The Count of Monte Cristo will get you: he will have his revenge

cross-blogging

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

serialized 1844-46, published in book form 1846

this is a first for the blog: I created this image with AI. But I won't be making a habit of it. A subject for discussion...?

My good friend Chrissie Poulson and I decided to read this book and do some joint blogging on it. For various reasons it has taken us a while to get to that point, but here we go! We are both posting today, and Chrissie’s post is on her blog - we have very similar history with it, but different things to say

CHRISTINE POULSON The Count of Monte Cristo - CHRISTINE POULSON

I have a long relationship with this book. When I was in primary school there was a teatime serial of it on the BBC, and I was mesmerised, particularly by that business of his escaping by pretending to be the dead body.

They put a children's version of the book in the school library, and I can still visualize it, feel it in my hands, oh the excitement - and it was a new shiny book too, I presume connected to the serial. (And very much abridged, it was just a  normal-sized book, which the full version most certainly isn’t.)

My father saw me reading it and told me it was banned by the Catholic church. I should stress that he was by no means objecting to it, or forbidding me from reading it - he would be telling me because it was interesting and funny. And the reason was, he said, because it featured Justified Revenge, an unusual reason. Obviously I took his word for this, and really it seems too good to check, but I have now looked into it – results below. ****

I borrowed it several times from school because I loved it so  much, and I couldn't understand why it was always there, why other people weren't borrowing it the whole time.  And then years later (and years ago now) I borrowed it from the public library - and I was quite nervous in case my happy memories were going to be smudged. But no, I thought it was splendid stuff. BUT - I realized halfway in that the book in my hands was vol 1 of 2. I had to race off to the library, heart in my mouth that vol 2 wouldn’t be there. Luckily, rather like primary school, the good people of wherever it was had not scooped up all available copies so disaster averted.

And now, many years having passed again, I have re-read it.

No mean undertaking: it is immensely long and you can see its roots in the serial form. But still tremendous fun, leaping around all over the place. As a child, I found Edmond Dantes’ early fate terrifying: He has been wrongly convicted and thrown into the dungeons of the fortified island, the Chateau d’If. Years go by: he is forgotten, with no prospect of release. Eventually he grabs his chance: he gets himself into the shroud of a dead friend, and is thrown into the Mediterranean as a corpse. (I can still visualize the TV version of his fighting his way out of his weighted sack).

His friend has given him some info on buried treasure (on a different island) and Edmond works his way up to getting there – he joins a band of smugglers, who don’t ask too many questions about his past. (And so he was mentioned in our recent blog Smugglefest). He ends up being phenomenally rich, and then he sets off in truly admirable style to reward everyone who tried to help him, and – more to the point – to take his awful revenge on those who did him down. He does this in a heartfelt and extreme way, prepared to wait a long time for his chance, and showing no mercy.

He is super-clever, super-rich, a consummate actor, attractive to women, quick-thinking. His servants love him. Mmmm…I wonder why the book has always been so popular? In fact I think it’s the revenge even more than his James Bond personality. I think it shows that all of us would secretly like to get back at everyone who has done us down, and given the opportunity, and the huge amount of money, we’d do that too. I’m not surprised that some people looked askance at the book. We’ll have to hope that most of us don’t get the chance, or else that kinder ways prevail.

The plot is amazingly elaborate and ranges over many countries. He takes on various names and personas – I was very happy with this

“What is his name?"

"If you ask him he says Sinbad the Sailor; but I doubt if it be his real name."

There is Carnival in Rome – ‘Albert was triumphant in his harlequin costume’.

There is a young oriental lady who is definitely a worry to modern eyes:

Haydée was reclining upon soft downy cushions, covered with blue satin spotted with silver; her head, supported by one of her exquisitely moulded arms, rested on the divan immediately behind her, while the other was employed in adjusting to her lips the coral tube of a rich narguilah, through whose flexible pipe she drew the smoke fragrant by its passage through perfumed water. Her dress, …consisted of a pair of white satin trousers, embroidered with pink roses.

Picture by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps

There is an extraordinary adventure where he uses the fairly recent invention of the telegraph to manipulate the stock markets by delaying news…

There is a body being dug up: like father like son. Alexandre Dumas fils ie the son of this one, used this trope in his La Dame Aux Camellias, a scene that is not included in more romantic versions such as the Verdi opera La Traviata - La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas Fils

There are parties: 

one could see the garden ornamented with lanterns, and the supper laid under the tent. Dancers, players, talkers, all uttered an exclamation of joy—everyone inhaled with delight the breeze that floated in.

The Count has his important views:

"a dead father or husband is better than a dishonored one,—blood washes out shame."

His final moves are interesting. His first great love was Mercedes, who ended up marrying the man who ruined the Count’s life. Will he think he needs revenge on her, will he end up with her? I cannot reveal the ending. I did think about all those Hollywood films where there were test screenings and the directors then change the ending to match their wishes. Not an option available to Dumas…

It was a long effort to read this, but it WAS worth it: it is a shameless book and it is beyond criticism, you can’t judge it by normal literary standards.

As I once said about another, very different, book, he seems to have used up every single possible plot from his head, it’s surprising he ever wrote anything else (he did, he wrote loads, notably The Three Musketeers).

There have been countless adaptations of the book, in all media, over the years, including two recent screen versions. My favourite comment on all this is the person who said that film-makers should be a bit more careful with their messing about with the story, or there might be a new blissful  headline:

“Count of Monte Cristo returns to seek revenge on the moviemakers who slashed his story.”

I re-watched the original one that won me over – you can find it on YouTube - and it is awful and cardboard and creak-y and studio-bound and  done on the cheap, but I can see why I loved it, and yes I could see why the scenes of him in the water thrilled my heart. Others I have sampled or seen years ago and they all blend into one – though I am sure readers may be able to tell us which ones are superior.

*** So was it banned or not? You’d think that was a straightforward yes/no question, but it isn’t. There are varying views, and it is apparently not easy to get a full list of the books on the Index. It seems clear that Dumas was on the Index, but perhaps not for Justified Revenge, which is disappointing. We should all be discouraged from thinking it’s a good idea, even though it worked for the Count. He is not a role model.

A recently-featured book

The Twenty-Third Man by Gladys Mitchell

had definite overtones of the Count of Monte Cristo – island setting, smugglers, bandits…