Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (Introduction).
Concord
This book was published in 1824. Hajji Baba's adventures were originally
written by Hajji Baba as a diary and given to James Morier as a present
for a service in his favour, who subsequently "adapted it to the taste of
European readers, stripping it of the numerous repetitions, and the tone
of exaggeration and hyperbole which prevade the composition of
Orientals;" but still, you will "no doubt discover much of that deviation
from truth and perversion of chronology which characterize them."
FOREWORD BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE only word that occurs to me to describe this famous old book is one
that is distinctly unfashionable; it is long since I have seen the adjective in
current print. The word is droll; not droll in the Balzacian sense, but in the
suggestion of odd humor, unexpected and kindly, covertly facetious,
mischievously wise. You will find yourself, after reading, unconsciously
echoing or imitating the Persian manner of florid imagery. Let us say, then,
that the reader's path will be strewn with sugar candy. And I could wish for
everyone ( Mashallah!) the same way of reading it that fell to me. For this,
until lately, was one of those innumerable classics which one has heard
praised since boyhood, but never read. I knew by hearsay that it was
inspired by the even more famous Gil Blas; but except for some long-ago
textbook extracts I hadn't read that either.
It was my good fortune, in the summer just past, to spend two months
in a bungalow above Lake Champlain. During that time I was devoted, with
as nearly complete concentration as this world allows its bedevilled citizens,
to finishing a job of work.
[...]
On this excursion from routine I had taken Hajji Baba with me as
laxative, and with that Adirondack cabin I shall always associate
Morier's book. All day, and until toward midnight, whether
swimming, idling in a rowboat, driving through hills, crossing the
little Essex-Charlotte ferry to Vermont or enjoying the humors of a
summer theatre, my inward absolute attention was upon the private
concern But I knew gratefully that on the bedside stand lay a copy
of Hart (in the minuscule World's Classics edition edited by Mr. C.
W. Stewart). I knew that late in the evening Hart would be available
for reading in bed. To resume Morier's pseudoPersian metaphors, no
matter how much abomination I must eat in my own task, no matter
how cruelly fortune might pluck my beard (such is the fascination
of the Persian beards in this book, I thought seriously of growing
one) the young barber of Ispahan was waiting with his rich
merriment. There was never a pleasanter book for "lectio in lectulo."
Next morning I would retrieve the copy where it had fallen under
the coudh, and lay it prospectively ready for the night. As it is a tale
of generous proportions, and I read only a few pages at a time, it
lasted me all that mountain interlude, and indeed a good deal longer
still. Autumn fires were burning on the hearth before I finished it, still
horizontal. It seemed that (like the poet in Chapter 7) I had
contrived a wheel for perpetual motion ("which only wants one little
addition to go round for ever"). But it does not require many pages
for the reader to observe that Morier is truly a great sheikh or
effendi in the matter of story-telling. He knows the art which (see
Chapter 45) is to make his tale interminable and still interest his
audience. May his house prosper! I kiss his knee!
[...]
Christopher Morley
September 1937
NOTE BY THE ILLUSTRATOR AFTER HIS YEAR IN PERSIA
A CENTURY has passed since Morier's time. And Iran of today is
not the Persia of Hajji Baba. Rickety postchaises are gone; upon
ancient routes --now modern motor-roads-- lorries displace camel
caravans. Yet journeying is not without adventure. During winter
the motor-traveller is menaced by ten-foot snow-drifts in sierras;
during summer he crosses blistering salt deserts, still traversed by
Hajji's Turkomen. Hotels are few and of a frontier type. Travellers
sleep, therefore, in tea-houses, pioneer garages or crumbling
caravanserais. And he fares best who carries a cooking-kit, with
alcohol stove to be fuelled with "Russian spirits."
"Oriental" is synonymous with "glamour." Persia is an oriental
land, long symbolized by flower-strewn rugs, lyrical descriptions of
Persian gardens, gay miniatures, and old tales of people whose garb
was lovely and fantastic. In reality, the flowery fields of rug and
miniature memorialize the wondrous --but brief-- miracle of Spring
in a half-empty land whose starkness often beats harshly upon the
eye. And, in the name of modernism, the old costumes have been
abolished by government decree.
Hajji, the barber's apprentice, would not, however, be a spiritual
stranger in Iran, where his "life," translated into Persian and once
believed to be the work of a native author, delights literate Iranis
--though they deem it unsuitable for the?young! For more than a
century is required for any great alteration in a people's character.
The provincial suspiciousness survives. Sketching in Holy Meshed,
near the Afghan border --where Hajji became a water-carrier-- I was
surrounded by a street crowd. In the Far East I had always found
crowds friendly and diverting. In the African "bush" whole tribes
had assembled to watch the sketching of their chiefs. But this
Meshed crowd, composed of muttering and unsmiling men, was different. How
different I discovered when, prior to my discreet but speedy flight, my
interpreter translated the speech of a pink-bearded elder who said, "The
last man who made pictures here was stoned to death."
Under a dictatorship, provincial suspiciousness is exaggerated
by wide-spread espionage, always necessary to a suppression of
civil liberties. And to move about at all I was obliged to procure, in
addition to other passes, a special permit from the Shah's own
Commissioner of Police. "The American, Baldridge," was officially
granted permission to "be in all parts of the Imperial Domain to paint;
all facilities to be given him." But, during the ensuing year, this
handsome document proved worthless. Repeatedly I was driven out of cities
by gumshoe activities which, bordering upon persecution, were engaged in by
my official protectorsÑthe police! I fled Ispahan to preserve my
pictures from a Police Superintendent, bent upon "confiscating
those disapproved; especially all sketches of women."
I did, however, succeed in making hundreds of sketches. And
while men in costumes are subject to fines in cities, remote villages
abound in people unaware of the decree or too poverty-stricken to
conform Licensed mullahs and dervishes are exempt from the law. A
helpful model was "Darvish Sefer," found singing the couplets of
Omar to Ispahan's craftsmen beneath the vaulted ceilings of the
mediaeval bazaar. And a professional dancing-girl in Teheran posed
for the drawings of Zeenab.
Much that is picturesque is being razed to make way for "foreign
style" buildings and motor-traffic. But that which remains is kindly
preserved by the dry air. In Kum, where Hajji sought sanctuary, the
golden dome gleams upon the mosque, beside which corpses and
clothes are still washed in a murky stream --whose water the
townspeople drink. Upon the Maidan of Ispahan --a painting of
which serves as cover for this book-- two marble goal-posts remain
at one end of the polo-field of Shah Abbas, the Great. And neither
modernism nor time nor weather can ever dim the drama of Persian
vistas, the hard clear colours, the mountains of Colah Cazi, or the
snowy peak of Demawend which continues to inspire the emotions
that humbled the ebullient barber.
The Persia of Hajji Baba is doomed. Nevertheless, with its
shrewd delineation of character, Morier's Hajji Baba is destined to
remain invaluable. It is unthinkable that, having survived centuries
of despotism, the Persian character should soon alter greatly.
Given a picaresque tale of by-gone Persia, an artist is at once
tempted to borrow from the Persian miniatures, those formalized
pictures which reveal a delicately whimsical world. But the Persia of
Hajjf was not, by many centuries, the Persia of the miniature
painters. And the tale of Hajji is rife with pungent realism. In the
illustrations I have, therefore, attempted to provide a corresponding
realism, based upon an intimate knowledge of Persia and the
Persians.
Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge