A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales (review)

Reviews223 A Compendium ofEastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales. 1999. Naji B. Oueijan. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 200. $47.95. At: t an international Byron symposium in Salzburg in 1995, a literary scholar associated Selim, the name of Byron's hero in The Bride of Abydos (1813), with English slim, and thereby concluded that the name was chosen to suggest the hero's weak physique and personality. The audience accepted the use of such folk etymology by someone who did not know the language or culture represented by Selim, yet who made a putatively significant literary point based on guesses. Oueijan corrects the erroneous definition of Turkish Sälim (< Arabic) 'safe or sound', informing his readers that the name conveyed the traditional Oriental theme of disguise and secrecy, by disguising the actually sound, brave revolutionary leader as feeble. This telling, opening example (1) and Oueijan's title of A Compendium would seem to promise, among other things, a new linguistic treatment of a major Romantic poet, in a primarily literary book that offers insights for lexicographers and other scholars of language. Unfortunately, the book's lack of a proper lexicographic, linguistic basis and its unalphabetized entries prevent the presendy tangential insights from reaching the potential of Oueijan's rich subject. The book contains discursive chapters (1-70), a semantically-based five-part compendium (71-164), and a conclusion (165-169). Notwithstanding the several lists of words in the appendices (171-179), there is no overall single listing of Byron's loanwords. Oueijan's failure to check minutely Young's four-volume concordance to Byron's poetry (1965), excepting Donjuán, and to use Hagelman's 981-page concordance to Donjuán (1967) partly explains the overlooking of numbers of loanwords that should have been treated (aga, Bairam, bashaw, camise, etc.). The absence of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic dictionaries and even OED2 (1989) in Oueijan's bibliography (181-191) suggests a further deficiency. When the entry in the compendium is a loanword, it is in Byron's spelling (e.g., the dagger ataghan vs. yataghan [145], goulvs. ghoul [109], and jewel of Giamschid vs. the legendary Persian king Jamshid's jewel [140] ) . As many of the items are not borrowed from an Eastern language, they might further the somewhat false view that Byron's Oriental aura may particularly derive from cultural associations like bower, dome, fountain, grotto, and tent, even though Oueijan writes with a knowledge of Arabic and Persian, if not Turkish. He should have clearly specified the often classical source of such items, and his entries provide little etymology or needed grammatical information . If an entry is not a loanword, it is often a semantic term (e.g., Persian scribe= Mahomet [120]; Food and Drink= raki, sherbet, and pilau [131]; Salutation = salaam aleikum [141]; and Garb = Turkish garb 'clerical coat' [ 148] ) . Many entries are, necessarily, purely geographical or biographical names that Byron Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Society ofNorth America 22 (2001) 224Reviews uses constantly, but that do not appear in general dictionaries. Lamentably, lexicographers must still rely on the concordances to find the Arabic, Persian, or Turkish words in Byron's poetry, which unsuccessfully proffers numbers of still obscure, usually Turkish items for general English (Carasman 'a principal landowner-line', Delis 'cavalry bravos', symar 'shroud', etc.). Yet in numerous examples Oueijan shows how Byron employs Eastern words that mainly create the aura making Byron one of the best literary, artistic users of such words. Oueijan's quotation from The Corsair (1813) illustrates this mastery, amid many unquoted lines that modern literary critics consider to be pedestrian: High in his hall reclines the turban'd Seyd; Around, the bearded chiefs he came to iead. Removed the banquet, and the last pilaff— Forbidden draughts, 'tis said, he dared to quaff, Though to the rest the sober berry'sjuice The slaves bear round for rigid Moslems' use; The long chibouque's dissolving cloud supply, When dance the Almas to wild minstrelsy. (98-99) Thereby Byron encourages his readers to borrow pilaff chibouk, and alma sensuously for themselves; and, even if they often eat p^L·ff, these words may retain a powerful, exotic hold on the reader's imaginations. Oueijan does not discuss Byron's substantial contribution to the introduction and familiarization of Oriental words in English and even in some European languages, an interesting topic related to the old question of whether literary writings influence the change and expansion of a lexicon like English, with its wide literacy. As a major exploiter of Oriental words to create authentic Middle Eastern local color, Byron uses 94 different Oriental words, 34 of which are Turkish, in English form chiefly in his Oriental verse-tales. He is the earliest known written user of alma 'Egyptian dancing girl', attar-gul 'rose perfume', galiongee 'sailor', the adjective Stambouline 'of or relating to the city of Stamboul [= Istanbul]', tambourgi 'drummer' (not credited by OED2), and tophaike 'musket', but not the introducer of chibouk 'tobacco pipe with a bowl', though OED2 credits him as such (Thomas Vaughan used chubúk in 1709, 85) . Oueijan does not credit Byron's introduction of alma, attar-gul, chibouk, and galiongee, the four (of the six introductions) that he treats. He sometimes indicates syllabification and pronunciation, as in couplets in The Giaour (1813, 449-479), where he rhymes pairs of words like set/Minaret, power/ Giaour, Mosque/Kiosk, Gazelle/ well, and lid/ Giamschid, with fly/serai and steed/jerreed elsewhere (Cannon 2000, 292 and forthcoming). And he often succeeds in the difficult task of defining the Eastern words contextually, rather than relying on the awkward, voluminous explanatory footnotes utilized by Thomas Moore, Robert Southey, and other British contemporaries. So Byron must be given a high rank in the introduction and familiarization of Eastern loanwords in Reviews225 English, extending to his also once great popularity on the European continent . In this sense, he is probably surpassed only by Sir William Jones (1746-94), and distantly trailed, in order, by the 19th-century novelistsJames Morier and Thomas Hope, Thackeray, and Thomas Moore, among many prominent literary figures who artistically utilized such borrowings and thereby served as conduits in introducing and/or advancing many Eastern loanwords' utility in English (Cannon 2000, 299). Overall, Oueijan accomplishes his purpose of demonstrating Byron's fervent interest in and broad knowledge of aspects of earlier Turkish culture, so as to present an authentic picture. Thus Byron contributed to the advancement of Oriental learning in the West, through carefully selected loanwords, sensuous metaphors, and imagery. His tales, immensely popular during the Romantic and Victorian periods, assisted in the ongoing correction of the false European views of Middle Eastern cultures that Western political and religious writers of his day promoted (165-168), and that Edward Said (1979) has detailed in modern times. Oueijan's attractively printed, generously margined book can be recommended for its literary semantic insights and general accuracy about many of Byron's Eastern words. Perhaps he will compose a second edition that buttresses the lexicographic and linguistic aspects of Byron's Oriental tales, along the lines offered in this review. Garland Cannon Texas A&fM University References Cannon, Garland. 2000. "Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature." Neophilokgus 84: 285-307. _____. Forthcoming. "Turkish Loans in the English Language." OrWi 41 . Hagelman, Charles W., and Robert J. Barnes. 1967. A Concordance to Byron's "Donjuán. " Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. OED2. The Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Second edition. 20 vols. Ed. John Sinclair and others. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Vaughan, Thomas. 1709. A Grammar of the Turkish Language. London: J. Humfreys forJonathan Robinson. Young, lone Dodson. 1965. A Concordance to the Poetry ofByron. 4 vols. Austin, TX: Pemberton Press. ...