Reading through the Arabian Nights this evening, I have found the problem with them. Actually it isn't really a problem but an annoyance for the impatient readers, such as myself. Personally, I want to finish a story before moving on to the next one. I am finding it so very aggravating to have to wait page upon page to find out why someone behaved as they did or how the rest of the story ended up.I can see why this book has made such an impact on people for centuries. It is so addicting!
Reading through these stories, I can see the appeal of them not only in the literary form but also the oral form. These are the stories that allow dreams to come to life. I will be the first to admit that reading is great but listening allows the mind to engage even more fully with a story. Without having the task of visually seeing the words, the mind can create a visual within the mind. Throughout our meetings, Prof. S. has talked about noticing us being so enchanted with a story that a classmate is telling that nothing could have taken our attention away. That is how I imagine that it would be hearing The Arabian Nights told as oral stories. We received a little exposure to this idea on Tuesday as Prof. S. read parts of the beginning of this collection of stories. But it wasn't the full effect of hearing all of them read aloud in a conducive atmosphere. Think back over the stories that you have loved the most so far and imagine hearing them being spoken to you from some invisible narrator. Doesn't it draw up images so vivid and profound that you don't want to open your eyes ever again? It does for me. As I am typing this, my eyes are closed imagining the three sisters and their imprisoned male captives with black slaves standing around waiting and craving the opportunity to behead the males of the group. I don't know how the story ends as it has diverted off into the stories of the men but my imagination craves the end as much as my more logical side craves a conclusion. Thus in one short sitting of The Arabian Nights I have found the most annoying and the most rewarding aspect of the story, the structure of a story within a story, that has made it beloved for centuries.
Thinking of these stories in this manner leads me back to a quote that I highlighted from the book that Prof. S gave me on Tuesday. He lent me his copy of Stranger Magic which I fell so in love with that I had to go get my own copy. This way I could make notes and highlight to my heart's content. Now I haven't made it past the introduction yet as my time is taken up with more trivial things such as sleep and working on homework for other classes. But in the reading that I have done so far this quote struck a cord in me. "I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else." Very few things in the world are more insightful than this philosophy towards reading literature. Everyone should always make a text mean more than what the author intended. If a person doesn't try to create more meaning or else a different meaning of a text, then the time spent reading it was wasted. If a person just want to believe what someone before them has said then they are wasting the precious gift of having the freedom and luxury of knowing how to read and imagine.
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