Dumas - The Three Musketeers

How many?

Hang on as Alexandre Dumas pins the reader to the coat tails of 4 diverse swashbucklers and assails the evils present in 17th century France. The Three Musketeers proved to be fascinating, exciting, insightful, and strikingly colorful.

I found record of no less than 3 notable translations of this book from the original French, and was not able to clearly track exactly which translation I had. It is sufficient then that it was translated. I can recognize approx. 5 words in French and those include at least 3 city names with cycling events starting or ending therein. In spite of my language deficiency, I at no point found the story ambiguous or strange, as one might expect in a translation from the amouric French to the spectacularly practical English. Much of the French language was present in the text - similar to the remnants of French and Russian remaining in the translated text of War and Peace. Whether the select phrases were common to the English ear at the time of translation, or whether a suitable translated equivalent fails to carry the weight of the authors intention, I don't know. No matter, it succeeds in drawing the English reader deeper into a fantastic realm where no cultural equivalent exists today and supplanting any attempt to drop an anchor into the shallows of reality.

This story is both well known and greatly distorted. I watched a movie some years ago which presented the story of d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. At no point in the movie did it occur to me that the story was really about the young man d'Artagnan and his entrance into manhood, the Musketeers, and the royal court of France. True to the name of the book, the movie held the 3 original Musketeers up as the focus, while distorting the true intent of the story as drafted by Dumas. I'll just get it over with and say "The book was better than the movie." There I said it.

I have no intention of writing a book report on this classic novel, and will thus spare you from another time worn phrase, "You'll have to read the rest of the book to find out what happens." In fact, you're going to have to read the whole book to find out what happens, because I don't have time or patience to summarize this dynamic and engaging plot.

Curious to me are the political and moral purposes of Dumas' novel which are at best dubious, as ends found in each of those arenas are found to be justified by diverse and contrary means. That is to say, he portrays an element as good in one light while later changing the light and finding fault in the same or vice versa. What's good for the protagonist, we might find to be shameful for the antagonist. Or, evil is spontaneously pardoned and declared good.

For instance, infidelity is commonplace in this novel and thus viewed with cultural acceptance and little reproach. The mistresses of each Musketeer and their daring friend are valuable to the success of the plot and adventures of the 4. However, on the dark side, one of the greatest evils of Milady De Winter is her chain seduction of those unfortunate gentlemen seen by her as obstacles or opportunities. On one hand the distortion of marriage is justified by the needs of the protagonists and the shortcomings of the mistress's real husbands, while on the other hand Milady is despised and ultimately punished for her seductions which leave no less distortion to the function of the sacred institution.

Similarly, politically one is left baffled by the author's handling of Cardinal Richelieu. Throughout the saga we are led to hold the Cardinalists, Catholics, and certainly the Cardinal himself in less esteem than the King and the poor Protestants held in the siege of La Rochelle. Though English, we are likewise enticed to hold the Lord Buckingham in high regard though he finds a mistress in the very Queen of France to the chagrin of Louis XIII and the fury of Richelieu. Though never fully exposed, this intrigue plays a central role in the plot. How is it then that Lord Buckingham is assassinated, the king is made a fool, and the Cardinal survives to not only pardon d'Artagnan, but elevate him among the Musketeers? Granted, it is not in Dumas' power to rewrite history. The Cardinal lives on, and Lord Buckingham was indeed stabbed to death by the very man named in the novel. Yet the abrupt transformation within the final chapters, must at least be regarded with curiosity.

I must leave it to the historians to establish why Dumas may have shed the particular shade and angle of light on this period of time which he did. Yet it was thought provoking to be led as spectator, mute and impotent, through the frontiers of France looking behind every rock and bush for one of the Cardinal's men, and then in a precocious instant to be allied with the man himself within the book's final chapter.

For the mature and discerning reader I recommend the book. Though by no means a history book, the novel gives a window from the 21st century out onto an exciting historical landscape from the perspective of one far less removed from the events than we ourselves.