object which appears insignificant when first mentioned but which reappears later to intrude suddenly on the narrative. At the moment of initial designation the given object seems unimportant and the reference casual and incidental. Later in the story, however, the object is brought forward once more an proves to play a significant role.” (Pinault 16), leitwortstil (leading-word style): “the individual Leitwort or “leading word” usually it expresses a motif or an important theme for the given story; the repetition of this Leitwort ensures that the theme will gradually force itself on the reader’s attention.” (18), thematic patterning: “the distribution of recurrent concepts and moralistic motifs among the various incidents and frames of a story” (22), formal patterning: “the organization of the events, actions and gestures which constitute a narrative and give shape to a story; when/if well, done formal patterning allows the audience the pleasure of discerning and anticipating the structure of the plot as it unfolds” (23), and dramatic visualization: “the representing of an object or character with an abundance of descriptive detail, or the mimetic rendering of gestures and dialogue in such a way as to make the given sense visual or imaginatively present to an audience” (25). To these narrative techniques are added certain postmodern strategies of discursive construction, for instance the intertext (through the taking over as such of some metaphorical structures specific to the erotic and narrative ritual), the paraphrase (through the rewriting of some syntactic expressions or structures in accordance with the narrative context) and the use of some archetypal elements in the configuration of the epic line (the alternation of days and nights, the initiating path of some characters etc.) and the Arabian atmosphere (the insertion in the text of some written poetries by Omar Khayam for example and of some paremiologic expressions).

Thirdly, the exemplary accomplishment of the storytellers of Cluj lies in the original construction of the frame-story. If in One thousand and one nights, Shahrazad told stories in order to subdue Shahryar, as we shall see later, to a metamorphosed identity, in the frame- story created by the authors of Cluj, the storytellers are Dunyazad, Shahrazad’s sister,  and the slave Rashazad, a character invented by Ruxandra Cesereanu, to whom it is attributed a fundamental function: Rashazad is the one who goes to the suk (Arabian marketplace) every day to collect the stories that Dunyazad will tell the king Shahriyar, should her sister Shahrazad fall asleep. Shahzaman, king Shahriyar’s brother, and the spiritual leader Tumidar join to these two storytellers, both bringing their contribution to the unity of the frame-story and to the configuration of certain narratologic and cognitive significations which I will thoroughly present as follows, commencing with the innovating book of Richard van Leeuwen, The Thousand and One Nights. Space, travel and transformation, published in 2007.

According to Richard van Leeuwen, “Shahriyar’s obsessive behaviour is the result of a form of displacement, the disruption of a spatiotemporal unity, and Shahrazad’s remedy is to create a new form of unity in which time and space are re-integrated into a new harmony” (Van Leeuwen 125). Before observing how Shahrazad creates this spatial-temporal unity, it is necessary to emphasize, according to Richard van Leeuwen and Michel de Certeau, certain distinctions between the strategic order and the tactical order, between the place and the space respectively: “Strategies are thus concerned with mummification, with the preservation of the status of places excluding the time factor, which may undermine established institutions. Tactics, on the other hand, seek to make use of the time factor, introducing the element of change, transformation and contingency. Both seek to ‘invade’ the other, and together they produce a spatiotemporal balance” (Van Leeuwen 127). Following the path of these ideas, (we may infer that) Shahriyar is a strategic being, submitted to immobility and stagnation, while Shahrazad, due to her practice of storytelling, is a tactical being, who introduces the principle of metamorphosis and reestablishes the spatiotemporal equilibrium. On the other hand, the place is specific to the strategic order, based on the rational distribution of elements, on the existence of the law of the proper which excludes the others, defining itself as closed structure, izolated by the temporal manifestations of the exterior (De Certeau 117). In opposition to this, the space is structured by the vectors of movementand of time and the metamorphosis is constructed through the interference of some mobile elements, it is updated and transformed as it is traversed (117). Thus, the place of Shahriyar is one based on the law of the proper, situated externally to the alterity and time interference, while Shahrazad’s spaces are in opposition to the principles of immobility (naturally the equivalent of dissolution). In other words, Shahriyar is a dimensional being, who builds himself the strategic order of the proper place through the exclusion of the alterity represented by the woman. However, Shahrazad is integrated into the multidimensional worlds constructed according to the principles of metamorphosis which make the stagnation in a stable place impossible, and in this way opposing death. Thus, through the ritual of stories “Shahrazad introduces the spaces of (the )others into the place of Shahriyar, turning the one-dimensional spatiality into a multiple spatiality, a space which encompasses a variety of other spaces” (Van Leeuwen 130). Moreover, Shahrazad determines Shahryar to accept alterities (represented by the women he has subdued to a cicle of death), restating his identity – according to the spaces of the miraculous, configurated by her narratives – and transforming, through the force of imagination, the real dimension into a polymorphic zone which does not submit  to a default order anymore.

However, how are things on the other side, in the variant of 2009 anno domini of One thousand and one nights, written skillfully by the storytellers of Cluj? Through a narrative strategy the meeting of Shahzaman and Dunyazad (which in One thousand and one nights takes place only at the end) takes place almost at the beginning of the story series. However, Shahzaman is made to recount as much as Dunyazad and Rashazad (being an initiated into  the storytelling universe), and that is why he ceases to be adimensional being but, through an ample narrative leap, he assumes  the restructured identity of his brother from the very beginning, becoming Shahriyar’s double. Like Shahrazad, Dunyazad and mostly Rashazad, the  slave, are tactical beings who, through the art of storytelling, introduce vectors of metamorphosis in an aspatial and atemporal zone, which is Shahriyar’s palace. Rashazad is sent in the suk to gather stories from tradesmen and ordinary people; in this way she discovers in alterity the source of  multiple spatialities(?)and of the evasion from the strategic place imposed by Shahriyar. Like his brother, Shahzaman eliminated the alterities represented by women and although he is not a strategic being and he didn’t isolate himself in a proper place (because he already is, in the Romanian version of the Nights, a metamorphosed Shahriyar) it is necessary that Dunyazad and Rashazad resuscitate his conscience of alterity and determine him to accept the woman as a complementary being who can refocus and complete his fragmentary identity. This fact takes place effectivelly at the end of the narrative ritual, when Shahzaman suffers  a complete metamorphosis and marries  Dunyazad and Rashazad.

Before coming to a conclusion, I will also insist on three elements of a great importance for the imaginary construction of the frame-story in the Romanian version of One thousand and one nights: the alternation of  days and  nights, the role of the witchdoctor Tumidar and the scene when we are presented how Dunyazad, Rashazad and  king Shahzaman go into a café to listen to the most skillfully created, bulging stories. If in One thousand and one nights any story is interrupted at the crack of dawn, in an intense narrative tension, for Shahrazad uses the technique of postponement to determine Shahriyar not to kill her and to segment the metamorphotic process to which the king is subdued, in the version offered by the storytellers of Cluj this strategy of postponement and fragmentation of the narration does not exist because for Dunyazad and Rashazad, Shahzaman does not represent the embodiment of some forces of  Thanatos. Because the narrative ritual is almost uninterrupted, Rashazad becomes ill one day, but then, in the frame-story, the witchdoctor Tumidar, who heals her, intervenes and recounts the facts and stories in the moast skillful manner. Thus Tumidar represents the tactical being endowed with magical and thaumaturgic functions, that introduces multiple spaciotemporal elements in a zone of disease; in this way he manages to stop the process of dissolution that undeniably led Rashazad to death. After Tumidar is healed, the slave of Dunyazad tells some stories from a book of sorrow, thus appealing  to a homeopathic principle for a definite healing, the three characters/storytellers, Dunyazad, Rashazad and Shahzaman go into a café to listen to some lies told in the most skillful way. Therefore the real space is contaminated by the effervescence of the narrative ritual unfolded by the three characters, but the descent into reality represents the last necessary procedure for the total transformation of king Shahzaman. If the suk represents the topos from where Rashazad collects her stories, having access to a multiple spatio-temporality, as the agent of the metamorphosis, the three characters’ passing beyond the margins of the palace, to the reality that generated the narrations of Rashazad and Dunyazad is the equivalent to the passing through the archetypal narration from which the stories recounted during the nocturnal ceremonies were engendered. In this sense the last stage of Shazaman’s metamorphosis implies the knowledge of the archetypal alterities (the storytellers from the café, those from the suk) that gave birth to the magical narrations. The stories told by those in the café are lies connected to the reality, that is, they transpose an alternative spatial-temporality, of the others, so Shahzaman, through this last narrative ritual of knowledge of the archetypal “Other” who generates compensatory worlds, will accept the feminine alterities that he had rejected before because of his wife’s having committed adultery. Thus, it will not surprise anybody that after they listened to the lies of the storytellers from the café the three characters will return to Shariyar’s palace and the narrative ritual will be continued, as  expected, with an uninterrupted erotic ritual.

These roughly the main elements of novelty that the  storytellers of Cluj, coordinated by Ruxandra Cesereanu, introduced in the imaginary and the symbolism of the frame-story, where the protagonists are Dunyazad, Rashazad and king Shahzaman. I hope that my presentation was explicit enough, if not, the reader can only wait for the publishing of this exquisitly skilled book that contains stories, one more beautiful than the other, depending on the imagination of each storyteller.

 

 

Bibliography

Daniel Beaumont, “Literary Style and Narrative Technique in the Arabian Nights”, in Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen (ed.), The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2004, 1-5.

Aboubakr Chraïbi, “Situation, Motivation, and Action in the Arabian Nights”, in Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen (ed.), The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2004, 5-9.

Michel De Certeau,. The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984.

Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, New York, I. B. Tauris, 2004.

David Pinault, Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992.

Richard Van Leeuwen, The Thousand and One Nights. Space, travel and transformation, New York, Routledge, 2007.

Yurio Yamanaka, The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: perspectives from East and West, New York, I. B. Tauris & Co, 2006.