The “Alexandre Dumas” collection. “The Count of Monte Cristo I”
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” The count of Monte Cristo. Volume I”, by Alexandre Dumas, collection “Le Monde”, on sale at newsagents, €1.99.
Tale of Thousand and one Night, an Orientalist painting with shards of gold and sparkling precious stones, the unexpected fortune of the Count of Monte-Cristo blurs the misfortune of Edmond Dantès. The marvelous interferes in the tragic destiny of the young Marseilles hero of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), betrayed by his friends, deprived of his great love. “I came down from a planet called pain”he proclaims, torn between an unfathomable grief and the chance suddenly stroked to put an end to it.
This is the whole duality of the drama that Dumas instills in the heart of the protagonist of his avenging epic, who, like a chess player, anticipating the blows of his opponents, will manage to dissolve an assembly of upstart notables, without faith or law. The Empire is dead. The first Restoration seeks its marks and reinvents a liberal society where the good and the bad are not those we believe. Banker, general or magistrate, above all suspicion, will be unmasked one by one by this lord, alchemist, savior of broken lives who calls himself the name of the island where fate smiled on him.
Like Honoré de Balzac in the Scenes of life Parisian and Eugene Sue in The Mysteries of Paris, Alexandre Dumas depicts the dark face of the world around him, led by fame and money, at the cost of lies, denial and injustice. But, however radical and vehement he may be, the writer is not content to paint a realistic and social fresco. Giving a chance to youth, sincerity and hope, he upsets destinies, just as that of Edmond Dantès capsized in the Mediterranean, in the shroud of Abbé Faria, thanks to which he escaped from his cell in the Château d’If. Embracing for a moment the death of his mentor, who bequeathed him a colossal treasure, he becomes a survivor, the grave ghost of a silent justice.
Therefore, wouldn’t there be a bit of Hugo in Dumas, so much does the Count of Monte-Cristo remind Jean Valjean? A bit of Shakespearean Romeo and Juliet in the thwarted loves of Valentine and Maximilian? As for Edmond Dantès, could he be a distant relative of Sinbad, this sailor crossing the seas in search of wonders? So here is Alexandre Dumas capable of mixing the harshness of the world with promises of love, mixing the smallness of some with the greatness of others. But the metamorphosis of his hero, from humble to powerful, from victim to executioner, raises a question of conscience, which Dumas addresses to the reader. This justice, supposed to wash away the betrayals suffered and the wounds endured, is it legitimate? Will giving it back with his own hands have any soothing or liberating power?
Dumas decides with leniency. The wisdom, knowledge and mysteries that Abbé Faria passed on to Edmond Dantès distanced the former sailor, who had become Prince of Paris, from the spirit of reprisals. If he remains inflexible in his Machiavellian revenge, he will not mortgage the future of the innocent or that of his heart. The mythical Count of Monte Cristo is also a cry of hope.
Find the “Alexandre Dumas” collection published by “Le Monde” on the site dedicated to him.
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