Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
As a remarkable rule with only few exceptions, 'al-chemists' reap-
pearing in nineteenth-century literature are said to be from different
countries than the authors themselves and their primary readerships. This
striking fact calls for interpretation. The most obvious reason is that au-
thors regarded chemistry as being extremely alien to themselves. Unlike
Chaucer, who let the miserable seeker, the yeoman, narrate his own
story, nineteenth-century writers preferred a third-person narrative to de-
scribe the foolish and wrong deeds of their 'al-chemists' from a critical
and distant viewpoint. Inasmuch as they considered chemistry a threat
from the (intellectual) outside, their 'al-chemists' bear a foreign national-
ity, frequently reflecting a nationalistic bias of their time. Furthermore, if
the plot contains a tempter (as, for instance, in Wieland's
Der Stein der
Weisen,
Balzac's
La Recherche de L'Absolu
, and Collins'
Jezebel's
Daughter
), that character is usually a stranger from very far away,
mostly from the east, who is equipped with various xenophobic ingredi-
ents, including the attribute 'fiendish'.
Strangely enough, the literary model appears to be one of the medie-
val Arabic
Tales of the Thousand and One Nights
, which were very
popular in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe after Antoine Gal-
land had first compiled and translated most of the tales into French
(1704-17). The “Story of Hasan of El-Basrah”,
28
although its origin is
still uncertain, is perhaps the oldest literary source of a cheating and
tempting alchemist. Hasan, impoverished by luxurious life, is tempted by
a foreign alchemist from Persia who promises to teach him the art of
gold-making. In spite of his mother's warning of cheating alchemists,
Hasan is credulous and greedy enough to be fooled and then kidnapped
by the Persian. As it turns out, the alchemist is not only a foreigner but
also a follower of a pagan religion “who hated Moslems with exceeding
hatred and destroyed all who fell into his power”. He is “a lewd and
filthy villain, a hankerer after alchemy” who is “wont, every year, to take
a Moslem and cut his throat for his own purposes”, which, in this case,
28
This is the title of the story in Edward Lane's edition (1838-41), vol. 3, chap. 25. In
John Payne's edition (9 vols., 1882-4), one finds the story in vol. 7 as “Hassan of
Bassora and the King's Daughter of the Jinn”. In Richard Burton's edition (10 vols.,
1885) it appears as “Hassan of Bassorah” in vol. 8. I am indebted to J.C. Byers for
this information.
