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Burton, Richard F(rancis)

受封为理查爵士(Sir Richard)

英国杰出的探险家和东方学家。1842年被牛津大学开除,前往印度任低级军官。在那里,他把自己装扮成穆斯林,把商人集市和城市妓院的情形详细记录下来。後来旅行到阿拉伯,再次扮成穆斯林,成为第一位非穆斯林而能进入圣城禁地的欧洲人。他将这些冒险纪实写成《麦地那麦加朝圣记》(1855~1856)。1857~1858年他带领一支探险队与斯皮克(John Hanning Speke)前往勘探尼罗河的源头。历尽艰辛,终於发现坦干伊喀湖。他到世界各地旅行,对所到的四十三个地方的人事(如摩门教徒、西非的人民、巴西的魔鬼宗教崇拜、冰岛和爱屈利亚人的波隆那)均有详尽的着述,学会了二十五种语言及许多方言。他译有三十卷古代东方的爱的艺术之手册。其中以翻译出版的《天方夜谭》(全本十六卷)最为杰出,其中的民族学注脚和大胆评论为他在维多利亚社交圈里招来许多敌人。他死後,其妻伊莎贝尔(Isabel Burton)将他四十年来的日记全部烧毁。

1821~1890年

Burton, Richard F(rancis)

British scholar-explorer and Orientalist. Expelled from Oxford in 1842, Burton went to India as a subaltern officer. There he disguised himself as a Muslim and wrote detailed reports of merchant bazaars and urban brothels. He then traveled to Arabia, again disguised as a Muslim, and became the first non-Muslim European to penetrate the forbidden holy cities; he recounted his adventures in Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca (1855-56), a classic account of Muslim life. In 1857-58 he led an expedition with John Hanning Speke in search of the source of the Nile River; stricken with malaria, he turned back after becoming the first European to reach Lake Tanganyika. His travels resulted in a total of 43 accounts of such subjects as Mormons, West African peoples, Brazilian devil cults, Iceland, and Etruscan Bologna. He learned 25 languages and numerous dialects; among his 30 volumes of translations were ancient Eastern manuals on the art of love, and he larded his famous Arabian Nights translation with ethnological footnotes and daring essays that won him many enemies in Victorian society. After his death his wife, Isabel, burned his 40 years of diaries and journals.