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Richard Burton's ARABIAN NIGHTS by Stephen Jared - Part 2
Rumors from Arab slavers around campfires during his pilgrimage had mentioned a large body of water, an inland sea, in central Africa. Burton wished to substantiate such talk, but first he wished to visit the legendary city of Harar, an ancient capitol in the area of what is today Ethiopia. It was a dangerous, reckless, some believed suicidal, mission to undertake. The superstitious Harari had faith in a Guardian spell. They believed that if an infidel survived passage, the spell would be broken and their city would perish. Of his nervous entry beyond city gates, Burton wrote, "I walked into a vast hall, between two long rows of Galla spearmen. They were large half-naked savages, standing like statues with fierce movable eyes, each one holding a huge spear with a head the size of a shovel." Burton lived to tell the tale of course, although one year after Burton became the first European to survive crossing the Harari threshold, the city's Emir died. A generation later, the whole area succumbed to colonization.
In Somaliland, at the outset of his search for the Nile, Burton didn't fare as well. Speke, now joined with him, suffered too from an attack by three hundred natives. Both returned home for several months to recover. "The Great Prize" as it was referred to in Victorian England would have to wait.
Earlier, Burton's success in Arabia had been splashed all over London newspapers, but now the near death catastrophe in East Africa had difficulty competing for column space given England's new war with Russia. The war started between Russia and Turkey. Britain sent reinforcements to Constantinople. Burton opposed the war but, once healed, couldn't resist the call to action. An officer friend with thirty-five years' service in Bengal met Burton in the ancient Turkish capitol, and immediately gave Burton a commission.
Burton would lead a cavalry unit, assembled outside standard military channels. They were unpaid toughs, criminals in some cases, known as Bashi-Bazouks or "Rotten Heads," as Burton translated. He managed to get four thousand of them into military shape. In the end, however, British high command held Burton's Bashi-Bazouks back. After half a million deaths, one of the most tragic wars of the 19th century ended.
With the war over, Burton was anxious to reconnect with Speke. In the fall of 1856, Burton and Speke arrived in Cairo. Enormous preparations were necessary, and it was months later when they crossed to the mainland from Zanzibar. They then began inland. One hundred years before Aristotle, Herodotus pondered the mystery surrounding the source of the Nile. He wondered if its direction could be the result of melting snows in the south. Over two thousand years later - two thousand! - in August 1858, Burton and Speke put to rest one of the world's greatest riddles.
Mountains of the Moon detailed their odyssey pretty accurately. In many ways, the movie was the last of a kind. Travelogue type adventures by filmmakers braving far corners of the globe found excitable audiences since cinema's beginning. Robert Flaherty and Merian C. Cooper focused lenses on primitive and exotic places within our real world. These films became grounded in the reality of what could be placed before a camera.* Seeking similar aims, though without the documentarian's approach, were movies like Lawrence of Arabia, Zulu and The Man Who Would Be King. Since 1990, computers have changed movies just as they've changed everything. Nearly twenty-five years since its release, Mountains of the Moon looks nothing like anything in cinemas today.
With the African period behind him, Burton stewed in London. Controversies about the discovery, a friend's betrayal and tragic end, plus Isabel's mother's stubborn efforts to keep her daughter from marrying him - he wasn't Catholic, had no money, and a rapscallion's reputation - left Burton in misery.
He needed an escape. He needed more stories to write. And so, he went to America, a country that in 1860 was on the brink of civil war.
He wore buckskin trousers, a large brown felt hat, and a couple six-shooters tucked into his belt. From New York he went south to New Orleans then out west to Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
Burton finally married Isabel in early 1861 (against her mother's wishes), and from that point forward they were traveling companions. They spent a few years in South America. They spent a few years in Damascus. Burton took Isabel on a nostalgic tour through India. He voyaged the Gold Coast in Africa, seeking riches. His life's final chapter was in Trieste, Italy.
After authoring dozens of books detailing his explorations, Burton famously translated the Kama Sutra, likely because he was uniquely capable of doing so, and likely because he enjoyed rattling the cages of his repressed Victorian homeland.
He also famously translated the Arabian Nights, and it was this work that clearly held a special place in his heart. For many years, sitting around campfires in Africa and Arabia, Burton told stories to eager listeners, tales pulled from the Arabian Nights. Burton became acquainted with the massive tome at the start of his career in the East. The accurate translation of the title, according to Burton, is The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. It's about a woman who becomes a storyteller in the hopes of living longer. A king is going to kill her, and she prolongs her life by distracting the king with outlandish adventures, stories within stories filled with beasts, magic, love and salvation.
Burton remains an enigmatic character, having written a ton, but very little autobiographical. Nevertheless, writing in the third person, he sometimes offered readers a glimpse into his life, such as the time he wrote, "What scenes he saw! What adventures he went through! But who would believe, even if he ventured to tell them?"
... continued in Part 3 of 3 »»
* Roger Deakins shot Mountains of the Moon. In recent years, hardly an awards season passes without him picking up a few trophies. Regarding his work for Rafelson, it might not be a coincidence that he started his career in documentaries.
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